Things are moving along OK now. I've got four full barrels of potting soil that I'm aging before using, and a full barrel of a mix I made with fallowed soil. Next time out, I'll repot those eggplant with it.
It's a simple formula, and it seems to work fine...dump non-productive containers, mix the soil with compost and rock powder to enrich it, age it if needed, then refill pots and plant anew.
As the soil dries out from transpiration through the crop leaves, I irrigate with well water plus additives to feed the roots. Everything is organic, except for a tiny pinch of epsom salts in the water. Magnesium is very hard for roots to absorb in alkaline soil, so I splash the leaves with it too. And as these things go with gardening it will either work or it won't. So far it's all working very well.
I'll have daikon ready to pull soon. Those are good in salads or as a garnish in little cubes...or in stir fries and soups. Which root crop produces the most food?...tough question to answer. Sweet potatoes take much longer to produce their tubers, but they're starchier and more filling...and have more vitamins than daikon or turnips. But the turnips and radishes grow so quickly. In four months they can produce two crops for every one of sweet potato. And you can eat the tops as well as the roots.
I'd say the turnip is the champ when it comes to producing food by the pound. The tops are super-nutritious and everything grows really, really fast. And they tolerate a wide variety of soils. So long as it doesn't get too hot and their roots don't dry out, they'll always come through. This year I'm growing Golden Globe. If the climate were cooler here and the soil less alkaline, I'd grow a lot of rutabaga. I really like them and they produce great big roots. Boil or steam, mash, mix half and half with potato...delicious.
But if the weather is too hot they get strong-tasting, unpleasant to eat, and hard to digest. So I've given up on them for a while. We'll see how the Golden Globe turnips do. If it gets too hot for turnips, I'll have loads of peppers and eggplant to eat. A smart gambler hedges his or her bets so they don't lose their stake.
I've heard hedge funds are a good investment...but suppose people decide they like fences instead of hedges in their landscaping? Sounds too risky to me.
That's a joke. At least laugh to be polite.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Catching Up
The air finally cleared up a bit, though it's been really bad at night. So I've been trying to get as much done as I can. I have so many things I want to plant, and the hot-weather crops are mostly fizzling out. I only get a few pods here and there on the okra, the molokhia and the Malabar spinach are setting seeds and fruit.
Been experimenting with liquid feeding in the pots...growing in containers has its limits. The roots can only expand so far, then they run out of fresh soil to exploit and the plants start showing signs of deficiencies. I realize now that topdressing the pots is not enough, they need compost tea or something similar to keep the plants healthy.
So far the results of my experiments have gone well. So I'm excited about this new technique. Well, it's not really new to me, I did this in my former garden decades ago. But by trying liquid-feed on my seedling trays, I could really see the results quickly this time. The eggplant seedlings have really started growing despite being badly potbound. I'm anxious to get those into larger pots asap.
This morning I was feeling somewhat burned out, so I went back to sleep and didn't do much. I need an easy day now and then, I think. I did get into the South Garden to pull some weeds, cut back more pea vines, and check on things. I thought the sweet potatoes I planted had died, but they've survived and some have started growing again. I might dig some potatoes after all. And those pea vines have rooted along with them in the bed and produced more pods. That variety of pea, Ologwe, has been a true marvel. I've never had anything grow so rampantly and with such determination.
Looking at my varietal selections, I realized that many of my biggest successes have come from planting crops that originated in tropical Africa and India. So once again I saw proof that varietal selection can be critically important. Planting temperate crops in the subtropics doesn't always work well. Open-pollinated (OP) varieties we buy from US seed companies are usually grown in temperate locales; and as years pass, they adapt to local conditions. Then I try to grow them here in this broiling-hot sun and they suffer with the heat...and the alkaline, sandy soil. Most temperate farms have somewhat acidic, loamy soils or clays.
But plant an African variety like Ologwe peas...and stand back! They feel right at home here.
I've tried harvesting some of my Liberty potatoes recently. Those originated in Cuba as "boniatos", then got modified by the plant-breeding masters at Clemson University to be more resistant to plant-parasitic nematodes. They've grown well for me, and now I find that I really like the potatoes. They're cream-colored, starchy, and not really sweet. The flavor is very different from the usual sweet potato...sort of nutty as I've heard it described...very nice.
I'm sold. Those are going to be my main potato crop from now on.
I love sweet potatoes, but the high sugar content of some varieties bothers my teeth. So I parboil those and toss out the water. For the usual more colorful potato, I'm trying Hannah currently. I bought some in Whole Foods, liked them OK, and I have some nice long slips growing on my kitchen window sill right now. I'm thinking they might take the cool weather better than Liberty. I love to try new varieties...it's a big part of the fun I have with gardening. You have to enjoy an activity to be good at it, that's a fact.
I have some Chinese kale seeds on my kitchen counter right now that are eager to get into some soil. I can't actually hear them speak to me to be honest, but this is their time of year, so I'm assuming. I've never grown Chinese kale, which is similar to that Italian veggie that looks like broccoli but is actually a type of mustard. Broccoli raab, that's it...had to go look in a seed catalogue for the name. The flowers of mustard are tasty too, but extremely hot. I just nibble on a few of those in the garden when they show up.
Been mixing potting-soil like mad...got four big barrels of it and still continuing on. Get ready seeds, I have nice homes planned for you guys. The salads I've been eating with my pac choy, radish greens, and purslane have been absolutely incredible. This is perfect weather for pac choy and radish greens...cool at night and warm, not too strong sun every day.
Been experimenting with liquid feeding in the pots...growing in containers has its limits. The roots can only expand so far, then they run out of fresh soil to exploit and the plants start showing signs of deficiencies. I realize now that topdressing the pots is not enough, they need compost tea or something similar to keep the plants healthy.
So far the results of my experiments have gone well. So I'm excited about this new technique. Well, it's not really new to me, I did this in my former garden decades ago. But by trying liquid-feed on my seedling trays, I could really see the results quickly this time. The eggplant seedlings have really started growing despite being badly potbound. I'm anxious to get those into larger pots asap.
This morning I was feeling somewhat burned out, so I went back to sleep and didn't do much. I need an easy day now and then, I think. I did get into the South Garden to pull some weeds, cut back more pea vines, and check on things. I thought the sweet potatoes I planted had died, but they've survived and some have started growing again. I might dig some potatoes after all. And those pea vines have rooted along with them in the bed and produced more pods. That variety of pea, Ologwe, has been a true marvel. I've never had anything grow so rampantly and with such determination.
Looking at my varietal selections, I realized that many of my biggest successes have come from planting crops that originated in tropical Africa and India. So once again I saw proof that varietal selection can be critically important. Planting temperate crops in the subtropics doesn't always work well. Open-pollinated (OP) varieties we buy from US seed companies are usually grown in temperate locales; and as years pass, they adapt to local conditions. Then I try to grow them here in this broiling-hot sun and they suffer with the heat...and the alkaline, sandy soil. Most temperate farms have somewhat acidic, loamy soils or clays.
But plant an African variety like Ologwe peas...and stand back! They feel right at home here.
I've tried harvesting some of my Liberty potatoes recently. Those originated in Cuba as "boniatos", then got modified by the plant-breeding masters at Clemson University to be more resistant to plant-parasitic nematodes. They've grown well for me, and now I find that I really like the potatoes. They're cream-colored, starchy, and not really sweet. The flavor is very different from the usual sweet potato...sort of nutty as I've heard it described...very nice.
I'm sold. Those are going to be my main potato crop from now on.
I love sweet potatoes, but the high sugar content of some varieties bothers my teeth. So I parboil those and toss out the water. For the usual more colorful potato, I'm trying Hannah currently. I bought some in Whole Foods, liked them OK, and I have some nice long slips growing on my kitchen window sill right now. I'm thinking they might take the cool weather better than Liberty. I love to try new varieties...it's a big part of the fun I have with gardening. You have to enjoy an activity to be good at it, that's a fact.
I have some Chinese kale seeds on my kitchen counter right now that are eager to get into some soil. I can't actually hear them speak to me to be honest, but this is their time of year, so I'm assuming. I've never grown Chinese kale, which is similar to that Italian veggie that looks like broccoli but is actually a type of mustard. Broccoli raab, that's it...had to go look in a seed catalogue for the name. The flowers of mustard are tasty too, but extremely hot. I just nibble on a few of those in the garden when they show up.
Been mixing potting-soil like mad...got four big barrels of it and still continuing on. Get ready seeds, I have nice homes planned for you guys. The salads I've been eating with my pac choy, radish greens, and purslane have been absolutely incredible. This is perfect weather for pac choy and radish greens...cool at night and warm, not too strong sun every day.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Chilly
Our cool season has arrived with a grand entrance...the overnight low broke a record for the date. I didn't catch it here, but the "official" low at a nearby airport was eight Celsius. I'm still heat-adapted so I slept in for a change...the house stayed warm overnight. I confess to using a small space heater last evening while I was online.
The air pollution has been hitting me hard recently...strong chemical odors, heavy smoke, and a really strong bloom of red tide just off the coast. Any one of those is enough to give me problems...it's another reason I slept late in my filtered indoor air. This time of year people cut back brush and burn it...things are still very primitive here in a lot of ways. We have curbside pickup of residential yard waste, but many don't use it. It's a mystery to me why they don't. And of course larger landowners burn off hundreds of acres, as they've done since colonial times.
So I haven't done much outside. I did set up more containers, and I finished getting the chipper/shredder ready for use. I planted three 34 cm pots of mustard greens, I use a lot of those in salads, soups, and stir fries. It's an easy procedure...mix the potting soil from recycled container soil, rock dust, vermiculite, and compost using a wheelbarrow and a hoe...line the bottom of a pot with pine twigs, cover the twigs with landscaping cloth, dump in the amended soil.
Then I plant about ten seedlings in each pot, set it on a rack of poles on concrete blocks, and cover it at night with chicken wire until the plants are big enough to hide the soil. Some type of animal loves digging in freshly-mixed potting soil, they can really wreck my work overnight. Also the fire ants love the pots...finding your hands covered in stinging ants after pulling a couple of weeds is no fun at all. So I rarely put the big pots on the ground to keep them away from animals, flooding, fire ants, and the back trouble I get from picking them up from the ground. I put the smaller pots of seedlings on the carport overnight to protect them from snails, etc.
I'm enthusiastic to plant a wide variety of greens and beans this cool season. I really think the tender raw greens fortify me, they're a good source of almost every important nutritional need of humans. I don't eat much fruit, so raw greens and peppers are my main source of vitamin C. I have hopes of planting more pac choy, radish greens, and mustard greens...plus chard, aurugula, mizuna, turnip greens etc.
For soups, my favorites are molokhia and mustard. The former grows best in the hot season and the rainy season, the latter in the cool season. But they're all good for soup, stir fry, or salads when young. Well, no salads with molokhia...you have to cook those.
I didn't feel up to doing much today, but maybe tomorrow I'll mix more soil or start clearing brush and shredding it...always something to do.
The air pollution has been hitting me hard recently...strong chemical odors, heavy smoke, and a really strong bloom of red tide just off the coast. Any one of those is enough to give me problems...it's another reason I slept late in my filtered indoor air. This time of year people cut back brush and burn it...things are still very primitive here in a lot of ways. We have curbside pickup of residential yard waste, but many don't use it. It's a mystery to me why they don't. And of course larger landowners burn off hundreds of acres, as they've done since colonial times.
So I haven't done much outside. I did set up more containers, and I finished getting the chipper/shredder ready for use. I planted three 34 cm pots of mustard greens, I use a lot of those in salads, soups, and stir fries. It's an easy procedure...mix the potting soil from recycled container soil, rock dust, vermiculite, and compost using a wheelbarrow and a hoe...line the bottom of a pot with pine twigs, cover the twigs with landscaping cloth, dump in the amended soil.
Then I plant about ten seedlings in each pot, set it on a rack of poles on concrete blocks, and cover it at night with chicken wire until the plants are big enough to hide the soil. Some type of animal loves digging in freshly-mixed potting soil, they can really wreck my work overnight. Also the fire ants love the pots...finding your hands covered in stinging ants after pulling a couple of weeds is no fun at all. So I rarely put the big pots on the ground to keep them away from animals, flooding, fire ants, and the back trouble I get from picking them up from the ground. I put the smaller pots of seedlings on the carport overnight to protect them from snails, etc.
I'm enthusiastic to plant a wide variety of greens and beans this cool season. I really think the tender raw greens fortify me, they're a good source of almost every important nutritional need of humans. I don't eat much fruit, so raw greens and peppers are my main source of vitamin C. I have hopes of planting more pac choy, radish greens, and mustard greens...plus chard, aurugula, mizuna, turnip greens etc.
For soups, my favorites are molokhia and mustard. The former grows best in the hot season and the rainy season, the latter in the cool season. But they're all good for soup, stir fry, or salads when young. Well, no salads with molokhia...you have to cook those.
I didn't feel up to doing much today, but maybe tomorrow I'll mix more soil or start clearing brush and shredding it...always something to do.
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