Yep, it’s that time again.
The garden has been tilled once, back a few weeks when it was dry enough to be tillable. Needs it again. This year it’ll get some soil additives. I’m thinking of a couple yards of “The Real McCoy“. This site gives formulas for how much to get. The area is roughly 80 x 30 feet (call it 250 sq ft for round number). Spread it out and till it in. Hopefully this will improve the yields on the cucumbers, pattypans, crooknecks, etc.
Interesting discovery today: the cornstalks that were tied up into bunches for Halloween last fall had a few small cobs on them that we didn’t bother with (the corn crop last year was meagre). Untying the sheaves today to spread out the decaying stalks, I find that the kernels on the cobs are all sprouting. Little bunches of corn plants coming out of a cob the size of a golf ball!
Then there’s the gopher problem. Last year, the gophers were let alone to do their thing. They ate all the peas, many of the beans and some of the tomatoes and carrots. Could install some beds with “gopher prevention” measures. Although I hear that they get in anyway. Might consider 1 raised bed for the peas. Would like to keep it something that can be disassembled in the fall when the garden is dismantled.
Last years selections (for review):
- tomatoes: red cherry, orange cherry, yellow pear, beefsteaky something, Japanese smoky something
- eggplant
- snow peas
- beans: wax bush, green pole
- turnips: purple top
- lettuce: mix
- winter squash: sweet pumpkin, kabocha, kuri
- summer squash: pattypan, crookneck, delicata
- cucumber: english long seedless
- corn
- beets: red, golden
- carrots
what worked well:
- orange cherry tomatos: got lots and lots of these
- carrots (despite the gophers)
- pattypan (relatively well, expect better with the compost additive)
- wax beans: got lots of these
- turnips: let them go too long, but they were good when trimmed down
- lettuces: worked well in the fall in the cool weather
- pumpkins & kabochas: lots of ground cover with big green leaves
- Marigolds: lots of these planted all over. Nice color.
Will head out to the seed stores in the next few days. Would also like to try for oriental poppy again. Maybe this time I’ll have a better chance of knowing where the Roundup is sprayed. grmph…
P.S. the asparagus patch is coming up!