What's in the Garden?
- Thread starter Leolady
- Start date
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Harry Cobean
Executive Chef
!
CWS4322
Chef Extraordinaire
Checked the asparagus patches...about 1" is above ground on several stocks...saw a man walking along the road collecting wild asparagus (yes, I made note of where he was and vow to take a walk there on May 18th). The rhubarb is ready to pick...the potatoes are up (some of them), good germination on the peas, onions looking good, some "volunteer" cucumber/zucchini/squash plants, and there are various things in the wrong places (thanks to the girls scattering the first batch of seeds we planted). And still counting down to when I can pull the first radish. Those grew quite abit with the rain we've had. Soil temp is 18C, so sweet corn can go in if the rain stops and the ground dries up...(can't do that where the chickens can be--they love corn!!!). I guess it is time to move the girls to their City home...
CWS4322
Chef Extraordinaire
Everything's in the gardens at the farm except for the tomato, celery, and pepper transplants. Oh, and eggplant. We have radishes (small), everything is coming up--except for the beans, they just started going in, and the cantaloup. We even got the small (about 40 ft by 50 ft) garden mulched yesterday and today, as well as the 3.5 acres mowed. I'm beat. The other gardens we plant so the rows are far enough apart the bulk of the weeding is done by rototilling. Otherwise, we'd have to hire field hands to keep up with the weeding here and in the City. Let the waiting (or should that be weeding) begin! I'm hoping for new potatoes for my July 1st potato salad. How're things going in your garden patches?
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I ran over to the garden to pick some chard for tomorrow's breakfast.
CWS4322
Chef Extraordinaire
+1
You'll like it. I replace toast with greens. I heard a nutritionist on the radio not long ago encouraging people to include veggies with breakfast.
Not really a big greens eater, but Kathleen is and SHE will like it. I will likely tolerate it (though I am willing to give it a go).
CWS4322
Chef Extraordinaire
Keep an open mind, FrankZ. I like runny yolk mixed in with the greens...or, dress it all up and make eggs benedict.
CWS4322
Chef Extraordinaire
I'll post pics of the gardens tomorrow. Too tired tonight and the light is fading.
GLC
Head Chef
CWS4322
Chef Extraordinaire
+1
I have to get up off my arse. My garden is full of weeds. I can hardly see the three potato plants.
GLC
Head Chef
I intensely dislike weeding.
Starting in the fall, I'm going to see about going to no irrigation for 90 percent of my garden, watering only those things that absolutely need frequent water (lettuce). One of the benefits is that, when planted for non-irrigation, the plants are set far enough apart that the tiller can run between them, taking care of the weeds and the necessary fluffing of the surface soil. I've been reading Steve Solomon and realized that it's nothing more than dryland farming, but with the planting done so that the deeper moisture isn't exhausted, rather than the intensive commercial dryland farm that depends on lucky rains and fails completely if it doesn't rain.
You have to have a lot of ground to do it, because of the wide spacing, and I have that. I also got, with the John Deere 140 1971 garden tractor I bought, a tiller attachment and a soil pulverizer, both of which will maintain the "dust mulch." The whole concept makes sense, and I regularly see commercial fields doing well without rain or irrigation until the extremely close planting exhausts the subsurface water.
Here's the short book on the subject:
Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway by Steve Solomon - Project Gutenberg
Also looking into huglekultur.
raised garden beds: hugelkultur instead of irrigation
Starting in the fall, I'm going to see about going to no irrigation for 90 percent of my garden, watering only those things that absolutely need frequent water (lettuce). One of the benefits is that, when planted for non-irrigation, the plants are set far enough apart that the tiller can run between them, taking care of the weeds and the necessary fluffing of the surface soil. I've been reading Steve Solomon and realized that it's nothing more than dryland farming, but with the planting done so that the deeper moisture isn't exhausted, rather than the intensive commercial dryland farm that depends on lucky rains and fails completely if it doesn't rain.
You have to have a lot of ground to do it, because of the wide spacing, and I have that. I also got, with the John Deere 140 1971 garden tractor I bought, a tiller attachment and a soil pulverizer, both of which will maintain the "dust mulch." The whole concept makes sense, and I regularly see commercial fields doing well without rain or irrigation until the extremely close planting exhausts the subsurface water.
Here's the short book on the subject:
Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway by Steve Solomon - Project Gutenberg
Also looking into huglekultur.
raised garden beds: hugelkultur instead of irrigation
We have our first silverbeet plants up and should be ready to start harvesting in another 10-14 days. The snow peas and beans are going well about the same till harvest. We are about to build our first raised vege bed. We are using bales of hay ted together to form the border, 5 each side one across, then I think I will try the suggestion above and collect the various dead wood around our acre and put that at the bottom to mulch down. I've heard unbleached wet cardboard attracts worms so a few packing boxes in then topsoil n mulch. I think we will grow beans over the autumn winter period to mulch into the gardens come spring planting. Any suggestions will be helpful. Also let the chooks in as CWS does to enrich our soil and weed it too before spring.
By the way we have a gray water system - just a holding tank for water used in the shower, washing machine and kitchen sink. I was thinking of putting a drip feed hose into the centre of the layers of garden so this can water it. Any suggestions or advice?
NikitaLysytskiy
Assistant Cook
On weekend visited my grandma
and in the garden there were
and in the garden there were
Nice Nikita
CWS4322
Chef Extraordinaire
Except for the "little" garden, we plant all of the gardens so that we can get the tiller between rows. Otherwise, we'd spend dawn until dusk weeding, 7 days a week.
CWS4322
Chef Extraordinaire
Lovely!On weekend visited my grandma
and in the garden there were
GLC
Head Chef
If you mean the huglekultur garden, I think it's essentially a wood composter at heart. And it's supposed to be very good at holding water over long periods and is considered a low water consumption method. I suspect any steady feed of gray water might be too much water. Makes the thing a slimy mess of rot, rather than the decomposition you want. I know people in very rainy areas often have to roof their compost pile.
