Top Ten Things I Learned in 2007

1. Don't crowd the plants. I put way too many big-vine plants (cucumbers, zucchini, "sunburst" squash, and pumpkins) in too small a space, with not enough trellising, and I never pruned anything. I ended up with a jungle, got only a few fruits from each plant, and in August downy mildew swept through the whole lot; by the end of September I had to pull up every plant and most of it, I couldn't even mulch. I lost a couple of heads of lettuce and a pansy to damp rot. I couldn't bear to thin the basil, and I ended up with a lot of tiny basil plants that bolted to flower almost right away. In general, thinning results in bigger, healthier, and more productive plants.
   


2. WATCH more closely for disease! I didn't notice the black spot until it was far along; I lost two peppers entirely. I also didn't notice the downy mildew early enough. When I did, I should have sacrificed the affected plants early, and I might have saved more.
   


3. Prune your tomatoes, they like it. Tips I found out too late: As soon as a tomato plant puts out its first flowers, pick off all the leaves up to that point. (And add soil; tomatoes can put out roots from their stems!) Pick off a few leaves every now and then through the season, to let sun reach all the tomatoes (makes it easier to see them for harvest, too). At the very end of the season, while waiting for the last of the fruit to ripen, pick off almost all the leaves. Tip I had but didn't use: You don't have to keep every tomato that sets. I had a LOT of tomatoes per plant, but most were very small. Next year, I'll go for less numbers, bigger individual fruit.
   


4. Don't plant under the tomatoes unless some sun is going to get in there! I tried it with pot marigolds, then with carrots. Both times, I got sprouts; then they disappeared as the leaf layer above them got thicker.
   


5. I need better trellising! I put four-foot metal tomato cages around the tomatoes, and they outgrew them. By the end of the season two of the tomato plants were lying horizontal. The flimsy plastic trellises I used for the cucumbers started leaning over even before anything had begun to lean on them. Other trellising mistakes: Often I didn't notice new growth that needed to be tied to the trellis before it had gone its own way too long, and bending it back ran the risk of breaking it. That was partly due to plants too close together, partly just not checking often enough. The zucchini did not seem amenable to trellising at all; I think it could have been if I'd started when it was younger. And I thought it was real cute at first when one of the cucumbers started climbing a tomato; then the cucumber leaves shaded by the tomato started dying. Not an experiment to repeat.
   


6. Switch to different greens in hot weather. The salad greens we started with produced wonderfully all spring. When the weather got hot, they shot up long stocks and flowered, and the leaves turned bitter. Next year, pull the spring greens as soon as the weather heats up, before they bolt. Plant some hot-weather greens (just before hot weather). Switch back to cool-weather greens in the fall.
   


7. Cherry Belle radishes don't grow well in winter. They were great all spring and summer; three weeks from planting to eating, and you can eat the thinnings too. I tried planting some the end of September and they hadn't gotten over two inches high, three months later.
   


8. Don't plant mesclun mixes unless you know what each variety looks like. I was letting weeds grow all over the garden because I didn't know what was a weed and what was unknown-green-number-eight in the mesclun seed mix. And ALL of what I thought were "Sacred Basil" seedlings turned out to be weeds. I'll try starting Sacred Basil indoors next year, and find out what the seedlings are supposed to look like. Someday I will now what every seedling of every crop and every weed looks like. Maybe by the time I'm 93.


9. Don't spend money on garden worms until you build up the organic content of the soil. It was December before it dawned on me that the reason the worms I'd added to the garden had not multiplied was, there wasn't enough for them to eat. I did build the soil up a lot, and the worms I did add survived. But they won't multiply until the soil gets rich enough to support a larger population. Instead of adding more worms, add more worm feed.
   


10. Avoid overhead watering. Really. By next spring I'm going to have a water-the-roots-only system of seep hoses put in. With the sandy soil and the raised beds, it's really impossible to over-water this garden. But damp-rot and downy mildew have made me very cautious about over-watering the leaves.
    

More planting, definite nibbling

Back to City People's Garden store this morning:

• 1 Orange Balsam thyme, already in flower;
• 1 French thyme, not flowering;
• 1 Greek oregano;
• 1 pot of nasturtium seedlings;
• 1 red "Colossus" pansy (two plants; one in flower, a smaller one not);
• 3 gallons of fresh compost tea (still warm);
• 1 watering can (turns out to hold just short of 2 gallons)

Came straight home to start mixing the compost tea one watering-can full at a time and pouring it on the garden, while it's still fresh. Doused the plants as well as the soil. A little over one gallon of tea went on the two small lower beds (with a little over four gallons of water), a little under two gallons went on the large upper bed (with a little over eight gallons of water.) I measured out another two gallons of water on each of the lower beds and another four gallons on the upper bed. That's 21 gallons of water total, and seemed to be all the soil would hold.

Oh, and I put the new plants in, too! The nasturtium divided into four seedlings.

Something is definitely nibbling on some of the lettuce plants, some onion plants, the cucumber and zucchini and pumpkin plants. The cukes are eaten down almost to the stems.
Chewed zucchini:

I sprinkled cayenne pepper around the plants nibbled on, and a few others.

Planting onions

We straightened out which key is which today. I went out at 9:30 AM and put in 24 Walla Walla onion seedlings and 24 yellow onion seedlings, interplanted with the pansies, peppers, and mesclun-mix salad greens. I figure if the pansies serve to shade the onions, the mesclun and peppers should too.

The Walla Wallas go from the left side in.

The yellow onions go up the right side.

Closeup of the peppers with onions:


Then I poured more fertilizer on: used up the last of the compost tea, and then some for fish&kelp. Between yesterday and today, I've put 5 gallons (2-1/2 cups fish&kelp, 3 qts. compost tea) on the vegetable bed; 1-1/2 gal. each (3/4 c. fish&kelp, 1 pt. compost tea) on the strawberry bed and the herb bed.

As near as I can calculate, our garden needs 45 gallons of water a week. I probably gave it that much Saturday evening. The soil was moist and easy to dig for several inches down today, while being dry in patches just on the surface. With the extra water today, and whatever Jean and Claudia add when they plant their additions tomorrow, I'm not expecting to do another watering until Saturday. I'm going to try to use a much lighter touch Saturday; I think I brought the water down too hard on the pansies and petunias last time.

I'm going to get more compost tea every Saturday, but I need a mister to apply it properly. Pouring it onto the soil is helping the soil texture, but to get the most benefit I also want to soak the leaves, gently.

Here's a closeup of some soil. The soil from the veggie and herb beds is sandy, but at least holds together when pressed in a fist. A handful from the strawberry bed is more sandy; it forms a nice clump when pressed, but falls apart when released. (That's the sample in my hand, and it's too close to the camera to see clearly.)



No sign of slugs yet.