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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Gardening strategies, was Michihili (very long)
  • Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:42:59 EDT


>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



Yes, year round. Garlic either grows or holds in the garden year round.
Cold nor heat much touches it. But, no, I don't plant between existing
plants, although I can't see any reason it wouldn't work. Two things about
that,
I'm not going much for the mature garlic bulbs. Most of the garlic is
harvested as garlic scallions which we eat in profusion in the summer and
fall,
bulbs, leaves, scapes, and all. A very great lot of it is chopped up and
dehydrated ... again the whole plant. A few are left to mature into bulbs,
especially the music garlic which is very large. So the garlic cloves for
this purpose are planted 3" or closer in both directions and the bed is
harvested clean. If the garlic isn't being used all at once, rather than
plant
between the plants, I will pull every other plant to give the remaining ones
some extra room. But in the end the bed will be harvested clean and
something
else planted there.

Second, and this will address other of your questions, there is no actual
garlic bed in the garden. Rather there are maybe 20 of them four feet wide
and two or three feet long scattered all over the garden. Same with most
crops, shell beans being somewhat of an exception and of course there needs
to
be enough sweet corn in one plot for pollination. But most everything else
is in very small beds all over the place.



>> 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.
>
>

Cold is best and no mistake. In warm and hot weather the odds are not as
good. But our perception of peas that the they need very cool weather is
exagerated. The key to peas is to realize that it's the blossom that is
critical, the rest of the growing stages are not. View them like peach
trees, the
critical time is when they are in blossom. Just before the blossoms and
just after it can get as cold or hot as you like and you will still get
peaches, but the blossoms are delicate. Same with peas. The critical thing
is the
blossoms. If it is too cold or the open blossoms take a hard freeze, that
flush of peas is toast. But if it gets above about 95 degrees or so the
blossoms will damage. If it doesn't get below 75 or so at night, the
blossoms
won't set. Otherwise you can grow peas any time you like.

>
> >BTW, James, what is your opinion of the Mr. Stripey OP tomato that is
> being sold commercially?

Those were all the rage here in the past few years. The tomato is OK,
nothing to write home about. Although the pictures all show a perfectly
round
tomato, it is a "German" type, "potato leaved" some call it, which means it
is somewhat scolloped on the sides and has a core. I don't grow them any
more. I love orange tomatoes and also deep red ones, but this novelty always
seemed like a half-baked compromise between them. BUT it's a weak bias and
I'd not hesitate to grow them again.

>
> >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?

That strategy works best on the long vining type cukes, a few of which I
grow on trellises. If you observe the plant carefully, you will find that it
is continually abandoning the parts of the vine that have fruited and adding
more vine with the new cukes. Because I want to keep the vines politely
withing the beds (all my beds are 4' wide), I favor the bush varieties Bush
Pickle, Bush Champion, Bush Master, and a few others. The vines are
protracted, the first 3' or so is like a regular cuke with additional growth
being
shorter and shorter and the cukes being poorer and poorer.

So although a regular Straight 8 or Ashley cuke will produce for a longer
time, it takes up a lot of bed space with much of that space being spent
parts of the vine that are no longer productive. Square foot for square
foot,
I get a lot more cukes by digging in one bed of senile vines while another
bed is on its way.

>
> >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?


That too. If you start a new vine while the old one is still producing,
take a bit out of each cuke and see if you can't tell a great deal of
difference.




>> 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.

Ah! You see, I don't actually have "a" spinach patch. Here just before
harvesting the first one, there are already six spinach patches in the garden
dozens of feet from each other and I'm no where near finished yet with the
spring spinach planting. The first bed is 4' wide and about 6' long. When
the spring grazing of the greens begins, I will cut the whole plant off 1"
above the ground until the basket is full and keep doing this until the whole
bed has been harvested. I'll add a little compost and by this time the
second bed will be ready for harvesting. That bed is 4' x 4'. But the time
I've harvested three or four such beds, the first one will have grown back.
It will do this maybe three times maybe two. By late June or early July, all
this early spinach will be bolting no matter what I do. So in mid June I
will have started a bed that can be overed with a shade cloth and will keep
putting these out in cooler and cooler, more and more dappled places in the
garden through August. There won't be nearly so much spinach and the quality
won't be as good, but, hey, spinach is spinach. About mid September the
spinach patches will expand again for fall spinach much as was done in the
spring.

But when one small plot is cut, recovered, and cut again, it is hoed into
the ground and something else is planted there.
>
>
> >Is this in a flat or in the ground? Flat early, ground late?

The very earliest ones in flats. But these are very few now of days. Then
by February in cold frames in the garden. The rest of the time in seedling
beds directly in the ground.

>> When I plant these(tomorrow) do you think it
> will be okay to plant them up to the first leaves(not the true leaves)?


I'd hesitate. Burying the stems of squashes tends to rot them. My guess
is that the odds are better in your favor if you let them start out a little
leggy in the garden.


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

This is philosphical, which never goes over well on this list. My main
garden is a circle of concentric beds, 4' of bed and 2' of paths with
connecting paths in the cardinal directions. The garden is 100' across
giving seven
concentric rings plus the center circle (which now hosts the pitcher pump)
and the bed by the permiter fence. How can I but wax affective, eh?

Now, Bev, you are an astronomer. If I ask the question, "Is the sun
revolve around the earth or does the earth revolve around the sun?" would you
not
immediately answer the latter? But what does "revolve around" mean? If
it means size is the deciding factor, then your answer is correct. But the
geometric truth is that if you visualize the earth as a fixed point in space,
immoveable, then the sun is indeed revolving around the earth. It's a
matter of what's important to you, and for me it's the fact that Iive here
(on
the earth) that is paramount when I visualilze who is revolving around whom.

I have lavished treasure and sweat and poured out my life like a pitcher of
water on this particular bit of truck. The rest of the cosmos can spin
about like the the sky in Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and please itself. For
me,
this is the Center of the Universe.

>
> >How large are your pea patches?

Each plot 4' wide and from 10' to 15' wide.

>> What kind of shell peas have you grown like this?

Wando, Thomas Laxton's, and Laxton's Progress #9, the last accounting for
the bulk of the shell peas.


> Are you talking about

> lima beans or butter beans or something like black-eyed peas?

I have to keep in mind I'm talking to a Georgian. What we call 'peas' here
you call 'English peas'. Oh, I'd love to do as well with black-eyed peas,
silver hulls, crowder peas, and the like as I do with "English" peas, but
the climate difference between us is critical and those latter along with
lima beans are iffy for me. Too bad too. When I lived in Georgia, I was not
much taken with the cuisine, but I did pick up a few habits such as boiled
peanuts and I dearly love all the "southern" peas. I'm getting better at
second guessing them and I do get a small crop, but, alas, I mainly buy them.

One thing Georgia has it all over any other place in the world is catfish.
The second best catfish was at the seedy red-neck place "Johnny Reb's" but
the best (excuse my racism) was always at a black owned catfish place, I
don't even recall any of the names now. It was made by dipping the catfish
in
this huge vat of Lousianna hot sauce then dredging it in cornmeal and thus
fried. There was also a version of fried chicken like that and without a
doubt the third best fried chicken in the universe. The second is my
mother's. And the first ..... well, when anyone asks me why I married
Herself, I
never hesitate to disclose, "It's the fried chicken."

I must have been a saint in my previous life to have been born Southern.


>
> >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.

Legume seeds last a good long time. They won't be too old. And you have
time to mature the seeds and replant them for the fall.


James







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