Planting Turnips, Carrots, Radishes, Greens, Green Onions and assorted seedlings

Whoo hoo I did it! I finished planting everything I needed to get into the ground right away. The only things left are finding space for the remaining cole crop seedlings and digging a mound for my fall garlic planting. I finished not a moment too soon, since we're expected to get pounded by storms this evening.

Freshly planted garden, viewed from the SW corner.

And from the NE corner. Yeah, my rows aren't perfectly straight, but I don't think the plants will care.

July 16th Planted:

Roots

• Hakurei Turnip (38 days)
• Purple-Top White Globe Turnip (55 days)
• White Satin Carrot (68 days)
• Sugarsnax Carrot (68 days)
• Miyashige Daikon Radish (50 days)
• Scarlet Queen Green Stem Turnip (43 days)
• Shunkyo Semi-Long Radish (32 days)

Greens

• Garnet Giant Mustard Greens
• Toscano Kale
• Champion Collards
• Redleaf Amaranth
• Goldberg Golden Purslane
• Summerfest Komatsuna Greens
  
• Cooking Sorrel

Onions

• Evergreen Hardy White Bunching Onion
• Nabechan Bunching Onion

Cucurbits

• 8-Ball Summer Squash (2nd planting)
• Sunburst Patty Pan Summer Squash (2nd planting)
• Amour Pickling Cuke (2nd planting)

Misc. Seedlings

• 2 Watermelon Seedlings (var. unknown)
• 4 Cayenne Pepper Seedlings
• 4 Brussels Sprouts Seedlings
• 2 Purple Kohlrabi Seedlings

For most of the plantings I did a box-style layout, giving turnips 6-8" and carrots and radishes 2-3". I planted a lot of the Hakurei turnips, because I liked them so much. I really hope they grow well. The greens should be exciting too, though I don't know if the kale and collards will get beyond the 'micro-greens' stage. I tried to arrange the root crops so that the quick-maturing varieties were in a very sunny spot, which I can sow with a fall crop of greens or peas.

At this point my space is pretty much used up. I'm kicking myself for not having the neighbor till the garden further east, but I was too lazy to move the giant rock pile out of the middle of the paddock. Most of the west side is unusable because of the shade from the maple trees. Oh well...I can always refine it next year.

In other news, my peppers are looking droopy. I'm trying to water them well, but they just won't perk up. Maybe with the coming rainstorm, all the fertilizer will be mobilized and the plants can take it up and be happy. If the peppers bite the dust I'll gladly plant other stuff in their place, since it's prime real estate.

Water Management

This year I finally got the galvanized aluminum watering can I've always dreamed of. It's great for small amounts of watering, but time consuming if I want to water an entire mound. Now I have a series of hoses and a nozzle with 7 handy settings. I could try setting up the sprinkler, but I'm not sure that moving it around every hour or so is any less work than just standing out there with the hose for 20-30 minutes.

I shored up the edge of the mound with the peppers so that I wouldn't lose as much water to the walkways, and it seems to have helped quite a bit. The soil here is quite sticky so it maintains its shape well, even when battered by watering and heavy rain. Next year I definitely need to integrate this micro-irrigation technique into my mounds better. It's low tech, but I can already tell that the water stays in the depressions I've made a lot longer.

Next I need to measure all my watering approaches to see how long it takes to yield an inch of water.

Fertilizing, Planting Beans

I had hoped to plant my beans in the cool of the evening last night, but I had forgotten to order rhizobium inoculant. I know it's not essential, as there should be some living in the soil already, but it's strongly recommended for first-time gardens. Planting so late, I didn't want to take a chance by not using it. I called around a few places, but they asked like I'd asked for the spleen of Jimmy Hoffa, so I gave up on planting last night. This morning I was in luck--I called Joel's Greenhouse in Pine Island and they had some packets left. It's really a great greenhouse (I hadn't gone before because the quickest route there is a gravel road that my Hyundai hates), and I couldn't resist buying a few other things.

I got a cayenne pepper plant, a burpless bush cucumber, an acorn squash seedling, some curly parsley, and some dill seeds. Can never have too much parsley around here. I also picked up a pair of fine-tipped Fiskars snippers like mom has, and a pair of lightweight gloves with nitrile fingertips, which are both very difficult to find. I think the seedlings, which were very well-established, must have only run me $8 or 9 since everything's on sale. Their prices are higher than at the garden stand by The Hub, but they had far better quality and selection, so I'll probably use them exclusively next year.

Fertilizing

Since I haven't had a year to accumulate any compost or develop the soil, I decided to use synthetic fertilizers. I picked up a bag of Vigoro Tomato and Vegetable Fertilizer, which is 12-10-5 plus some micronutrients. I probably should have added this when I was planting, but I didn't have any yet. I sprinkled something approximating the recommended amount around the tomatoes, peppers, and cabbages. Since I had to sprinkle it over mulch, I have no idea how much will actually make it to the root zone, but I figure that something is better than nothing. It wasn't expensive, just $3.66/bag and I'll only need 1.5 bags. I tried not to get any on the leaves or stems, for fear of causing fertilizer burn. I also integrated a small amount into the soil before planting the beans (I tried to keep it minimal because I didn't want to discourage the rhizobium.

July 15th: Planting the Beans

These I planted across the mound, next to the peppers (which are planted along the south side of the mound). I planted two rows of four beans 12" apart and 36" from the next set of two rows. The beans were spaced at 2-3" within the rows. After placing the beans in each furrow, I sprinkled the rhizobium inoculant on top and buried the beans 1" deep. I watered well and mulched the area between the sets of double rows. The soil is nice and warm, so hopefully they will germinate quickly. If I find any gaps in a few days I'll plant more seeds.

The varieties were: Cupidon French Filet, Carson's Yellow Wax, Provider Snap Beans, and Jumbo Green Beans. I alternated rows of these to allow for within-mound variation.

I bought the smallest packets of each, and each one contained a ton of seeds, so I may sow some more in a low-demand area and see if they grow. Maybe I should clear an area next to the fence so they can grow up it.

Getting your seed shipment may be even more exciting than getting new shoes.

More about my Field Layout

Since it was so late in the year and I needed to take quick action with planting, I didn't do much research before I carved up the garden. I just followed my instincts and the lessons I'd learned in the past. I wound up with wide, deep rows and evenly spaced plantings, instead of the more traditional narrow rows with crowded plantings. Of course, there's nothing new under the sun, and it turns out that this called 'wide row gardening' and 'block style layout'. Here are two publications that discuss it in more detail:

Wide Bed Gardening for Easier Gardening and Higher Yields (Cheyenne Botanic Gardens)
Block Style Layout in Raised Bed Vegetable Gardens (Colorado State University Extension)*

*This one has good information about planting distances for block layout, which can be hard to find.

It looks like I made some good choices with this garden layout, though I could have set things up better for water management by adding a lip at the edge of each mound. I think I will continue this approach next year. The landlord even said I could cut off some branches from the trees that are shading my plot, mostly volunteer white ash. I'm getting my compost pile going now, so hopefully I'll have some good stuff to add to the garden next year. Hopefully we won't be moving again (at least not until we're ready to buy a house--then my garden will be off da hook!).

Planting the Seedlings: Tomatoes, Peppers, and Cabbages

This weekend I began planting the starts. I planted:

July 11th : tomatoes
July 13th: cabbages and peppers

I also threw the dill plants into the ground because they were looking so wretched. I have little faith that they'll survive, but it's worth a shot. I still have more cole crops to plant, it's just a matter of finding sunny space for them.

Variety-wise, I basically went with what was available at the garden stand. The tomatoes are a random assortment including Better Boy, Brandywine, Rutgers, and some yellow full-size and cherry toms. The cabbages included Savoy, Stonehead, Discover, and Red Acre. The peppers weren't well-labeled, but I think they were all sweet peppers.

For all the seedlings, I tried to mix the varieties around so that I wouldn't have all of one type in a single location, in case that spot's bad for growing.

I also took a few approaches to the planting itself. The tomatoes were really leggy, so I removed their bottom leaves and buried them quite deep. Since they were already so tall, I had to mound soil up around them to keep the stems buried. This might have been a bad approach from a water management perspective. I mulched heavily around the mounds using oat straw. I placed the tomatoes in the second row from the north. They will get excellent sun there, but won't be shaded by taller plants. I may have spaced them a bit close--I used a checkerboard pattern with ~24" between plants, giving 3 offset rows in the mound. If I get a single tomato out of this I will be amazed.

When I watered the tomatoes I noticed that a lot of the water was running into the walkways, so I took a slightly different approach with the peppers. These I placed on the furthest north mound, where they will be next to the green beans, but not in their shadow. Between the peppers and the beans I made a trench, where most of the water flows. I hope this will make a little reservoir of moist soil whenever it rains or I water. I have not mulched these yet and I'm not sure if I will.

For planting the cabbages I got cleverer still. I placed each cabbage plant in a small depression, so that they will be surrounded by moist soil after I water and the water won't run into the walkways. I mulched heavily between the plants to discourage weeds, hold more water, and keep the soil cool. I've heard that cabbage roots are delicate and they often don't survive transplanting. I tried to be gentle with them, but they were terribly root-bound in the pots. I teased the seedlings apart while holding the rootmass in a pail of water--a technique I perfected on swallow-wort, of course. So hopefully these little guys will survive. I would really like to put up a bunch of sauerkraut from my own garden.

Next I need to plant the herbs and I'm trying to monitor the garden to find a sunny spot that's not in high demand from vegetables. I will be receiving my seeds early next week and then I will plant those.

Starting Out in 2008

Our house, with a vibrant sunset tinted by Canadian forest fires.

Well, Dan and I have moved out to a lovely country house in Zumbrota! It came with a fenced paddock in the backyard, which the landlord was keeping sled dogs in. It seemed like just the perfect place for a garden as it will deter the more lethargic deer and rabbits. Although it was so late in the year, mom and I have had good luck starting late gardens. From a weed ecology perspective it's a good idea, because all of the early weeds have done their thing by the time you start. Also, you're past the danger of late frosts.

This year has been strange for weather. The spring was very long and wet--planting was delayed all across the Midwest and then we were hit by relentless rain leading to flooding. That, plus a few hailstorms, means that most gardens and all the crops have been delayed. I even picked and canned strawberries on July 4th! In most years they would be long over by then.

So far I've bought many started plants from the garden mart at the grocery store. Another benefit to late planting is that the starts are dirt cheap! Only $0.25 apiece for vegetables (but the herbs were more dear at $3 each). Getting the garden started was more costly than I'd hoped, but as I've learned in the past, you can't truly do it to save money unless you're comparing the costs to buying upscale organic produce. Also, there are more costs the first year. Here's the breakdown of the annual expenses:

$25 + 5 - having the neighbor till the garden + 2 straw bales
$30 - herbs and vegetable starts
$75 - seeds from Johnny Seeds (yikes!)
$25 - 6 40-lb. bags of composted manure

The garden, freshly tilled. It's in a handy, fenced paddock. The barrels in the background are the doghouses from the landlord's sled dogs.

I also got some wonderful gardening tools from Lehman's. My favorites so far are the ass-kicking Wilcox gardening tools. Each one is made from a solid piece of stainless steel, so there's nothing to break, and I've broken more trowels and dibbles than I can count. The craftsmanship is excellent and they're even marked to measure planting depth. The customer service lady I talked to just raved about them--she's been gardening for 40 years and she says the only tools she needs is a Wilcox trowel, a pair of snipers, and a new pair of gloves each year.

I also got the metal watering can I've always dreamed of, a large spade, a couple of pairs of gloves, and a heavy-duty rake.

The neighbor, a farmer himself, did a great job of tilling the garden. The soil seemed so compacted I was worried, but he fluffed it up really well and made it perfectly level. Then (after dodging a few nasty storms) I dug it into raised mounds. They're about 25' long and about 3' wide and about 1' above the walkways.

The mounds, mostly finished and planted with solanaceae.

I got enough manure for one 40-lb. bag per row (or maybe a little extra, depending on if I plant all the rows). I'm not sure if this is enough, so I might add synthetic fertilizers. Since it's the first year, I have no idea of the underlying fertility of the soil and this may be a good bet, especially for the tomatoes (those greedy bastards!).

So far the main limitation has been working around the shady areas. There are a lot of trees here, so I'll probably have to go with some irregularly shaped plantings to avoid the dark spots. I think that since I'm planting so late and the days are getting shorter, finding enough sunlight will be essential.

At this point I think the only other thing I need is an extension to the hose and one of those gentle shower head type attachments. I've been doing pretty well with the watering can, but once the whole garden is planted it will be really time consuming to water the whole thing. The landlord left a sprinkler here, as well.

I also want to get some garlic to plant in the fall, but it is outrageously expensive. Gardening books warn you off of using what you find at the grocery store, but when the option is spending $12-21 for only 3 bulbs from a fancy catalog, I may take my chances with the grocery garlic. Next: planting!