Memorial Day came, which is normally when I would plant the majority of the garden. Most of it was already in this year, so I just had to plant the tomatoes and peppers. Unfortunately a late frost and a long night killed off my pepper and tomato plants that I had started, so I had to buy plants. We put in 20 tomato plants and 32 pepper plants on Saturday.
It was almost 90 degrees when we put the plants in and we had a wedding to attend in the afternoon, so the rush was on to build boxes for the tomatoes, get them set, fill them with dirt, and finally do some planting. We got all the plants in the ground in about an hour and gave them a quick drink while we went to the wedding. Fortunately it would up raining the next day and today, so everything is looking really good.
The garlic went to seed already, which was kind of a surprise for me, as did some of the onions. My onions, which I didn't think was going to make it through the April freezes, is waist high and looking better than the commercial farmer's onions down the road. All the plants look exceptionally good this year, especially considering that it isn't even June yet.
There is still a lot of work to do. I have to get the cattle fencing for the tomatoes cut into 10 foot lengths and put into place. This year I am putting a fence on both sides of the 1 foot wide box to make sure there is lots of support. I also need to put the cages around the 32 peppers. Last year I didn't cage the habaneros but I think they would have benefited from it. I need to replant about 30% of the carrots that didn't germinate. That happened last year too, but the replanting worked out great. Finally I need to finish putting down the walkways between the boxes. The plastic is down, mainly to control the weeds, I just have to cut the boards and nail/screw them.
It looks like it might be the best year yet for the garden. Hopefully I can keep learning and maybe one day make some money at it.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Spring Planting
With the abundance of warm weather and rain we've been getting, I decided that last Friday was the perfect time to get everything planted, except the tomatoes and peppers. So I started cleaning out boxes, pulling weeds and getting everything prepped. It took five loads of dirt to fill four boxes + two long boxes. With all the boxes ready, I decided I would start by putting up my trellis for the cucumbers and winter squash.
My cucumbers are planted in the top skinny box in the picture, the winter squash are in the closest box. I have 5 cucumbers in a 1'x10' box and 3 butternut squash in the other 1'x10' box. As you may know, cucumbers and winter squash grow on vines and will grow to take over a large part of a garden. A lot of people plant them on hills. Rather than take up all of that room, I use cattle fencing, which is 16 feet long and 5 feet high as a trellis for the vines to grow on. You can buy trellis material made for gardening, I just happened to have a lot of this cattle fencing around the property when we moved in and decided it would be perfect (and it has been). After working with it for a couple of years, I would actually recommend it at this point. It is easy to work with, just one piece, you can cut the bottom off and use the pieces sticking out to put into the ground, and it is extremely sturdy. I use 1/2" steel round bar driven into the ground to hold the trellis up. Again, there was a lot of lying around in a scrap pile on the property when we moved in. If I didn't have that, I would use metal rebar, approximately 4 feet long with 12 inches driven into the ground. That will ensure that your trellis doesn't fall down during high wind or heavy weight of the vegetables.
With the cucumbers and winter squash planted, I move on to the summer squash and zucchini. These you plant 1 per box because they take up a lot of room. I put 4 seeds in the center of each box. Once they germinate and poke through, I will keep the two strongest vines. This is a little different than I have done in past years, keeping just one plant per box, so we'll see how it turns out.
Finally I put the beans in. I put 9 plants per square foot and plant two full boxes of beans, one yellow wax and one green. That is a total of 144 plants of each type. Last year our harvest was around 180 pints of beans, which we froze or ate fresh. My goal each year is 150 pints. That allows us to eat beans 3 days per week for an entire year. I prefer bush beans instead of pole beans for the square foot garden. And although the packages say that you'll only get so many beans and then they are done with bush beans, I've never seen that to be true. We will usually start harvesting in July and continue until the frost hits in late October. I will have to remember next year that I can buy the beans by the ounce at the local hardware store rather than by the package.
After all the planting was done, it was time for weeding and checking the progress of the other plants. The garlic and onions all look great; we can't wait until we get to harvest them. I had planted some spinach and lettuce back in March, then we had quite a few hard freezes. Two of the plants survived, so I predict will be enjoying the first salad by the end of the week. They love the cool evenings and rainy days we've been getting. The radishes look awesome and my wife can't wait to harvest the first square. I plant one square every week, then after 21-25 days of growing, I will harvest the radishes. Every week after that, I harvest 16 radishes and plant 16 more. This continues until roughly the middle of July or whenever it gets too hot for the radishes, then I'll start again around the beginning of September.
I'll do the same thing with leaf lettuce, spinach and head lettuce, although you don't harvest the entire square, so at some point you end up with an abundance of lettuce & spinach. With head lettuce, spreading out plantings allows you to not have multiple heads of lettuce ready to harvest at one time.
Now it's time to get the walkways finished before July and we spend every day harvesting and/or canning.
 |
| Trellis |
With the cucumbers and winter squash planted, I move on to the summer squash and zucchini. These you plant 1 per box because they take up a lot of room. I put 4 seeds in the center of each box. Once they germinate and poke through, I will keep the two strongest vines. This is a little different than I have done in past years, keeping just one plant per box, so we'll see how it turns out.
Finally I put the beans in. I put 9 plants per square foot and plant two full boxes of beans, one yellow wax and one green. That is a total of 144 plants of each type. Last year our harvest was around 180 pints of beans, which we froze or ate fresh. My goal each year is 150 pints. That allows us to eat beans 3 days per week for an entire year. I prefer bush beans instead of pole beans for the square foot garden. And although the packages say that you'll only get so many beans and then they are done with bush beans, I've never seen that to be true. We will usually start harvesting in July and continue until the frost hits in late October. I will have to remember next year that I can buy the beans by the ounce at the local hardware store rather than by the package.
After all the planting was done, it was time for weeding and checking the progress of the other plants. The garlic and onions all look great; we can't wait until we get to harvest them. I had planted some spinach and lettuce back in March, then we had quite a few hard freezes. Two of the plants survived, so I predict will be enjoying the first salad by the end of the week. They love the cool evenings and rainy days we've been getting. The radishes look awesome and my wife can't wait to harvest the first square. I plant one square every week, then after 21-25 days of growing, I will harvest the radishes. Every week after that, I harvest 16 radishes and plant 16 more. This continues until roughly the middle of July or whenever it gets too hot for the radishes, then I'll start again around the beginning of September.
 |
| Radishes planted 2 weeks ago, radishes planted 1 week ago, lettuce, spinach, and some left over onions |
Now it's time to get the walkways finished before July and we spend every day harvesting and/or canning.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Carrots
The weather went from having a hard freeze to 80 degrees in 2 days. That put everything into high-gear. Today I built another 4x4 box to go on top of another, making it 12 inches deep. This is where my carrots will grow. Unfortunately I got a late start on it.
I set out around 7:45 PM to build the box and plant the carrots, however upon arriving in the garden, I noticed that not only have the plants really taken of with the warm days and rainy nights, so have the weeds. So I started by weeding my lettuce, spinach and radishes. Once that was done I went over to the onions and garlic. Then I weeded the box where the carrots would go, even though these weeds would soon be covered with 6-7 inches of dirt.
Having all that done, I cut my boards, nailed the box together and got it to the garden, just as the sun was going below the treetops. I figured I had 30 minutes until it got dark. With my double box in place, I fired up the tractor and started hauling soil from my compost bins. One and a half buckets in the loader and the box was full. With daylight quickly fading, I measured out the square feet, drove some 8 penny nails in the box and ran to get the seeds & twine. Wrapping the twine around the nails marks off each square foot.
I marked out my 16 holes per square foot and I could no longer see to tell if my seeds were hitting the holes. So I got a flashlight, and planted 256 carrots under the full moon with a flash light. Had it been beans or corn I was planting, there would have been no need for the flashlight, but with the tiny carrot seeds, I really didn't have a choice. Other than being eaten by mosquitos, it was a really nice, cool evening to be planting. And being able to finish under the moonlight was cool.
I set out around 7:45 PM to build the box and plant the carrots, however upon arriving in the garden, I noticed that not only have the plants really taken of with the warm days and rainy nights, so have the weeds. So I started by weeding my lettuce, spinach and radishes. Once that was done I went over to the onions and garlic. Then I weeded the box where the carrots would go, even though these weeds would soon be covered with 6-7 inches of dirt.
Having all that done, I cut my boards, nailed the box together and got it to the garden, just as the sun was going below the treetops. I figured I had 30 minutes until it got dark. With my double box in place, I fired up the tractor and started hauling soil from my compost bins. One and a half buckets in the loader and the box was full. With daylight quickly fading, I measured out the square feet, drove some 8 penny nails in the box and ran to get the seeds & twine. Wrapping the twine around the nails marks off each square foot.
 |
| Double high carrot box |
I marked out my 16 holes per square foot and I could no longer see to tell if my seeds were hitting the holes. So I got a flashlight, and planted 256 carrots under the full moon with a flash light. Had it been beans or corn I was planting, there would have been no need for the flashlight, but with the tiny carrot seeds, I really didn't have a choice. Other than being eaten by mosquitos, it was a really nice, cool evening to be planting. And being able to finish under the moonlight was cool.
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