Fall 2023

 

Sunrise around 7:11 am on Saturday, September 23, 2023.

September 11, 2023 Gardening Journal

When summer got here this year it meant business.

The last week of June was brutal.  We were already behind on rainfall - not for the year, because we had heavy flooding rains in March, but behind by quite a bit for April and May.  And as June came to an end, the temperatures soared to near or just over 100° F for several days in a row.

The sun beat down on the poor plants day after day, intense and unmerciful. And with the lack or rain it didn't take long for them to start showing signs of stress.

I decided last summer that mulch and shade cloth are a gardener's best friends in the summer.  I bought two more shade cloths, but again, I found myself way short on mulch.  

Last year's straw was pretty much gone, decomposed, mostly into the pathways.  I tried to buy a couple of bales of straw at the feed store, but they were sold out and didn't expect more until the wheat harvest got underway.  

I had planted a row of Sorghum Sudan grass with the intention of cutting it several times through the summer, but with no rain, even that wasn't growing, so there wasn't anything to cut.  I finally resorted to cutting some Johnsongrass that was growing in The Mudhole area, just to have something to at least try to cover the bare soil.

It just wasn't enough.  

So the spring garden was pretty much a bust.  We did eventually end up with a few things: snow peas; strawberries; blackberries; cucumbers; green peas; tomatoes; yellow squash; potatoes; green beans; and some cabbage.  But when I say "a few" that really means "a few."  I think we harvested maybe eight yellow squash before the squash bugs killed the plants.  Between about eight cucumber plants, I think we got four cucumbers.  We got enough green beans for two meals.  You get the idea.  

The only exceptions to the "few" might be the San Marzano tomatoes and believe it or not, the Jimmy Nardelo peppers.  I actually ended up picking a good number of the tomatoes and have put up 10 pints of juice, with probably five more pints worth of tomatoes in the freezer.  

Five pints of tomato juice from the San Marzano tomatoes.

And the little peppers that I thought were either hit by frost or burned by the wind?  They're absolutely loaded down with peppers now.  They're ok, but I probably won't grow them again.  I'll go back to my old favorite, California Wonder.

And while July was a bit better than last year (a tiny bit cooler on average with two or three little rains of about .25"), any hopes I had of a fall garden were pretty much over when the weather turned brutally hot again in August, and the rain effectively stopped.  

One of many HOT, dry days in August.

By the end of August, we were under a burn ban again, and now that September is here, almost all of the grass is dead.  The trees are shedding their leaves, I guess in a last ditch effort to survive, and the ground is like a brick.  And the few things I've tried to grow in the garden are being decimated by grasshoppers.  Even covering the plants with a shade cloth or netting hasn't helped much - the grasshoppers are either finding a way under the cover, or possibly eating their way through it.  So not a single cauliflower transplant survived, and I'm not sure the broccoli is going to make it either.  Every single beet I've set out or been able to sprout has been eaten down to the ground and my little fennel transplants didn't even last two days...gone, eaten by the grasshoppers.

I don't think I've ever seen squash bugs as bad as they were this year either.  I don't know if I'll even be able to grow any squash, pumpkins, watermelons, cantaloupes or cucumbers next year because there are probably going to be so many of them hiding in the garden - in the straw, under the cardboard, in the raised bed around the cellar.  

Squash bugs of all ages congregated on a butternut squash.

It's very disheartening to have a beautiful squash plant loaded with little baby squash only to come out the next day to find it wilted beyond recovery.

Two hills of squash, killed by squash bugs just as they were old enough to start producing squash.  The one on the right was completely wilted by the next day.

Several times this summer I sat down to write a gardening journal entry, only to find myself staring at the computer and thinking, "What's the use?"  

There is really not much that's very "positive" to write about.  But as the 2023 gardening season is coming to a close, I thought it might be nice to look back on how some of my "projects" turned out, and to reflect on lessons learned and changes planned for next year.  

The bean tee-pees didn't work out too well.  Turns out the poles were two close together and not in the ground deep enough, so that tallest one ended up falling over anyway.  And because the beans were so thick, I couldn't see through the foliage very well so I don't know if I was not seeing the pods, or if they weren't making any because it was just too hot and dry.  Altogether, I think I picked enough that RAF and I each had about two tablespoons of beans for supper one night.  I might give the tee-pees another try next year, but I'll make sure the structure has a wider footprint, and I'll only plant one bean per pole.

The bean tee-pees.  The first one fell over not long after this picture was made.

Trying to grow things on both sides of the cattle panel trellis was a disaster.  The tomatoes planted on the south side of the panel where the green peas were planted were spindly and stunted until I finally cut the peas down.  The cucumbers on the north side of the panel opposite of the other tomatoes didn't grow well at all...they probably didn't get enough sunlight, and/or water.  So that's definitely something I won't be trying out again.

The Charles Dowding/Ruth Stout bed did really well in the spring, and I thought I had found the answer to gardening in the Arkansas summers.  I was excited by the potato harvest and was really looking forward to more potatoes from some that were planted later.  But once the drought hit, that area didn't live up to the hype either.  Little rain showers of 0.10" or 0.05" or even 0.25" just weren't enough.  The water wasn't able to make it through the hay into the ground and once that ground dried out, any thoughts I had of growing anything else there were done.  The only things that have survived are a few cherry tomato plants (they've turned into sprawling monsters), one poblano pepper plant (which I expect to be dead any day now) and the sweet potato vine, which is probably only surviving because it's growing in the shade on the south end of the bed.   I won't abandon that bed either, but I will need to put some thought into what I can do to improve the dirt.  I still think the deep mulch idea is a good one, but that area definitely needs more work.

The "smother the Bermuda grass" plan has been a modest success.  Early on in the year, I was pulling multiple rhizomes every time I made the rounds through the garden.  But the number of rhizomes has slowly gotten to be less and less and in the Charles Dowding/Ruth Stout bed, there's hardly any Bermuda grass growing now...only at the west edge where the bed meets up with the fence.  Edges are always going to be a problem I'm afraid, but this winter I think I'll pull everything back from the fence, dig out any rhizomes that I find, put down more cardboard and then pull the hay back over the new cardboard.  The other problem area - the edge where I put down privet chips last winter, is perhaps a bit worse, with more of the grass finding its way up through the cardboard and wood chips.  But all in all, that's made a big difference in the amount of Bermuda grass that's making its way into the garden, and while I know it's a war I'll have to fight as long as there's Bermuda grass in the yard, at least I feel like I'm winning a few small battles.

The Hügelkulture bed was lot of work...and I've decided that all of that work was for pretty much nothing.  Contrary to everything I read and watched on YouTube, that bed did NOT perform any better in the drought than the rest of the garden did.  I actually had to start watering it sooner than other parts of the garden.  I won't abandon it, but it is in need of some serious redesign.  I worked on it this weekend, flattening it out on top then planting it with a cover crop of lentils, a bag I bought at the grocery store that I never cooked.  I hope they'll come up and will fix some nitrogen in that really poor dirt.  (And at this point, it really is just "dirt," not "soil!")

Three "disaster areas" in the garden (from left): my row of Sorghum Sudan grass; my Hügelkulture row; and the Charles Dowding/Ruth Stout bed.  All three were a bust once the hot, dry weather arrived.

Like the Hügelkulture bed, my raised rows were a lot of work...work that I'm now regretting, and slowly undoing.  I realized during the first year of trying to grow things in those rows that I had made them too narrow, and the sides too steep.  Because of that mistake, they're much like the Hügelkulture row - it's almost impossible to water anything growing in them!  The water doesn't have a chance to soak in...it just rolls down the sides into the walking row.  So while I am doing my best to be "no-till" this is an instance of where I don't feel I have any choice but to undertake some serious "soil disturbance" to fix the mistake I made with those rows.  Little by little I've been using the pitchfork to loosen up the mound of soil at the top of each row, then drag it out to the side, essentially making flattened rows that are roughly 24" to 30" wide.  

A "re-worked" raised bed on the east end of the garden.  It has been flattened out into a lower, wider bed and I am able to water it now.

They're still slightly raised, but if I can ever find a source of wood chips, my plan is to fill in the walking rows up to, or almost up to, the height of the growing beds.  Already I'm seeing a huge improvement in my watering.  I'm now able to take my little green watering can and give the crimson clover cover crop I planted in one of the flattened rows a good soak.  It makes a huge difference and I wish I had known to do that when I started.  Just goes to show that you can't go by everything you read on the internet, huh.  But I guess to garden is to learn, and so I can put this in my "something I've learned" drawer.

And where I had started building raised rows on the west end of the garden, I've changed gears there too, and have instead switched to making more of the 24" to 30" wide beds, slightly raised, with walking rows that are around 16" wide.  I started on the part of the garden that was "occulated/solarized" under the billboard tarp, just because I didn't want it to start growing weeds once I moved the tarp.  I planted those pieces of row with a cover crop mix of daikon radish, hairy vetch and winter rye, but it's been a struggle to keep the plants alive.  It seems a shame to be using city water for cover crops, but I just don't think I could carry that much water that far as often as I would need to.  So for now, I am just giving the plants a drink in the evenings right around sunset, with the hope that we'll start to get rain again by the middle of September.

The wider, flatter raised rows at the west end of the garden and the flattened out Hügelkulture row on the far left.

This weekend, I finished those rows, using the shovel to relocate the dirt that I spent so much time building up into raised rows into the new flatter, wider beds.  Using the shovel reminded me of why I wanted to go "no-till."  I lost count of how many grubs I dug up as I was moving the dirt.  In the two that already had hairy vetch, rye and daikon radish I planted more of that same mix to finish them out.  But in the third one, I planted more Sorghum Sudan grass, then took what was left of the poor Sorghum Sudan grass I planted in the spring and laid it across the row to try to shade it just a bit.  I hope that it will come up and if I can keep it watered, maybe I'll have enough of it to use as straw to cover the strawberry bed for the winter (I never bought any straw at the feed store because it now costs almost $12/bale!)

And speaking of my strawberry bed, I'm pretty unhappy with it.  It hasn't ever really recovered after the rejuvenation process.  

The strawberries aren't looking so great.

It wasn't the rejuvenation process that was the problem.  I may have killed about half of the plants with the pine shavings I used for mulch.  What I discovered is that the pine shavings behave in much the same way that whole leaves do.  They mat together to make a barrier on top that the water can't get through.  So while I thought I was giving the plants plenty of water, in reality the water was probably just barely making it to the surface of the soil.  After I figured that out I spent about 30 minutes pulling the wood shavings off of the bed.  I need to find out when is the best time to lift the plants, and just redo the entire bed.  That makes me very sad.  

And while I'm worried about my strawberry bed, really, the entire raised bed around the cellar didn't look very good.  I might say it actually looked downright tacky.  

My raised bed, filled with, and surrounded by grass in the corner where the bumblebee nest was.

Recall that an American Bumblebee queen (Bombus pennsylvanicus) chose the raised bed for her nesting spot last spring, so to keep from disturbing the colony, I've pretty much steered clear of that area this summer.  I think the colony is winding down though, because I've seen three male bumblebees, found a few dead workers, and the activity going in and out of the nest area has slowed way down.  So I finally put on my gloves and pulled grass from in and around the raised bed.  It dawned on me while I was working on the cleanup that I shouldn't even try to find dirt to fill in the southeast corner of the bed...I will just use that as a place to put plants that I am taking out of the garden, sticks that fall in the yard, etc.  Eventually all of that material will rot down.  Yes, it will take a while, but in the meantime it will just be a work in progress - a "compost in place" operation.  And I am thinking I will build a cold frame somewhere on the south side of the raised bed.  Expect a post about that project if I decide to move forward with that!

All in all, I guess the fruit trees and berry bushes are doing Ok.  A few leaves on the apple trees have started turning yellow and dropping off, but I think that's just a normal response to the drought.  I've tried to keep them and the two little cherry trees watered as best I can.  I think they'll survive if I can just keep them alive until the rains return.  

Watering the little Enterprise apple tree.  I pulled the mulch back and slowly put three watering cans of water around the base of the tree.  The soil was then covered back over with grass clippings.

I'm not sure about the jostaberry plant.  It started to look quite pitiful once the weather turned so hot and dry, and it has finally lost every last leaf.  I think it's still alive, so maybe it has just shed its leaves in self-defense.  It might be one of those plants that really needs more shade.  I didn't bother to read that much about it before I planted it so might have made a mistake. I almost let one of the raspberry plants die from lack of water, but hopefully I realized it was in trouble in time!  The blackberry plants and the grape vine are, of course, suffering from the drought, but I hope they have root systems that are well-enough established that they're going to be Ok.

I am sad to admit that I was a bit too lax in maintaining the back part of the garden where the bean tee-pees were.  It got overgrown with cherry tomato plants (the one I pulled out today was sprawling about 8' along the ground), and because I didn't keep those plants under control, the grass came back and is trying to reclaim that area.  I used my string trimmer last month to clear out the purple hull pea cover crop in an area just the size of my billboard tarp, and have left that part tarped since then.  I'll need to do the same thing with the rest of it, but I don't know what will happen where all of the grass has gone to seed.  I guess I'll just be pulling grass every time I walk through there next year.  Sigh.  Farmer Jesse said to keep the soil covered because if you don't, it will cover itself.  Well, he is exactly right. 

Regarding my compost bays...I mentioned in a previous post about my mistake of letting things grow in and in front of them this year.  That was a big mistake, but I've also finally realized that one reason I've not had much success with my composting is that I haven't kept the materials wet enough.  I finally have a small, but nice little pile going in bay #1.  Little Joe made quick work of the corn stalks and that was a good addition to the pile.  It won't make nearly enough to cover beds in the garden, but I think it's going to make an excellent seed-starting medium to use in the spring.  If I can do that, and not have to buy a $20 bag of potting mix, that will be a win in my book.  And of course I plan to continue with my "manure and hay collection" this winter, Lord willing.