The Start of Garden Season 6.0

I've gotten quite a late start on my garden this year. Probably has something to do with the unrelenting cold wet weather and the fact I'm 30 weeks pregnant. Kinda puts a damper on things when you move at the pace of a snail and have the range of motion of an unjointed stick. So slowly over the last 4 weeks or so I've been cleaning out the remnants of the fall garden and pulling weeds. Due to the added mulch last year, I didn't have a lot of weeds to deal with except in the corn bed since that one only got an inch of mulch. It produced quite a flourish of weeds. They were so bad I actually was able to just pull and roll them up like a carpet.

I'm doing no till/lasagna/back to eden/deep mulch/Ruth Stout types of organic gardening. I started this last year and I was happy with the results so I will continue on in the hopes that it continues to just get better. I was really happy I didn't have to get out there and shovel up and turn all the dirt like I usually do, it's my most hated task. Despite that, I still had a lot that needed to be done.

First I sprinkled a healthy dose of organic poultry litter based organic fertilizer on my garden. In my 256 sq ft garden I spread about 30 lbs of the stuff. Maybe it was overkill but I wanted a good nitrogen layer to help break down the old mulch layer and seep down into the dirt below. Because it's organic, slow release and processed to pellet form, I'm not worried about burning any plants.

I didn't start any plants indoors this year, it's been hard enough keeping my household going while being pregnant as it is, I never got the motivation to start seedlings. I picked up a few things from the Mercer Arboretum March Mart plant sale. Usually it's at the end of March but this year it was earlier, which is great. I got the rest of my seedling stock from Lowes. They had a decent selection of tomatoes and peppers. I really wanted to plant some Ichiban eggplant but I couldn't find any. I guess I'll have to start my own next year. I did pick up an interesting looking white eggplant though, just for kicks and giggles.

One day I transplanted all the plants, the next day I sewed seeds, and then over the course of three days I put in the mulch. This year I was fortunate enough to get some free mulch from some family members. The kind that specifically reference by the Back to Eden film as whole tree chippings. The pile I got had been composting for at least 6 months so it was a very favorable mulch to put in, better than the stuff I had last year. Better still I have some leftover I stockpiled in the back yard that I'll use to mound up my potatoes and spread as needed to support the corn stalks and use for suppressing weeds should they pop up.

A view of the garden facing West. I moved around almost everything I usually plant. I thought it may be beneficial to move stuff around since different plants have different demands on the soil. It was really hard for me to do this because I'm a real creature of habit and don't like change much, but we'll see how it goes.

This first bed was strawberries, potatoes, and peppers last year. Okra later in the summer. This year it is all tomatoes. yep 100% tomatoes. i'm hoping for several more pints of spaghetti sauce this year. I have Cherokee Chocolate, Boxcar Willie, Celebrity, Early Girl, and Better Boys in here. I'm using large cages for those I'll let have 3-4 growth points, small cages for those that will have 2 or 3 growth points, and stakes for single growth point tomatoes. Just mixing it up and seeing how the results vary. I believe there are 12 tomato plants in here. I usually only have 4 tomato plants in half a bed. I planted extra heavy this year in some of my boxes as an experiment to see how much I can really support in each box with these new methods. I expect if the dirt is healthier and I use better organic fertilizers I can support more plant in a smaller space. It's the theory anyway.

This bed has always housed corn. Due the the mass of weeds, I first put down a layer of newspapers 4 or so papers thick and then piled on the mulch at 3-4 inches deep. Bye Bye weeds. Here I have Sweet peppers (3 varieties), one Jalapeno plant (strictly for bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos - YUM!) , a leftover Early Girl tomato plant, and a mini eggplant plant. On the opposite side is one Sunflower (Kong Hybrid) in the middle, cantaloupe and watermelon. i usually do three sunflowers but I opted for only one this year since the seeds we get have really yet to be much for eating. I mostly plant them as a stink bug distraction and a jab at the HOA (because the plants get so tall they tower over the fence) I think I'll plant a few more in DD's garden bed along the back fence just for pretty pretty. Corn has been relocated to the other 8x8 bed. I did 5 rows much more sparsely planted than in years past. I've been really bad about giving each corn plant enough room to really grow to it's potential so my goal is to space them really well this year and see how that improves production and fullness of the ears.

This is the only bed I didn't really mix it up too much. Here I have planted Green Beans (bush variety topcrop), lima beans, two eggplants (Black Beauty and White eggplant), and I did two planting of cucumbers in the middle. I purchased a new trellis to see how that works out, I'm skeptical, it seems flimsy. I just have yet to really work out a good trellis system for my cukes. I planted Straight Eight's this year under the direction of my massively green thumbed grandfather. I hope they do well, last year was such a bust it depressed me and the kids LOVE cucumbers. This is my most densely planted bed, we'll see how it does.

This bed is where I used to always do tomatoes and cucumbers. I pulled out and relocated the garlic chives from last year and here I planted one sweet potato (it was sprouted in the pantry so I thought why not give it a try), 3 lbs of seed russet potatoes, two zucchini, and one yellow squash. I only mulched around the squashes. I'm going to wait for the potatoes to make their way up and then mulch around the emerged plants. I planted quite densely here, so we'll see what happens.

The perennial/herb bed. The only major difference here is that I've moved any surviving strawberries into this bed and planted some new ones. I don't know what my deal is, but I cannot for the life of me grow strawberries. I think I need to do some more research. I culled back my oregano (that stuff likes to just take over) and trimmed back the thyme some. Added some sweet basil and dill on the other side. The parsley is still going strong at the far left, I thought that stuff was supposed to be annual but it just barely makes it through the summers and comes back full force in the fall. I did cut it back some. There's an open space here I'm going to plant some more cucumbers in a tomato cage and see how well that works out. I'd love to find some more Stevia and plant it in here.

View of the garden facing East, you can see my stockpile of mulch in the corner. There's more stuff I need to mulch around the yard so some of that is spoken for but the rest will go to the potatoes when they come up and garden as needed. I think I'm probably going to try and sell my rotating compost bins, I just don't use them anymore since I added in the worm towers, which I like much better for composting.

The fig tree is most promising this year. It has some real height to it and has already started putting out leaves and some baby figs. I desperately just want to sit down with a giant bowl of figs and eat my heart out. I hope this is the year.

The most successful asparagus has come back with some nice thick stalks. I don't get a lot at once, maybe 2 or three stalks per day but there's perfect for snapping and grazing on as I do my rounds around the yard. They're so tender and sweet right off the plant. When it starts heating up I'll let them grow up to ferns and feed the roots for next year. I might plant some more next year if I actually want a harvest, until then, I just like grazing. I put a few yellow onion bulbs in just to the right there just kinda to see what happens.

Orange tree. I'm conflicted on what to do, I have yet to get anything from this tree and it still doesn't look great. I kind of want to dig it out and try a new tree after I prepare the dirt better, but on the other hand I keep holding out hope that it will make it and start producing. I highly doubt I'll get anything from it this year again. If it doesn't look amazingly green next year, it's getting the ax.

This is my shame bed, that started out with some great thornless blackberries that did great for a few years and then just died. It's been barren for a year or two. I wanted to plant some blueberries here but I haven't been able to find any plants decently priced so I decided to let this be DD's garden. She has some marigolds (which I also put all around my garden, great pest repellent and they're pretty too), a purple bluebell, she also planted some onions, green beans, corn, some wildflower seeds, and 4 o'clocks. She also "planted" some of the old stuff I ripped out of my garden, like that bolted collard plant, lol. She waters fervently every day. I'll put a thin layer of mulch here as well just for good measure. I went back and planted a row of onions myself and I'll probably put a giant sunflower or two here also if none of her flowers/plants come up.

So that's the garden this year. It wasn't really that much work but I am totally spent. It's hard to garden for a pregnant lady but the effort will be worth it when I have a newborn (Late May/Early June) and lots of fresh produce in my back yard. Check back in a week or two to see seed sprouts!

Do Worm Towers Work?

As a second installment from my original post where I began my journey to improve my garden soil. I took a leap of faith in building some worm towers into my garden. It's been one year since I've put them in and here's what I have to say about it.

Short Answer: Yes.

Long Answer: For the purpose of composting, worm towers do work, all year long I've been able to throw in kitchen scraps into my towers and it composts away. The majority of the time however it may have only been a small percentage of worms actually were doing the eating, most of the time it was Black Soldier Fly larvae. I'm ok with that because they make quick work of it in the summer and they're inert bugs that don't have ill effect on my garden and I don't have to stay on top of carbon addition to the towers. Which means I can be lazy and still enjoy good results.

I did not "prime" my towers with any species of worms hoping they'd multiply and inhabit the dirt. I built on the premise of If-you-build-it-they-will-come. While planting my spring garden this past week, it became a common sight to shovel a spade or two full of dirt and have 1 to 3 worms in the dirt I removed. Two observations: populations were larger near the towers, most of the worms were small babies or juveniles. I didn't find many large adults, but they did show up occasionally. the fact that there were babies, the adult had to be around somewhere.

See, worms!

Was the new populations a direct result of the worm towers? I would say they helped, but they were not the sole reason worms came. Last year I had also trucked in and added about 3 inches of humus and manure composts to each bed. Then a few weeks later I added another 2-3 inches of wood mulch. I think all things combined provided for my success in creating habitable environment for native earth worms. Many eggs may have come to me in the compost to begin with that could have jump started my populations. In any case, they are here now and I am totally thrilled. The overall texture of my dirt is much improved from last year, it is moist and at least 50% more loamy than last year. Some beds are still a little dense, but I think they'll only continue to improve. All critter activity (meaning I found plenty of other bug and larvae types in the dirt in addition to the worms) is also up quite a bit from last year. I hope many of the others aren't pests, but they're sightings were only a 1/4 or less of those of the worms, so they're a minority.

To keep my populations happy, I did not till or turn my dirt this year. I've decided to add a nice layer of organic fertilizer and then another layer of mulch, about 3 inches. Last year's mulch and compost had decomposed and sunk down to the level of my beds, as I expected.

So that's how it has worked out for me. I plan to keep all my towers. Next year when I'm not 7 months pregnant, I'll probably move the towers to the corners of the beds instead of centered on the ends, I feel like there's wasted space trying to plant around them. The kids still love "feeding the worms"

Spring is Coming for REAL!

After having quite a chilly and abnormal winter this year, this past week has been downright lovely. I haven't posted much about the garden over the winter...or really anything because I don't like going out in the cold. So basically, I throw a few seeds out there and check back right before spring gets here. It didn't help that I became pregnant right about planting time for fall gardening and I get very sick in my first trimester so I'm pretty lucky I got anything but weeds out of the fall garden.

Got a decent crop of carrots. Not as many as I usually do since I didn't do a very good job planting them under the mulch and then thinning, but what did come up, grew exceptionally well, much better than years past, minimal tops and all root. Very sweet and crisp. Good for freezing and canning but doesn't keep too long in the fridge, it goes rubbery.

Danvers 126 variety

I just pulled up my turnips too. We've been eating on them here and there over the winter, but I'm the only one that likes turnips/turnip greens, and one person can only eat so much. The ones I left be got pretty large.

These were just the largest ones, between softball and double softball size. I also have a good armful of regular sized turnips and leaves I will probably blanch and freeze. All but the one DS is holding (while he munches on raw collard leaves) turned out very firm and good flesh. The largest one got pithy and spongy in the center, so it's going to the worms as compost. Also notice the yellow blooming broccoli behind DS. I like to always let some broccoli go to flower because the bees LOVE them. I wait until I'm ready to plant for spring to take them out. Gotta make sure the bees know where to come that way I don't have pollination issues.

With the turnips, a friend suggested I pickle them, and being pregnant and not sick anymore, I want to eat lots of pickles so I obliged. I also planted beets this year, but they did very poorly. I only got a handful of very tiny beets. Just enough to color the turnip brine. Every time I try beets they just don't do the best, but I'll keep trying because I do love beets.

I canned 4 pints of carrots and 6 pints of turnips (only the largest turnips, still have lots more greens to put in the freezer). I still have a decent portion of kale and a healthy bit of collard greens to put away in the freezer.

Since I'm doing no till gardening now, I will just spread a good dose of organic fertilizer on top of my beds (I am using this stuff, I had good results with it on my lawn last year and it says you can use it in the garden also), lay down newspaper 3-4 papers thick and cover with 2 inches of mulch. When it comes to planting time, I will punch down through the newspaper, add rabbit manure and cottonseed meal and plant in the soil. This should work really good for controlling weeds this year. Over the winter the weeds weren't bad either, only in the corn bed because I didn't mulch very heavily last spring.

Here's to a new season of gardening and many more posts!

Some Updates on the Garden

The heat of summer is certainly upon us. The insects are taking over the garden with extreme force. Just walking around this morning I found two varieties of stink bugs.

 This is the brown maramarated stink bug. I don't remember seeing many of them last year, but a few years ago there were TONS of them.

Because of the massive invasion of these guys, all my tomatoes still coming off the vine were so damaged and just sticky and gross, I decided to clip down the plants and wait a month and replant for the fall. Since I'm trying to keep as much vegetation recycling directly back into the soil, I took a pair of manual hedge shears and chopped up the tomato plants into a fine salad and laid it on the existing mulch. I didn't think much of it initially, but I did leave about 2 inches of stump at the bottom, and the tomatoes may regrow...which would be awesome and perfect when they start fruiting in the fall. I'm interested to see what becomes of it. I've probably harvested 20 lbs of tomatoes. I'll be making and canning spaghetti sauce this weekend, my favorite way to store the tomatoes.

I left the Rutger tomato plant because it looked like it had a lot more to grow. If it gets too overrun, I'll take it down too. I should just take out the cucumbers too because they are a bust, I didn't get anything from them, but I thought it might be possible they would survive the summer and make a comeback in the fall. I'm still on the fence.

Along with the bad bugs, I did find some beneficials too. Early in the season there were lots of lady beetles, now I'm seeing Assasin bugs and black soldier flies.

Milkweek Assasin bug. He has a long pokey proboscis looking thing on the bottom side of his head. All the better to kill the bad soft bodied insects around the garden. He and his nymph friend were hanging out on the eggplant, which are finally starting to grow some fruit. Thanks for your help buddy, you're always welcome around here!

Then there are the soldier flies, which are mostly neutral, they don't even eat in their adult life, they just live to reproduce. As far as the garden goes, I don't mind them but they do buzz around like wasps and can be unnerving. They don't carry any diseases and such, so they're pretty inert.

The larvae are actually extremely efficient at breaking down rotting food. I think they're much faster than compost worms. I have a tendency to not put enough carbons in my worm towers (I had the same issue with my composters, which is why I gave them up) and so the environment has been perfect for soldier fly larvae and they make quick use of the scraps. I can't even keep my 8 towers filled anymore because they are so fast at reducing it all to mush, the burning heat helps too. When they are done eating, they just climb out the tube and become adults. If you have chickens, you can harvest them to feed your birds.

Concerning the worm towers, it's been 3 months since I installed them. I'm not yet sure how effective they have become for attracting native worms, but they've been ideal for composting in general. My kids love "feeding the worms" and they're just so easy to use. Once it got hot enough to kill off the fruit flies, I've been much happier with them. I'll try to put forth more effort to put in carbons as often as I do nitrogens so the worms have something to work on. The soldier fly larvae really prefer to eat on the nitrogens. I'll be digging around the towers and do an update in the fall after they've been in 6 months and see how much better or worse my dirt looks.

In other news, the sunflowers are blooming. I stopped fertilizing them so they got pretty lanky before they flowered and then we had a really windy day and they blew over. By that time the heads were too heavy for the plant to recover upright, but as long as they're still alive, I will let them be. When the heads start to die and yellow, I'll cut them off and hang in the garage to finish drying and maturing the seeds. Last year  I tried to hang a paper bag over the head like I had read, and that just doesn't work here in our humidity. All it did was mold and lost all the seeds. My husband is 5'7", before they started to bend, they were at about 9.5-10 ft.

The watermelons really love the shade that the sunflowers provide. They don't have a whole lot of leafy growth so the sunflower leaves keep the melons from sunburning. we have 6 melons growing. Lost one to DS, but he hasn't picked anymore since.

I planted some okra near the watermelons and they are doing ok, but not great. The ones shown here are planted near the peppers and are loving it there. Here's some of the peppers I picked from our plants. Not huge, but the best I've ever grown. The walls were thick and extremely juicy. I kept getting sprayed in the eye while cutting up the peppers. The plants are still really green and are getting along well. The peppers I planted in the herb bed aren't doing as well. I didn't prime their planting spots with rabbit manure though.

I probably won't have much update for a while, I can't bear to be outside for too long anymore, it's just so hot. The plants are mostly done anyway sans the eggplant and the upcoming okra. Oh well I guess potatoes will be ready soon, the plants flowered and they've started to wilt. I'm excited to see what some sprouted grocery store potatoes will yield me. I did toss some Buckwheat into the corn bed and I am hoping that sprouts up and generates some biomass to lay over the exposed stalks.

So far, I'm loving my new gardening techniques this year, no till, mulching/ back to eden, lasagna, organic fertilizing.

Corn!

I started getting a little ansty for the corn to be ready and took one ear off that looked the most ready and it was looking good. Once the kids saw me take one off they insisted they all needed to come off. I'd been seeing more bugs hanging out around the corn so I decided to go ahead and pull the majority of the ears. As it turns out, the development of the corn really wasn't much better than last year. I had a few that were really well filled, but most of them were still just small. Still tasty though. I think next year I'll plant the rows differently and stagger the plantings by a week or so, that way the pollen hangs around longer. One of these years I'll perfect it. Until then, I think this was a pretty good haul.

My shucking helpers

This guy was stowed away and I stuck my fingers in all the mush because I wasn't watching what I was doing. It totally grossed me out. I think this is a corn earworm and I think I've had them in the past, but they ate up several of my ears this year. You can just cut off the chewed part and eat the rest of the corn if that doesn't gross you out too much. Good news is there was no stink bug damage this year and overall I had much better pollination of the lower kernels, I think this is a result of my hand pollinating but all my pollen expired before the silks were done being fertilized which is why I ended up with mostly half ears.

Those kids looooove shucking corn

We got a very large bowl filled to the brim. It was so tender and sweet. I just wished the kernels were bigger and many were not quite ready due to the kids' enthusiasm but all still edible.

Once I harvested the corn, I usually pull out the stalks and bundle and put them out to the curb but this year I'm trying something new and I just broke the stalks at soil level and laid them down in the bed and covered them with a layer of mulch. Unless my plants are diseased or severely infested with critters I intend to do this with all my plants this year. In the process I mulched over my field peas as well. I pulled some out and did see plenty of nitrogen nodules so I'm hopefully they are adding some back to the soil as they die off. In probably two weeks once the corn has died and settled I'll try to broadcast some buckwheat in that bed as a cover crop.

A Lost Cause

Well, the squash vine borers finally annihilated my squash and zucchini plants. I knew it was only a matter of time before I would miss eggs. I wasn't exactly being diligent either since I was getting tired of zucchini. The fridge is still full of it. I was planning to rip the plants out anyway but when I saw the health of the plant rapidly decline and new leaves looking wilty I figured I already knew what happened. I tore the plants out this morning and there they are the little culprits.

There are two of them towards the top of the stalk with little brown heads and all their poop (called frass) towards the bottom where they've been. Now that I know what I'm seeing, I'm sure this is what has happened to my squash in the past. I don't think I will plant squash here again for a few years in case there are any bugs there that will come out later in the season.

I think I'll plant some more okra there. I already planted some along the edge of the watermelon bed and the pepper/potato/strawberry bed. Or maybe I'll just let the area rest, now that I'm sure my dirt is protected with the mulch I'm not so afraid to leave the area bare.

So Many Beans and Promising Corn

One of my most favorite crops is green beans. They're SO easy to grow and the particular variety I like (Greencrop) is extremely prolific, even after the kids maul the plants in their enthusiasm to pick beans. The plant just bounces back and produces more and more and more. Bush varieties may not typically produce as much as vine varieties but this one is a contender. We pick a big bowl of beans from 8 plants about every 2 to 3 days. More frequently if I can keep DS from grazing, but he eats a sizable handful on his own every day.

The corn is also doing exceptionally well this year. Although I know I planted closer together than I should have almost every stalk has developed an ear and in a few cases there are two ears! The plants are over 6' tall now which is the tallest I've ever had a crop of corn grow. In the past I have just gone out and shaken the plants a bit and let the wind do it's own pollinating. I do always end up with the tips of the corn never filled out. This year I've gone out nearly every morning since the silks started showing and hand pollinating with a bushy paint brush. I just want to see if it really makes a difference. In this way I can target the tassels and anthers (dangly bits on the tassel) that are still full of fresh pollen and spread it to the new silks on all the corn, many times on plants that have tassels that are already done. You can tell that a silk has been pollinated if it turns dark and begins to shrivel within a few days. It's about time to put up my squirrel fence around the corn because those little critters will shred it open right on the plant and eat it up!

The male flower of corn, called the tassel. The dangly bits are the anthers which are pockets that contain the pollen, they will be a dark pinkish red when they are ready to release pollen and will turn orangy when they are spent.

The female flower of corn is called the silks. Each silk has to be pollinated to form the kernel that it is attached to. Silks continue to emerge for days, up to a week after the first silks show, so it's important to make sure it gets pollen continually to ensure a full ear of corn.

My whole crop of corn, in an 8'x8' bed, there are approximately 70 plants. I'll probably end up with around 45 ears due to some not developing silks, loss to bugs/squirrels, and underpollentation.

This stalk has two female flowers (silks) the top one is mostly pollinated and just forming kernels now and the lower one has new silks ready to be pollinated. I've had double silks before but the second one never formed an edible ear. I'll be super thrilled if this one does.