Mixing a small batch of green onion seed, half fresh from this year, half from years ago and no longer viable. Why? The mix of dead and alive seed makes it easy to spread quickly, getting good coverage and not having to thin out a bunch of seedlings that pop up too close together. Works when seeding by hand, as I’m going to do with these, or with seeders that tend to drop a lot of seed, like the Planet Jr. and the Earthway!
Veggies
Seeding potatoes
Place seed potatoes in a hand-dug trench at about 12″ spacing. Cover with a couple of inches of soil. Wait for stems to grow a few inches. Start hilling: pile on soil to bury the stems so there’s more underground stem rooting and allowing for potatoes to form. Keep hilling every couple of weeks for as long as it’s practical—stems still growing, more soil easy to get at, leaf cover not in the way. As simple as it seems!
Zukes in the field
Zucchini, transplanted into the field a couple of weeks ago, don’t seem to be doing much so far. Don’t be fooled! Once they get settled—I imagine a lot of root action, spreading wide and down—they will explode. Pop! They’ve been under row cover to protect them from the cucumber beetles that attack all the cucurbits. I’m giving them some air on yet another mainly cloudy day. It’s generally not a good idea on the leaf disease front to keep our local garden veggies in warm damp conditions that can happen under row cover when there’s not a lot of sun. Looking at the photo, I can’t help but notice all the other garden would-be inhabitants, what we call weeds. I see some thistle, mallow, dandelion and of course, pigweed (aka amaranth). Like the zukes, they only seem like they’re not doing much…because I recently wheel hoed!
Carrots, once they get started…
These carrots started coming up a few days ago, uncovered! It’s not surprising given the cloudy, warm and fairly wet weather, perfect for getting carrot seed going, but it’s not usual. Carrots germination generally takes some work. Once up, though, and past the stage where little critters try to chomp them out of existence, they’ve always been an easy-growing, low-maintenance, fun to be around!
Cucurbits!
Cucurbit, from Cucurbitaceae, is a useful word! How else would you refer to the large squash-and-melon family that includes winter squash like acorn and butternut, summer squash like zucchini, pumpkins, gourds, melons (cantaloupe, watermelon, and so on), cucumbers, even the fruit that dries out to become loofah sponges. All the same plant family, all with similar-looking leaves and sprawling vined growth. I’ve on and off wanted to learn the scientific Latin-word plant classification system. I’ve even semi-memorized the basics more than once, then soon forgotten, because there’s no actual use for it in my day to day. But some terms, like cucurbits, do come in handy…
Spinach in the field
Yay, spinach! Seeing direct seeded crops germinate is one of the most satisfying things in the field. Here, it’s spinach, Reflect variety, seeded a few days ago, coming up nicely. In general, seeds do germinate, that’s a good starting point. But there are lots of variables, and the unpredictable weather extremes that have become the new normal don’t help. Is the seed new this year, or has it been around for a year or more? What conditions does the particular veg like: ground always wet until germination, soil temperature not too low or too high, seed not too deep or too shallow, and so on. It sounds more complicated than it is, only because, as a tiny farmer, you have little control over any of it. You lay seed down at a reasonable depth, water it in, watch, hope for the best, and prepare to reseed if things don’t go your way!
Looking tiny by comparison, you can also see redroot pigweed seedlings popping up. They’re easy to handle if weeded early. Otherwise, a no-joke garden invader!
Tomato seedlings compared
The Big Beef tomatoes on the left look so much bigger, healthier, greener, than the ones right, and they were planted a couple of weeks later. Both are in the same sized plug sheets. Both get the same time under the lights and out in the sun. Hmm…
This year, I’ve been planting smaller quantities more often, to see how a small batch approach works in our unpredictable weather. Instead of putting in four rows of carrots now, I’ll put in two now and two more in a week or so. It’s an experiment. The hard part is actually keeping track of the observations over time, so that later, there’s…data. More to come!