Early spring cool weather gardening.

[doc henderson]

OK, so I am nearly retired, and we want to eat better, lose weight and get back in the best shape we can.  the food in Costa Rica was wonderful, and more that we needed.  lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.  I made some garden stakes from an oak flitch that needed to have something done with it.  Thanks Howard.  Our average last frost is April 8th.  We are putting spinach in our eggs each morning.  I have a compost pile in the old garden area 30 x 60 feet and raised beds up by the house.  we had a sprinkler zone out to the garden, but it needs redone.  My compost pile is 20 x 30 x 10 feet.  I plan to plant early spinach, onions, lettuce, carrots, radishes, beets, and what else?

[doc henderson]

[Mooseherder]

Peas! I plant them twice. 

[thecfarm]

swiss chard is easy to grow.
Compost pile 20X30X10. wow!!! mine's about 3-4 feet around.

[doc henderson]

Well, we have not had a garden for about 15 years, but all the grass and odd dirt goes in there.  I am not going to haul it to the dump.     

[SawyerTed]

Broccoli, cabbage. Kohlrabi, peas, collards, turnips and potatoes will go in here this week.  We plant using Wyatt-Quarels planting guide. They are a company in Raleigh.  The guide is available online.   

https://www.wqseeds.com/planting_guide.pdf

I disked the garden yesterday and will fix lists and fertilizer tomorrow if it doesn't rain.  

[aigheadish]

We're going to get more into gardening this year, it looks like I should already have some spinach going but I don't. I'd love to have spinach handy, and snap peas. It's supposed to be a rain out this weekend, so I may try to convince the wife that we should start a bunch of seeds in the house and invest a bit into some lighting. It shouldn't take much as our house gets good east and west sun, except where our garden will go is on the east side of the house and is in shadow earlier than some other spots. I could see, if we get into it moving the garden elsewhere but where it is is very handy for a good amount of sun and easy watering. I don't know anything about cold weather gardening, other than it's interesting. 

[gspren]

I'm thinning out my collection of "stuff" and will give two propane bottles and some other stuff to my Amish neighbors who put in a huge garden which they will share some of to us. My preferred method of gardening.

[DDW_OR]

my garden build

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=124171.0;all#bot

[SwampDonkey]

I plant lots of beets and we eat them just like chard when they are young and the rows are a little thick, thin and cook. I never seen the sense of doing chard with all the beet greens to be had. My first crop in spring is onions in May. I'll then plant by beets, carrots, dill, rosemary (starts) in the first part of June. My beans go in mid June along with peppers, tomatoes, squash, cukes, melons. I don't plant potatoes, they are nearly free in these parts. I don't plant corn, not a corn man. Then there are berries to pick all summer beginning in July and ending in September. I should have a big crop of raspberries this summer, usually 60+ quarts, every second year. I make a lot of jam and some juice. Store jam is around $10 these days, way more than I'll pay.

[SawyerTed]

We got ours planted yesterday.  

The soil worked a bit cloddy, I'm hoping for a soaking rain this weekend to break them up.  

The old Farmall tractor was running good which made making the lists fun.  

The first row has potatoes planted, the second row has onions, collards, spinach, broccoli and cabbage.  The store didn't have kohlrabi plants.  The third row has sweet peas.   My beet seeds are soaking and will go in the fourth row.   

The Farmall tractor has a fertilizer hopper and distributor on it.  A full 50 pound bag will make about 8 rows.  I double fertilized a couple of rows and still have two empty rows to share with my children.  

There's a device we call a tobacco setter or hand setter that I use to plant potatoes.  It's an antique We cut the potatoes into chunks with at least one eye on each.  I push the setter in the ground, Emily drops a seed potato in the chute, I pull the handle to open the flap to release the seed and one of us kicks a little dirt over it.  Once we get our rhythm, we can plant a 100' row in a few minutes.

I also have an Earthway push type seed planter for peas, beans, corn and such.  It makes short work of a 100' row of peas.  

[thecfarm]

I said swiss chard because I can't get beets to germinate in July.
I tried and not many came up. I almost paid off The Farm selling beet greens.
If I could of got them to grow in July. The Farm would of got paid off. 
Swiss chard will keep growing until frost kills it.

[SawyerTed]

Do you soak your beet seeds in water 24 to 48 hours before planting?

After planting water the seeds and lay a board on top of the row (a layer of cardboard, newspaper or mulch will work)   After 5 days or so, remove the board.  

I get buckets of beets.  

[thecfarm]

I never soak the seeds, but always had very good luck planting beets in May.
When I said I almost paid The Farm off selling beet greens, I was not stretching the truth all that much. I think I bought beet seeds 5 pounds at a time. Just kept planting them every week in May. I am not talking a 50 foot row either. I planted an area 4 feet wide by 20 feet long at a time.
I did not want beets, I wanted the greens. I ran out a few times. 
Must of did something right, because they would grow in the early part of the season.
I had more then one person tell me they won't grow in July because of the heat.
Looks like they was right.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah May is great germination for beets. In late June or July I water the beet rows for germination unless we have a wet summer. 2 years ago was lots of wet, didn't need to water beet rows. I usually plant mine all in May, eat greens as I thin and then let the beets size up for eating and pickling.

Some mid June planted beets.

[thecfarm]

I put the water to my rows too.
My garden is on the dry side. I can till my garden before some people can even walk on thier's.
But I am running water on mine before most too.
I make a shallow trench so the water will stay where the seeds are.

[SwampDonkey]

Ground here is full of gravel, you can see in the photo. So yeah, dries fast in spring. If we get a dry warm April the land around here can be farmed, sewing grain. Some places you can't plant until mid-late May because the land is too wet. I use creek water if I'm watering much. If not much to water, I'll use from the tap. But I would never water a whole garden on well water. Creak water has more nutrients anyway and not ice cold. In a dry summer I can easily use 3 - 50 gallon tanks of water and my gardens are small compared to Ted's. I have not had to water now for 3 years. Last year it got dry at the end of gardening. One of the best gardens I ever had. Tomatoes on my ground seem to grow like trees. I think it's in the breeding. I actually prefer a stalky plant no more than 24" tall, these now grow chest high. Cucumbers here are like zucchini, huge. I'm sure the soil here is rich to compared to years ago when stuff never got added to it much. Dill grows 6' tall, I remember dill only grew about 30" years ago.

[SawyerTed]

We do have a big garden area.  It's been difficult to get Emily NOT to plant the whole thing.   I've learned to shorten the rows and not fix so many or she will plant all of it. 

We were used to planting enough for our extended family.  The kids are grown and the folks have passed on.  The adjustment to gardening for two has been like learning to cook for two.  It's not a quick adjustment. 

Emily still loves to can and freeze whatever we grow.  We only save a little by doing so but our quality and flavor far better than store bought.

[Ron Wenrich]

When we first moved in 47 yrs ago, I put in a big garden.  It was way too much work trying to keep ahead of the weeds, and keeping up with the watering needs during the dry spells.  Another problem was there was so much produce, we couldn't eat it all.  We got 35o lbs of potatoes the first year, for example. 

The garden got smaller every year until it was pretty much a problem getting anyone to help with the upkeep or eat the produce.  So, I went smaller, but more condensed.

I built a greenhouse on the end of my garage.  Its 8x16.  For a number of years, I went hydroponic.  It worked for several yrs, but it was limited.  The cost of hydroponic fertilizers was pretty high.  Yields were good some yrs, and not so good others.  But, my growing season was increased by about 2 months.  That's mainly due to grow lights.  We could handle the amount of produce.

A couple of yrs ago, I went over to raised beds.  I use a wicking system that works pretty good.  I don't get the sun drying out my beds, and there are limited amounts of weeds.  I'm using a good amount of compost, which minimizes the fertilizers.  I can plant thicker and still have good results.  I am now automating the watering, which was the most time consuming. 

I just bought my seedlings.  I found seedlings work better for me than starting from seed.  Tomatoes, peppers, kale, beets, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce.  If I were to plant outdoors, the tomatoes and peppers would need another couple of weeks before planting.  I still have room for zucchini and cukes.  Melons do not do well.  Zucchini require hand pollination.  I'm thinking about putting in a small batch of potatoes, but they'll go outside in a raised bed.

I've seen greenhouses that are working year around and are using geothermal heating and cooling.  Looks to work pretty good, as there is a guy in Nebraska that is growing citrus in his. 

[SwampDonkey]

Nice thing about going small, not much time needed for weeding. Grow a lot of stuff, don't space it out so much.  Grow mats around tomatoes and peppers eliminates weeds there. Can be reused for years if you get the heavy kind. Hardly a weed most of the summer where the vines are, they smother what few try. I only need to go through the onions once, then there is just the odd weed here and there to pull. Leafy stuff in rows just use the hoe and hill them and the weeds are gone, pull one now and again. Rarely need to water unless we get a dry summer, for a 3 year stretch we had dry summers. Never been dry since, during the time that matters. I start all my tomatoes and peppers and talon onions in the grow tent inside, I have great luck with them being vigorous and fast growing. Getting plants local is not a reliable source anymore.  A lot of folks got older and retired from that business. I don't set out tomatoes until June 15th, first part of June is usually wet and cold. Most always a frost first week of June here. Last year, was none. A rare year.

Some of my peppers last May in the grow tent.



Late June

[aigheadish]

I'm kind of like Ron but it sounds like on a much smaller scale and now we are ramping up a bit. 

We started with a small but decent sized for us plot that we didn't manage for weeds or watering very well. It was too far from the house and we didn't feel like doing much with it. Then we took a break until last year where we had an ok run with raised beds made from big flower pots or those big black and yellow totes. We got some small tomatoes and a decent amount of cayenne peppers from only a few plants each. 

This year we are building better raised beds and extending the amount of space by quite a bit, it'll probably end up 20 or 30 feet of raised bed. Small by comparison from a lot of you guys but it'll be a good restarting point for us. I mentioned wanting to start some seeds inside to my wife yesterday and she was agreeable, so we'll likely do that while it rains all weekend this weekend. I know we have some lights but I think they are low end so I may get some more. It looks like they are pretty inexpensive from Cramazon, though I've never used LED grow lights, only the big fluorescent ones of yesteryear.

Ron how does your automated watering system work? We are just using a hose but it'd be nice to find some decent soaker hoses or something better where I could just turn the water on and let it go for a bit. 

[Ron Wenrich]

Here's my current setup:



The bed is 2'x3'x1'.  The bed is lined with 6mil plastic.  There are 4" drain tubes in the bottom of the bed.  On top of that is a layer of peat moss. Then its filled with compost. 

The 4" bottom layer is filled with about 2" of water.  The peat moss acts like a wick and pulls the water up to the compost.  The extra space in the tubes help aerate the roots.  This will give you moist compost as a growing medium.  It'll last for about a 7-10 days when things are small.  When they get big and things get hot, that'll last about 3 days.  I collect rainwater when I can.

For watering, there is a 2 1/2 quart plastic paint tube with lid put in the corner with seep holes cut into the bottom.  The spigots regulate the flow rate.  The white line is connected to a submersible pump which goes to a 15 gal tub I bought at Lowe's.  The pump came from ebay, and you don't need a very big one.  The blue tube I use as an indicator of how much water is in the system.  I use a piece of insulation board as a gauge.  You also need an overflow at about 2 1/2" above the bottom so you don't overfill.  That goes to the blue return line which goes to tank.  To automate it more, I plan to put a timer on it to water when I'm out of town.  I have 9 beds and 3 tanks for everything.

I used a similar system when I was doing hydroponics.  In that system I had 1 25 gal tank and watered twice everyday.  I had a set of ebb and flow banks that I used to grow things like lettuce and kale.  I tried bigger things, but it didn't work out too good.  It also went to a bunch of 5 gal containers where I grew things like cukes, tomatoes, etc.  That worked out fairly well.  Raised beds give me better yield.  The wicking system can also be used outdoors, but you need to have an overflow so as not to drown your plants when you get too much rain.

[rusticretreater]

I use a ground fabric that is thick but also permeable.  I laid it out and used garden staples to hold it down until it gets "married" to the ground.  I fashioned a metal ring about a foot in diameter, placed it on the fabric and used a propane torch to burn a hole in the fabric.  No weeds and it lasts for years.

We try to grow everything and are always trying new varieties, plus our mainstays.  Kudos, Doc.  Its the way to live.

[SawyerTed]

There's the thread titled Living in the Country. 

Gardening is part of living in the country but gardening and preserving what is grown exemplifies "country living".   It's hard to buy fresh produce flavors. 

My paternal grandparents gardened, my mom and dad gardened and my children are taking it up in their own ways.   Emily grew up here during a time everyone had gardens.   I still use the cultivating tractor her daddy bought second hand in the 1960's when the mules were aging out. 

Fewer and fewer people have gardens around here.

Many families go to the farmers markets and are happy with buying their fresh produce.   I'm glad they support the growers. 

We swap produce with neighbors and family.  Emily's cousins share with us and us with them. 

[doc henderson]

Ron, you got some great info in pics, Ted I will check out the other threads.  cold rainy snowy here tomorrow.  will get caught up.  Thanks everyone for the info.