Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] Gardening strategies, was Michihili (very long)

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Gardening strategies, was Michihili (very long)
  • Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:08:23 -0400



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?

The first thing, of course, was many, many years ago breaking from the mindset of "putting out" a garden.

I actually had never thought of that. It's funny though, you think of
flower gardening as a year round 'hobby', but vegetable gardening has a
'season'(s).... I think you are right in that I need to think of it as
a continuous process.


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.

year around?
Ok, say I have garlic planted 6 inches apart. When the leaf color
changes, and it is time to plant anew, you plant new cloves in between
the existing plants, leaving only 3 inches spacing(which doesn't matter
due to the fact that the latter bulb won't enter the former bulb's space
until after the first bulb is harvested?)


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.

This is key for me. I should have done this when my first planting was
drowned out, or after the rabbit mowed them down, but I did not. I
didn't because I did not think we had enough cool weather left to make
good peas. I'm not confident enough to know when it is too late to plant.



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.

Wow. I should do more of that. I have planted suckers before, but I
don't keep on planting them.
BTW, James, what is your opinion of the Mr. Stripey OP tomato that is
being sold commercially? It is yellow with red stripes, I think. I was
given one, just want to know what to expect from it.



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.

In my experience(and this applies to tomatoes somewhat as well) if you
pick them regularly, they will continue to produce. If that is so, why
do you need to continue to plant new transplants? Why not just have 2
or 3 plants? What am I missing here?


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.

Funny thing is that I do plant potatoes year around-anytime I allow some
to sprout beyond use, I just find a place to plant them.



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.

That was my point with tomatoes and cucumbers...what variety of cuke are
you growing that doesn't continue to produce, or it it that you just
want those 'new cukes' from a fresh vine?

And I am combining posts here...

Radishes, turnips, beets, are sown directly where they grow for the
second and third (and more) crops.

So I should plant more spinach in my existing spinach patch, or radishes
in the radish patch...etc. My radish leaves are mature, but the
radishes are still small. I probably already should have planted more.


They are planted by taking some seed in my right hand and
folding the two middle fingers over it.

thanks for the sowing lesson. I do something similar, but I make a
trench and don't use my pinkie.


With this spacing I can
use a special small hoe I've made (you can make one out of an egg turner you get and the "Everything's a Dollar" store) and cultivate
between the emerging plants once before they are big enough to mulch heavily or before the leaves take care of that.

Children's tools work too, as do pasta rakes.



Lettuce, chard, and all the brassica including oriental greens, onions and all such as leeks, are planted in short straight rows in
the seedbed close together. When they are 1 1/2" to 2" tall, I loosen the soil and transplant them. Creek sand or sterile peat is
very good for such beds because it forces a lot of root growth and
the soil comes away without damaging any of the roots.

Is this in a flat or in the ground? Flat early, ground late?

Cucumbers, summer squash, and melons are started in pots and tansplanted when they are 4" tall or bigger.

I've got some spaghetti squash in the greenhouse that should have been
transplanted a few weeks ago and is now leggy, like a foot tall. It is
still upright though. The first leaves have not fallen off yet, and are
about 4-5" above the soil. When I plant these(tomorrow) do you think it
will be okay to plant them up to the first leaves(not the true leaves)?


The sweet corn is grown in the Center of the Universe garden and not in the corn field (obviously).

Center of the Universe garden...now James, is this your main garden area
or just *your* garden<g>?




With shell peas I've been broadcasting the seeds so they land every
3" or so then covering them over with two or three inches of mulch
(usually horse stall litter). I've still got peas in the freezer from last year doing this and we eat a lot of peas. I get two and maybe a skimpy third picking from them then hoe them in and plant something else with another pea patch coming on behind them.

Now that is a method I could definitely use here.
How large are your pea patches?
What kind of shell peas have you grown like this? Are you talking about
lima beans or butter beans or something like black-eyed peas? I need to
grow more small red field peas.
I love the Texas Fair brand of Field peas. When it comes to field peas,
I'm picky and no other brand will do. A few years ago I saw some dried
peas in the produce section of a local grocery store that were sold in
bulk. I bought a few pounds and planted them in the garden, thinking
that if I did not like them, I'd use them for animal feed for the goats
and of course as a cover legume crop they would fix nitrogen, too. That
year was a horrible garden year....long story short, health problems,
loose goats and mega rain created a weed patch that the goats later
raided. I ended up only getting a bit more seed than I originally
sowed. After cooking a batch fresh to see if I liked them-I did, I
allowed most of them to dry on the vines for seed. I have approximately
half a mason jar left from that venture. I think that was 2003, but I
am not sure. I've been looking for more bulk peas like that, but have
never seen them again. My only option, without knowing the variety, is
to plant the old seed, the peas in the jar. It's time.
I did not intend to grow field peas this year, but I just might try it
as there is a patch of ground that is lightly tilled-it is cultivated
very lightly and shallowly just to kill the grass. I had planned to
have about 4 hills of cucumbers, but low germination has reduced that to
one hill. The place I had allotted to be mulched for cukes could be
used to grow peas...cast the peas, top with mulch...voila, fresh supply.
Whaddaya think? If they don't germinate due to being old, I've only
lost one meal, but if I get a few plants, I could at least replenish the
seed. I make a hoppin' john cajun dish that uses this type of pea and
it just doesn't work as well with other peas.




I may replant pole beans once. Most of the time if you strip the old ratty leaves compeltely off the declining vine, it will leave out again and make a whole new crop of both leaves and beans. But we grow so much hard corn and have pole beans in most of it that there is plenty no matter what we do. Whole dried pole bean plants,
pods, leaves, stems and all, make excellent winter chicken and rabbit food.

Half-runner beans (including black turtle beans, red habenas, and pinto beans which are all half-runners) are gown much as climbing peas. They are grown on a fence or trellis and when the vine gives
up on the lower leaves (the beans having been harvested), yellows them and begins dropping them off, more beans are planted parallel to them 6" away. By the time the first bean is calling it quits and bidding fair to die altogether, the second one is crawling up the haulm and setting on more beans.

As you know, I'll be putting in some Bloody Butcher corn near the end of
May. I had planned to plant it conventionally in rows, but now I think
I will plant it in hills and do the 3 sisters thing again. We just
cannot ever seem to grow enough green beans. I also plan to have some
blue lake bush beans later in addition to the Roma II bush beans already
planted. I really need black beans, and I had forgotten that they are
half runners. I just might, in my small plot of Golden Midget corn,
plant the 3 sisters there, too, and plant black beans in the corn.
Looking at my bean supply, I need all kinds of white beans, too. This
is Afterthought Garden Planning...lol...but holy cow I am low on dry
beans! I really need to restock. Now, I'm eying the last of my navy
beans and wondering where I could squeeze them in. I like mixing black
beans and navy beans, so I don't suppose it would hurt to grow them
together in the same corn patch...<wheels turning rapidly now>

James, I can't thank you enough for all the information you share. I
feel honored to know such an experienced gardener. Thanks for reading
my long posts and helping me become more self sufficient. I appreciate
the time you take to answer my questions especially this time of
year-woops, that mindset slipped back in!

One can read a bunch of books, get on a bunch of gardening lists, or
surf the internet all day long but finding someone like you is a rare
thing. Even people who have gardened for 50 years don't have your
experience on things because many times they have gardened the same way
year after year without much experimentation or variety. You, however,
garden and think out of the box. I know that you butt heads with people
sometimes, and I'm sure you think about leaving this list, but I just
want to reiterate a thank you for hanging around.

Bev


--
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public
debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered
and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed
lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of
living on public assistance."

--Cicero, 55 BC
http://erthnsky.blogspot.com/




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page