Mulching Onions

The time has come to mulch my onions.  Mulching accomplishes at least two things:  It keeps the roots more evenly moist and discourages weeds. My main season winter storage onions are up beyond 18 inches tall and the weather prediction is for extended warm and dry.  I just did my second weeding by hand and so this is also a good time to cover the soil up for weed suppression.

I don’t like to mulch my onions any earlier than now since it cools the soil and might slow the growth during our cool, wet spring.

One old book I had, classified onions as Light Feeders along with carrots, peppers, parsnips, peas and beans.  I don’t quite agree.  I think onions were classed as lighter feeders because their root balls are quite restricted and don’t reach far out like other vegetables.  But they really do need a rich soil if grown at optimum spacing.

Because of their less-extended root system, they are more susceptible to the drying out of the soil (especially my sandy soil) during dry periods, so an even moisture environment is superior and a mulch helps accomplish that.

Before mulching

My onions are grown in rows across the bed.  The rows are one foot apart and the onions are 8 inches apart within the rows.  That gives 96 square inches per plant.  (Actually I seeded indoors in January, two seeds per pot so many 'plants' are pairs of onions.  Pairs give me slightly smaller onions which isn't a bad thing since mine tend to be so big.)  About the same spacing could be accomplished with 10 inch equidistant spacings but there’s a reason for my wider spaced rows. 

Several years ago, my son TOG had invited volunteers to help hand weed his onion beds as he was falling behind and could lose the crop.  One of the free helpers was a bit rough and heavy handed.  He had a tendency to reach in and often break the taller onion leaves while going after the lower growing weeds.  After a couple of weeks of cooler weather, some virus, fungus or disease whooshed though the beds with the broken leaves and wiped out the crop.

That is why I like my onion rows running across my four foot wide bed with enough space to reach in from the side without breaking any leaves for weeding and mulching.  TOG's multiple rows run down the length of his 30 inch wide beds and once the onions are tall it gets difficult to reach in over a row to get at the weeds by hand.

My mulch of choice is autumn leaves from a neighbour’s maple tree.  This year I used some that I’d stored in a barrel for over two years.  Last year I used 7 month old leaves and first chopped them up with the lawn mower.  Unfortunately, mowing reduced the volume to a quarter of what I’d started with, the mulch was too thin and I quickly ran short.  So this year I just crumpled and broke the very old leaves with my hands before spreading them 1.5 to 2 inches thick over all of the bed.  And I was careful not to damage any onion leaves.  It worked well.

I did the same for my garlic.  

Any weeds that do make it through the mulch are grabbed by reaching in between the rows at ground level.  The sunshine and soil fauna will break the leaf mulch down over the next two months and even though much of it will be gone by harvest time, about the end of July, I really believe mulching onions makes a big difference.

Happy Gardening.

Hilling Potatoes

Potatoes before Hilling

Reading about the old Soviet Leader Nakita Khrushchev Is rather mind numbing – a lot of people died because of him.  The only thing I remember of him when I was a kid was when he was in the UN and took off his shoe, pounded his desk with it and shouted, “You Shut Upf! You Shut Upf!”  More recently I heard that he had complained in the 1960’s that he couldn’t find hardly anyone who knew how to grow potatoes.  

The disincentive through Soviet Collectivization had destroyed the passing on of valuable knowledge of simple things like growing potatoes.  I believe our own industrialized mega-farm agribusiness has accomplished the same thing.  Therefore, I grow potatoes not only for accessing the best tasting varieties of this organic, unsprayed, dietary mainstay, but to know How to grow them and the ability to “tell others also”. 

Heaping the soil around the potatoes is important for production.  I like to do mine when the plants are about 16 to 18 inches tall.  I feel it’s a fine line between allowing enough foliage to support good growth and disturbing extended roots already established by the plants.  If I hill too early, I bury too much foliage.  If I hill too late, I disturb baby spuds in the soil.  Maybe I'm just being picky but I always try for optimum production.

Some texts promote hilling twice.  Some say to hill when the flowers show up and the plants are full height.  My sandy soil tends to hill only so high and a second hilling isn’t usually successful so I prefer single hilling with my in between timing.  

With my soil, hilling is accomplished with my bow rake.  This is when a proper longer handle on a rake is most useful. In heavier soils or when I want to dig slightly into the path, I’ve used my 2 lb. grub hoe. 

Potatoes after Hilling

 The spuds run down the beds in a double row 24 inches apart.  From one path on one side of the bed I reach over the bed to the far path and rake the soil up against the far row of plants, burying the plants halfway.  Then I rake from the centre of the bed up the side of the closer row.  I do the same thing from the opposite path, reaching across the bed for the farther row and raking from the centre bed line for the closer row.

A bit closer view.

This is all very doable with the four foot wide bed.  A narrower bed couldn’t hold a double row of potatoes.  Any small weeds that are buried in the hilling are not coming back.  Later, the close mature canopy of the potato's foliage shades and slows future weed growth so that any weeding is minor and done by hand pulling whenever weeds are noticed while walking by.

One problem I have is my sandy soil erodes easily with watering and I must be gentle and gradual with my water-wanding.  Later in the season I must be aware of any exposed potatoes and quickly cover them by hand so they don’t turn green (and toxic).  These spuds usually show up while watering by hand and dredging muddy, eroded soil from the centre between the rows works quite well for covering them up without disturbing other roots. 

The novelty of growing spuds inside a stack of old rubber tires is cute but not practical.  Where does one find the soil to keep on adding as the plant grows taller?  One single plant can only place so much energy into potato production so why not use all that extra soil for more plants rather than one tall one?  What could be the toxicity of dust and chemicals from the tires?

Four foot wide beds with double rows of potatoes, hilled and well cared for in a good year will give me 50 lbs of spuds from a 50 square foot bed.  

This year I have a couple of test plots comparing different nitrogen sources and different seed suppliers.  I’m seeing differences already and will report as the crop matures. 

Let’s not be like Krushchev’s Soviets.  Potatoes might be ‘cheap’ right now, but I believe many more of us need to know how to grow potatoes for when they aren’t.

Happy Gardening.

Nice Melons

Crimson Sweet Watermelon five days after transplanting.

Hannah's Choice Cantaloupe five days after transplanting.  They're both adapting well and starting to take off.

I’m quite new to the Cantaloupe, Watermelon growing scene.  These I thought of as mostly garden luxury items.  How else could you describe a fruit crop that only ripens over a 12 day period, is tricky to grow, can’t really be stored or frozen, and takes up needed bed space where other more productive and longer keeping vegetables could be grown.

Over the decades I’d occasionally tried a certain watermelon or muskmelon that was ‘easy’ or ‘highly recommended’ for my area, but they always gave poor results.  Technically our cool summers on the Wet Coast are not very good for melon production. Plus, I never knew when they were ripe and they readily succumbed to wilts and viruses resulting in few and small fruits.

Last year that changed.  I harvested 9 decent cantaloupes averaging just under 2 lbs each.  They tasted great and I learned how to tell when they were ripe.  That was 17 lbs from about 22 square feet of bed.  This was closer to my average production goal of 1 lb of produce per square foot.  Last year my Raspberries only gave me .33 lbs per square foot and my Strawberries gave me .41.  So, Nice Melons are always a fun treat that I can now squeeze into my production demands.

Two years ago, I built a new greenhouse.  The old one, 8.5 by 10 feet was built of cedar 2 X 2’s mounted onto a base of 4 X 4 inch cedar fence posts.  It had lasted many years but a nasty winter (south!) wind had grabbed it and tumbled it up the garden and into my hop pole.  The sturdy greenhouse plastic had helped it hold its shape but out in the howling wind I had to quickly slice off the plastic to keep it from blowing away, and it sadly folded like an old lawn chair into a tangle of broken spars and hardware.

My new greenhouse was Bigger – 12 by 15 feet made of 2 X 3’s.  It spanned 3 full beds instead of 2 shorter ones and this extra space gave me the idea of trying some cantaloupes.  Without any planning I grabbed two varieties of seed from off the local seed rack.  They were transplanted in the greenhouse and growing nicely but just as they started to fruit the wilts came and stopped everything.  It seemed the humidity was too much for them – I’d been watering the foliage too much, too late in the day and some virus whooshed through the melons turning the vines powdery white.

Last year I made more changes.  I chose a different variety that was much more disease resistant.  My son TOG (The Organic Grower) gave me some bits of his drip irrigation system to set me up for one bed in the greenhouse.  That bed contained the Cucumbers, Peppers and Melons.  The melon portion also got some landscape fabric set down on top of the drip lines which helped keep the foliage even dryer.  The result was some Very Nice Melons.

This last winter we noticed a bit of a surplus of home canned tomatoes in the pantry and decided to reduce this year’s paste tomato production by half.  This would leave even more room in the greenhouse and so I planned to try some Watermelons this year as well.

On April 12^th I seeded some Crimson Sweet Watermelon and some more Hannah’s Choice Cantaloupe, (both from Johnny’s Seeds) indoors under lights.  Within a couple of weeks they went outside into the greenhouse and continued to thrive in their pots.

I set down the drip lines coming from a header that is attached to a garden hose plugged into a 70 litre garbage can that sits on a small platform outside the greenhouse.  I transplanted the 4 melons into the bed, spacing them every 2 feet down the bed with some extra space in the middle separating the two varieties.  Between each melon I laid a 2 foot wide piece of fabric across the bed held nicely in place by my homemade coathanger wire staples.  That will keep the weeds out and the moisture in.  I fill the garbage can every day in the summer and let it slowly drain on its own.

Let’s see if I can get some Nice Watermelons too. 

Happy Gardening.

Planting Corn and Squash

 My corn and squash bed is a modest affair.  I’ve been using the same black plastic bed cover for 30 years.  The three inch long diamond shaped holes were cut at 16 inch square centres.  That’s three rows down the bed with 16 inches between each corn plant.

Pollination is always a concern with small blocks of corn since they are wind pollinated.  Growing a single row of corn looks cute but doesn’t pollinate properly unless you do it by hand and get the timing just right.  And multiple varieties cross pollinating leaves a tasteless mess.  Growing corn in triple row blocks works well for me.  I can grow more than one variety as long as each variety tassels at a different time. 

When we had kids at home I grew more corn: blocks of 9 or 12 per variety with three ripening dates.  Usually an earlier variety and later variety seeded at the same time and then the later variety seeded a couple of weeks later for a third planting.

Now it’s usually just the two of us so I only seed a dozen Golden Jubilee for easy eating.  I prefer full corn flavour and creamy texture rather than just sugary sweetness.  Corn for freezing hasn't been a priority for me with just a backyard garden.  Corn takes up a lot of space and nitrogen and can wear out / deplete a soil quickly of many other nutrients.  Corn for drying and grinding is recommended by Eliot Coleman for a “Hard Times Garden” but we’ve just never been into corn meal recipes.  However, we might get into dry corn and dry bean production if the economy falters or…. 

The three squash plants are transplanted into the south end of the corn bed with the corn at the north end.  The squashes were seeded indoors under lights on April 12^th and then grown in their pots in the greenhouse after a couple of weeks.  Judging by the root ball in the pots, I think I’ll delay my starting of my outdoor squashes by one week next year.  Set out time should be closer to the end of the month when it’s warmer.  

I prefer only vining squashes over bush varieties so that the squash vines can spread throughout the base of the corn stalks. I also choose winter squashes that store a good long time in my garage.  Currently my choice is a variety of Delicata.  But this year I’m also trying some Butternut.  The goal is to get five squashes per plant yielding me about 15 from my corn bed.  These two types keep at least until the end of February.  

I also have a Zucchini plant in some extra space at the south end of my Cabbage bed and another Butternut in 20 square feet of a newly decommissioned asparagus bed.  The three squashes in the corn bed are also free to wander across the path and surround the Zucchini.

The 50 square foot corn bed is in a spot where the chickens had been for a few months in the spring so there’s no need for extra nitrogen.  I added 1.5 lbs of lime and 1.75 lbs of Rock Phosphate then tilled it all in making sure the last bits of the mostly decomposed dump of fall leaves that the chickens had worked on was stirred in as well.

The bed is raked flat after which my row marker is used to mark the three lines 16 inches apart, down the length of the bed.  Then with the flat back of the bow rake I gently rake a bit of soil away from the three lines in both directions, creating three gentle troughs and rises down the length of the bed.  This will direct the water to arrive evenly at each plant.  

The black plastic bed cover goes over that with the planting holes lined up in the troughs.  Down each row, between each diamond shaped planting hole I place a large egg sized stone.  The plastic under each stone has a slit cut in it for more even watering.  Lastly, I use my coathanger wire staples to hold the edges of the bed cover in place near the paths.  This bed cover will leave the bed weed free all summer.  It also warms the soil nicely for better early germination of the corn.

The diamond holes stop nearer the south end and are replaced with cross slits.  This is where the squashes are planted.  Like my cabbages, I like to use a thin stick slid diagonally across the squash leaves and stem into the soil to help hold the young plant steady against any wind stress.  The final item is adding a four-foot stake just north of each squash plant to help identify exactly where each plant sits when the profusion of tall leaves hides its location since I need to know where to focus the most water.

Last year’s corn germination was good so this year I still only planted two seeds per diamond opening.  Once I’ve recorded the current germination rate I’ll thin them to one plant per hole.  If the rate is mediocre and leaves me with empty spots or weak plants, I’ll either go to three seeds per spot next year or replace the seed.  Multiple seeds guarantees a plant in each spot -- a full block is important for pollination and more productive.

With my extra space in my modestly expanded garden and my two chickens for extra nitrogen, I might consider growing some extra corn for freezing next year.  I haven't seen fresh Organic Corn advertised anywhere here in the Fraser Valley and a regular non organic dozen is getting more and more expensive.

Happy Gardening.

Planting Cabbage

Last year’s cabbage crop was a good success.  This year could be even better with a minor change in my process.

Years ago, I struggled with cabbage root maggot. Cauliflower was the most susceptible.  The mid-sized crop was growing nicely but any amount of sun would suddenly wilt the leaves as if the plants were in water stress.  Pulling up the sad plants showed roots eaten away by white maggots.  

The next year I tried the recommended wood ashes stirred around the planting holes but that didn’t really help.  Finally, I learned that some kind of barrier on top of the root area solved most of that.  First I tried tar paper circles with a slit cut to the centre but later found that black plastic bed cover would be both a bug and a total weed barrier. 

Eventually I kept one 5 by 12.5 foot piece of black plastic specifically for my cabbage family bed.  The holes for the plants were actually slits or crosses cut into the plastic at the right places.  Using 24 inch square centres between the plants resulted in wonderful large cabbages averaging 7 lbs each.  The cabbages stored well in my garage until mid-April.  My only concern last year was that my hand watering through the slits wasn’t reaching all of my sandy soil and I feared dry areas under the plastic.

This year I changed my plastic and raking prep slightly.  I laid out my pre sliced plastic sheet over the flat raked bed and when it was in the exact right spot I stuck small sticks into the centres of each planting spot.  Then I removed the plastic and raked lightly with the back of the rake drawing a bit of soil away from the planting spots.  That left me with two very gentle troughs down the bed spaced 2 feet apart.  The water would run towards the plant’s roots.  Next, I made a smaller trough down the centre of the bed.

The plastic was relayed onto the bed and the small sticks removed and I transplanted the cabbages through the cross slits into the main pair of troughs.  The minor centre trough was held down with medium sized stones and under or in line with each stone I sliced another slit.  This will allow more water to reach the centre of the bed.  The perimeter of the black plastic is anchored with my 8 inch long staples, homemade from coat hanger wire.

The 50 square foot bed had been enriched the week before with 1.5 lbs of lime and 1.75 lbs of Rock Phosphate.  This was tilled / stirred in.  There was no need for added nitrogen from seed meals because my two chickens had been in that bed for a few months during the winter.

This year I planted seven Storage #4 F-1 cabbages from Johnny’s Seeds that were seeded in flats indoors on March 23^rd and transplanted into pots a month later.  I also included one almost Broccoli plant called Happy Rich.  It is technically not quite a true heading broccoli but rather puts out side shoots for a longer season, as long as you keep cutting the side shoots.

Each plant was given a small stick slid down diagonally between the leaves and stem to avoid the roots but to stabilize the plant from shaking in the wind in this early transplanted stage.  I also mixed a gallon of fish fertilizer to water in the transplants and give them that extra starting boost.  The far end of the bed has room for a zucchini squash plant that will be installed in a week or less.

This raking and black plastic all sounds like a lot of work for 7 or 8 cabbages but there’s no weeding to do.  Now I just water and watch them grow and possibly go after cabbage butterfly caterpillars or maybe the odd slug if damage is sighted.

Happy Gardening.

Fall Spinach Finishing and Spring Spinach Starting

 

My spring seeded spinach and lettuces are almost ready to steal some leaves from.  On March 13^th I seeded indoors under lights, Olympia Spinach from Pacific Northwest Seeds and Encore Lettuce Mix from Johnny’s.  I transplanted them into the garden on April 14^th and now they’re looking almost ready.

Meanwhile my fall planted (last year) spinach is finishing in the greenhouse with my third and final harvest now.  That was seeded last August 1^st in pots and transplanted into the finished pea bed a few weeks later.  August is a hot month and direct seeding doesn’t always work that well so using small pots in some shade is an advantage.

Last fall when I rolled the greenhouse to its next rotation spot, the spinach and lettuces were waiting for it to extend the season.  The lettuce doesn’t survive the winter, but the spinach does.  I did cover it with leaves for a week during our only cold snap.  It’s been bearing nicely this spring.

The Strawberries are starting to bloom now.  They were transplanted into their new bed last August 13^th -- 44 Shuksan plants in 50 square feet.  (named after the 85,000 foot peak near Mount Baker in NW Washington.)  They were top dressed with 2 lbs of Alfalfa Meal on March 15^th and have really taken off.  

Too bad they can’t stay to produce a second year.  I suffer from Strawberry Root Weevil and must start new plants and move them to a different spot in the garden each year to beat the pests.  But we’re hoping for maybe 25 lbs this year.  We’ll see, I’m getting my Lovely Wife, who inherited the berry picking gene, to weigh them this time.

Happy Gardening.