Re: Grinder's no-till vegetable garden
Looking good Grinder. You inspired me to do a garden this year again but I didn’t go to anywhere near the tender caring great lengths you have to get things going. I just went to a nursery and purchased some tomato, Squash, and cucumber plants. I also have some carrot and potato. I did however mix in some leaves and manure into the soil for some extra nitrogen I hope.
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Re: Grinder's no-till vegetable garden
Glad to hear it, John! Nothing wrong with purchasing starts. Wish I was better set up for carrots and potatoes, and beets, turnips, leafy greens and such. Maybe next year.
88 seedlings in the ground as of yesterday (32 tomatoes, 3 sweet peppers, and 53 squash and pumpkins. 8 of the 10 cherry tomatoes need another week or two for their roots to fill-out their large pots before I can safely transplant them).
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Didn't plan on having so quite so many squash and pumpkins, but given the number that died last year I started plenty of extras and then decided to go ahead and transplant them all. Now that nearly all of the squash and pumpkins are in, it's on to peppers (84 of them! LOL), and then cantaloupes, watermelons and cucumbers ...and then on to relocating perennial herbs from the garden, and then transplanting new ones (also outside the garden) ...and then on to transplanting all the flower seedlings.
Re: Grinder's no-till vegetable garden
Whoa! Just three tomato plants and two squash plants give me more than I can eat and you have 32 and 53 respectively. You may as well register your property as a farm so you can take advantage of the tax benefits. Looking real good.
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Re: Grinder's no-till vegetable garden
05/28
Transplanting continues…
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Finally began to notice (haven’t been paying close enough attention) Striped Cucumber Beetles and clear signs of their damaging effects on many cucurbit (cucumber, squash, pumpkin, melon) seedlings. Removed one each badly damaged and dying Fordhook Zucchini and New England Sugar Pie Pumpkin.
05/30
Transplanting continues…
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Cucumber beetles on every cucurbit. Massive infestation. Zucchini are hardest hit so far, looks like none of them will survive.
202 seedlings are in the ground:
24 Jet Star Slicing Tomato
8 Opalka Tomato
2 Chadwick Cherry Tomato
12 Connecticut Field Pumpkin
11 Tommy Apple Melon Cantaloupe
11 Strawberry Watermelon
10 Marketmore 76 Cucumber
10 New England Sugar Pie Pumpkin
10 Fordhook Zucchini
10 Buttercup Squash
9 Waltham Butternut Squash
3 mystery squash/pumpkin
21 California Wonder Pepper
14 Red Marconi Pepper
12 Golden Calwonder Pepper
11 Sweet Hungarian Banana Pepper
10 Rainbow Blend Pepper
8 Purple Beauty Pepper
6 Cubanelle Pepper
06/01
Morning frost finished-off the cucurbits (all but a couple watermelon seedlings and one field pumpkin suffered serious frost damage). It’s just as well, as the cucumber beetle infestation was well on the way to killing them all anyway. A handful of pepper plants are badly damaged as well. Tomato plants and the vast majority of pepper plants have suffered no visible effects.
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06/02
Transplanted final seedlings into garden:
12 Lime Aromatic Basil
12 Genovese Basil
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06/03
Removed all 86 cucurbit plants from garden.
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Relocated first 5 of 17 perennial herb plants (thyme, sage, catnip, fennel) from garden to new ornamental/herb garden area.
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06/04
Direct sowed seeds (leftover from April seed starting) in all 86 removed cucurbit locations:
12 Fordhook Zucchini
12 Waltham Butternut Squash
12 Tommy Apple Melon Cantaloupe
12 Strawberry Watermelon
12 Buttercup Squash
12 New England Sugar Pie Pumpkin
10 Marketmore 76 Cucumber
4 Connecticut Field Pumpkin
Fingers crossed…
Relocated 4 more perennial herb plants (more thyme, sage, catnip, fennel) from garden to new ornamental/herb garden area. 8 more to go.
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Re: Grinder's no-till vegetable garden
Always enjoy seeing the updates to your garden... that sucks about the beetle infestation, I have a slug problem eating the few green bean shoots that I have, need to put some bowls with beer in up there to take care of them. Unfortunately, a lot of my garden has become overgrown, just not had time to pull weeds and so they are somewhat taking over. I do have the previously mentioned green beans, as well as some peas that are growing OK, a few potato plants, cucumber, rhubarb and a grape vine that are doing pretty decently though.
I also in among the weeds have turnips, carrots and radish, but, my 5 year old helped sow those seeds and so they are not in easily identifiable lines! Still, worst case I am getting the area ready to really work on things fully next year.
Re: Grinder's no-till vegetable garden
Quote:
Originally Posted by
naiku
Always enjoy seeing the updates to your garden... that sucks about the beetle infestation, I have a slug problem eating the few green bean shoots that I have, need to put some bowls with beer in up there to take care of them. Unfortunately, a lot of my garden has become overgrown, just not had time to pull weeds and so they are somewhat taking over. I do have the previously mentioned green beans, as well as some peas that are growing OK, a few potato plants, cucumber, rhubarb and a grape vine that are doing pretty decently though.
I also in among the weeds have turnips, carrots and radish, but, my 5 year old helped sow those seeds and so they are not in easily identifiable lines! Still, worst case I am getting the area ready to really work on things fully next year.
Thanks. Yeah, garden pests... and weeds... Ugh! Ah well, we can only do what we can do, and try to learn what we can in the process.
Did you end up using any sort of mulch? Barring that, perhaps you could try woven ground cover fabric next year. I foresee a time when my wood chip supply will have decomposed to the point where it no is no longer adequately effective as weed control, at which point I will probably use woven ground cover fabric.
How cool and fun to have your 5 year old helping you plant the garden!
Re: Grinder's no-till vegetable garden
I did use mulch, what I think my main issue with the weeds was not putting a thick enough layer of mulch down. The areas is thicker its much easier to control. I'm likely going to use some kind of weed sheet next time and cut openings for seeds.
It's great having him help, he loves planting seeds and hopefully it gets him eating a wider variety of vegetables of he's growing them as well.
Re: Grinder's no-till vegetable garden
Quote:
Originally Posted by
naiku
I did use mulch, what I think my main issue with the weeds was not putting a thick enough layer of mulch down. The areas is thicker its much easier to control. I'm likely going to use some kind of weed sheet next time and cut openings for seeds.
It's great having him help, he loves planting seeds and hopefully it gets him eating a wider variety of vegetables of he's growing them as well.
When I originally created the garden area from lawn, I simply used all the wood chips I happened to have at that time and did the best I could to distribute them evenly across the entire area. Fortunately, that turned out to be an average of about six to eight inches of well settled-to-densely packed wood chips. Even so, some pesky stuff still manages to get through here and there.
And then there's the considerable issue of dealing with such a thick layer of wood chips while planting/transplanting, which (in my case, at least) tends to preclude small/closely spaced crops such as carrot, radish, turnip, beet, lettuce, etc., which tend to favor loose soil in prepared beds. As the wood chips break down however, and presuming I finally get around to planting a late summer/early fall tillage crop of minowase daikon radish, my densely packed sandy loam lawn soil should gradually become increasingly light/loose, rich and fertile, without any need for tilling and its attendant disadvantages. It's been a hard slog, but for better or worse I'm convinced that this initial investment in considerable inconvenience and additional effort will pay off in the long run.
Good plan. Cutting (burning) holes in weed fabric for seeds/seedlings will control weeds far more effectively than planting in gaps between sheets.
Once you've introduced your boy to the joys of munching in the garden, he'll be hooked for life. :)
Re: Grinder's no-till vegetable garden
Quote:
Originally Posted by
naiku
.... It's great having him help, he loves planting seeds and hopefully it gets him eating a wider variety of vegetables of he's growing them as well.
Watching this video the other day I thought you might enjoy it too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AllTcLmoDys
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Re: Grinder's no-till vegetable garden
06/06
Relocated eight remaining perennial herb plants from garden to new ornamental/herb garden area. As normal, freshly transplanted fennel plants looking droopy and sad. Like the others, they too will perk up in a day or two.
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06/07
Remaining eight cherry tomato seedlings transplanted into garden (finally!). Culled one of the two earlier transplanted cherry tomato plants, due to unidentified pest/disease issue, and replaced it with one of the eight, for a total of nine Chadwick Cherry Tomato plants.
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With all the herb plants relocated, there's an unobstructed path between the fence and tomato plants. Nice!
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