The other day I started forking up one of two beds where peas will be planted and got a third of it done before my knees had had enough. That bed was totally covered with Bermuda grass and that's my fault for not removing the few pieces that started taking root there late summer. What a pain in the patoot!



Today I took two ibuprophen to get ahead of the stiffness, resumed the project and two hours later, it's done. There are two 15 gallon buckets slam full of Bermuda grass. The second pea bed should be a lot easier. All I have to do there is dig up the finished cauliflower and broccoli plants, give the bed a light forking and it's ready. Very few weeds there thanks to mulch. And the ibuprophen worked. No stiffness!

Update on the Dreikäsehoch tomato name. I have since learned that it is the same as Whippersnapper and came out of the UK.

That Bermuda grass is a tough one to get rid of. If you don't get every little root it is right back. Way back in the day I sprayed it with Roundup and while it looked to be gone it was back with a vengeance the following year. Now I do as you just did and dig it out by hand then diligently remove anything that I see sprout.

Whippersnapper is supposed to be a good tomato. I hope that you enjoy it.

That broadfork has 16" long tines and does a dandy job of loosening up the soil. I snatch a clump of Bermuda with my hands and the whole thing with all it's runners comes right up. Then I root around in the soil with my hands to make sure no runners escaped. Then about a week later when any missed pieces sprout, they come right out of that loose soil.

The other pea bed will be easy as all I have to do is dig out the finished cauliflower and broccoli plants. There are hardly any other weeds in there due to a good mulching. Just a quick forking will finish that job.

GoDawgs wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2020 5:49 pm

worth1 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2020 2:27 pm Everything looks really nice.
Some sort of winter critter is eating holes in my cabbage.

With all the rain could it be slugs?

Cabbage worms, millions of cabbage worms.

Time to break out the bT. It will get 'em all quickly if it's not too late. Very natural stuff.

This morning I got the old cauliflower and broccoli plants removed in what will be Pea Bed #2. Because of good leaf mulch there are few weeds in there, mostly some henbit so it will be a quick forking job.

Then I went to dig out the cabbage plants. They're developing little mini cabbages from growth points around where the original head was cut.





Already there are several baby cabbages forming.



I think I'll call them cabbagettes. : There's going to be okra planted here later so I won't need this area for a good while. I want to see just see how big the cabbagettes get.

Probably not a great deal bigger from what I recall seeing in the past. If leaves are good, they are still edible and each cabbagette will produce a seed stalk

Thanks for that input, Woz. I'll watch for seed stalks. Some of those are the Charleston Wakefield whose seeds I need to replenish so it would be nice if it bloomed.

This morning I started the asparagus seed, 'Conover's Colossal', an old 1800's variety from Baker Creek. Last time it took ten days for germination of a different variety but it should be about the same with this. They should be ready to plant out in about two months.

I also started a sun mapping project. It will consist of taking photos of the garden from the four corners at 10am and again at 5pm and I will do that on the first of each month. I want to see exactly where shadows fall in several different spots, particularly where there's plenty of light now which will turn to shade later as tree leaves push out.

Last year the garden tomatoes really suffered in the full sun. The ones up at the house did much better, getting some afternoon shade. So this is the bed at the top left corner of the garden where they will go this year as this bed will get some shade from a crape myrtle probably after 4pm.



This is a shot of the left side. Last year the tomatoes were where the big buckets are sitting. This year they will be at the top of this side on pallets laid across the bed. You can see the crape myrtle on the left that will give some shade as the sun swings around towards the pond in late afternoon.



The bottom of this side also gets some shade during mid day from a cedar tree on the other side of the fence outside the photo. I wish I could cut it down but it's not on my property and the owner's horses like to get up under it in the summer. Later in the year about a third of this lower portion will be in full shade for about four hours but I really want to know for sure before putting shade-needing plants there. Thus the experiment begins.

We've had two nice days with temps in the mid 70's and a bit of wind to help dry out the beds but rain is coming back in maybe starting tonight. Thursday is to be a real toad strangler with possible rough weather so I've been busy getting five beds forked and mulched for early planting in a few weeks. There's still one left to do but it's not in the main garden and is way too wet.

These are three of the five beds I prepped in the last two days. They've been broadforked, weeded, raked and now mulched. It's just leaf mulch with some grass clippings and some pine straw mixed in but it will keep any weeds from coming back for a while. There are a few flags stuck in some corners showing me where I need to douse some fire ant hills that are just starting.



This is one of two leaf piles that will supply mulch from now through fall. We about ran out at the end of summer so more was vacuumed up in the fall for this year.



The 12 Packman broccoli plants are being started in four sets of three to spread out finish times. The Stonehead and Charleston Wakefield cabbages, 6 of each, are being started in two sets of three each. The different DTM of the cabbages should naturally stagger them a bit.

The first sets of all were started Jan 17 and tomorrow I will start the next three of everything. If all goes well, the January plants will go into the garden on Feb 23.

You are really getting organized. Growing any cauliflower this spring? I’m really happy with the Vitaverde F1 just harvesting now.

No cauliflower this spring. That's going to be a "fall only" thing because the weather is even more variable in the spring than in the fall.

For better or worse, I am a data and excel junkie but it has served me well for garden planning over the years. I grow various stuff all year and sometimes bed transitions are tight enough that I have to have a handle on it all so I use spreadsheets. Each year has four tabs on the master excel garden file; spring/early summer, late summer/fall, spring map, fall map. It's the only way I've figured out how to keep track of sixteen 4'x18' beds plus open areas.

This is a section of this spring's sheet with a wide column for notes on the right left off. The tan color indicated fall items although some of those are both spring and fall. Green indicated things already seeded, yellow indicated things to be started within ten days to remind me. All of this information is so valuable to me when seeing what's been done in the past and when, including notes of results, and changes to do next time. The vegetable section is 107 lines long with two separate lists at the bottom for herbs and flowers. Those aren't very long. I'll also add that all the starting dates and a lot of the transplanting dates are determined according to the "gardening by the moon" I've been playing with for the past five years. Nothing like another variable to toss into the mix!



Yes, I've even tortured a spreadsheet to map the garden to scale, one square per foot. This is part of this past fall's garden map. Beds are color coded for different plant families, planting history for noted under the beds, Excel notes in the pepper bed with variety names. dark blue squares in the bed corners to indicate which beds have been prepped, etc. It all comes in very handy when it's time for crop rotation planning.



There's a separate file for weather tracking (daily highs, lows, rain, monthly averages, etc) that goes back 19 years. The data comes from a UGA weather station three miles away. It's amazing to see how weather cycles come and go. This all must seem like insanity to some but it's invaluable to me. I like the old saying about how if you don't know where you've been, it's hard to successfully go forward.

Best use of a spreadsheet that I have ever seen!

Thanks, Woz. Like everything else in life it didn't start as involved but grew over time.

Dawgs, I also use spreadsheets extensively to map out the garden; keep a list of all interesting tomatoes I've researched (det/indet, taste, dtm, size, color, productivity, seed source, etc.); tracking the growout of my cross, the planting lists for each year (2021 is almost full...), and more. I love them.

Nan6b wrote: ↑Fri Feb 07, 2020 11:04 pm Dawgs, I also use spreadsheets extensively to map out the garden; keep a list of all interesting tomatoes I've researched (det/indet, taste, dtm, size, color, productivity, seed source, etc.); tracking the growout of my cross, the planting lists for each year (2021 is almost full...), and more. I love them.

Wonderful! A kindred soul!

Well, more rain will be moving in tonight and for the next three or four days. Wind this afternoon is to be 15-20 with gusts to 35. North Georgia is getting snow this morning!

Turnips are scheduled for sowing on Tuesday and the peas were to be planted this coming Friday but both are being moved back ten days. The beds for them are prepped and ready so it's just a matter of drainage holding up the parade.

We bought seed potatoes yesterday at the feed 'n weed. They were freshly opened sacks so I was able to pick out ten nice small potatoes each of Kennebec and Yukon Gold. I prefer to plant small whole potatoes which eliminates the risk of any funk happening from cutting up big ones. Also bought the pea seed and a fresh bag of seed starting mix.

They were out of size 8 rubber boots and didn't yet have the legume inoculant I wanted so I struck out with those.

This week more scallion seed will get started and on Friday the third set of three broccoli plants as well.

My computer calendar rang this morning and reminded me to go fertilize the one onion row I have out there so I'm headed that way now. It'll only take a few minutes.

Spreadsheet and computer calendar envy, here! Love your sunmapping plan too - I need to do something like that as well. Spent a lot of time just looking for the shadows all season long but did not write down or take a pic of the data! The trouble here we have so many cloudy days there's no way to map your shade unless the sun cooperates.
BTW your tip about watering the rosemary was duly noted last week, and lo behold she is flowering again!

[mention]GoDawgs[/mention], using a spreadsheet is a great idea! I used to keep a detailed journal, but as some life events took over, I didn't keep it up. But your spreadsheet would be an ideal way to keep track of varieties grown, germination rates, dates planted, weather information and loads of other things, as I am frequently on the laptop looking at something.

I do sun-studies every so often.
1. Make a map of an area (1 square=1 of my feet, since that's the measurement I can always use.)
2. Measure out blocks 2'x2' on the map, so you don't go nuts trying to do every square foot.
3. Get up at sunrise on a clear day.
4. Go outside every hour. Put a tick mark in every 2'x2' square that has sun that hour. (sun covering over half of the block)
5. Get up and go outside over the next few days to get the hours you missed due to cloud cover or emergencies.
6. Count up your tick marks to see how many hours of sun each block gets.

Best to do these when trees are leafed out. Ideally, do it on June 21, longest day of year. But if you do it end of May, that's the same sun positioning as beginning of July, e.g. I have my garden mapped this way. No area of it gets more than 7 or less than 3 hours of sun. (I wish my neighbors would trim their trees back!)