rainbow gardener's 2017 gardens

[applestar]

Hehe I think I keep posting the link because I'm hoping people will try it. I'd love to try, but I don't know that I could pull it off here, even though I DO very rarely have volunteer potatoes spring up.....

It sounds like it was successful for Gary350

Subject: What happened to the Thread, growing winter potatoes?

This one -- right?

Subject: What to do during the winter months...

I'm SO glad you posted that link. I immediately recognized the header design as the website where I saw an article on planting potatoes in the fall for spring harvest. I wrote about it and posted the link here ages ago and have mentioned it several times since then, always apologizing that I could not find the link again. Yep, there it was, and here it is

http://www.emmitsburg.net/gardens/artic ... potato.htm

I planted potatoes once in the fall just as an experiment because I have so much trouble with trying to grow potatoes in TN in spring. I cut my potatoes into pieces with about 2 or 3 eyes and let them dry 2 days. I set the cut pieces on the soil surface 12" apart in a 25' row. I shoveled soil from each side covering the potatoes with about 2" of soil. As the tops grew taller and taller I shoveled more soil from the sides to cover the plants until seed potatoes were covered with 8" of soil. I covered the hill with straw, tops barley poked through the straw when we had a early frost and early cold winter. The potatoes never grew any more tops all winter. Spring came I kept waiting for tops to grow but none grew. I planted tomatoes in April, mid May soil was warm enough to plant the rest of the garden and still potatoes were doing nothing. Potatoes were in my way of planting the garden so they needed to be gone. I was very surprised to find a good crop of potatoes just waiting to be dug up. I posted that on this forum about 10 years ago. I will remember to try this again next season.

[rainbowgardener]

Thanks! I have a second 4x4 plot of potatoes that is still hanging in there and volunteer potatoes that have popped up a bunch of places. The volunteers are actually doing the best!

When I get around to thinking about fall planting, I will definitely try to include some more potatoes!

[rainbowgardener]

You want to see how fast things grow around here?

Here's one garden bed with my second planting of corn on 6/27:

Here is the same bed FIVE DAYS later on 6/2:

That corn has been growing more than an inch a day, maybe almost two inches! (Squash is growing fast too!)

[rainbowgardener]

So that little patch of corn (second planting) is now tasseling. It's a bicolor and doesn't get as tall as the Silver Queen.

Today I finally finished getting the next corn patch ready. It is a 10x4 bed that had broccoli and potatoes. So I pulled the last broccoli and dug the last potatoes. Turned the old mulch under. Laid down some compost and turned that under, loosening the soil. Planted 40 corn seeds, 1/ sq ft.

I'm used to doing things on such a micro scale where I was before. That is the biggest corn patch I have ever planted all at once!

Should be enough to eat and to freeze!

[ElizabethB]

RBG - you can plant tomatoes, cucumbers, pepper plants now for fall harvest. Start seeding your greens - lettuce, chard, spinach, mustard - now.

Something I learned about tomatoes is to pinch whatever suckers you may have or any cuttings and root them in pots for fall plants. They root easily and quickly. Takes a lot less time to get them started than starting from seed then transplanting.

[ElizabethB]

I thought you may find this helpful. The Planting guides are comprehensive and should help with your crop rotation.

https://extension.tennessee.edu/publica ... /PB901.pdf

[Gary350]

few more



.

Your swiss chard looks good. I planted 3 kinds of chard 3 different times in spring the green came up, a few rainbow came up, not many red came up. Red and Rainbow are the ones I like. The 3 years I lives in Arizona I planted chard from seed in November it all came up and grew fast as weeds 70 degree days and 40 deg nights all winter was perfect for them. I need to be plants chard seeds in pots soon I want some for fall and winter. I see you have Russian Red Kale too, nice.

[KitchenGardener]

Something I learned about tomatoes is to pinch whatever suckers you may have or any cuttings and root them in pots for fall plants. They root easily and quickly. Takes a lot less time to get them started than starting from seed then transplanting.

Brilliant! TY

[rainbowgardener]

(Click to enlarge). If you do, you can see ears on the corn. This is my second planting of corn. The squash is acorn squash. The leaves aren't really wilted, they were just a little battered from rain. If you scroll up towards the top of this page, you will see this same bed with the corn on 6/28 and 7/2. Big difference!!



That is actually a cluster of four acorn squashes.



The sunflower plant was a volunteer from the bird seed.

[applestar]

The corn and squash in particular look fabulous. It's almost funny how they are making your 1/4 circle bed look small.....

But that also means you definitely have more room to grow now.

...what a monster Sunflower...

[rainbowgardener]

I haven't updated this for awhile. My garden was looking so August-y. But I pulled some things, did a bunch of weeding, started replanting, the beans grew and filled in some. It still isn't looking lush like spring/ early summer, but not as bad.

overview:

this bed had broccoli, kale and chard. Now there's beans in the back, tiny broccoli seedlings in what looks like bare dirt, and one very late planted summer squash, which is an experiment to see if maybe this late in the season the vine borers have gone away:

The 4x4 did have carrots and corn. Now it has a thriving volunteer potato and a volunteer tomato (where the red spiral is) and a few carrots left and a couple bean plants.

Here's the two quarter circle beds. Squash is looking very sad and fungal, but still producing. In the middle where the corn used to be is more broccoli seeds. In the back bed you can see a lot of asparagus ferns and some strawberry. There's also rhubarb and artichoke in there.

I didn't take a picture, because it mostly looks like bare dirt, but the bed at the end of the deck that had potatoes and broccoli, is now planted with chard and spinach seeds, just starting to sprout. It has a few volunteer potato plants popping up, probably from tiny tubers that got left behind in harvesting the potatoes. I may not have to plant fall potatoes, they are planting themselves!

[rainbowgardener]

Still getting bell and hot peppers from my garden and a few tomatoes. Harvested the last of the spring carrots recently, a supermarket bunch worth. Got a few potatoes from one of the volunteer plants. Have harvested most of the winter squash, just a couple still going (the plants mostly died of powdery mildew). Biggest success story right now is the green beans--picked and froze a quart of them today and lots more still to come.

Peppers and green beans

Summer squash and green beans (this is the same bed that is shown in the quoted photo in Gary's July 17 post above, that had chard and kale and broccoli in it. Now it has baby broccoli in there, that will come into its own when the squash and beans are done. Succession planting!)

late planted summer squash not being attacked by vine borers

I have spinach, chard, and broccoli plants coming along and just planted lettuce seeds today.

[rainbowgardener]

And since woman does not live by veggies alone, here's a couple samples of what is still blooming in my garden

cypress vine (close relative of cardinal climber vine), butterflies and hummingbirds love it:

helianthus

[rainbowgardener]

I will re-do this later to show the end of the season. But this is the progression of one bed, through the season so far. If I get it together, I will do one for each bed. Since I am terrible at keeping records, this will show me what my planting succession was

(click to enlarge)

[rainbowgardener]

couple more updates:

this is the bed that had potatoes and broccoli in the spring. Now it has spinach and chard and some volunteer potatoes from what got left behind after harvesting the spring potatoes. We will soon be picking some greens.

this was the bed that had corn and squash. Now it has one last winter squash plant barely hanging in there, a circle of broccoli seedlings in the middle, some cabbage and kale along the straight edges (mostly not visible), and lettuce seeds that haven't sprouted yet along the outer curve.

[applestar]

Loving the progress reports and photos. You really have a lot of food growing very effectively.

[rainbowgardener]

[KitchenGardener]

What a beautiful photo!

[SQWIB]

Awesome harvest.

[applestar]

Yeah it's like an autumn table decoration right there.

[rainbowgardener]

Another kind of harvest:

I've been gathering and harvesting lots of herbs lately. So far there's sage , rosemary , thyme (but no parsley), basil, oregano , lavender , lemon balm, tarragon , spearmint. And I'm not done yet.

[rainbowgardener]

replanting! Need to get some new pictures soon.

I'm in the process of pulling all the rest of the summer stuff, since we had a killing freeze. So the eastern most of my square of veggie beds, which most recently had tomatoes, peppers, and beans, has been all cleared and weeded, new compost added (and I let the chickens churn the compost under*), and replanted. It has a row of garlic down one edge, a wide row of cabbage seed in the middle, then a row of carrot seed and a row of peas on the other edge where they could grow up the fencing. I'm using up all my old seed, so I don't know what the germination rate will be, but at least I can start fresh with new seed in spring.

The 4x4 in the middle had a row of carrot seed planted in late winter, then it had corn and squash, late summer it also had tomatoes and peppers and beans. Now I planted it half with chard seed and half with chinese cabbage seed.

I have three more of these beds to finish. The quarter circle bed has a thriving group of broccoli plants 6-8" tall and some kale. Still want to plant some lettuce in there.

We are eating spinach and chard out of the bed that used to have potatoes and broccoli.

This is what succession planting looks like (in warmer climates).

* The chickens do a great job of this. Not only is everything well mixed, but the particle size is broken down until it is finer and softer than potting mix. Their pay is that they do eat some of the earthworms and other detritovores out of it, but they also eat weed seeds. I just have to be sure to get the bed fenced in again, so they don't eat the seeds I plant.

[rainbowgardener]

Everything has been weeded out, more compost added, replanted for winter . Broccoli in the quarter circle bed is just about ready to start making heads. We are eating chard , kale, and spinach . One of the beds has baby broccoli plants in it. Everything that looks like bare dirt has seeds planted in it: more chard , kale, broccoli and spinach as well as cabbage, Chinese cabbage, carrots, peas, garlic, lettuce (there's more beds not shown). It's all sort of an experiment. Last year I was still building garden beds and never planted a winter garden. So I don't really know what will work and what won't.

[rainbowgardener]

Yay!! Lots of the seeds I planted have sprouted, so I have lots and lots of tiny baby seedlings of kale, cabbage, chard ....