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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Michihili Chinese Cabbage
  • Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:44:00 -0700

Excellent post. That's a keeper.


On Apr 19, 2009, at 5:06 AM, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:


I need to do better in reseeding my veggies. How do you remember to
reseed everything? Is there a day of the month that you take inventory
or something?


Of all the aspects of gardening that one has proven to be the most artful
and illusive.

The first thing, of course, was many, many years ago breaking from the
mindset of "putting out" a garden. I remember visiting a friend some time back
who was entertaining his elderly MIL and he asked me what was shaking in the
garden. It was early March and I told about transplanting onions and seeding
beets and turnips. MIL's eyes widened, "Oh, it's much too early to 'put
out' a garden" Here the magic date is May 10. Very traditional gardeners on
that day plant peas (much later than their prime time) and watermelons (much
earlier than their prime).

Another garden epiphany came during erstwhile attempt at market gardening.
Snap peas are very popular here abouts and I had the usual fence lined with
them. At that time early, primo snap peas fetched $3 a pound and bedazzled
by how well we'd done, I put up 80' of trellises and replanted peas. There
was a huge crop of them but suddenly you couldn't give them away. After
the peas faded and I hadn't planted any more (since the freezer by now was
full of them), everyone demanded to know why I had no peas for sale. Thus it
went.

It drew into stark relief the phenomenon of garden boom and bust ... knee
deep in some vegetable one week and perishing for want of it a fortnight
later. So I began to pay close attention to it.

Foremost is the fact that for one's own direct use, even for a large family
peopled primarily with teenagers, it is amazing how little planting it
takes at any one time to have all the vegetables you want. So we have adopted
this as a general scheme: Calculate how much of something you are likely to
eat during its season of maturity and plant twice that much of it. Doubling
the amount is a hedge against poor performance -- poor germination, loss to
pests, etc. Most of the time the garden plot yields that double amount.
The half not eaten is first subject to be preserved, as the old mountain
saying goes:

"We eat what we can, and what we can't we can."

What isn't perserved for human food is converted into some other type of
food by feeding it to the goats, pigs, rabbits, or chickens. In fact it is a
definate ploy to breed the rabbits so that the maturing bunnies can be fed
primarily with weeds and garden surplus.

Next the garden surplus is returned to the soil by composting it.

And last, definately last, we might sell some of it if it is convenient and
profitable. Any money so derived is view strictly as "trinkgelder" and not
to be relied upon although some years it is a tidy sum. We have always
made more money selling vegetables casually and incidentally than when we did
it as a planned enterprise.

Now, to comment on your actual question. Replanting by dates never seemed
to work out. Rather we keep a weather eye out for the signs that it's time
to replant.

Some examples:

Green scallion arlic grown from the cheapie Chinese bulbs from the mart is
best before the leaves harden off. When one garlic plot is about 4" high
and just begins to change from chartreuse to blue-green, it is time to plant
the next one.

Loose leaf and semi-heading lettuce is invariably grown here by
transplants. When the seedlings are about 1 1/2" high, they are transplanted to the
final bed and then another plot of seedlings is started.

When climbing peas set on their first blossom, more peas are planted 6"
away so that as the first peas begin to fade, the next crop is climbing right
over top of the old vines and blooming.

Almost all the tomatoes here are OP and indeterminate. When the plant sets
on suckers, those are snapped off and put into pots or else put right into
the ground in a new tomato plot. When the old vines show signs of
exhaustion, they are grubbed up at about the time the new ones are fruiting.
Sometimes I will be harvesting tomatoes from the fourth generation of suckers by
late fall.

Cucumbers produce a good flush of high quality cukes and then go senile and
the fruits become smaller, bitter, and oddly shaped. We only keep 8 or so
bush cucumber vines going at any one time. The first are here in the
window waiting a few more weeks until the ground warms more. As soon as they are
transplanted, more will be started. As soon as the second are ready to
transplant, the first will be fruiting and a third wave is seeded.

While most of the potatoes are just eaten first as new potatoes, the mature
potatoes, then cured and stored potatoes ... we also put out a few potatoes
in June, July, and August so we can have the small, sweet new potatoes all
along the summer.

For some crops there is no profit in managing them this way. Peppers and
eggplants, for example, just keep producing until frost unabated so there's no
point in planting them more than once.


James
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Gene GeRue
www.RURALIZE.com








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