Garden 2018
May. 15th, 2018 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sylkeThis year will hopefully be more of a garden-tending year. Last year, things did indeed just get out of hand late in the summer due to travel and whatnot.
So, here's the current state of things:
I've decided to keep the cherry instead of replacing it with a potato box. Last year it finally was producing enough cherries to be worthwhile, but they were kind of heavy on maggot infestation. I've got some spinosad (spin-OH-sid) spray to use when the flies start coming out to lay eggs. It's a better pesticide to use than others because of the lower impact on pollinators (aka honeybees). Also getting "yellow sticky traps" which is literally what they're called and what they are, and they're used to tell when the flies are emerging and therefore when to start spraying.
The house-grape has been cut back severely and is starting over from scratch. It got so overgrown it was reaching past the AC compressor, it just needed to start fresh, and I've got two T-bar posts set up, ready for a couple wires to be strung between them as a trellis. The garage-grape still has a few vines through it, and I'm gonna be setting up a trellis there as well instead of the bamboo fency-thing that's there now. Hoping to get at least some grapes off it because last fall I made some pretty phenomenal green grape jam from them. Hilda *raved* about it every time she had some.
I wish I'd known that tree was a mulberry before I started pruning it viciously. I still am glad those branches are out of the way of my blackberry canes, but I might have made different decisions of what to prune. The blackberry bushes didn't fare so hot last year and I only have a few canes this year for fruiting. But it's all cleared out over there now, so I can be more conscientious about the new canes, supporting them, and keeping them from getting long and unwieldy.
The strawberry boxes are doing pretty well right now and just starting to flower. I'm gonna need to start sprinkling the fox-urine granules soon because last year we got bupkiss for fruit, likely because it was all stolen by critters. I've let the daughter-plants that took root under the blackberries and mulberry tree stay so we have a better chance at more strawberries, but the daughters on th other side, those got ripped out to make room for more veggies.
My asparagus suffered a huge hit over the winter. I had 18 plants last year, now I have 4 that sent up shoots this year. This was supposed to be my first real harvest year, too, so that's been kind of disheartening. I've ordered more crowns off Amazon, and I'll re-plant when they get here in a couple weeks with all the mounding and fertilizer and whatnot.
I have three types of fertilizer on hand currently. A 5-1-1 fish oil for lots of nitrogen, a 9-4-12 Miracle-Gro that's advertised for fruits and vegetables, and a 3-4-4 organic by Espoma for herbs and vegetables. I need to do some research on how much, which goes on what, all that. Nitrogen promotes leaves, but too many leaves and you don't get enough energy put into making fruit. But corn and potatoes need hella nitrogen. So spray the fish oil into the soil before planting the corn, and use the espoma on everything getting transplanted, till it into the ground, all that good stuff.
The kiwi vine is growing super slowly, which is OK because it's supposed to become gigantic eventually and I'll have to choose whether to cut it down or to take out the wooden arch in the garden as the vine becomes too big for it. I put in two cauliflower plants that I bought from Jake a couple days ago, those are a lot happier since they'd become rootbound in the pot. Also, this was a year I did a lot from seed in an attempt to start indoors.
Current plants:
Ones I bought from Jake:
2 cauliflower, Snowball, in the ground
1 Black Krim tomato
1 Brandywine tomato
1 Indigo Rose tomato
2 dinosaur kale
2 King of the North red bell pepper
2 Cocozelle squash (like zucchini, to-be-delivered)
1 Black Beauty eggplant
Ones I grew from seed:
4 Andrea-Tomatoes (keep 2 in pots away from planting to preserve seed-line and not cross-fertilize)
3 curly-kale (very spindly, maybe 4?)
3 cucamelon
3 cucumber
2 Trinidad Scorpion (keep in pots)
2 cauliflower (fading or dead)
12 purple tomatillos
dill (in the herb planter)
basil (planted by the boys at the museum, moving to the planter soon)
To be sown directly:
corn-edamame-pumpkin in far strip
watermelon under the black walnut
seed potatoes
purple pole beans
5/15 update:
The purple pole beans went in today, and I sprayed the cherry tree. The asparagus crowns arrived over the weekend, and the non-Andrea tomatoes, the cauliflower I bought, all the peppers, one cuke, all the cucamelon, all the kale (4 curly, 2 dino), that's all in the ground and got a bit of fertilizer on planting.
Still todo: tomatillos (asap, they're super leggy), the Andrea tomatoes, find a place for the other cukes, get the Cocozelles from Jake and plant them, and get Paul to till the back 40 so I can plant the three sisters. And maybe build that potato tower finally. Try to layer: cardboard, 3" topsoil, seed potatoes, another 3" topsoil. Then when the plants are 6" high, layer in compost, then hay (to keep it loose), then topsoil. And nail on another layer of boards.
So, here's the current state of things:
I've decided to keep the cherry instead of replacing it with a potato box. Last year it finally was producing enough cherries to be worthwhile, but they were kind of heavy on maggot infestation. I've got some spinosad (spin-OH-sid) spray to use when the flies start coming out to lay eggs. It's a better pesticide to use than others because of the lower impact on pollinators (aka honeybees). Also getting "yellow sticky traps" which is literally what they're called and what they are, and they're used to tell when the flies are emerging and therefore when to start spraying.
The house-grape has been cut back severely and is starting over from scratch. It got so overgrown it was reaching past the AC compressor, it just needed to start fresh, and I've got two T-bar posts set up, ready for a couple wires to be strung between them as a trellis. The garage-grape still has a few vines through it, and I'm gonna be setting up a trellis there as well instead of the bamboo fency-thing that's there now. Hoping to get at least some grapes off it because last fall I made some pretty phenomenal green grape jam from them. Hilda *raved* about it every time she had some.
I wish I'd known that tree was a mulberry before I started pruning it viciously. I still am glad those branches are out of the way of my blackberry canes, but I might have made different decisions of what to prune. The blackberry bushes didn't fare so hot last year and I only have a few canes this year for fruiting. But it's all cleared out over there now, so I can be more conscientious about the new canes, supporting them, and keeping them from getting long and unwieldy.
The strawberry boxes are doing pretty well right now and just starting to flower. I'm gonna need to start sprinkling the fox-urine granules soon because last year we got bupkiss for fruit, likely because it was all stolen by critters. I've let the daughter-plants that took root under the blackberries and mulberry tree stay so we have a better chance at more strawberries, but the daughters on th other side, those got ripped out to make room for more veggies.
My asparagus suffered a huge hit over the winter. I had 18 plants last year, now I have 4 that sent up shoots this year. This was supposed to be my first real harvest year, too, so that's been kind of disheartening. I've ordered more crowns off Amazon, and I'll re-plant when they get here in a couple weeks with all the mounding and fertilizer and whatnot.
I have three types of fertilizer on hand currently. A 5-1-1 fish oil for lots of nitrogen, a 9-4-12 Miracle-Gro that's advertised for fruits and vegetables, and a 3-4-4 organic by Espoma for herbs and vegetables. I need to do some research on how much, which goes on what, all that. Nitrogen promotes leaves, but too many leaves and you don't get enough energy put into making fruit. But corn and potatoes need hella nitrogen. So spray the fish oil into the soil before planting the corn, and use the espoma on everything getting transplanted, till it into the ground, all that good stuff.
The kiwi vine is growing super slowly, which is OK because it's supposed to become gigantic eventually and I'll have to choose whether to cut it down or to take out the wooden arch in the garden as the vine becomes too big for it. I put in two cauliflower plants that I bought from Jake a couple days ago, those are a lot happier since they'd become rootbound in the pot. Also, this was a year I did a lot from seed in an attempt to start indoors.
Current plants:
Ones I bought from Jake:
2 cauliflower, Snowball, in the ground
1 Black Krim tomato
1 Brandywine tomato
1 Indigo Rose tomato
2 dinosaur kale
2 King of the North red bell pepper
2 Cocozelle squash (like zucchini, to-be-delivered)
1 Black Beauty eggplant
Ones I grew from seed:
4 Andrea-Tomatoes (keep 2 in pots away from planting to preserve seed-line and not cross-fertilize)
3 curly-kale (very spindly, maybe 4?)
3 cucamelon
3 cucumber
2 Trinidad Scorpion (keep in pots)
2 cauliflower (fading or dead)
12 purple tomatillos
dill (in the herb planter)
basil (planted by the boys at the museum, moving to the planter soon)
To be sown directly:
corn-edamame-pumpkin in far strip
watermelon under the black walnut
seed potatoes
purple pole beans
5/15 update:
The purple pole beans went in today, and I sprayed the cherry tree. The asparagus crowns arrived over the weekend, and the non-Andrea tomatoes, the cauliflower I bought, all the peppers, one cuke, all the cucamelon, all the kale (4 curly, 2 dino), that's all in the ground and got a bit of fertilizer on planting.
Still todo: tomatillos (asap, they're super leggy), the Andrea tomatoes, find a place for the other cukes, get the Cocozelles from Jake and plant them, and get Paul to till the back 40 so I can plant the three sisters. And maybe build that potato tower finally. Try to layer: cardboard, 3" topsoil, seed potatoes, another 3" topsoil. Then when the plants are 6" high, layer in compost, then hay (to keep it loose), then topsoil. And nail on another layer of boards.
