Farming Anecdotes

I've had a few busy weeks lately and it doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon.  I hope to have time to work on this blog soon, but we'll have to see.  One of the things I was busy with this week was visiting with a college friend who was in town.  We went out to dinner one night with several people, including his parents.  I knew his dad did some farming, so I was excited to talk to him about that.  Being a master gardener is something completely different than being a farmer - each may have a lot of expertise, but in my case, it's the farmer that has the life experience and wisdom.

I started the conversation by asking him what he was growing.  He's got peas and onions going right now, with potatoes next week - I said I had peas and just planted potatoes, and planned to put onions in the ground next week.  We talked about growing watermelons in Varnville - if it's not, it ought to be the watermelon capital of the world: I asked him about powdery mildew - he said you had to get them in the ground early, about March 15th.  Very little automation has come to the world of watermelon farming.  The seeds go in by hand and they are harvested by hand.  He told me how many acres he used to farm, but I forgot.  I asked him about late spring frosts and he said they used to set tires out in the field and burn them.  The cover of smoke would keep the frost off of the plants.  He said he reckons that they probably couldn't do that nowadays.  I'm sure he's right about that.

Weeds and Watermelons

I feel like I've done a lot in the yard during the past week - it's been mostly weed pulling and brush clearing, but there were some weeds I was going to have trouble getting to.  They were in and around what has become my watermelon patch.  I didn't plan on having one of those - I was trying to trellis the plants so they would be neat and orderly, and sometimes you can't do that.  I finally let them take over a corner of the garden, and they have paid me back with a few surprises.

I started cleaning up the area the other day by pulling all the weeds that the watermelon vines weren't growing through, and then I got out there tonight to do the more tedious part.  I began finding watermelon vines, making sure they didn't have any fruit on them, and following them back to main plant and pruning them.  I can't tell you how much I cut back, but it was a lot.  I must have been a little careless, because I accidentally cut a vine that had a watermelon attached.  It wasn't all bad - a 14-pounder that's supposed to grow to 15-20 pounds.

I knew about two fruits growing in the tangle of vines, but I found a third one last week.  When I moved it out of the way tonight, I discovered it was split on the bottom.  The chickens were nearby so I broke it open and gave it to the chickens.  That would have been three fruits, counting the one I accidentally harvested and the one still growing, but I found another one - this one is very small, but that means we'll get to save it for later.

Summer Vegetable Garden

Flowering Purple Majesty Potatoes

Our vegetable garden is coming along nicely these days.  I'm close to adding another bed, and adding a composting pile - also, I just added trellises that I really like.  Since my seed starting didn't go as planned this year, I needed to go out and buy a few plants.

I went to Lowe's this morning with the intention of buying squash, pepper and tomato plants and watermelon seeds, and came home with:

Crookneck Squash
Better Boy Tomatoes
Red Bell Peppers
Sweet Banana Peppers
Crimson Sweet Watermelons

To me, the cost can really add up when buying vegetable plants.  I try to find the best deal by looking at the price and the number of seedlings in the pack.  A number of 4-packs, for example, will have more than one per section.  It might not be the best idea to divide these plants, but it's worth trying.  There were nine tomato plants in the 4-pack that I bought this morning.  I divided the tomato plants and planted the three largest ones in the garden, stripping off lower branches and planting them deeper, to encourage a better root structure.  I also potted the other six and I'll either leave them in pots or plant them in the garden at a later date.  I put the plants next to one of my new trellises, hoping to use it to support the tomatoes as they grow.

I got 5 banana peppers, but I had a hard time finding bell peppers.  I looked for a long time and only found green ones - I finally found individual pots of red bell peppers instead of multi-packs.  I bought two pots of those which got me 4 plants.  I had planned to put the squash in the same bed, but after planting the peppers, there wasn't enough room - knowing how big the squash plants will get.  I had plans to devote a whole field to corn - when I say "field", I really mean a 4 x 8 bed  - but I needed more room to plant the squash.  I almost have a "3 Sisters" garden going on there.

Before I went to Lowe's, I planned to buy watermelon seeds - they were cheap and I have all summer, right?  So, when I was looking at all of the vegetable plants, I ran across watermelons.  There were a couple of different varieties - one would grow 20 pound fruit or the other, Crimson Sweet, would grow to about 10 pounds.  I chose the Crimson Sweet variety for a couple of reasons - I grew it last year and it is a recommended variety of the Clemson Extension, and I plan to trellis these plants.  I don't know how well this will work, but I thought I might have better luck with smaller fruit than trying to support 20 pound watermelons on a trellis.

Wish me luck and hopefully this season will be great!

Front Yard Garden

I was glad to be off this past Wednesday, because I still had plants I wanted to get in the ground - and it took me longer than expected. I was expanding the vegetable garden into the beds in the front yard and had to move the plants that were there. After taking Ella to school, I went by the recycling center to get some compost, but they were out. I thought this was a little strange, but it was Earth Week and there is a sale on compost during April, according to Ken Burger's column in today's paper. It was also raining sporadically, so with two strikes against working in the yard, I took the morning off.

Once I made it outside, I started clearing the bed of plants - mostly lilies, but also a citrus that survived the winter that I had to pot up. After digging up the six or seven clumps of lilies - crinum asiaticum(I think) - I decided that, since I didn't know where they were going yet, until I do, I should pot them up for now. I was thinking about doing a mass planting somewhere, but don't know just yet. And while I'm digging, I figure I should go ahead and divide the clumps - they're quite large. I spent the rest of the morning and through lunchtime dividing and potting the lilies, ending up with 35 of them, some having multiple bulblets too small to divide.

I had an afternoon of non-gardening activities to do, so it was early evening before I got back to work. I worked some compost from a near-empty raised bed into the front garden and laid out three hills for squash, a place for watermelon to roam and room for supports for cucumbers and gourds. I planted nine Early Prolific Straightneck squash in the three hills and four watermelon vines, but I still need to get supports for the cukes and some for beans as well.

We had some much needed rain this weekend and the corn I planted a week ago is coming up, So everything is going well.

2010 Vegetable Garden Planning

It seems that I am doing more vegetable gardening than anything else these days. I'd like to write about a variety of topics, but this is monopolizing my gardening time lately. It's still at least three weeks before I plant potatoes and onions and maybe more lettuce and spinach, and I'm already planning the vegetables for the summer. It seemed a little early when I was looking through my Park Seed catalog Sunday night, but as I thought about it, some of the vegetables will be transplanted to the garden in late March, after having been started from seed six weeks earlier - around the second week of February. After I realized that, I felt like I was almost late. So, these are my choices from the Park Seed catalog - most of these varieties are recommended for our area by the Clemson Extension and can be found in my vegetable garden chart.

Pole Beans - Kentucky Wonder, Blue Lake, Kentucky Blue
Kentucky Blue looks likes the best, but I've grown the other two, so I might get all three. I'll be able to compare the three and see which ones I want to grow in the future.

Sweet Corn - Early Sunglow, Silver Queen
These are regular sweet varieties, rather than a super sweet or sugar-enhanced hybrid. The Early Sunglow can be planted earlier than normal, so we'll get corn through the whole growing season.

Cucumber - Sweet Slice, Diva, Sweet Success(seedless), Salad Bush
I know we won't eat all these cucumbers, but I thought I might grow one. The Salad Bush variety looks like the one for us. The catalog calls it "a space-saving slicing cuke".

Watermelon - Sweet Beauty Hybrid
I know we might only eat a slice or two of watermelon, It's always good to have one to eat in the summer, and if I have more, I'll give them to neighbors or take one to a fourth of July party.

Peanuts - Gregory
I've never grown peanuts before, but I thought I would give them a try. I have to figure out how many plants I need to get about two pounds of peanuts. I boiled some peanuts a couple of summers ago in the crock pot and they turned out pretty well.

Pumpkin - Autumn Gold, Howden, Big Moon
I don't know if I'll grow all of these varieties. They are very different, so I thought I might try them all. Autumn Gold pumpkins are 7-10 pounds. Howdens will be 20-30 pounds. According to the catalog, Big Moon may produce 150 pound fruit. I think my brother-in-law grew some of these huge pumpkins a couple of years ago and I'm just a little curious.

Squash - Early Summer Crookneck, Enterprise (straightneck)
To the best of my knowledge these are bush type squash and I'd really like a vining type. Squash take up a lot of space and I'd like to grow these on a trellis of some sort if I can. Several years ago, I bought a squash plant from Lowes and it was a vining type. Ever since, I've ended up with bush type, and I'd rather not have that. If I can't find what I'm looking for, I think one of my neighbors grows it and probably has some seeds I can have.

Tomatoes
I'm still looking at tomatoes - I haven't decided which variety to grow yet. Everything I read about them, talks about how many diseases they can have, so I don't think I'm planting them in the garden ever again. I'm planning to use five-gallon buckets to grow them in from now on. I can put them anywhere and it'll leave room in the garden for other veggies.

Peppers
Same goes for the peppers. There's even more variety of peppers than tomatoes, or it seems like. I'm planning to get a few varieties of bell and sweet peppers for Robin.

Sunflowers
I'll probably get a mix of sunflowers and stagger plantings through the year, so we'll have them for a long time.

Coneflowers
I'm planning to get the four different varieties that Park Seed has.

Strawberries
I've got to learn a little more about strawberries before I buy any. They're sold as plants, so I have some time before I need to order them.