Garden Exploration: March 2013

Please comment or share, any dialogue is appreciated.

Just a quick update. The corn is doing very well. We'll see how it turns out. The corn is on average about 2 inches tall. I direct sowed 9 squash and 3 zucchini. 3 of the squash was butternut, 6 are crookneck, and the 3 zucchini are black beauty.

By the look of things, the pole beans will probably be direct sown next Saturday and that will complete my first three sisters garden.

The plan, as this huge amount of corn is ripe, is too obviously eat some with dinner but for the rest, I'm going to let it dry on the stalk and then store it whole. The best stalk of corn I will save for seed next year.

I may have gotten a little overzealous with the two grow bags!

Part of the plan with this garden is to also minimize having to buy seeds year-after-year. I also believe that genetically, the plants will adapt to the environment and be stronger in successive years.

It's been a little while but I've been a bit busy lately! The garden is doing well and I have a lot to update.

Some new developments: I have two blueberry bushes to go in near a fence and some strawberry's to replenish my strawberry patch.

EDIT: Just to note about the corn, I have two stalks coming up already. Normal germination is 4-12 days. I soaked the seeds for a day and a 1/2 and planted 7 days ago.

First, all the corn was planted on Feb 24. Should be in good shape, no frost or overly good weather in the future. Do have an 80+ predicted for tomorrow though. The corn all went into the three sisters 5x5 garden. Had some seeds left over and didn't want to waste them so I planted about 25 in each of the grow bags behind the bed.

To the right of the corn, you can see the Topsy turvey I mentioned in an earlier post. I ended up planting 10 jalapeno seedlings into it. Again, it shouldn't be too cold for them.

The potato's are growing well. It is interesting that some are growing so much better than the others and the red potato's are growing the best. I did have a little cold weather damage but the plants have pushed through and created new leaves.

The tomato's are doing pretty well. I have lost a few, but those were the hot weather variety that I probably should have waited to put in. The okra, on the bottom right, could have probably waited as well. It's pretty sickly looking compared the the okra directly to the left that I just transplanted today.

The buds on all the cuttings look like they are going to produce leaves so I'm excited about the 42 that I planted in the quart containers. There are buds on the vine that look about ready to say hi as well. It was about this time last year the first growth appeared.

On the bottom left of the picture I planted four horseradish roots. They were pretty well developed so they should do well.

So, on to the 4x4 garden. As they say, a plan is not a plan until you run out of time for changes! The asparagus roots just didn't seem to make it through the winter. Might have been too wet as the roots were decomposing. Had to change the plan. So now there's celery, peas, lettuce, greens, beets, and radishes. I am succession planting here.

In the grow bag is the cucumber and below that two other tomato plants.

Succession planting can be very powerful. I can't count how many times we had garden food rot because everything matured at the same time. Decided to get smart this year.