Gardening Gardening

And second cutting:


Garden is doing great. It’s been crazy dry here so I’m watering regularly.


Asked my semi-pro neighbor and he said the sweet potato plants look fine. He said sometimes when they are raised in a green house, then transplanted to full sun it can kinda shock them a bit. Also told me not to overwater them.






Corn is thriving.

 

I kind of forgot about the radishes I planted in between a couple rows of potatoes. I’ve been lucky this year in that the voles/chipmunks haven’t been gnawing on them. I give the tops to my chickens and rabbit, who both seem to enjoy them.

 

Oh, I am turning green here looking at the pictures.
I went down to look at my garden. The fenced area has two foot high grass and horsetails. When you don't keep it up, the horsetails take over.

 

Hopefully we had our last freeze/frost warning last week and I can now get everything in the raised beds and grow bags. Only thing I had planted so far was lettuce and radishes (about a month ago). Those are doing great! (I know things are a bit crowded in there but I'm trying to maximize the square footage of the raised beds.)

 

Garlic, asparagus, strawberry, lupine, and a volunteer hosta on the trail.

Other volunteers here and there in the garden include forget-me-not, sunflower, yarrow, coneflower, a lot of dill, and a lot of lettuces.

 

Been picking snow peas and cut a head of broccoli last evening.
Tomato plants looking good but nothing like The Wood Wolverine . Wow! No tomatos on mine yet.
Everything else well on the way.

I had many more peas, but I was eating them while picking.

 

I love fresh peas.

 

Veggies lookin good.
It's been really nice to take a break from daily watering. We got 2 light rains, yesterdays was better than the previous but it really helped wet everything down. My garden is doing great. The grass clipping weed control is working excellent! I picked up another 2 packets of salad green seeds for when what I have gets too mature. I'm about ready to start giving some away, we have a bounty.

 

I had a bag of potatoes that were sprouting and I dug a trench and planted them. First time planting potatoes. They’re growing…I have about three inches of compost on top of a layer of cardboard above bare soil. Should I be mounding dirt on these to increase production? Don’t want to kill the plant

 

So do you fully cover or leave a minimal amount of green showing?

 

This is a recommendation I use: "When the potato vines grow to about 6 to 8 inches (15-20 cm.) above the soil surface, more soil or organic material is hilled up around the young potato seedlings so that only the top leaves stick out of the ground. This forces new tubers and new potatoes to grow under the new mound of soil. When the potato vines again reach 6 to 8 inches (15-20 cm.) above the soil surface, they are hilled up again."

Read more at Gardening Know How: Covering Potato Plants: How To Hill Up Potato Plants https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/potato/how-to-hill-potato-plants.htm

 

Ok thanks. I will wait a bit…they’re at 2”

 

I’m doing potatoes in buckets this year. Two small pieces with eyes about an inch from the bottom of the buckets. Once they grow, I’m adding more potting mix. Obviously, I can only go as high as the top of the buckets. Going to be interesting to see how many pounds I produce per bucket.

 

I debated whether to drill the drain holes in the sides or the bottom. I elected the bottom of the bucket due to possibility of rotting tubers. All of my other buckets, I drilled through the sides so a reservoir of 1-1.5” of water and nutrients would remain in the bottom. Also, I think my organic rich potting mix will help retain moisture in the buckets.

 

I used potato bags one year and I wasn't too impressed with the yield. I think the soil was too heavy and retained too much water.

 

Found this little guy in some dill this morning.