Salad Garden and Pansies. 5.10.2021

 Salad garden has lots of lettuce, spinach, radishes.  Also diverse other stuff, garlic, chives, and developing pepper plants.

And some pansies.  They add a lot of color to the vegetables.  

Planting the last of the Dwarf Tomato Seedlings. 5.10.2021

 I hope that some of these turn out very good.  I planted the last of the Dwarf Tomato seedlings yesterday.  Some are in containers, some in the ground.  Some of the container plants are in potting soil, but some in really big containers are in soil / compost mix or soil / old potting soil mix.

These are the Extreme Bush.  Since they are reported as among the smallest of these dwarf varieties, I planted two in this approx 5 gallon container.

Germinating Old Pink Banana Squash Seeds. 5.10.2021

 I thought these were all dead.  I soaked the last of the 2019 batch of Pink Banana Squash seeds for a few hours, then wrapped them in wet paper towel and placed the package into a plastic covered bowl.  This is four days later.

So they are germinating.  The rule of thumb is that viable seeds sink and dead ones float, but all of these floated.  Next test is transfer them to potting soil and see if they grow.

So far, none of the Pink Banana Squash seeds that I started out in potting soil this year have germinated.  Maybe they still have a chance.  All I want or need is two hills of vines.

Planting Squash Plants with Black Plastic Mulch. 5.9.2021

 I want to save squash seeds this year.  I plan to cover the flowers with mesh sacks but also want to isolate the plants, while giving the vines room to roam.  I have never used black plastic mulch before.  Black plastic mulch supposedly kills weeds, reduces water requirement, warms soil, and increases yield.

This area was not accessible to mowing, so a few months ago I put down black plastic to kill the grass and weeds.  I decided to leave it there, and plant some of the squash seedlings there.

In this area, I planted Illinois Squash, a Cucurbita mixta variety, and Fordham Zucchini, a Cucurbita pepo variety.  The Zucchini is a bushy type.  It should not be difficult to select a few blossoms to isolate for saving seeds. 

The grass and weeds were almost entirely eradicated already.  The soil was moist under the plastic sheets, which have been in place for several months.

There are more squash seedlings to plant elsewhere.  Most of those locations are also already under plastic.  I hope this method is successful.  It does indeed feel like less work, better weed management, and better water management, already.  Not very attractive, but that's OK.

Some Irises. 5.9.2021

 The iris bed was too much to keep weeded, and I didn't get to mulch it last winter.  So it's pretty weedy.  The interesting thing is, this is the first year they didn't have leaf spot and bacterial rot diseases.  My theory is that they need ground cover, either mulch or weeds, to prevent soil spores from splashing onto the leaves and starting an epidemic.  The down side of the weediness, other than appearance, is there seem to be fewer flowers this year.

I love bearded irises so will continue to work on my growing method.  I feel certain that will mean a bark chip mulch.  Last fall I moved some to the vegetable and fruit garden.  Those are mulched and also have no leaf spot or bacterial rot diseases, and also few flowers.