Reflections on year three of no-till

It's been three summers since I last rototilled the soil in my garden it into a fine powder.  As the third no-till growing season came to an end, I found myself thinking a lot about why I switched, and wondering, "Has it made a difference?"  

After quite a bit of thought, I can unequivocally say, "......maybe?"

It does seem like maybe there's more organic matter on the surface - but only on those rows where I left cover crop residue or put down mulch.  And it does seem that maybe the water soaks in better than it used to - but again, only on the rows where I left the residue from last year's cover crops.  

Does the soil hold that moisture longer?  It didn't seem to...not really.  Even on the rows that were cover cropped, once the rains stopped, the soil dried seemed to dry out just as always.  I guess there still aren't enough soil aggregates - enough humus - to retain the moisture for very long.

So I think to answer the question, "Has it made a difference,"  I guess it depends on where in the garden you look. 

In some places, the soil was so poor to begin with, I think it has to have gotten at least a little better.  

Take the Hügelkultur row for example.  When I compare the production in that row this year to the pitiful results from last year, there was a huge difference.  The San Marzano tomatoes did amazingly well this year, in spite of me and an early summer drought.  

Was this because the soil had more nitrogen because of last winter's cereal rye/lentil cover crop?  Had the buried logs rotted down more, holding more moisture?  Was it just dumb luck - a fluke?  I'm not sure.  All I know is that I had more tomatoes in that row than I knew what to do with.

The San Marzano tomatoes were absolutely loaded down with beautiful tomatoes in spite of their rough start and the dry spell we had during the early part of the summer.

The rows that were cover cropped with crimson clover last year seemed to do really well too until the drought and the grasshoppers came.  The crimson clover residue doesn't last long at all, and because those rows weren't mulched with anything after that, the soil just dried out in spite of all the trips I made with my little green water can.

Lush growth of basil, carrots, parsnips and petunias in the month of June.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to harvest a single thing from this row.

One of the supposed benefits of no-till is a reduction in the number of weeds.  I remember feeling panicked last spring with all the winter annuals that came up everywhere.  But I left them, and after they died back, it seemed like overall there were fewer weeds in the garden this year - mainly just low-growing annuals like Common Yellow Wood Sorrel (Oxalis stricta) and Ground Spurge (Euphorbia prostrata) (both of which are considered by many to be undesirable garden weeds) and some grasses like Goosegrass (Eleusine indica) and Hairy Crabgrass (Digitaria sanguinalis) (both of which I consider to be extremely undesirable garden weeds!). 

But the more I learn, the less bothered I am about having some weeds in the garden.  I recently listened to Huw Richards interview Joshua Sparkes on Substack, and when I searched for "Joshua Sparkes" on YouTube, I found a presentation he did on the "Old Tree Soil" YouTube Channel for the Mycelium Presentation webinar. It was a LONG presentation, but I thought well worth the time!

Now I'm not ready to go all in on leaving all of the weeds and on growing weed/crop polycultures like they do on that farm, but a lot of what he had to say really made sense.  In his view, weeds aren't necessarily a problem - they're a free resource - an opportunity.  

A couple of "opportunity" plants growing in one of my rows...curly dock (Rumex crispus).  This plant is supposed to be a dynamic accumulator making it great for "chop and drop" mulch.  I'm not going to try to dig it up again (I've failed at that several times already).  So long as I don't let it make seeds....

I'm slowly coming to understand that having healthy soil means sometimes stepping back and just allowing nature do its thing - letting things grow, letting things share space, letting things decompose on the ground in the rows.  It means acknowledging that I don't have to have my thumb on every single thing that happens in the garden and it doesn't have to be so neat and orderly like the garden Charles Dowding grows to be considered a successful garden.

Having grown up working in a garden that was plowed and hoed, that's a big adjustment for me to make.

At the end of year three, I have learned that I still have a lot to learn about how going no-till can make my garden better.  

The National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has lots of good information online, including a publication titled, "Unlock the Secrets in the Soil - Principles for High Functioning Soils."  That publication says:

Soil health is the continued capacity of a soil to function as a vital, living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans. Only living things can have “health,” so viewing soil as a living, breathing ecosystem reflects a shift in the way we view and manage our nation’s soils.

Key soil health management principles:

• Minimize disturbance
• Maximize soil cover
• Maximize biodiversity
• Maximize presence of living roots

I think I've done Ok at "minimizing disturbance" after last fall's re-work of my raised rows.  I've actually not disturbed the soil much at all since then (other than pulling the goosegrass and crab grass).

But in my fourth year of no-till, I really want to focus on the last three soil health management principles.  And based on my experiences from the first three years, I think the key is going to be using cover crops.

I had what I'd consider pretty good success with my cover crops over the last two winters, but the problem was I didn't plant enough of them.  Other than the rows where I grew the hairy vetch/cereal rye and some crimson clover, the rest of the garden was pretty much bare all winter, with maybe only a light layer of half-rotted straw to cover the rows.  So that was definitely a fail - I didn't "maximize soil cover" over the winter months very well at all.

And even though I did manage to grow some Sorghum Sudan grass to harvest for mulch this summer, I only planted 2/3rds of a row, which in each of the two cuttings I did only made enough to put a thin layer of mulch over about 2/3rds of another row.  I didn't get a third cutting from it this year because of the drought.  So many of the rows that were left bare during the winter were also bare during the summer, when the temperature on the soil surface pegged out my thermometer at over 120° F.  

I've made up my mind to fix that mistake starting this fall.  I'm going to do my best to maximize soil cover, biodiversity and living roots by planting a mix of cover crops over most of the garden this winter.  But then I also want to try again to grow my own mulch next summer and test out some diverse cover crop mixes - maybe a mixture of things that are pretty drought and heat tolerant like the sorghum Sudan grass, sunflowers, purple hull peas, okra, zinnias, and sun hemp.   

My plan is to keep a thick layer of mulch or a good "polyculture" of food crops and/or cover crops in every growing space I can.

But to put that plan into action, I had to get those fall covers planted.  They needed at least a little time to grow before the weather turns cold.  

By mid-October, I was starting to get really anxious.  The drought that started in August had gotten even worse and I knew anything I planted wasn't going to germinate.  

I was afraid I was running out of time.  

On Saturday, October 19, I decided I couldn't wait any longer.  I planted different cover crop mixtures that included:  cereal rye; winter wheat; lentils; hairy vetch; crimson clover; daikon radish; lacy phacelia; cilantro; dill; and fava beans.

Watering the parched rows at the west end of the garden.  Notice the few pitiful little withered stalks of Sorghum Sudan grass...the grasshoppers ate all of the other cover crops I had previously planted in that row, but apparently didn't care for the Sorghum Sudan grass?

And as much as it pained me to do it, I spent probably five hours dragging the garden hose (hooked up to city water) up and down the rows, trying to give every row a good deep soak, watering slowly enough that the water would soak in and not run off into the walking rows.  I told RAF there was no telling how much water I used.  I guess I'll find out when I see the water bill!

Giving the Hügelkultur row a good soak.

Apparently the watering paid off because five days later, little shoots of cereal rye were poking up through the straw.

And in other rows, little crimson clover seedlings....

Crimson clover seedlings with a few volunteer zinnias (left).

The rows all got a second good soaking about a week after they were planted, but that was the last time I had to water them.  

On October 30/31 we finally got some rain!

That wonderful, wonderful rainy spell gave us 1.08".  It didn't rain on November 1, but all combined, on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th, we got another 7.58"!  It's amazing how much things grew after that!

Beautiful green rows of crops on November 14, just under a month after planting.  Notice the Sorghum Sudan grass that looked so pitiful the the previous picture...between the water I put on the row and the rain, it has put on lots of new growth.

Mix of daikon radish, crimson clover, lentils, common wood sorrel, and miscellaneous weeds.

It's now mid-November and the winter cover crops are looking really good.  So long as it doesn't immediately turn off cold, I think they'll be able to put on enough growth to survive the winter.  There are a few "blank spots" in some of the rows where the seeds didn't germinate very well, or the rabbits ate the seedlings, but overall, I'm happy with how they're doing.

So now I wait.  It will be about five months before the cover crops are ready to terminate.  It gives me plenty of time to get my sickle sharp.  I'm going to be doing lots of crawling on my hands and knees cutting things down!

I was pretty disgusted and burned out by the end of this year's growing season.  The drought and the grasshoppers just made gardening, "no fun" for me.  But I'm already starting to feel a bit of anticipation, anxious to see what happens next year.  

When I write my post, "Reflections on year four of no-till," I wonder what I'll have to say?

Mo

The little dog came to us in late winter or early spring of 2018.  

I first saw him in the field chasing cows with a pack of dogs that belonged to the Trash Trailer man and our other neighbor.  The dogs all ran back under the fence when I yelled at them, but the little brindled brown and white puppy stopped just before he went under the barbed wire and looked back at me for 30 seconds or so.  

He came back by himself later that afternoon to chase some more, and I yelled, "You're going to get yourself shot doing that!"  He stopped and looked at me for a minute or so, then turned and went back under the fence.

A few days later, he was in the yard.  "If you're going to be coming through my yard you're going to have to have some Frontline!"  I told him.  I went into the house to get some and when I came back out, he let me walk right up to him.  I bent down to see if I could put the medicine on him.  He didn't run away, and didn't act like he would bite so I put the Frontline on him and then petted him.  His fur was so incredibly soft!  His entire body wiggled with what I can only describe as "happiness" or even "joy."

Over the next few days, when RAF and I were outside, he would show up.  RAF yelled at him and told him to, "Get out of here!"  He just ducked his head down and wiggled all over.  It wasn't very long before RAF was playing with him, throwing sticks which he chased with delight, even bringing them back to be thrown again.

"He needs a name," I said.  RAF said we could call him "Mohammad" (after the late boxer Mohammad Ali) because with his underbite, the little dog looked to be part boxer.  "Mohammad Moses," RAF would call him, because he said he didn't want to sound like he was favoring one religion over another.  But I didn't like that name, so I just called him "Mo."

He started coming back when we weren't outside, and because it was still cold, he curled up into a little ball on the carport slab, shivering and shivering and shivering.  I felt sorry for him...he wasn't very old, maybe just six or seven months old?  I had an old yellow hoodie with a broken zipper so I put it out on on the front porch for him to sleep on.  

Unbeknownst to me, RAF really liked him and secretly let him in the house one night after I had gone to bed.  Of course Lola wasn't having that!  He told me that she barked in her vicious high-pitched Chihuahua voice, and RAF was afraid she would wake me up, so he put the little brindled brown and white dog back outside.  

But the sleeping outside in the cold didn't last long.  When it became obvious that he had adopted us, we adopted him.

Little Mo left us on Friday, August 23, 2024.

His passing has left a huge hole in my heart.  RAF has Lola, and I had Mo.  I told RAF it's funny, but I hadn't realized how completely Mo was intertwined in everything in our lives.  When I feed the cat, he won't be there waiting for his three or four kibbles of cat food.  When I sit down to watch TV, he won't be sleeping on his couch cushion by the window.  When we "go for a ride" he won't be in my lap trying to stick his nose out the cracked open window.  When I sit in the chair by RAF's desk, he won't be there wanting to be picked up and held in my lap like a little puppy.  When RAF plays certain songs, he won't be there howling along.  When I see a rabbit, or the groundhog, or turtles at the pond, or a mole hill in the yard, he won't be there ready for the chase.  When I cut up chicken for supper, or thaw out the hamburger, he won't be there ready to clean up any "scraps" that "accidentally" get left.  He won't be sleeping on the laundry, or following me into the bathroom, or standing there ready to be picked up and put on the bed at 9 pm.  He won't be dancing back and forth with excitement when I pick up his orange walking vest, my camera and walking stick.  He won't be sitting in on the porch with RAF when I come home from town and won't greet me wiggling his entire body when RAF declares, "MOMMY'S HOME!"

It's going to take a while.

Mo on April 30, 2019, sitting and waiting for me to catch up on one of our walks down to the creek.

Mo working at RAF's desk.

Mo sleeping in RAF's lap.

Mo wearing his new orange walking vest on November 25, 2020.  He wasn't too sure
what it was for but it didn't take him long to understand that it meant
 we are going for a walk!

Fixing my mistake

Many years ago, I decided I wanted to try to grow watermelons in the south part of the garden.  The problem was that the area still had lots of grass in it, and my thinking was that because I wouldn't be able to run the tiller through there once the vines started growing I should put something down to block the grass and keep the area looking "nice."

We had some old carpet that we had pulled up from the inside porch and I thought it would be perfect to block the grass.  So I dragged it out to the garden and spread it out by the watermelons.

It was a nice concept, but it didn't really work out (for reasons to be explained later).  

The watermelons didn't grow very well, and I ended up having grass growing there anyway - not through the carpet, but on top of it.  

If I had been smart (sadly, I'm never smart on the front end), I would have pulled the carpet up that fall and taken it to the landfill.  

But I didn't do it.  

And I didn't do it the next year, or the next year, or the next....  It doesn't seem possible that it was that long ago, but I want to say that it may have been there for close to 20 years!

I never forgot forgot that it was there, but after the Bermuda grass grew up over it, it became one of those "out of sight, out of mind" things. 

And that's how it was until about two or three years ago when I decided to plant some blackberry plants my sister gave me there in the south side of the garden.  I planted a couple of them, but when I tried digging a hole for the third plant, I was perplexed when I couldn't sink the shovel (really a spade) down into the dirt.  I stomped on the shovel really hard...nope, not going in.  

I dropped to my knees and started pulling grass to see what was going on.  That's when I found it...the old carpet from many years ago.  I mentally kicked myself...several times.

I don't think I really believed the carpet would break down and turn into dirt.  I knew it was made out of synthetic fibers.  I guess it was just something that was in that category of "so long as it's not bothering me right now, it's not bothering me."  

I ended up using my box cutter to just cut slits in the carpet where I wanted the blackberries to go.  Later when I planted the Jostaberry and my raspberries I did the same thing...I just cut through the carpet so I could dig the planting holes and said to myself, "I really need to get that carpet out of here."

But I didn't do it.

The blackberries did Ok, but I just couldn't seem to keep them watered.  It was the same with the Jostaberry.  It grew a lot in the spring, but once summer came, it started to look quite ill, and eventually almost every single branch on it died.  The raspberry that was planted into the carpet also died.

I thought I had lost the Jostaberry, but this spring, it put out one small branch.  I cut off all the dead parts, hoping that it would survive.

I had ordered an Aronia berry from Food Forest Nursery, and when it arrived, I planted it between the blackberries and the Jostaberry.  Again, I had to cut through the carpet to dig the planting hole, and again, I said to myself, "I really need to get that carpet out of here."

But I didn't do it.

The single branch on the Jostaberry grew quite a bit, but not as much as I had hoped it would.  And when hurricane Beryl came through in early July, the wind broke off the single branch.  I cut it into four sections to see if I can get one to root.  But that was that.  The plant did not put out any more branches.  I had lost it.

It has been so dry this summer that I was also starting to worry about the Aronia berry.  It hadn't grown much at all, even though I had been carrying water to it and had put mulch around it.  

Something just wasn't right.

One evening, I decided to pull the mulch back from the Aronia berry so I could make sure the water soaked in all the way around.  And that's when I did a literal "forehead smack" because I knew then what was wrong.

It was the carpet.

I tugged on it to try to peel it back so I could water the plant, and to my dismay, I discovered roots growing on top of the carpet in a thin layer of decomposed grass and leaves that was only about 1/2" thick.  The roots were very dry.

I pulled and tugged, and tugged and pulled, carefully working the Aronia berry roots loose.  Some of them broke off because they had embedded themselves into the carpet.  But little by little I managed to free the little plant's roots from the horrible synthetic fibers of the carpet.

An orange root from the Aronia berry, broken on the end, but free from carpet.

And once I had pulled the carpet away from the Aronia berry, I decided it was finally time for me to fix my mistake once and for all.

So I pulled and tugged, and tugged and pulled (and mentally kicked myself several times) and little by little, I was able to peel the carpet back.

Underneath, the ground was like concrete.

Hard packed dry dirt under the carpet.

It was bone dry and so hard that I couldn't even drive the pitch fork into it.  The carpet was intended to block weeds and grass from coming up, but what it ended up doing was actually blocking water from going down!

In hindsight, it's really amazing to me that ANYTHING was able to survive where that carpet was.  I think the blackberries did Ok only because they are planted in a low spot that is shaded in the afternoon by the big pecan tree, so there might have been more moisture in the ground there.  

But it's no wonder that the Jostaberry and the one raspberry planted into the carpet died.  

Pulling the carpet up wasn't easy because while the carpet hadn't broken down, the sharp pointed rhizomes of the Bermuda grass did manage to pierce it and had intertwined themselves all through it and anchored it to the ground everywhere it has put down roots.

The carpet was only about 6' wide, but it ran all the way from the third blackberry plant down to the first raspberry plant, a distance of about 20''.

(Incidentally, as I was pulling the carpet out, I also found the remnants of a colored cardboard box that I had put down to block the Bermuda grass.  The corrugated cardboard of the box was gone, but the colored layer on the outside was like a thin film of plastic.  That's why they say don't use colored cardboard like that in the garden.)

It took a couple of evenings for me to finally get it all pulled out. 

So now I have a pile of dirty old carpet to take to the landfill (what a shame), and I have learned a couple of valuable lessons about trying to block weeds.

First, and most obvious, don't use something that won't decompose.  That's just asking for trouble.

Second, things that block grass and weeds from coming up also block water from going down.  If it's being used around trees or shrubs, it needs to be pulled back when I water so the water will actually go down into the ground and not just run off the top of the weed barrier. That's what was happening when I watered last summer.  I just didn't realize it.

I'm still a big believer in using cardboard or newspaper to block weeds and grass, but I'll never again make the mistake of using something that won't rot in a few years.  Twenty years - that's a long time for that carpet to lay there and still be mostly intact.  I am pretty positive that my mistake would have outlasted me...I think had I not finally pulled it out, that carpet would have still been there long after I've died and decomposed.  

A story of seven little apples...

When the little Gala apple tree bloomed this spring, it was absolutely covered with flowers.

And in spite of the cool weather and there not appearing to be very many pollinating insects about, it looked like almost every bloom out of probably a hundred or more set a little apple.

But there was no need to worry about thinning them.  Mother Nature took care of that on her own.

The little tree ended up with seven apples.

By early May, the baby apples were starting to look like teenage apples.

And as the season turned from spring to summer, the apples grew larger and finally started to take on a bit of red.  

One morning I discovered a worm hole and a rotten spot on the reddest one.  I went ahead and picked it, cut the bad part out and ate it anyway.  It was a bit green but it was still a pretty good apple.

A week or so later, something (maybe a bird, a grasshopper or a June bug) ate a hole in the top of another one.  I picked it, cut out the bad part, and ate it too. 

I noticed a rotten spot on apples three and four, so I picked them, cut off the bad spots, and ate them too.

Apple five was a beauty.  It was almost entirely red and I could hardly wait to try it.  But one afternoon as I stopped to admire the three little apples that were left, I discovered a June bug burrowed down at the top of apple five, with a large rotten spot all around it.  So I picked it, cut off the bad spot, and ate it too.

That left only two...apple six was right by the main trunk and apple seven was much smaller out on the end of a branch.

Today I picked apple six when I found a June bug on it.  Luckily, there wasn't any damage yet.

What an absolute beauty.  Hardly any blemishes on it, nice size, shape and color...and the smell!  Ah, you couldn't make a perfume that smelled that sweet and wonderful!

I haven't eaten it yet.  But if it's anything like apples four and five, I'm positive it's going to be the best apple I've ever eaten.

Apple seven is still on the tree and is starting to turn a bit red.  It will be much smaller, but I hope it turns out just as nice as apple six.

So all in all, not a bad crop for the little tree's third year.  Even though there was only one that was sort of market quality, I enjoyed every bite of every one of them and I'm hoping the little Gala tree (and the Enterprise) makes more next summer.

Update (7/26/2024):  Yesterday afternoon I discovered that something had eaten a hole in the top of apple seven.  So far, it's not starting to rot, so I'm going to leave it to ripen as long as I can.

As for apple six?  RAF and I split it last night after supper.  It was delicious...and yes, maybe was the best apple I've ever eaten.

The Baldwin's Milkvine (updated July 5)

I've been wondering how the Baldwin's Milkvine was doing this spring.  I last checked on it on May 5, and at that time it was about 2' high, with one small flower cluster.

Today, Mo and I walked down to check on it and it has grown so much!  It has two branches, both almost up to the top of the cage, a few pretty large leaves, and several flower clusters.

There aren't any seed pods forming yet, but maybe some of these flowers will be pollinated when the sun comes back out later this week (we've had several cloudy days in a row and the pollinators haven't been as active).  But it made me happy to see that it seems to be doing well now that it again has something to protect it and to climb on.

Update July 5

It has a pod!!!!

To try to keep any seeds from blowing away if the pod dries and cracks open, I put a small mesh bag over it.  I hope I didn't mess up by doing that.

My biggest worry is that the calves in the field (who are curious about everything) might try to reach through the wire with their tongue and pull the pod loose.  I put something up on the wire in front of the bag so I hope that will protect the pod.

Interestingly enough, the vine is still blooming strong.  It has actually grown out the top of the cage by about a foot so I carefully pushed that part back down inside the cage.  I'm hopeful that it will make more pods before summer is over.

Yay!!!!!

May 30, 2024 Gardening Journal

It's been just over a month since I posted about Trash Trailer Man's pigs tearing up my yard.  How time flies.

In that month, we've had a few rainy days.  Only twice were the rains were over 1" but I hope the cumulative total was enough to help rehydrate the ground after what I believe was a very dry winter.

In looking back on my post from April 9, "Do I even still have a garden?", I sounded pretty pitiful and sorry for myself.  I often find it hard to have a positive outlook on things, even when I want to see the best.  But I'm going to try my best to think back on some of the progress that happened in the garden in April and May.

Sunday, April 21 

Gambling that we'd had our last frost of the spring, I decided to go ahead and plant some okra and cantaloupes.  

I planted two rows of okra, one on either side of this 4' bed, then planted three hills of cantaloupe in the center.

The first planting didn't come up, so I tried again a week later, this time planting the seeds thick in the rows.  By the first of May it was coming up, and here's how it looked on Saturday, May 4.  I think it's possible that in some spots, every seed came up!

And here's how it looked as of May 26 (yellow wood sorrel and all!).  I'm afraid the cantaloupes are outgrowing the okra...some of them are already trying to climb up on the okra and it's not really big enough to support them yet.  But maybe it will be ok.

Saturday, April 27

I started the morning by planting three rows of Golden Bantam corn behind the cellar where last year I had a cover crop of buckwheat followed by sun hemp.

The seed was some I had saved from the corn I grew last summer.  I hope, hope, hope that it didn't get cross pollinated by some other variety of corn and grows true to type!

In less than a week, the corn was coming up.  Here's how it looked on Saturday, May 4.

And here's how the corn looked as of May 27.  I've thinned it once, but it may need to be thinned a bit more, especially since it's putting out lots of side shoots. 

After that, I decided a row of the cover crops had to go.  I knew the rye wasn't quite mature enough - it hadn't made it to milk stage - but the San Marzano tomatoes needed to be put in the ground ASAP or they were going to die (again, I started my tomatoes too early).

So I put on my gardening gloves, grabbed the new sickle I bought on Amazon, and got to work on the Hügelkulture row.

The sickle worked GREAT.  It cut through the tough rye stalks with very little effort, and was so much easier on my hands than using the grass trimmers, which is how I cut the rye last year.  I wish I had bought one years ago!

Because it cut so well, I was able to just crawl on my knees down the row, laying the rye over in place.  In 20 minutes, I had already made it about 1/3 of the way down the row.

I had started at 11:14 am, and by 12:17 pm, that row was finished.

And while crawling down the row cutting it by hand was a bit hard on my knees, and I maybe could have cut it with my string trimmer instead,  I really think it would have been much harder to cut with the trimmer.  And, I likely would have killed this little toad.  

Of course I could have killed it with the sickle too, but the odds of that happening were much less because it was literally "hands on" cutting.

Sunday, April 28

I had hoped that after I terminated the winter rye, I could let it dry for about a week before I planted anything into it.  But the San Marzano tomatoes were looking so bad, I decided the sooner they were put in the ground the better.

The tomatoes actually look better in this picture than they did in real life.  The leaves were all starting to turn very yellow and many of them were already blooming because they thought they were dying.

I had potted the plants on into bigger containers when they outgrew the smaller pots.  Turned out that while it did let me postpone planting them out a while longer, the creamer and juice containers I used were not a good choice for pots!

The tomatoes were badly pot-bound and because the containers had ridges on the inside that went around the container, I couldn't get the plants out!  I ended up having to cut them out with the utility knife!  Lesson learned...don't pot things in a container that has horizontal groves or ridges inside!

I had planned to lay them on their side so they'd root along the stem, but the stems were already so thick I was afraid they'd snap if I did that.  So I just dug the hole as deep as I could and plopped them in.

The plants seemed awfully spindly so I stuck a stick beside each one and used a stem of the winter rye to tie the plants to the stick.

I also hoped that would protect the stems from cutworms, because I didn't dig around to clear the area of cutworms as I planted.  

By May 4, the tomato plants were starting to recover from their over-long stay in the containers.

And here's how the tomatoes were looking on May 26.  Almost every single plant is loaded with big clusters of tomatoes, with the exception of the first one in the row.  It's a beautiful plant, but for some odd reason it doesn't have a single tomato on it...maybe not even a single bloom.  

I also "earthed up" the Russet potatoes with manure/straw that I had saved back just for that purpose.  Russets are an indeterminate potato (who knew there was such a thing!) so it is recommended that they be earthed up. The Kennebec potato is a determinate type, so earthing up is optional.  I decided not to do anything with them.

And here's what I'm found under one of the Kennebec potato plants this afternoon.  I didn't measure, but I'm estimating that potato is about 2 1/2" long, so  nice size. 

Saturday, May 4

I planted a few more things....

1) African runner peanuts

And here's how the peanuts looked as of May 26.

2) A summer cover crop/home-grown mulch of Sorghum Sudan Grass.

Here's how the Sorghum Sudan grass looked as of May 26.

3) Some Lilliput Zinnias from seed I saved.

And the Zinnias as of May 26.

I also started terminating more cover crops.   I cut down all of the crimson clover except a small section of one row that was just now reaching full bloom.  That piece of the row wasn't covered with wire over the winter, and the rabbits sure enjoyed it (which meant it was a bit later putting on growth).

I also got started on the big patch of winter rye out by the raspberry plants.  After I cut the first block, I set out three new raspberry plants, and threw down some purple hull peas into the cut rye as a summer cover crop.

Here's how the purple hull peas looked as of May 26.

Friday, May 10

I finished terminating the last two rows of winter rye.  These rows also had hairy vetch planted in them, and they were much harder to terminate than the winter rye alone.

But my, oh my, oh my...as I was cutting, I was absolutely amazed by the amount of biomass that those two rows made.  Both rows are now covered with a layer of mulch about 6" deep.  I'll be interested to see what it looks like come time to plant my winter cover crops.

Wednesday, May 15

Even though the jalapeno transplants weren't very big, I decided to just go ahead and get them out in the garden.

Because the aluminum foil trick worked for the broccoli, I did the same thing with the peppers.

The Cherokee Purple tomatoes were starting to get pretty big, and would soon be in danger of falling over.  So I put up a couple of t-posts and some sticks to make a support to tie them to.

And here's how the tomatoes looked as of May 26.

There are several nice clusters of tomatoes too!

I did mess up though (I think) when I cut some Johnsongrass from the mud hole area to use as mulch around them.  About a week later, I noticed the tips of some of the tomato branches were wilted, and on a closer look, there were holes in the side of the stems, some with frass deposited on the stem.

While I didn't find the culprit, I suspect it was a stalk borer of some type, possibly brought into the garden in the Johnsongrass.  From what I read the females lay their eggs on grasses in the fall.  They hatch out in the spring and bore into the stems of the grasses, but if something happens to the grass, they can migrate to a new plant, which in this case was probably my tomatoes.  Next time I'll know better...lay the cut grass out to dry before I put it on the garden!

But thankfully there doesn't seem to be too much damage, so I hope we'll still get some nice tomatoes by late June or early July!

Sunday, May 26

I finally got some Kentucky Wonder beans to come up on my second try.

And I finally got some yellow squash to come up and grow.  The largest plant had one female bloom on it, but no male blooms to be found.  Luckily the pitiful little plants that I had started in toilet paper tubes had a single male flower open up the next day, so I tried hand pollinating the flower on it's second day.  I hope it wasn't too late.

The patch of Bulls Blood beets are starting to make little beets now.  I never did get any beets to grow last year despite repeated attempts.  Not sure what was going on with them, but I wondered if they were being eaten by slugs or crickets.  Something had actually started in on these when they were smaller, but most of them have survived.  

Beets aren't something I'm a big fan of (to me they taste like dirt - or as I imagine dirt would taste if I ate it!).  But RAF likes the ones my mama makes - pickled beets - so I hope I can make him at least one jar this year using her recipe. 

There are also several nice Marketmore 70 cucumber plants, and they're starting to bloom.  Just like with the beets, I couldn't grow a cucumber to save my life last year, and while that didn't bother me too much (because I don't really care for raw cucumbers either), RAF and youngest daughter really love them, so I hope we can make some for them this year.

The raspberries are starting to ripen, and if I can beat the birds to them, there will be enough for a few nice little snacks.  I actually had a handful today...yummy!

The blackberries are turning slightly red, and the four older plants are absolutely LOADED with fruit. RAF doesn't care for the raspberries (he said, "You can have all of them.") but he's a big fan of these  blackberries.  So I know he's looking forward to having these!  I hope we'll start picking some by mid-June.

The little Gala apple tree was covered with blooms this year, and because there were only about four flower clusters on the Enterprise apple, I didn't figure any of those blooms would be pollinated.  

But boy were they pollinated!  I think almost every single bloom set a small apple! 

For a while, I was afraid I was going to have to do some serious thinning!  But Mother Nature took care of that herself, leaving about seven nice little apples on the tree.  I hope they go ahead and ripen because I really do like Gala apples!

After a very rough start, a few of the onions did manage to survive, and have made nice little bulbs, some of them about 2" in diameter.  I am wondering if they're ready to pull, or if something has just bent the tops over.

The Florence Fennel is looking like it might actually live.  If it can bulb up before the weather gets too hot and it bolts, I'm excited to give it a try.

The second planting of carrots...

The third attempt at celery, although the plants are still very tiny and may not make it...

The Globe Artichokes...

I think that will do for this post.  There are a few other things: snow peas (which are almost finished); early frosty peas (which have produced a few pods); Swiss chard (which I don't know what to do with); red sails lettuce (which is starting to bolt); Boston pickling cucumbers; a variety of slicing and cherry tomatoes; parsnips; and sunflowers galore!  

And while I was kind of in a down-in-the-dumps mood when I started writing this post, just looking at the pictures has cheered me up a bit.  

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the garden in June, and how much things change!