NEW PROJECT! -- Extreme PETC : Cilantro, Peas, Fava, CORN...

[applestar]

Well, friends, I might be premature in posting this, but succeed or fail, I thought I'd share with you my this year's experiment.

Designated: Sunflower House. 8'x12' with 24" green wire fence to keep out rabbits
...expanded this year on the east end to accommodate TPS potato transplants. Adjacent to "Haybale Row" this year planted with three varieties of seed potatoes.
Crop succession : last year's Falstaff B. sprouts, leeks, carrots, and cilantro overwintered, some garlic, Egyptian walking onions, garlic chives, clover cover crop
>> early this spring self seeded cilantro, Red Russian kale, double rows of shelling peas and fava beans
>> mid spring 2" mini blocks and 6" pots of corn transplants between existing crops and along center and end rows reserved for the purpose, and some watermelon
>> late spring to be sown melons and runner/pole beans

View from NE corner:


View from East side:




View from South side:


View from West side:




View from NW corner:


- Snow peas on the arch trellis is rapidly finishing up >> melons and beans will be sown in the next few days
- Cilantro have been harvested with several remaining allowed to bolt along with overwintered carrots to attract beneficial insects and for seeds (these can be cut as deemed necessary to make growing room)
- Leeks and garlic have sent up scapes (planning to harvest leeks/thinking to cut off garlic scapes though I think these are elephant garlic)
- Egyptian onion mother plants are growing top sets and starting to fall over
- garlic chives are being harvested
- Shelling peas are being picked every day and when finished will be cut down as mulch
- Fava beans are podding but still small. Tried eating them as edible pods but was not sure if I liked it that way. How long for to mature beans I wonder? Already solidly shading the corn in the north row. I did put up another string at about 3ft height to hold up the favas and keep from leaning/towering over the corn after taking the pic.
- One most vigorous out of four B. sprouts plant was allowed to bloom and go to seed this spring for beneficial insects and for harvesting the seeds. They are almost mature and should be ready to shatter soon, certainy within the next week or so. Then the seed stalks will be cut and entire plant will be lopped at the soil level.
- Most of the corn appear to be doing fine. There are three varieties are planted in three blocks and East-most block of "Orange Squat" was planted first, followed by Howling Mob and then Double Red Sweet in the West-most block.

Two of the watermelon have sprouted, one growing true leaf.
(That carrot will have to go.... )


-- harvesting peas by reaching over the still short corn and between the favas from the north side path:

[jemsister]

Dude, that is an awesomely bushy garden. I suppose by the time the corn gets too tall, the pea season will be over, right?

[applestar]

"bushy" or "busy"

That's the idea and I think the peas are on right track/schedule, but the fava's may linger a bit longer than best for the corn. Corn leaves are already spread wide enough that we know the roots are starting to mingle and possibly compete.

Ideally, cutting down all the legumes NOW would provide the maximum benefit, but that would be giving up most of the pea and fava harvest. Both peas and favas were started later this year than scheduled due to unusually lingering hard freeze, so it might have worked out better had I been able to start them two weeks earlier.

I think corn roots go deeper than peas but some of these favas are supposed to grow to 6 feet and could potentially cause problems for the young corn. On the other hand, once they are done and cut down, in theory, the dying roots will release rhizobium N nodules way deep for the deep corn roots to find and use.

Most of the finished upper greens will be used as mulch to break down and feed the soil.

(Looking at waterbug's sweet corn thread -- and I think they were started at about the same time -- mine looks less robust which could be attributed to the overcrowding as well as less airflow. I think I'll side dress them with some more fish fertilizer today especially since we have a weekend of rain coming, and see if that helps some.)

I wonder if it would be beneficial to top prune the favas...?

[rainbowgardener]

"Looking at waterbug's sweet corn thread -- and I think they were started at about the same time -- mine looks less robust"

But remember waterbug is in LosAngeles. Presumably warmer and sunnnier there.

Love your garden. It sounds like a variant of three sisters, just planted amongst the leftovers of all the winter and very early spring stuff.

So how does the letting things bolt for self-seeding thing work for you? In recent years, I've been doing that more and more. Currently I have a bunch of the fall sown, over wintered spinach, bolted and going to seed. But I've never so far gotten more than a few volunteers back when I have done that. Last year I let some chard and lettuce bolt and basil seeds. Some of the basil seed I actually scattered and covered lightly (as well as collecting a bunch). I got no volunteer basil from that. A little bit of chard and lettuce came back, but not very much considering there were probably thousands of those seeds.

[lakngulf]

As founder of PETC, I have noticed that some members do not acknowledge it as a problem, but as a challenge and badge of honor. That being so, I have decided to set in motion a contest for the PETC-ist garden of the year. "Bushy/Busy" is our first entry.

[applestar]

p.s. I found a third watermelon seedling crawling out from under a cilantro -- long 3" hypocotyl and all.

I buried it up to the cotyledon in compost and cut down the offending cilantro -- chopped it up into mulch for the watermelon as renumeration

[applestar]

Update:



...still harvesting peas, and harvesting favas beans every day.
...corm is bigger, especially Howling Mob which is a tall variety
...sowed Rocky Ford Muskmelon seeds
...discovered a couple of volunteer tomatoes among the favas (tomatoes were grown in this bed along the N side and under the arch trellis last year). May or may not cut them down.... (messes up the crop rotation f left to grow )

@Rainbowgardener -- self seeding results in far less number of volunteer plants than the amount of seeds produced would suggest, but I do end up with plenty in terms of harvest for the next season. In addition to letting them re-seed in the bed, I also harvest the seed heads but immediately scatter them where I want them to grow next without bothering to save. (requires diligent note taking if not already planned on paper ahead of time )

Also, the finches -- gold finch, house finch, kinglets, etc. -- eat a lot of the brassica family seeds and either they or the sparrows and juncos eat the lettuce seeds (and shatter/scatter them in the process). So unless I WANT TO SAVE SEEDS for starting inside and planting or for giving away, I share them without collecting.

I confess I haven't been buying wildbird seed lately. I put leftover fruits and nuts in addition to saved sunflower seeds in the feeder (I'm growing more sunflowers to save seeds this year). The birds still come around but forage off of what's growing in the garden -- I'm slowly replacing the Rose of Sharon hedge with a native wildlife hedge along that long fence to the right in the photo. I already have a lot of berry bearing plants. I need a 2nd plant for my hazelnut which blooms every year but doesn't produce nuts. I'm seeing more nesting birds which is really great

[tomf]

You sure do squeeze in a lot of plants, I am still wrapping my head around companion planting. I like the fence around your garden, it makes it feel "cottage".

[lakngulf]

Well, there seemed like plenty of space when I planted all this.....What happened? Believe it or not, there is a row of pepper plants between the squash and the corn..

[applestar]

My corn is starting to tassle/silk ...one at a time...

Here are some photos that I know won't show because of the exceeded bandwidth block. If I'm reading the explanation correctly, they should be released from the block on 27th or 28th.

View from East (Orange Squat) -- light foliage color is mostly due to overexposure

Didn't take a close up of silks but they are normal pale color.

View from West (Double Red Sweet)


Look at *these* gorgeous silks


I held a printer paper under the only mature tassle (an orange squat) and electric toothbrushed it to collect pollen -- very nice I must say... This was the second collection -- first one collected as much pollen in the paper fold. A good half as much the third time.

Poured the collected pollen into four developing silks. (Ok I admit it -- 5 -- I got overeager and poured the Orange Squat pollen into the Double Red silk pictured above. (face palm ) but I won't do that any more and only use Double Red pollen for double red corn silks.

I think TZ said he uses a brown paper bag over the tassels. I'll do that tomorrow because I'm pretty sure some polen blew into my eyes the first time.

[applestar]

You can see the photos now.

[applestar]

Another update -- it's getting harder to walk along the path between the corn and the potato, and very difficult to harvest the last of the favas, though I got enough for breakfast this morning. The pea vines are starting to yellow, but the corn are too big now -- I can't reach what pods there may be left, and it looks like I have no way to actually cut them down. Hopefully, the dying tops should mean the roots are dying also and nitrogen being released.

Several of Orange Squat and Double Red Sweet corn plants have mature tassles, and good many of the two varieties have half exposed tassles and good many have exposed silks -- two per plant. One or two Howling Mobs have tassles showing and developing silks.

Low quality photo

[applestar]

I made myself go out in the rain yesterday and was astonished to see that one of the Howling Mob is over 8ft tall

I think I actually didn't get the tassle in the picture


Here's another view. You can see the tassle against the neighbor's yellow euonymus bush. The green arch trellis at the entrance to the bed is 6 ft high:

[applestar]

HARVESTED FIRST CORN!!

Double Red Sweet


Baked in husk for 18min at 375°F, ready to eat
(well OK, DH and I took one bite each already )

-- VERY VERY SWEET! Consensus is that this is as sweet as the farm stand corn we've been getting, that were so sweet eating them first ruined flavor experience for tomatoes that we're even after.

All done. I was the only one holding this cob, and my fingers were stained purple. You can see where I wiped my fingers on the edge of the paper towel:


CAN'T WAIT TO GET MORE

[DoubleDogFarm]

Your garden is a Riot.

Eric

[gunsmokex]

What kind of corn variety is that? I had no idea purple corn existed! I presume it tastes the same?

[applestar]

It's called Double Red Sweet. Yes, it's very sweet and has good satisfying corn flavor. It's an OP variety, meaning you can save seeds and sow them and get same characteristics as long as you don't have cross pollination from a second variety, unlike hybrid varieties.

[gunsmokex]

Thought I'd finally get some pics of the crops.

[applestar]

I just realized I didn't continue to report on the progress of this experiment as they happened.

But essentially,
- I had great pea and fava harvest
- corn didn't get hand pollinated as I intended -- especially the 8ft plus howling mob, but we had some nice corn harvest
- I made the mistake of letting the numerous volunteer Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes grow and they grew among the corn stalks, blocking pollen distribution for the later ears -- but I had tons of cherry tomatoes to harvest all through late summer until frost
- Watermelon and melon only had one fruit each -- I think for the melon
- part of the problem was that I planted the last left over sweet potato slips about two feet away and they took over that part of the bed so that even though Matt's Wild Cherry growing on the other side of the sweet potatoes continued to flourish, the melons were unable to do the same.
- I dug these sweet potatoes last, just before frost, and had a smallish number but good sized potatoes
- garlic chives and Egyptian walking onions in another section did very well and I'm still harvesting some of the greens

I think there are some more photos of this bed and commentary elsewhere, but I can't remember which thread at the moment.

[goodngreen]

Wow. I'm still a newbie here, but that was one of the most informative and funny threads I've read! Thank you applestar Mod for all the pictures and descriptions.