The Dawg Patch

[JayneR13]

But aren’t brassicas biennials? Will you truly be able to get seed from first year plants?

[GoDawgs]

It's the way our weather cycles go. The F2 brocs were planted out Sep 18 so they've basically been through a winter. Then we go through week long cycles of mild springish days and nights followed by a week or so of cold days and almost freezing nights. By this time those poor plants think they've gone through several winters and springs! The seed for growing them was collected last April from plants set out Fall 23.

The fall collards were planted out Aug 15th this past fall and have completely gone to seed. They're loaded with filled out seed pods waiting to dry down. I wish they'd hurry. That's supposed to be a spaghetti squash bed! I actually did set out one plant in there (in the middle of the photo) and need to plant some seed in the second hill next week.

25.04.26 Spring spag squash in last of fall collards,kale.JPG

Time marches on and waits for no one! I might just try to dig and pot up the plant with the best pods and set it aside to dry down, then yank the others out along with the fall kale that's still going. We're already getting collards and kale from the spring planting so no loss there.

[karstopography]

That’s the trouble with saving seed some of these crops . The waiting and time constraints. Meanwhile, those garden spots are in high demand and the clock is ticking. We all need dedicated garden space just for seed saving.

[GoDawgs]

Lots of stuff done in the past couple of days. We're getting down to the last nitty grittys and heading to the finish line. Got the sweet potato bed mostly prepped. This was the failed pea bed. The trellis on the left was removed but I left the one on the right alone. I usually plant sweets right down the middle of the bed but why reset the trellis? I'll just plant them near the trellis and guide the vines up it. There are still four kohlrabi there because I didn't have any place else to stick them but they're almost done and will be out of the away soon.

25.05.05 Sweet Potato row mostly prepped.JPG

Got two rows of Mississippi Silver cowpeas planted. They're not up yet.

25.05.05 MS Silver peas planted.JPG

These are the Asuka Akane turnips. When they're ready they push up out of the ground.

25.05.05 Asuka Akane turnips.JPG

Here the first ones I pulled. They have a very mild turnip flavor. So pretty!

25.05.05 First Asuka Akane turnips pulled.JPG

This morning I got the trellis posts set down the middle of the garlic bed and worked up the soil. On this trellis will be 5' or so of the long Asian Red Noodle beans; on the rest of it will be Suyo Long and Glorie de Paris cukes from the MMMM plus a new-to-me one that I bought called Tanja. That one is a 14" long burpless slicer supposed to be bitter free. The garlic is starting to decline and will probably be ready to pull out in about three weeks.

25.05.05 Cuke trellis, row prepped in garlic bed.JPG

Thursday and Friday will be the big push to get just about everything else planted. Having beds ready really helps. After this weekend there will only be a few flowers and a couple of stragglers left to deal with. It's been a long haul getting stuff in and I'm ready for the shift into maintenance phase!

[GoDawgs]

The remaining fall collards and kale are still taking up space in the spring spaghetti squash bed! The vines from the eventual two squash plants will more than need all of the bed! There's one squash plant already in the ground. I removed the first collard to the right of it and trimmed back the kale on the other side of the bed to make room for the second squash hole. That will be seeds, not a transplant.

25.04.26 Spring spag squash in last of fall collards,kale.JPG

The seed pods on the collards are getting really fat.

25.05.05 Collard seed pods.JPG

Most of the plant was trimmed away except the branches with the large pods and I hung it up hoping the pods are far enough along they will dry and the seeds will be viable. Another experiment.

25.05.05 Hanging collard seed pods.JPG

This morning will be devoted to weed whacking between the beds and getting the rows ready for the Silver Queen corn planting.

[rxkeith]

several years ago, i saved seed from second year collards.
i ended up with 2lbs of seeds. enough to feed the state of
georgia. i still have maybe a pound of seed left. i have never
had to plant collards again. they still come up as volunteers. in the mix
are kallard greens. there must have been some hybridizing going on
with the russian kale which also comes up every year now. there are some
interesting leaf shapes out there.


keith

[GoDawgs]

Yesterday and today have been the big push towards the planting finish line.

Yesterday morning I got the cukes planted as well as the Red Noodle Asian beans on one 18' long trellis, set out a few squash plants I grew and seeded others. Got another row of bush beans planted and tilled the corn rows one more time for planting today. I did notice that the watermelon seeds are up plus some okra seeds. Did an inspection of the potatoes and found/destroyed some Colorado beetle larvae plus one adult.

In the evening I sprayed all of the cabbage, broc etc with bT for the worms that have suddenly attacked. I swear there are more of those white butterflies out there this year than I've ever seen in one place!

Today I got out there early and planted the Silver Queen in the 12' behind the five 6' rows of the yellow corn. So now all five 18' rows are complete. Then I side dressed the yellow corn and hilled it up for the first time. After lunch I got most everything else fertilized and called it a day. My bender-over is, as is said around here, "wo' out" and one knee is pretty stiff but everything on the to-do list got done.

I am getting SOOOOOOO close to having the garden IN! The sweet potatoes will be planted next week and that's it. Just a few this and thats afterward that don't count for much!

[JayneR13]

I know the feeling! I've been doing prep work for the last week or so and have planted a few things. Plus PA wants the pantry garden in before Memorial Day, weather permitting! So it's GO time! We huffs and we puffs and we get it all in! LOL

[GoDawgs]

Day 3 of much needed rain, 2.5" in all so far. Woo hoo! Probably a bit more scattered stuff today. During a break in it this morning I had to go check the garden to see if the corn was under water or not. NOT! Yay! Things overall are looking pretty good. The Mississippi Silver cowpeas are up. Behind that bed is the pepper bed with carrots on each side, garlic to the left.

25.05.11 MS Silver peas, carrots and peppers behind.JPG

The cabbages are moving right along. I cut the first Stonehead cabbage yesterday. They're the four in the middle on the left. The Early Wakefield pointy ones in front of and across from those are wrapping. And Alcose, the wrinkly dwarf Savoy type cabbages lower right are finally going to head up. This is the third time for them and was their last chance. But it is the last time for that purple Kalibos. Pretty but way too slow for me.

25.05.12 Cabbages.JPG

Tomato row with three different eggplants on the front end. They're just loving the rain! The stakes are supporting second story cages for a few tomatoes that get really big.

25.05.12 Eggplants on tomato row.JPG

I did use yesterday's rainy afternoon to at least decide what I want to put in the fall garden. Of course we all know that's going to change at least several times. Next step is to make sure I have the seeds I need.

[GoDawgs]

There's still room for plants on the back end of Tomato Row (the pallets). The plan is to leave room for a few more tomato plants to be started for producing fruit when the firsties are about done and take us into fall. We'll see how that works out!

25.05.12 Tomato row, room for more.JPG

There are four potted peppers that I think are supposed to be rather shorter peppers so perfect for buckets. Those would be Frank's Sweet, Habanada, Petite Marseillais and Senora Mild. I did Frank's last year and it did well but the rest are new to me via the MMMM. Then there are two dwarf tomatoes, Rosella Crimson and Velvet Night, that will only get about 3' tall.

25.05.12 Small growing peppers. dwf tomatoes.JPG

The big blown-down pecan refuses to die. There's still a part of that huge rootball in the ground so life is stirring! New little branches are sprouting on limbs still attached to the trunk. The will to live.

25.05.12 The pecan refuses to die.JPG

[GoDawgs]

BURRRRPPP! Excuse me! I just finished then LAST bite of the big garden elephant! (You can eat the whole elephant... one bite at a time.)

HOORAY! The garden is IN! Got the sweet potatoes, zinnias and tithonia planted out last evening so we're now officially in maintenance phase.

Twelve Jewel sweet potato slips were set out with their watering collars in place and mulch put down. I feel so sorry for them today as the temp is 88 but it is what it is. They had to get in the ground. They always look funky for several days and then all of a sudden they get with the program.

25.05.15 Sweet potatoes planted, mulched.JPG

Then we played musical plants. The bed that was supposed to have zinnias down both sides and tithonias down the middle still has asuka turnips on one end and will until they go to seed. Then a few weeks ago I ended up with a homeless Tivoli, a dwarf spaghetti squash that got bumped from a different bed and ended up stuck in the middle of the zinnia bed. So all of the zinnias, some tithonia and one squash plant plus old turnips are now in that bed.

25.05.15 Tithonia, zinnia and Tivoli squash.JPG

So the eight leftover tithonias got stuck down the scallion side of a future bean bed. The scallions will be pulled soon as they're overgrown anyway. I will pot up the flowering ones going to seed and let them finish their seed making that way.

25.05.15 Tithonia and bean samples.JPG

The Top Hat corn is mostly about knee high now. The Silver Queen that is behind it in each row is up about 2". There should be no cross pollination.

25.05.15 Top Hat corn, SQueen behind.JPG

And some of the pole beans are starting to climb. Grandma Roberts is an MMMM bean grown here for the first time last spring and did so well that she's made a return appearance this year and won the prize for first one to the pole. She's the quad pod on the near end.

25.05.15 Grandma Roberts, Jeminez, etc.JPG

So that's where things are now. Time to concentrate on bug/weed/disease patrol in the garden and begin some way overdue pruning of stuff around the house while waiting for puttin' up time to start.

[rdback]

25.04.16 Bean poles put up.JPG


The circle at the end of the bed is where I will plant a circle of Boone County White corn...

...special stuff I want to try like that Boone County I do 7 circles in 4x18' beds and it's a dense enough spacing that I have no germination problems. It's a method I read about a long time ago. If I remember right, the circles are 18" in diameter and are set 27" apart on center. I sow around the outside edge of that template I made and thin to 8 plants per circle once seeds are up.

This looks like something I might want to try! It sounds like it works nicely, especially in confined spaces. Can you tell me more about your template? I know you thin down to 8 plants, but how many seeds do you start with? Do you have any spacing marked on the template, or do you just randomly plant around the circle? Have you tried this with any other varieties? Curious minds want to know, lol.

[GoDawgs]

@rdback, I originally got the idea back in 2017 from an online site but I can't find that link now. Someone had given me a packet of Boone County White as it came in a collection they bought and they didn't want it. Boone was supposed to be a big white corn for use early as eating corn and later as a dried corn. But it was free so what the heck; use it for the corn bed experiment. However if you search "grow corn in a bed" now you'll now find a bunch of sites. Back then there were hardly any. I've looked at a few of them and everybody has a slight twist to how it's done so you might want to check those out and see what you think. Meanwhile, here's how I did mine.

The beds here are 4'x18' and I planted seven hills of corn in one. I first set seven stakes in the bed to mark circle locations. One stake was in the middle of the bed and the other three on each side of it were each 27" apart on center. The reasoning behind the various spacing measurements is to end up with all seed 8" apart around the circle perimeters and the outside of each circle is 8" apart from its neighbor. 8" is the spacing I use in the row corn I grow.



I scribed and cut out from cardboard an 18" diameter circle as a template, made 16 marks evenly apart around the edge of the circle with a hole in the middle to fit over the stakes and hold the template in place. The marks are 4" apart. A corn seed would be pushed into the soil at each of the marks.

Corn is a heavy feeder and I think in the fields they inject ammonium nitrate into the soil pre-plant so I got some ammonium sulfate from the local feed & seed as corn likes a little sulfur too. With a hand tool I pulled back some soil 3" outside the planting marks and 3" deep for the fertilizer, put in a three-finger pinch each of ammonium sulfate and 5-10-15, covered the fertilizer and then planted seed at the marks. Pick up the template move to the next stake, rinse and repeat.

I usually thin row-grown corn to 8" apart so I initially planted the seeds 8" apart around the circle. Lesson learned: That has since been changed to 4" apart with later thinning because if you end up with gaps from failed germination and then try to sow more to fill the gaps, that replanted corn will never catch up with the others. Better to over plant at the start and thin later for a uniform stand and uniform pollination. Here's corn up and thinned.





I do a second fertilizing with a little ammonium sulfate scratched in around the circles when the corn is about 10-12" tall, or "about knee high" as my old mentor used to say. The mulch really helps conserve moisture. Corn hates to get dry.





When the tassels first start showing I fertilize for the last time using some 15-0-15 with a little superphosphate to fill in that middle number.


Final result of the Boone County experiment:





I have tried this with several varieties so I can get an earlier taste! It needs to be an early corn and hopefully with the ability of germinating in cool soil. Here that would hopefully mean planting it around the third week of April so I can then get my 80 day Silver Queen corn rows planted the first week of May. That's enough apart to prevent cross pollination. I have also tried growing three rows down the bed but had problems pulling soil to the outside of the stalks to prevent lodging and fertilizing that middle row was problematic so I switched back to the circles. Easier.

This year I'm trying Top Hat (https://www.southernexposure.com/produc ... weet-corn/).
Spring Treat was my favorite followed by Quickie but I can't find a reliable source.

Do your homework, see what best fits your growing situation and let 'er rip! Experiments are fun!

[rdback]

@GoDawgs, thanks for the informative response! I've always heard you must plant corn in a "block", for proper pollination. My setup doesn't really support that. But, the "circle" approach might just work! I think I'll give it a try this year. Thanks again!

[GoDawgs]

@GoDawgs, thanks for the informative response! I've always heard you must plant corn in a "block", for proper pollination. My setup doesn't really support that. But, the "circle" approach might just work! I think I'll give it a try this year. Thanks again!

Glad to be of help! The key thing is having enough plants close enough to each other so they can swap pollen. Sometimes when the pollen is going I take a stick and gently tap the stalks. That makes pollen fly around a bit more.

Hmmm, I wonder if you could do concentric circles, like do the 18" one and then another circle of seed 8-10" outside that first one. Just thinking out loud.

[GoDawgs]

The National Pickler cukes are coming right along, enjoying the rain we've had. There's an 18" piece of fencing attached to the poles and that will support the initial flop when the plants first get upright and wobbly. By then I will have hung the 4' high fencing about 5' above the 18" one.

25.05.15 Nat'l Pickling cukes.JPG

And the Stonehead cabbages are swelling fast. They are destined for sauerkraut before they split.

25.05.15 Three Stonehead cabbage left, ready.JPG

Before the big pecan fell, this is was a nice shady place to rest or clean up fresh pulled veggies:

23.09.20 Trees, north side of garden CLOSE UP.JPG

Now the only shady spot is under a big multi-stemmed crape myrtle, visible behind the right end of table. What a change! It's shady there until noon so there's a chair parked there right now because the old bench is so decrepit that it is no longer safe to sit in.

25.05.16 Current shady spot.JPG

Ah, but there are improvements coming. Stay tuned...

[Whwoz]

@GoDawgs, thanks for the informative response! I've always heard you must plant corn in a "block", for proper pollination. My setup doesn't really support that. But, the "circle" approach might just work! I think I'll give it a try this year. Thanks again!

Glad to be of help! The key thing is having enough plants close enough to each other so they can swap pollen. Sometimes when the pollen is going I take a stick and gently tap the stalks. That makes pollen fly around a bit more.

Hmmm, I wonder if you could do concentric circles, like do the 18" one and then another circle of seed 8-10" outside that first one. Just thinking out loud.

Yes @GoDawgs I have done circles within circles before with success. If spacing allows for it you can even put one in the centre.

[Whwoz]

viewtopic.php?t=2495

For those that want a bit more about growing corn in circles, from a previous discussion

[GoDawgs]

@Whwoz , thanks for posting that!~ I knew I had written that before but had no idea where to look.

Now I'm wondering if anyone who read that actually tried it. Would love to hear the results if they did!

[GoDawgs]

I planted another row of beans (Providers) yesterday in the same bed as the cukes. It's where the snap peas were pulled out. The beans are probably not needed but it's better to have more and give them away if necessary than not have enough. But for sure, once they start making there are enough now planted in stages that we should have fresh beans whenever we want them and more than enough to can up.

25.05.22 Bean support, new planting, cuke trellis.JPG

Pickles helped me hang the trellis fencing on the main cuke row (above photo). They're getting tall enough that they're getting wobbly, ready to flop and run. Well, they can flop against the trellis and run up that! They are National Picklers.


The older beans are now tall enough that I ran support twine down the row. It keeps the plants from flopping which makes picking a pain in the back if I have to reach way to the middle of the bed to pick them! These are Blue Ribbon beans and they get tall enough that I'll probably have to add a second run of twine higher up. A row of Jumbo bush beans was planted two weeks ago on the other side of this bed.

25.05.22 Bean support in place.JPG

The first garlic was pulled yesterday. It was 9' of mixed varieties and the tops were looking pretty frowsy
and starting to brown up. They were better than I thought they'd be but still not as big as I had hoped. Only two small rounds in the bunch. The other 36' of garlic will get pulled next week.

25.05.22 Mixed garlic pulled.JPG

Yesterday I accidentally committed squashicide. One of the lowest leaves on the young plant was yellow and I clipped it off near the main stem... only I got the main stem along with the leaf stem! Three drats and a rap on my knuckles. And there were two little baby squash on it about 2" long. Waaahhhh! So more seed has been planted to start another one. Haste makes waste!

25.05.22 Squashicide, cut stem.JPG

I'm not sure what will be going on today. Probably a weed patrol, seeing if anything needs more mulch and probably running the Mantis down between the corn rows.