Sunday, May 08, 2016

Planting, first week of May. 5.7.16

No photos today.  Too busy around the garden.

Most of the kitchen garden beds are planted.  So are the chicken feed beds.

Painted Mountain Corn.  Front row is cilantro.   5.9.16
The chickens get:  One row of sunflowers, surrounded by Painted Mountain Indian Corn.  There are also 3 rows of Dakota White flint corn.  It doesn't matter if the Dakota Ivory mixes with the Indian mountain, they are both flint corn.

It's early for corn, but they all germinated within 2 or 1 weeks, mostly 1 week.  Very few kernels did not germinate.

I surrounded the sunflowers with corn, to see if that keeps out rabbits and deer.  Those herbivores did not bother corn last year.

I've planted the 3rd batch of sweet corn.
#1 is Trinity.
#2 is Bilicious.  Se+ therefore OK to plant near Trinity which is also Se+.  I think.
#3 isTrinity again.

I'm aiming for about one patch every 2 weeks until early or mid July.  Watching soil temp, it's been above 60 since early April and mostly above 70.  On sunny days, soil temp is up to 80,

A patch of corn in my garden is about 3 or 4 rows of 5 or 6 plants per row.  According to most advice, it's better to plant corn in patches instead of single rows, because pollination is less effective in long straight rows.

I may take some photos tomorrow and add to today's post.  It seems kind of drab without photos.

Tomatoes are growing rapidly.

Peppers don't look so great.

Eggplants are in between.

Okra looks sad.  I don't know if I will get it to grow and produce.

Potatoes look amazing, huge green lush plants.  I hilled them up with soil, to about 1 foot.

Favas in bloom.  5.9 16
Favas are full of flowers.  No beans set yet.

Squashes, pumpkins, and melons all planted.  Most are not yet to true leaves.


3 comments:

  1. Hi. Another SW Wa Gardener here. I ave been using Mel Bartholomew's SQ foot layout for coen with great success. Planting 4x4 blocks of open pollinated corn every 2 weeks like clockwork . but instead of 4 per foot I dibble one into the center of each square since I'm using bailing twine instead of 1x1 pieces of wood to make the grid I can squeeze in 1 or 2 plants per SQ.

    I have been really enjoying you blog here

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    Replies
    1. Cody, glad this blog is useful for you! Thank you for commenting. I think your plan to plant every 2 weeks is excellent - you should get lots of fresh sweet corn this summer.

      Some of the seed packets recommend each corn plant get 1 square foot of land. Early ripening sweet corn does not seem to grow as large, so I don't know if that is necessary.

      Thanks again for reading and commenting. Have a great gardening summer!

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  2. Your favas looks good. I'm eating mine already starting last week but the bane of fava is the critters chewing up the pods before it gets ripe. The ones at the community garden lot's almost all gone. Mine wasn't growing in a wire cage because it wasn't planted in blocks. It was here is a bunch and scatter all over. Not attempting any sweet corn this yr, since the critters are active on favas they will definitely attack the corn even more ferociously.

    ReplyDelete