Unlikely Garden Resources

I planned to write an update for the following article this spring, so I went to Wal-Mart and Lowe's earlier this year looking for cool-season vegetables and I never found the abundance that I did a few years ago.  With the bad economy, people had started vegetable gardens, and they were growing more than just tomatoes in the summer.  A few big box stores were capitalizing on this and sold a larger selection of vegetables.

I looked at Wal-Mart in February when I planted potatoes and onions and they didn't have any.  And while I didn't look specifically for them at Lowe's, I was in and out of there a number throughout the spring and I didn't see any.  I went back the other day and I found their display. They had a huge variety of onions, garlic, shallots, and potatoes.  It's the absolutely wrong time to plant now, but I was looking at them and wondering if I could store them until fall (or spring, in the case of potatoes) and plant them at that time.  Maybe they will be deeply discounted.  Maybe they just threw them away.  I'll have to find out.

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Red potato plant in bloom

Over the past couple of years, there has been a large increase in the amount of people trying to grow their own food.  It used to be people grew tomatoes or squash in the summer, but it has expanded to include other vegetables.  Excluding traditional feed and seed sources, Lowe's started selling onion sets in the spring a couple of years ago.  Last year they had these garden packs - asparagus, strawberries, potatoes, onions, leeks and shallots in small amounts, in various combinations, for the home gardener.

I made a discovery Wednesday at Wal-Mart.  I was leaving through the garden are and noticed a display that looked like it had a few winter vegetables.  I was expecting a few veggies mixed in with flower bulbs.  I was surprised to find that it was all vegetables.  They had asparagus crowns, strawberries, garlic, two types of shallots, two types of onions, and five types of potatoes.

Feed and seed stores are usually good for a couple of varieties of a couple of vegetables, in large quantities, at reasonable prices.  The vegetables at Wal-Mart are packaged in smaller quantities for the home gardener and they are more expensive.  Most home gardener don't have the need for five pounds of one variety of potato or two pounds of onion sets.  What Wal-Mart does right is it offers more specialty vegetables.

Asparagus is a perennial, which means that it lives for more than a year.  Most people probably don't have enough room in their garden to commit to asparagus for a number of years - I know I don't.

Most people grow strawberries here and there.  They can be perennials, but some experts suggest replanting fresh plants every year.  I've never grown them, but I know Robin would like me to.  I think I have issues with plants that need a certain amount of daylight to produce fruit or flowers, etc.  I think I will try growing them before long.

Any reader of this blog knows that I have had no real success with onions.  Wal-Mart offers two varieties in small quantities.  I may continue to try growing them, but I won't devote as much space to them as I have been.  And, on second thought, I may not buy them there either - a lot of them had already sprouted and had fairly long green shoots poking out of the bags.

I tried growing garlic almost a year and half ago.  The only place you can reliably find garlic is in a catalog or the grocery store.  The catalog can get expensive when you figure in shipping, so I decided to try planting garlic from the grocery store.  I wasn't expecting great results, but I thought I would give it a shot.  I waited a little late to pull them up - they had been sitting in soil that was a little waterlogged.  I put them on a shelf in the garage to dry and forgot about them.  They're still there and I noticed that started sprouting recently.   I suppose they would be fine plants, but they would not produce very good bulbs.  Wal-Mart is selling  garlic bulbs and I'm sure it's in small amounts and affordable.  I'd rather have found them in the fall, when you're supposed to plant them.  Maybe I can buy them and keep them around until October.  We'll see.

I've never grown shallots, but I'd like to.  If Robin will use them, I'll grow them.  I just don't think we've ever eaten them around here before.  I also think it's great that Wal-Mart has potatoes.  Although I'll buy the bulk of my seed potatoes, I may buy the blue potatoes that they are selling.  I like growing a few odd things.

That's it for vegetables at Wal-Mart.  I blogged about more traditional sources for some of these here.  Go out and try to grow some of these this spring!

Spring Cleanup

I know it's not spring yet, but I feel like it motivates me to think like that, when I have pre-spring chores to do.  I needed to get out in the yard and clean up some dying plants from the dose of winter that we've been having.  I planned to tweak Ella's green roof project, pull up the onions and broccoli that were damaged recently, and start planning for chickens - I don't know when that will be, but I can plan, right?

Fixing the green roof project didn't take too long, and I pulled up the onions and some of the weeds and got bored - I've had a long week and it was a little colder than I wanted.  When I moved to the beds with the cold-damaged broccoli, I was surprised to find very nice heads on these plants, despite the dying foliage all around.  I pulled some weeds from the beds and decided we're going to have to eat some broccoli this week.

We've been talking about getting chickens for a while now.  We(I) finally got a dose of what it would be like to have chickens when neighbors went out of town for Xmas and asked us to take care of theirs.  They have five hens, two of which are laying.  I've read a lot about chickens, so I think I know how all of this works, in theory - reality is a different thing.  I had plans to build the perfect coop and henhouse with nesting boxes, etc, but the chickens hardly used the henhouse, didn't like being cooped up - they liked being free range in the yard, and they laid their eggs next to the A/C unit.  It was an eye-opening experience - now I just have to take in all I have learned when working out plans for chickens in our yard.

After the Freeze

The new year is a time for starting over.  In some ways I mean that literally around our house.  I can't say I was taken by surprise by the cold weather that hit us in early December, but I was surprised how long and how cold it was.  I could say that I was preoccupied with Ella's green roof science fair project - which I was - but the fact is, I would have been unprepared even if I hadn't been doing something else.

The extended cold really did a number on all of our winter vegetables - broccoli, onions, lettuce.  I've pretty much given up on them - I just haven't pulled them out of the ground nad thrown them into the composter yet.

I also had tender and somewhat hardy houseplants outside - only a few might live when warm weather comes around again.  Other plants I'll hold onto and see what happens to them as well.  So, I am making a sort of fresh start.  I need to get out in the garden and pull up the old vegetables and I think I'm just going to plant lettuce and spinach - it'll be more low maintenance and I can easily cover it when I have to - if I remember.

The Winter Vegetable Garden

I've been pondering the winter vegetable garden recently - rethinking it. I planted two beds of broccoli, two beds of onions, and a bed of greens - lettuce and spinach. We rarely eat broccoli - especially from the garden, I haven't successfully grown a really good onion, and our greens are nonexistent - the spinach never came up and something must have eaten our lettuce - I don't think it just died.

I need to rethink our fall planting more - I don't want to give up on onions, but I may limit myself to a half of a bed, and only one type of onion - yellow granex hybrid, also know as a Vidalia. I'll stick with the broccoli, though I'll try to grow more from seed. Robin says she's trying to sneak more vegetables into meals. I think my focus during the winter ought to be on greens. We will get the most out of them - they're usually easy to grow, cheap, replenish-able and I really enjoyed all the salads I ate last spring.

Planting Time

I just took a couple of days to organize my vegetable seeds/plants and to decide what I'm planting and where. I've narrowed my first planting down to white and yellow onion sets, broccoli plants and carrots, lettuce and spinach seeds.

Also I have three kinds of onion seeds, more lettuce and spinach seeds and broccoli seeds. I plan to use the lettuce and spinach in a succession planting. I'll probably start the broccoli in seed flats and move them to the garden when I have room. I've been wanting to try to grow onions from seed - fall is the best time to do that, but I don't have a lot more room. I'll try to squeeze them in with the carrots if I don't have too many.

If nothing interferes with my plans, I should be planting everything this weekend.

Spring Vegetable Gardening

Last weekend I finally got my potatoes and onions in the ground. While I was at it, I planted more lettuce and spinach as well. I planted so much that I had to make a diagram to know where everything is planted. Not really - I made the diagram to help me with crop rotation in the future. I planted three kinds of potatoes, two kinds of onion sets, two kinds of spinach and two kinds of lettuce.

I know I bought five pound bags of potatoes, but I don't seem to have as many as last year - there are a number of big ones, so maybe that's the reason. I got a third variety this year and ended up planting all of them in two raised beds. Last year I got white and red, and this year they also had Yukon gold. I'm expecting a better crop this year in the raised bed than I had in the ground last year.

I think I bought a pound each of white and purple onion sets. I was expecting to get yellow ones too, but they didn't have any. Until I'm am expert at this, I'm not going to be picky. I need to pay better attention to them this season. I think my biggest problem with the onions was my own neglect, so I'm going to vigilant this spring. I know everyone who plants onions uses sets, but I think when fall comes around, I'm going to try growing them from seed.

I planted Melody spinach several weeks ago, after I pulled up my broccoli. It's been growing nicely. I thought I would see about growing Space spinach as well. I planted that in the holes in the concrete blocks around one of the beds of potatoes. I'm not sure how long they will last into the warm weather, but I know at least one of them is more heat tolerant than average.

I already have lettuce growing in the garden from the winter - I think I planted it after Halloween and we have been eating on it since Xmas - but I had seeds for two more varieties I wanted to plant. Since I'm short on space I decided to plant the lettuce in the same bed with the potatoes. I've read many times about "intercropping" vegetables that have different needs, etc. In this case, the lettuce will be ready about 45 days after planting, while potatoes may take 100 days of more to mature, however you can harvest them real young as "new" potatoes. So if I can get some more lettuce without interfering with the potatoes, why not?

Instead of worrying about how much space I have in the raised beds - because I will never have enough - I've decided that one of my landscape beds is going to be part of the vegetable garden. I've got garlic planted out there right now and I had planned to watermelons and pumpkins out there as well - to give them room to spread - but I'm already thinking all the other things I can plant - cucumbers, squash, corn. I can't wait!

Onions Make Me Cry

I don't know what's wrong with the onions I planted last fall.

I never really thought about how onions grew until it started looking like mine weren't growing. I planted lots of onion sets in mid-October, well within the window for planting onions in the fall, or so I thought. Just recently, I started to wonder about those onions. They had pretty good tops on them, but when I pulled up a few, they hadn't bulbed - the bulb hadn't grown. So I decided I needed to do a little reading about onions. I found the following in The South Carolina Master Gardener Training Manual - "Short-day varieties, suited throughout South Carolina, begin to bulb when there are 10 to 12 hours of daylight." So, if onions for our area bulb when there is 10-12 hours of daylight, then the time frame for this is January 5th through March 21st in the spring and September 21 and December 3 in the fall. According to this information, onions in the fall need to planted well before mid-October.

(Just now, looking up the quote, I also read that lack of water could hinder bulb growth - so that could be my problem.)

As for planting onions in the spring, we're in that bulbing window now. I don't have mine in the ground yet - I've been too busy getting raised beds built and filled. I'll probably put out onions and potatoes in the next week. And I'm definitely going to need my landscaped beds as well - for all the potatoes and onions I have and all the summer crops I want to plant.

Time to plant onions and potatoes

It's that time of year again - well, one of them - time to plant onions and potatoes. I've had mixed results finding ones to plant over the last year or so. Last spring was the first time I had planted either. I happened to find onion sets at Lowes, but I had to go to a "feed and seed" for potatoes. The first place I called was 17-A Feed and Seed in Summerville. They normally had onions, but they hadn't gotten their supply yet, so I bought five pounds each of red and white potaotoes. I think five pounds works out to about 20-30 potatoes.

I was fairly happy with the outcome of my first time growing onions and potatoes. The onions didn't get as big as I had hoped and we harvested a lot of our potatoes as "new" potatoes, instead of waiting for them to mature. Also, let me stress the importance of hilling - mounding the soil around the potato plant once it starts growing. Some potatoes will form near the surface, actually coming out of the ground - and you don't want that. The potato will turn green and that's bad. This sounds crazy, but the potato is one of those plants that everything is poisonous except the fruit. So, we lost some potatoes to that and then the rain came. We had so much rain, flooding the garden. The remaining potatoes rotted. It didn't help that I was planting in the ground and our soil was largely clay. I've got raised beds this time, so I'm hoping for a much better crop this spring.

Last fall I planted another crop of onions, hoping to do better this time. Lowes didn't have any so I called 17-A Feed and Seed again. They didn't have any so I called Dorchester Feed and Supply. I figured they were the next closest place. They said they had some onions, but were running out. This surprised me, because it was barely time to plant - everyone must have gotten theirs early - so I went out in a hurry to buy onions. They sold white and yellow onion sets by the half pound and by the pound. I thought a half pound wouldn't be enough so I bought a pound of each. It turned out a pound probably was a couple of hundred onions - at Lowes I only got about sixty. I had so many that I was planting them everywhere I could and still had enough to give a hundred or more to a few neighbors. After buying those, I noticed Royall Ace Hardware in Mount Pleasant had the same ones as Lowes had last time.

It made sense to me that you could plant potatoes in the fall just like onions. I found a small amount of information on it, mostly planting dates for South Carolina, but no one I talked to had ever planted potatoes in the fall. They encouraged me to do it and let them know how it well it went. I didn't do it this past fall, but I plan to try this year. I think it's not more widely done, because certified seed potatoes aren't readily available that time of year. I found in a gardening catalog the other day, seed potato "eyes" for about what I would pay for potatoes in the spring. That's probably a good deal, because most prices on potatoes in catalogs probably run about $20 for the same amount you can buy at the feed and seed for $5 - the catalog does give you a larger variety. Hopefully the "eyes" will be available in the summer/fall. If not, I'll have to experiment with store-bought potatoes.It made sense to me that you could plant potatoes in the fall just like onions. I found a small amount of information on it, mostly planting dates for South Carolina, but no one I talked to had ever planted potatoes in the fall. They encouraged me to do it and let them know how it well it went. I didn't do it this past fall, but I plan to try this year. I think it's not more widely done, because certified seed potatoes aren't readily available that time of year. I found in a gardening catalog the other day, seed potato "eyes" for about what I would pay for potatoes in the spring. That's probably a good deal, because most prices on potatoes in catalogues probably run about $20 for the same amount you can buy at the feed and seed for $5 - the catalog does give you a larger variety. Hopefully the "eyes" will be available in the summer/fall. If not, I'll have to experiment with store-bought potatoes.

This spring I called both of the places I bought from in the past and they didn't have any, so I called a third place - Red Top Feed and Tackle Shop - and they had onions and potatoes this year. I went out there and got a pound each of red and yellow onions (I think - maybe white) and five pounds each of white, red and Yukon gold potaotes. That's my reason for constructing more raised beds - I have too much to plant.

PS - I had sort of a rambling about growing onions, which I'll save for a later post.

Is Vegetable Gardening Worth It?

Is vegetable gardening worth it? I have many reasons for saying this, but don't worry - I'm just playing devil's advocate. I've put in a lot of hard work building raised beds, hauling compost, pulling weeds, fretting over germinating seeds, and many other things, just to grow vegetables that aren't as large or as plentiful as those in the grocery store. And if you want a tomato in January, good luck with that one.

Because of the rain - blame El Niño - and the cold, I've been in a holding pattern for longer than I would like to be. I have raised beds to build , compost to haul and potatoes and onions to plant, and short windows of time to do these things, and for what? Potatoes are $2 for a five pound bag and onions are $3 for a three pound bag.

I was reminded of that fact when Robin and I were watching "Kitchen Nightmares" and the owner of a potato-themed restaurant was ecstatic when she was given free potatoes - we looked at each other like, "She must not know how much potatoes cost!"

I doubt my abilities some times, especially when I make big plans - I wonder if I can pull it off. Last year I had plans to grow everything from seed, from flowers to vegetables, but things didn't go as planned. I'm afraid I will have the same luck again this year, but I know better. I've learned a lot since then and hopefully have planned better this time. I have plans for a cold frame in the yard for seed starting. All I need are my seeds from Park Seed - I'm still waiting on them.

Biding My Time

I bought onions and potatoes last week and I decided I needed to build a few more raised beds to plant them in - quickly. Originally I decided that over the next several days I would buy concrete blocks - I need 16 for a bed and I don't want to load down my car too much - set up the beds over the weekend when I was off and get Robin to pick up Ella from school so I could go get compost after work two or three days next week. I wanted to get everything ready, so I can plant by early-mid February.

I thought that it might be easier if I could get a day off from work next week. I would still work on building the beds, but I would use that one day to make a few trips to the landfill for compost. Work has been a little busy lately and the best I could do for a day off was maybe Tuesday. That meant I had to get the beds laid out this weekend. Well, that's not going to happen now.

It has been raining steadily since last night and the low predicted for tonight is 20 degrees - again on Sunday night - so I'll have to wait until it dries out before I can get out there and work. I've accepted the fact that I have to bide my time until my next day off before I can go get compost and plant. It'll be early-mid February and that's still a good time to get onions and potatoes in the ground.

Ramblings

I'm gearing up for Spring planting by laying out new beds, trying to maximize our space. I was going to interplant vegetables with other landscape plants, but I came up with a garden plan that I like - separate from other landscaping. I still may plant a few veggies other places, especially those that need room, like pumpkins and watermelons.

I bought onions and potatoes today, and, as usual, I bought more than I have room for - so I'll have to find places for them elsewhere in the yard - maybe. I was out in the yard today and realized I had room for an extra bed or two, and I'll need them if I want to plant all of the potatoes I bought. It also means I need to get moving on building the beds and filling them - so I can hurry up and plant. Looking at my raised beds, I realized the first one I built is different than the second one - the one I'm basing my future beds on. To see the first bed, click here.

The pond has been looking sad lately. It needs to be cleaned out, but also the pumps were slowly getting clogged - causing the waterfall to slow to almost a trickle. I really didn't want to have to stick my hand in there for any length of time. I thought it would only take a few minutes so I decided to brave it this afternoon. I got them cleaned out within about ten minutes, and the waterfall is rushing again. Getting a close look at the pond today made me realize that I need to clean out leaves, dead plants, etc. I remember last winter draining the pond halfway, wading in and cleaning leaves off the bottom, but that will have to wait for a very warm day - today the water temperature was 56 degrees!

New Year, New Raised Bed

The past couple of weeks, I've felt very unmotivated to work in the yard. There hasn't been much sun left when I got home from work, and the temperature was starting to drop. When I have been home early, I just haven't felt like going back outside. It's rained some too - enough to make it no fun to work in the mud.

I saw no end in sight, with Ella starting school on Monday - so I had to give myself a big push and tell myself that it was my last best chance to get stuff done. It must have worked, because I got another raised bed almost ready to plant in two afternoons.

Wednesday afternoon, I swung by Lowe's near work and picked up ten cinder blocks. I wasn't sure how many I needed, but they're heavy and I didn't want to load down the car too much. When I got home I discovered I only needed only five more, so I immediately ran to Lowe's near home before traffic got bad. When I got back I laid them out and leveled them. Now they were ready for the compost.

Even though I'm off on New Year's Day, my only chance to get compost from the county landfill was after work on Thursday. I knew it might rain, but as long as it wasn't raining more than a light drizzle, I would still go. When I left work the rain was holding off, so I decided to go. I put plastic down in the back of our hatchback and I was off. When you buy compost by the ton at the landfill, they weigh your vehicle entering and leaving and you pay $10 a ton for the difference. I had been there in the rain before and it wasn't that bad, but today was just extremely muddy. I was having to scoop right on the surface of the pile to get the fluffiest and driest stuff. The deeper I dug, the wetter and more compact it was. It was a slow process - I also suspected that it would weigh more and I'd be paying a little extra because of it.

I loaded the car as full as I dared and then left to be weighed. 520 pounds of compost cost me a whopping $2.60. The landfill and the recycling center sell the same compost for $2 per bag - the bags probably weigh 40 pounds. Going to the landfill may be a little more effort, but it's well worth the price difference.

Once I got home, I backed the car as close to the garden as possible and shoveled it into a wheelbarrow and dumped it into the new raised bed, repeating that process four or five times. So, I'm nearly ready to plant in the new bed - I thought I would plant more lettuce or spinach, but I realized I have only a month before I will need to plant more onions and potatoes, so that bed may sit fallow until February. Our broccoli is close to being over done, so I may pull that out and plant spinach there - we'll see. I've got places to put possibly five more raised beds. As I'm thinking about the warm-season vegetables I want to plant, I may need all of those. I've posted a diagram of my raised beds here.

Yet More Vegetable Gardening

I've been researching vegetable gardening a lot lately. I'm trying to get organized so I can have a year-round garden. I attempted this a year ago, but I had less experience. I've learned a lot since then - like the difference between long-day and short-day onions. I also tended to get sidetracked with other gardening projects) I wanted to plant pumpkins for Halloween, but I missed the early-July planting time), but this year I HAVE A PLAN. It's a vegetable gardening chart I compiled from fact sheets at the Clemson Extension's Home and Garden Information Center. There are charts that tell you when to plant in your region, fertility needs, which varieties do well in South Carolina and which family they belong to, so you can do proper crop rotation. I pared down some of the information to suit my needs. There are many vegetables I don't plan to grow, so I deleted those.

This will give me a schedule to stick to - I've even ordered my first set of seeds from Park Seed tonight - onion seeds I want to try and lettuce and spinach for several plantings through the winter and spring. I've got at least two places I know that I can get onion sets and potatoes from when the time comes, so I feel that I am off to a good start. I hope I can keep up the momentum.

More Fall Vegetable Gardening

Fall is definitely in the air. We've had some unexpected cold nights in the past week. The first morning I worried about my plants - especially the tender houseplants that have been outside since the Spring, and the plant swap stuff that are still sitting in the driveway. We've had more cool nights - mid to high forties - and everything have been fine, though it has gotten me to think about what I plant to do with these plants during the winter. I even dreamed that the temperature dropped to 20º and all my plants died!

I've collected numerous houseplants and tender succulents since the Spring, and the reckoning is coming soon. Most of these I picked up off the street, their owners having abandoned them, so I wouldn't be losing out financially, but I'd hate to see these plants that I "rescued" die. Last year I had some metal shelves that I wrapped in clear plastic that I bought at Dollar Tree. It was quite thin, but it was large enough to double up, and when it got too cold, like last winter, I threw some old quilts over it at night. I ended up losing a lot of succulents I was propagating for the Spring Plant Swap. This year I'd like to get some thick plastic sheeting and line the garden storage/greenhouse area and possibly wrap shelves again.

Yet another garden injury!

Despite having sliced my toe pretty good Tuesday morning - first my hand, now my foot - I managed to get a lot done around the yard on Wednesday. Robin said she was planning to do laundry on Tuesday and I wanted her to wash my garden gloves - I started wearing gloves since my last accident. I had replied to a post on Craigslist last week - someone wanting help in their yard in exchange for plants. I couldn't pass that up - free plants and something to blog about. So, while I was out in the yard around six in the morning looking for my gloves, I stepped on something that sliced down the side of my big toe. I cleaned it and put a band-aid on it and called work. I really thought I would be fine in a couple of days.

Of course I had to cancel my plans to work in someone else's yard for plants. After getting a good look at her list of plants, it wasn't that disappointing to miss out. Several of the plants I already had - hidden ginger, taro, canna. She had a few varieties of canna that I wanted for a bed I might make over the winter.

I had Wednesday off and I really didn't go back to the doctor - "you again?" I limped around on Tuesday, but after walking the dogs in the evening, it really hurt. We thought we might go to the doctor on Wednesday, but my toe felt pretty good in the morning. Robin was insistent that I be sure I could go to work on Thursday. She suggested I walk around the block and see how I feel. If it hurt after that, then we would go to the doctor, but it felt pretty good.

I planned to try to work in the yard. I had a long list so I started with the easiest stuff and thought I would see how I felt. I ended up doing almost everything on my list. We've got a few stumps that keep sprouting and I keep cutting them back. I've tried various things - salt, vinegar, etc - to kill them but but nothing has worked. The next thing I'm going to try is smothering them with black trash bags - no light and no water will kill them hopefully. We've got oaks and maples in our azalea hedges that I've been meaning to do that to.

I finished planting all the vegetables for the Fall. I planted (more) onions and lettuce in the raised bed and broccoli and garlic in one of the beds out front. I seemed to do ok this past Spring with broccoli, but there just wasn't enough - and the last of it bolted when we were out of town. (Doesn't that sound like it ran away while we were gone?) I have 18 plants this time, so we'll see how much we actually get.

I had a little trouble with onions in the Spring. The sets were planted all the in the ground, meaning the bulbs were completely covered, and not in a raised bed. We had a few heavy rains in the Spring and some of the onions didn't like all that wet clay soil. Last Summer I sa my neighbor, Mr. Hiers, had his onions planted almost right on top of the soil, so the only thing in the ground were the roots. It looked like he had a pretty good crop. I'm trying it his way this time. I'm sure it will be an improvement over last time, especially in the raised bed.

The last thing I planted was garlic. I've never grown it before, but I thought I would give it a try. I bought three garlic bulbs and peeled them and broke off the cloves. They tell you to plant only the biggest ones, but I figured I would plant all of them and see what happens. I have the 10-12 larger cloves in one area out front and then I put the rest of them behind them. probably 15-20 more. They won't be ready to harvest until summer so it's really an investment of time and space. Robin's excited as well. She's never cooked with garlic cloves before, so we'll both be learning something new.

I have one more thing to mention - I got a free pineapple plant off craigslist today. It was posted a few days ago, but it was crazy trying to get up with this person to actually get it. I finally had to go to her house today and get it. She's been trying to give one to someone else in my neighborhood, so I volunteered to hold it for this guy to pick up at our house. We'll see if he actually comes to get it. I might end up with two.

Fall Vegetable Garden

I finally started planting my fall vegetable garden. I went a long time without having anything in the ground, so I'm trying to catch up. My raised bed is finished for the most part and full of compost. This past week I bought onion sets - yellow and white - and some broccoli plants. I looked for lettuce plants, but the ones I saw were real leggy. I'll try again this weekend, and I'll also look for lettuce seeds and spinach seeds.

The feed store where I bought the onions, sold them either by the pound or half pound. With a lot of things, a pound doesn't sound like very much to me, but when it comes to onion sets, it is. I think I planted close to fifty onions so far and I haven't even put a dent in them. I looked into storing them until spring, but it seems like a lot of work and they're very cheap.

I wanted to plant something in the holes of the concrete blocks as an experiment. Since I don't know what will happen, I decided to plant onions - since I have so many of them - and hope for the best. I'll let you know how it goes.

When I got compost for the raised bed a couple of weeks ago, I went ahead and filled almost the whole bed. After reading about planting in compost, the consensus is that it is best as an ammendment to the soil. So, before I planted the raised bed, I went around the yard, digging holes, putting that soil in the garden, and putting compost in those holes. I've done that with half the bed, where I planted broccoli, and in the block holes, where I planted white onions. If I can clean out most of the dollar weed in my other beds, I'll be doing the same thing with the other half of the bed.

I feel like I don't have nearly enough room in this bed for everything I'd like to plant. I'm probably going to plant lettuce, spinach and garlic in any space I can out in the flower bed. Wish me luck.

Revamping the Vegetable Garden - Again

July is the worst time in the vegetable garden, I think. It's so hot that it's a wonder anything will grow. It's when the squirrels , birds or rats(?) have found the tomatoes and this year it was when we took our vacation. Since we were going to be gone for more than a week and our garden would go to heck, I decided to start the process of revamping the garden early.

I decided to do raised beds again, but this time I'm using something inexpensive, but durable - concrete blocks. I really didn't want to do raised beds, but our yard had some flooding issues this spring - the last of our potatoes rotted and our bush bean seedings didn't like being in standing water - I can understand that. I've done raised beds before out of wood, but I had problems with rot and wood is expensive. I really considered pressure-treated landscape timbers, but I would have to use too many to get any kind of height. We are talking about raised beds here. We have some neighbors who made their beds from concrete blocks, two blocks high, and they really like them. I think for starters I'm only going to do one row of blocks - that's eight inches, which I think is a respectable height.

I've done the math and I think I can fit three to four 4x8 concrete block raised beds in the part of the yard we use as our vegetable garden. Before we left on our trip, I started on preparations. Since our most recent vegetable garden was hastily laid out and dug, I've had a huge problem controlling weeds and grass. I laid extra pieces of pond liner (EDPM/PVC) - black rubber, essentially) over the area that will be the future garden. It's been down almost three weeks now - I glanced under the edge and it doing a pretty good job of killing the grass. In addition to depriving it of light and water, the black plastic is also cooking the soil - killing weed seeds , etc. I'll be leaving it at least another week and then I'll be laying out the first of three or four raised beds.

It looks like I'll have plenty to plant in the next few weeks, from late summer crops tomatoes and beans to fall crops like onions, garlic, lettuce and maybe potatoes(?). All of my neighbors that "farm" have never planted potatoes in the fall, but the local planting guide says you can. I'll have to try it and see how they grow. I'll let you know.

Onions

Like I wrote before, I wanted to grow everything from seed - and that included onions. From what I had read, one had more choice/variety when onions were grown from seed. As much variety you were likely to find with onion sets was red or white, I also read. Friends tried to discourage me - they said sets were the easiest way, but I wanted to grow from seed - I also knew that if things didn't work out, I could still plant sets.

I digress: I experimented with onion sets last year. I knew I had planted them too late, but I wanted to see what would happen. By the time the tops fell over and died (with a little help from some aggressive squash!), they were about the size of a quarter. I pulled them out we ate them anyway.

So, I ordered various onion seeds from a catalog, choosing various kinds that sounded cool, like Walla Walla Sweet, Super Star, Yellow Sweet Spanish and Greek Salad and I planted them. But while those seeds were sprouting, I learned something important about onions. There are two different types - long day and short day - and I didn't understand the difference until recently. I was under the impression that since the South has longer days, we would grow long day onions . Not so - Onions are a cool season crop so they grow during cooler weather. In the North, that can be during summer when the days are longer, but in the South, onions are grown late winter/early spring or late fall/early winter during cooler weather, when the days are shorter.

So I went to Lowes and bought onion sets. There were a few different varieties - I don't remember what red onions there were, but the white onions they had were Yellow Granex Hybrid(like Vidalia onions) and Texas Sweet. I bought the Yellow Granex and planted half of the 64 that came in a bundle and they seem to be doing fine. I'll keep you posted.

On a similar note, there are some other onions I'm curious about. One is the Egyptian walking onion. Instead of small sets, you plant one large onion bulb and it produces baby onions on a stalk. When the stalk dies and falls over, the small onions form another plant where they land, hence the "walking". There are other onions that are small and cluster, that are possibilities. When I know more I'll let you know.

Seed Starting

I thought I would get a head start this year if I grew my own vegetables and flowers from seed. Boy, was I wrong! I don't think I anticipated how early I should have been starting various seeds. I started seeds in January and February for cool season crops like lettuce, broccoli, spinach, cauliflower and onions. They took their time germinating - some didn't at all. (I know that some of them were last year's seeds, but still.)

I thought I was making progress, but I didn't have anything to compare it to...until I went to Lowes. Nothing will make you less inclined to grow from seed than visiting Lowes in mid February. I am exaggerating...a little. I did buy a few things there, but I was determined to see this growing from seed thing through. I bought onion sets - it seems the seeds I started were the wrong kind for my area. (More on onions another time) I bought heading lettuce - it was so much larger than what I had grown up to that point. I also bought broccoli - my seeds hadn't germinated. I will be buying tomatoes as well - you get the picture.

My successes? I consider the sweet corn I transplanted to the garden Wednesday a success. Ditto on the sunflower seedlings I put in the front yard at the same time. Also I have a fair amount of Black Eyed Susans and Purple Coneflowers and a few Hibiscuses that I will be transplanting soon.

On a related note, last year my mother-in-law gave me a grow-your-own-kitchen-herbs kit that she bought at Goodwill. I had no expectations of getting any plants out of it, not knowing how old it was. So I wasn't surprised when nothing happened. She gave me another one this year, maybe for Xmas, and I waited until a week or two ago to start the seeds. To my surprise, most of the seeds germinated - Basil, Parsley and Corriander, but not the Thyme. I'll keep you posted on those.