Zach's 2016 Garden

[Gardeneer]

Your soil is overly clay. I see cracks on top .
If I were you I would add lots of compost to it. If not for the whole garden, at least around the plant.
Clay is good if amended with manure and compost.

Gardeneer

[Kazedwards]

Originally Posted by M.SeanF.

Hi Zach,

Your garden looks great. You're really having to work hard this spring.

Did your Amish Paste re-root?



Sean

It just started to show some roots growing. I plan on getting it in to the soil soon.

Originally Posted by Lindalana

Very impressive garden and layout! Best of luck growing all your veggies! Love love love the view...

Thank you.

Originally Posted by Gardeneer

Your soil is overly clay. I see cracks on top .
If I were you I would add lots of compost to it. If not for the whole garden, at least around the plant.
Clay is good if amended with manure and compost.

Gardeneer

I plan on it. It is amazing how much the soil improves with mulch and I normally use grass clippings. I thought about mulching this last week but with all the rain and water problems I have had I thought would wait.



-Zach

[bower]

I love your cool garden layout too. Hope everything hangs in there in spite of the rain and you have a great season.

[Kazedwards]

I planted all of the peppers yesterday along with most of the ground cherries. Today I'm planning on on sowing corn.





-Zach

[ginger2778]

Solo cup name tags?

[Kazedwards]

Originally Posted by ginger2778

Solo cup name tags?

Yes. I used solo cups last year to start seeds in and wrote on the sides with permanent marker. The marker never washed off so I cut a bunch up for labels. I also use sour cream containers. They work great!


-Zach

[Kazedwards]

Yesterday I finally got cucumbers, corn and kohlrabi sowed. That fills up the garden for now. I might try to squeeze some flowers or a little lettuce here or there. I rigged up a trellis for the cukes too.

I also got all of the dwarfs that Craig sent.

Now I just need to maintain it and enjoy.


-Zach

[Kazedwards]

I saw today that I have fruit set on Siletz. I am very surprised too. I had to replace that plant maybe three weeks ago. I did have a few buds at that time.

The tomatoes on the micro dwarfs in pots on the deck growing too.

The water logged plant seems to be recovering as well.

The garlic scapes are curling too.



-Zach

[Kazedwards]

Today I made room the a few more plants. The rest were doing the leaf curl thing so I tossed them. I moved Betimes Macbeth since its a micro dwarf too. It's in a nice little corner now.

I am seeing flowers on a lot of plants too.
This one is Mamie Brown's Pink.

Here are four of the tomatoes I planted today. I made some room for them behind the compost.

Cucumbers and corn are coming up.



-Zach

[Kazedwards]

Picked the first tomato of the season a few days ago. It is an unknown yellow cherry dwarf. Almost all the tomatoes have flowers at this point in the season but only Siletz has any fruit set. It's been so hot that I'm worried about. All the plants seem to be doing quite well for the most part. I did lose a few small plants to wind earlier this week though. Today I found 5 horn worms. A couple of them have already done a little bit of damage but I expect the plant to do just fine still. It's crazy how horn worms just appear overnight and are the size of a finger too.

The peppers are doing good to. I have a couple plants that already have fruit.
Georgia Flame

Beaver Dam


The garlic scapes are straightening out too. I hope to get more true seed this year. One scape has opened too and I can see a few flowers. Very excited.




-Zach

[Kazedwards]

Well the AC went out list night. Lucky for us it was only in the 80-90s today. Last night it got down to the upper 70s to which helped. For the last month it's been in the high 90s and was over 100 a handful of days. Very glad it happened when it did.

Anyway the walking onion patch is right next to the AC so I took the opportunity to thin out the patch. They are currently dormant but that will only last about a month. I divided all of the nest in to single bulbs and replanted the largest 20 or so. I'm impressed with the size of a lot of them which was 1" or more. Most where a torpedo shape do to crowding from the nest dividing.
This was average nest size.


All of them lined up. The area in the back right by the AC is where they came from. A few got to go back too.

The scapes/stalks came from the bottom of the bulb instead of the center. I have heard that it is a plus for storage.

Here are the largest bulbs.

Here is all of the left over onions.

I spread them out on a screen to dry.
I also have a ton of extra bulbils to.

I'm thinking I will see how they store and offer them up to share this fall once it cools down.


-Zach

[bower]

Wow that is an impressive haul of onions from the tiny space! And the bulbs are really large. My egyptian onions are red skinned so a different type, but they have also formed quite a thicket. I was wondering if they should be dug and divided. Ours don't go dormant until fall and are just starting to put on topsets.

[Kazedwards]

Fall is the typical time to divide and thin them I think. This time of year mine divide into bigger nest. They hadn't died down but were not putting on new growth. They go really dormant in the winter and all of the leaves die down. Last winter they didn't though probably because it was so mild. I'm going to see how well they store now. I probably should have left the scapes on and hung them now that I think about it. A few week ago I planted a few bulbils in the main garden too so I will see how they do there. Hopefully I can get bigger bulbs.


-Zach

[Kazedwards]

The gardens looking good today. Yesterday we got a good rain and it reply benefited from it.

The cucumbers are really taking off. They will start to climb up the trellis soon.

Mark Twain is really catching up

Mamie Brown's Pink is one of the most vigorous and sturdy right now.

Estler's Mortgage Lifter is catching up at the same rate as Mark Twain. Both were small plants when put out. It has the biggest tomato flower I have ever seen too.

Speckled Roman is one of the plants that had the really curly leaves. I was really worried about it at first and almost pulled it. Right now now it is the second plant that has set. I guess it is just wispy foliage.


The corn is really taking off too.

This is the garden from the deck.


I also have a Myers's lemon tree, Orange tree, and a pixie grape up on the deck. They are really enjoying being outside. The small pot are clementine seeds that I started over the winter.



-Zach

[Kazedwards]

I'm starting to get lots of fruit set. Siletz has had the most so far with around a dozen. One of them might be starting to blush too.


Speckled Roman also got its stripes.

Reisetomate has also set one.

So has Sungold F2, Goose Creek, Betimes Macbeth and Tom's Landrace Paste but I didn't get pictures of those. I'm sure there are a few more too. It was in the 70s today and will be tomorrow too. 80s on Monday then back to the 90s after that. We have had some rain too so I'm sure that it has all helped.


-Zach