SQWIB
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Location: Zone 7A - Philadelphia, PA

Need advice on a planting schedule.

zone 7A

I plan on a dedicated bed just for spinach and will pull the spinach when I go to plant my summer veggies.
Here is the bed to be used for the spinach, it is 24” wide by 8' long.
Image
Any tips?, spacing, best time to plant?

The other beds I plan on planting some Legumes in the beds along with lettuces and radishes.
After the radish, and lettuce harvest, I'll plant my summer veggies, leaving the peas, until they're done.
These beds are 22” wide x 36', so I planned on doing a line of legumes (snow peas along the back) and leave them in when I plant the tomatoes, eggplants and peppers? Does this sound OK?

Here are the beds First section 16'

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2nd section 20'

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I'm still unsure what to do with the back beds, I may just toss some spinach, radishes and peas in there till it's time to plant my summer veggies. Advice?

These beds are 36” wide by 10' long
Image

Shorter plants struggle a little to the far right side of the bed on the right, I'm gonna try a few brandy wine reds there this year.
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Here are some of the things I will be planting,

Black Beauty
Basil
Brandywine Red
California Wonder
Celebrity
Cherokee purple
Corno Di Toro Giallo
Jalapeno
Leeks
Matts Wild Cherry
Parsley
Patio Princess
Ruby King
Rosemary
Tabasco
Unknown Eggplant
Zucchini
Spinach
Kale
Lettuces
Radish
Sugar snap peas
Swenson Snow Peas
Mammoth Melting Sugar Snow Peas
Stevia
Lemon Verbena
watermelon

ButterflyLady29
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It looks really nice.

Yes, you can plant cold weather crops in the beds then warm weather crops when those are done. It's called succession planting and it's a great way to get a lot of produce from a small garden.

Are you going to plant any flowers in your beds? I like having flowers in my gardens. Some can bring in pollinators and some are edible. And some are just pretty.

SQWIB
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Location: Zone 7A - Philadelphia, PA

Here's what I have in my front yard, back yard and ponds

Tulips
Tiger Lilies
Cala Lilies
Stargazer Lilies
Hyacinths
Phlox
Peri Winkle Vinca Minor
Oregano
Thyme
chives
Black Gamecock Iris
Red Laydeker Water Lily
Pickeral Rush
Iris pseudacorus
Pink Water Lily
water hyacinths
Sunpatiens
Gerbera Daisy
Marigold
Raspberry
Blueberry
Brunnera 'Jack Frost'
Rose of Sharon

I have some new plants I'm putting in with my parsley and butterfly house.
Swamp Milkweed Cinderella
Common Milkweed

Here are two I'm not sure what they are, I'll check for tags tomorrow.
Unknown 1 (pic)
Image

unknown 2 (pic)
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I've started filling all my raised beds with either oregano or thyme for a perennial cover crop.
Do you have any other suggestions for flowering plants?

SQWIB
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The rose of Sharon, Thyme and Oregano are always loaded with tons of bees.
The rose of sharon is in an ideal spot for pollination and I trimmed it a few years back to get it even fullerr.
I had one pop up by my pond that I cut back to try and get it to grow fuller.

I was going to install a Mason Bee house but my wife shot me down, I gave her a little info on the mason bees but shesaid no.
I am highly allergic to bees and last sting was not pretty, I however love the little guys and don't mind them buzzing about, I'm just extra careful.
I may pop up a house anyway lol.

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rainbowgardener
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All those cold weather things like spinach and peas can be planted "as soon as the ground can be worked." That means it is not frozen and is dried out enough not to clump up if you dig it. That is probably now for you. In these global warming times, spring comes earlier almost everywhere. It looks like you are having spring like weather - lows above freezing after the next two nights and highs in the 50's and 60's and lots of sunshine. Time to get planting! When I lived in Cincinnati, there was often a good planting window in Feb. If I missed it, I might end up not planting for another month. But then the cold weather stuff would just bolt when it all of a sudden got hot later.

Unless you really want to have a lot of extra spinach to freeze, one 8' double row is PLENTY of spinach, you don't need to plant it elsewhere.

Succession planting doesn't have to be plant cold weather crops, wait until they are all done, then pull them and plant warm weather stuff. You can double up and overlap. For example, your spinach bed. Plant it now with two rows of spinach seed, done next to the outside edges, which will leave a little space in the middle. When it is warm enough for peppers, put your pepper plants (not seeds, this will work better with decent sized transplants) down the space in the middle. By the time the pepper plants are big enough to start crowding things, the spinach will be done. You can do the same thing with the lettuce. In a wider bed you can do the same thing with broccoli - plant rows of broccoli down the edges, very early. Later plant tomatoes down the middle. By the time the tomato plants are getting big, the broccoli will be about done. In my garden, planting is continuous throughout the season; where ever a space opens up, I pop something in it. Herbs like parsley, basil, I just tuck one or two plants at the ends of beds or little extra spots. Bigger herbs, I mostly grow in pots.

You have water melon on your list. Do you know it is a gigantic plant that will take over your yard? If you grow it in a bed, it needs to be one with lawn next to it (not patio). When the watermelon crawls out of the bed, it needs to be somewhere where the stems can root into ground as they grow.

Mason bees don't sting. Female mason bees can sting, but they almost never do unless they are forced to, like you catch one in your hand or it is trapped inside your clothing.

Flowers like tulips and lilies and iris are pretty, but they are useless for beneficial insects. By beneficial insects, we mean not only pollinators, but things like ladybugs that will eat the aphids, and teeny-tiny stingless braconid wasps that will parasitize and kill the tomato hornworms and other nasty caterpillars. To attract insects like these, plant lots of things that have their nectar in tiny florets. This includes everything in the parsley family, like dill, fennel, caraway, coriander, carrot/Queen Anne's lace, when they are allowed to bloom. Others are yarrow, tansy, sweet alyssum, buckwheat. Other good beneficial insect plants are all the mint family stuff, bee balm, lemon balm, pennyroyal, anise hyssop. Marigolds and sunflowers are also good to grow.

I still don't understand the idea of a "perennial cover crop." You are going to plant your oregano and thyme (seed?) and then turn it under? They don't add much to the soil when turned under. And they are very slow growing their first year. Planted early they are still pretty small by the end of their first season. What is the point?

SQWIB
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The thyme and oregano bring the pollinators directly to the beds and act as a mulch.

I read this by DR. Elaine Ingham and figured I would give perennial cover crops a shot as a root biomass, plus as I said before it brings in pollinators.
Let me know what you think, is this a fools errand?

https://www.soilfoodweb.com/FAQ.html

Note on Perennial Cover Crops from https://www.soilfoodweb.com/FAQ.html :


What Cover Crops Should I Use Instead Of Annual Cover Crops? Do I Still Need To Till?
Here is a suggestion: Instead of annual cover crops, grow a mix of 25 or more perennial cover crops that are short. Perennial, so you only buy seeds once, possibly planting fall germinating plants once and sprint germinating plants once, and then they seed themselves for the next several hundred years. Perennial, so you don't have to disturb the soil to plant them each year. Stop killing soil life! Short plants, but plants that cover the soil surface so the the soil surface is protected throughout the ENTIRE year. You don't harvest these plants in the spring time in order to plant the crop, you till up furrows where you plant your seed, but the rest of the soil is left un-tilled.

You can see why you want to choose short plants that can be driven on so the plants don't die when you drive on them to plant the crop. But you don't have to then go out and till to get rid of the weeds, so there's less damage to the soil again. The short cover crop doesn't interfere with the cash crop being grown, just make sure the short cover crop is shorter than the cash crop. no more mowing, no more tilling, or harrowing to get rid of weeds. The perennial plants supply nutrients to the soil organisms, who make the enzymes to pull N, P, K, S, etc. from the rocks, pebbles, sand, silt, slay and organic matter. So the criticism of the cover crops taking nutrients away from the cash crop is a lie, or, is true only if farming in dirt, not soil. If decent sets of microbes are NOT present, then yes, cover crops will compete with the crop and nothing will grow well. But with proper sets of organisms in the soil, nothing will be nutrient-limited. Make sure the balances of microbes are correct, to control the balance of the different forms of nitrogen. Make sure that will be correct for the plant you want to grow.

Remember that all these plants should be connected below ground by mycorrhizal fungi. Thus, all plants are healthy or all are sick if they don't have the mycorrhizal connection. So, planting into summer cover crops won't work if the strips you plant the garlic into aren't prepared. All of that non-decomposing cover crop plant material in between the strips you till will be a real problem, so you have to get the right biology into the soil to do the decomposition. And why make biomass above ground that is then a problem to get it to decompose and get into the soil? Plant things that will make ROOT biomass, not above ground biomass. If you have plants that grow mostly roots, way deep, then you don't have to do the work to till above ground plant material into the soil. And when you till anything into the soil, you kill the very organisms that you need to do the work for you. When you harvest garlic, or any root crop, you do have to dig them up. BUT ONLY the strip that they are in, not the entire field. Yes, you have to mark your rows, but really, that's not difficult, when you consider all the other reductions in work you get from letting the organisms do the work for you. So think about this, and as you do, I'm sure other questions will arise. So ask again, but try to incorporate this different way of farming into everything you grow -- strawberries, garlic, tomatoes, whatever.

SQWIB
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The watermelon will be planted in the raised bed and trained to follow the front of the bed on mulch, I done this last year and it was working out well until the neighbor pulled out what he thought was a weed and it was my watermelon.

Thanks for the spinach advice, I now have a gameplan.

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applestar
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Interesting idea. I mean a lot of people have grass in the paths between raised beds. Why grow grass when you could grow something more useful?

I tend to end up with chickweed and deadnettle in the garden beds and creeping charley in the lawn -- they bloom very early and keep the bees entertained until other stuff like dandelions bloom and and cilantro, overwintered kale, and stuff bolt and strawberries and fruit trees bloom, etc.

Yep. Don't forget raised beds dry from the thaw earlier so you could probably plant another week earlier. But later on, they may heat up earlier and the peas might suffer. Fyi - I've started pre-starting peas because I really just don't have the ideal spring climate -- late average last frost, then week long heatwave enough to need a/c. I need them to sprout and get growing faster than when sown direct in the ground and also to foil the chipmunks that dig the dry peas up as soon as I sow them. I can hunt up the link to detailed thread if you need it. (am I in the right thread for this comment?)

SQWIB
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applestar wrote:Interesting idea. I mean a lot of people have grass in the paths between raised beds. Why grow grass when you could grow something more useful?

I tend to end up with chickweed and deadnettle in the garden beds and creeping charley in the lawn -- they bloom very early and keep the bees entertained until other stuff like dandelions bloom and and cilantro, overwintered kale, and stuff bolt and strawberries and fruit trees bloom, etc.

Yep. Don't forget raised beds dry from the thaw earlier so you could probably plant another week earlier. But later on, they may heat up earlier and the peas might suffer. Fyi - I've started pre-starting peas because I really just don't have the ideal spring climate -- late average last frost, then week long heatwave enough to need a/c. I need them to sprout and get growing faster than when sown direct in the ground and also to foil the chipmunks that dig the dry peas up as soon as I sow them. I can hunt up the link to detailed thread if you need it. (am I in the right thread for this comment?)
Yes I would appreciate the thread, thank you.

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applestar
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Ok. You will have to skim through this thread but I think all the pea starting info is in here -- I found it with site search for "peas egg cartons" :wink:
:arrow: Subject: 2016 -- starting seeds and cuttings for the new season
applestar wrote:Trying yet another idea this year... A dozen peas in each designated for variety egg case.
Oh, maybe this, too --

:arrow: Subject: Applestar's 2016 Garden
applestar wrote:This year's "Sunflower House" (SFH) and "Sunflower House Extension" (SFHX) beds
image.jpeg
the compost bin used to be in the middle of this bed

I planted all of the remaining pre-sprouted peas in the SFH today.

Subject: 2016 -- starting seeds and cuttings for the new season
applestar wrote:Here's an example of how the peas pre-sprouted in the clear egg cartons turned out.

imafan26
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The UH is doing research on cover crops. The biggest problem here not only for homeowners but for commercial growers is the high cost of land and there isn't a lot of farmland available. Most small farms are on 5 acres or less. Most small farms do grow diversified crops so they can sell year round, but have the same problem as homeowners, they don't really rotate crops because they find a good place to grow eggplant and it stays there year after year.

Homeowners and farmers realize the value of letting the land rest and rotating crops to balance the nutrients that are being removed and replaced with cover crops but who wants to give up valuable land to a cover crop. It is hard enough to even rotate crops because you have a market and equipment for one crop but not for the other and your buyers want a consistent supply.

The UH came up with the idea of intercropping cover crops between the cash crops. Planting every other row in a cover crop.

This is something that has been done on ginger farms for years. Ginger rows are alternated with rows of marigolds. Ginger is intollerant of nematodes so field sanitation is important. One ginger farm does not allow anyone to step foot on the farm without using their coveralls and boots and they have to literally step into a sanitizing solution going in and out of the field everytime. Tools have to be sanitized before they go in and they are not used on any other field. Ginger farms can generate $10,000 a month, so they protect their crop. If nematodes get in the soil, they would have no choice but to move the farm. There are no nematode resistant ginger.

Cover crops like marigolds and sunhemp are used to manage nematodes. Sunhemp is a legume so it is also a nitrogen fixer and can be used as mulch and an insectary crop. Interplanting sunhemp can be used in no til fields.

Aloun farms uses sorghum between fields of melons for a cover crop, but also as a trap crop. The sorghum is the roosting host for the fruit flies. The sorghum is sprayed with GF 120 as the melons start to flower to kill roosting fruit flies and fruit fly traps are set year round to capture the males.

Insectary plants are grown perennially on the perimeter of the fields. I grow cuphea, alyssum, and other flowering plants year round to provide nectar for beneficials and Jamaican oregano, basil, and some of the herbs like basil will flower and attract pollinators and beneficials directly into the garden. I have a lot of lizards, skinks, trees and shrubs that provide habitat.

I also have plumeria, gardenia, jasmine, hibiscus, and orchids which I don't want to give up but I know attract nasty bugs like thrips and mites. Those plants I try to keep away from the vegetable plants as much as possible and I monitor and treat them when I have to. I try to let the beneficial insects control them and I only treat the ones like the hibiscus for erineum mites because natural controls don't really work and I don't want to get rid of the plants which is my only other choice. By limiting pesticides and tolerating damage, I actually have not had to do much spraying.

I am spraying the orchids now for thrips and I am using sulfur and pyrethrins. The orchids are budding up and there are no flowers so no bees are harmed. The plants that are flowering, I use alcohol.

I have planted more roses and more alyssum. I am also going to replace some of the geraniums with cuphea again. The cuphea does not get as big and they attract beneficial insects.

The butterfly bush is not blooming now so it is causing me less issues with the butterflies.

Slugs and snails are the biggest problems and I have resorted to herbicides on the weeds which have finally made a dent and by eliminating their hiding places, I finally am seeing fewer snails.

I am also seeing fewer whiteflies now that some of the host weeds have been eliminated.

Dr. Wang and Jari Sugano have been working on cover crop research for a few years. Within the link are links to other videos associated with their research. In Hawaii, we have a 365 day growing season, and a 365 day bug season, so things had to be designed to allow for the best combinations of cover crops and intercropping to benefit the crop, the soil, encourage beneficials, with the least economic impact keeping the land in the cash crop as long as possible.

https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/WangKH/cover-crop.html

Cover crops on the mainland where you have an off season is usually done in the fall and winter. In warm areas, there is no off season except July - August (the best time to solarize). Interplanting of cover crops is a way to work in cover crops between vegetables. Timing and compatibility matter. Corn and beans are a good match but the beans have to be planted after the corn is well grown. Cow peas can be underplanted in the corn. It will act as a living mulch and the residues will help replace the nitrogen after it it tilled in. Asian cabbages are good as nutrient scavengers and the brassica juncea are also good for nematode suppression. Buckwheat can be grown between rows of vegetables. It needs to be tilled in when it blooms otherwise it is weedy. Sunhemp needs to be grown first, then cut down and planted between rows. Sunhemp is a legume that will provide some nitrogen fixing if the micorrhyzae are present but are also nematocidal. Sunhemp though is really hard to pull out if it is left a long time. Cowpeas cannot be planted next to onions as they both attract black aphids. Naturtiums is a black aphid trap.
Crackerjack and single gold are the best marigolds for nematode suppression in my garden for the type of nematodes I have. The flowers also attract beneficial insects and marigolds are aphid trap plants. Fennel is planted off in a corner and it has protected the garden well as it is an aphid trap, the aphids feed the lady bug larvae and the long lasting blooms provide nectar and pollen for bees, parasitic wasps, syrphid flies, lacewings. I have only had one sickly kale attacked by aphids in the last years and no spraying has been needed. The African basil is allowed to bloom and that provides nectar for bees and other insects. The Jamaican oregano is in constant bloom as is the lavender. I seasonally plant sunflowers, borage and other plants in the herb and vegetable garden to attract beneficial insects. I have other landscape plants like penta, cuphea, alyssum, nasturtium (seasonal), and a diverse number of flowering plants so that I have something in bloom all of the time.

I am not bug free. I have a lot of slugs and snails since I have few predators. The lizards take care of a lot of the flying insects, caterpillars, beetles and worms. The birds eat my seeds, fruits, and any snails I kill. The cattle egret will eat the lizards, grasshoppers and anything else that is rousted after the grass is cut. I have to spray for erineum mites in summer, and I have to physically cut out and scrub off scale that is resistant to pesticides. Whiteflies are usually managed with water and cutting the hibiscus. Managing ants usually controls most of the aphids and scales that the fennel does not take care of.
https://soilandhealth.org/wp-content/upl ... sstate.pdf

You need to find out what cover crops work best for your. Most people don't use cover crops correctly. Buckwheat if allowed to go to seed keeps popping up as a weed. Cowpeas are edible (black eyed or pink eyed peas) but, if you keep them past flowering, the energy if transferred to the pods and peak nitrogen fixation is at flowering and declines after that. I have to inoculate legumes to get good fixation. The herb plot is so nitrogen poor, even the legume needs some nitrogen supplied.



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