Posted on 05/08/2015 1:13:04 PM PDT by greeneyes
The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no telling where it will go and... that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us!
NOTE: This is a once a week ping list. We do post to the thread during the week. Links to related articles and discussions which might be of interest are welcomed, so feel free to post them at any time.
It means a respite from digging in Hubby's soon to be tomato and pepper patches, and carrying 5 gallon buckets for watering some of the beds. Plus the rain barrels are filled up again.
Speaking of rain barrels, it is skeeter time, and hubby had me get some skeeter dunks for the swimming pool and rain barrels. I just want to mention an alternate treatment that I have sometimes used - it works. Just float a spoonful of vegetable oil in the water - skeeters can't grow.
It's been a busy week with such nice sun shiny days that I have spent most of my time gardening, harvesting, and cooking or preserving stuff. Today I have to hit the housecleaning hard, get some food prep done for Sunday, and hit the supermarket specials.
The lemons are now about the size of ping pong balls. 17 of the tomatoes are transplanted into gallon containers and awaiting the final transplant into 5 gallon buckets. 7 tomato starts in 5 oz Dixie cups are in desperate need of transplant, so I may go ahead and put them in gallon buckets for a while, since I still need to pick up the buckets and clean them up.
Hubby's target date is May 15 for transplanting his tomatoes and peppers, and I have a little over 1/3 of that bed prepared - so that's my priority for next week's project.
I have one winter density lettuce head left and two Winter giant spinach left to harvest on Sunday for Mother's Day Salad. Most of the rye has been harvested and grass trimmings used for mulch.
Sunday I'll be starting my next batch of yogurt, and grinding some more wheat for bread. Last batch of pretty good, but still a bit too sour for Hubby-but a big improvement over the traditional week long starter process. I thought it was pretty good, but I like the tartness of sour dough.
The scraggly potatoes that I got into the ground have actually come up and are about 6 inches tall - if I get any potatoes, I'll be surprised. One of the fruit trees in the orchard by the walnut tree has pea sized fruit - kinda looks like a plum.
It's a mystery tree. The metal tag got lost, the map we drew says nectarine, but we never ordered one of those, and it is too cold to live here anyway. It was the first tree to bloom this year, and it had white blossums all over it, and bees just swarmed it like crazy. I thought surely it was one of those ornamental pear trees. So we shall see what happens from here.
Have a great weekend. God Bless.
Pinging the List.
Does anybody do biointensive? I’m curious if the 2-6 times greater harvest is true.
Glad to hear that you've got rain .
Here in Western NY we have what Joe Bastardi last weekend called :" Suddenly Summer"
No rain yet , but expected this weekend.
Keep going ,..and growing !
I’ve been potting up a flat or two of beautiful Israeli Sweet peppers today...I hope any musloids that happen to drive by don’t consider it an ‘act of provocation’...
Tomato plants and peppers have been in the garden for three weeks. All have little fruits showing and we’re optimistic that we’ll have red cherry tomatoes in 10 or 15 days.
Today’s rain knocked down the awful oak pollen. It was beginning to be impossible to mow the grass without a bandana around my nose.
Some kind of cut worm destroyed our cucumbers. We had these plants protected with tin foil but they still got to them. Looks like we’ll have room for something else, bought at the farmer’s market tomorrow.
I bought 4 tiny cayenne peppers locally for $1.98 and they have their own home in a big pot next to the raised beds. Don’t know why we didn’t start these with the rest back in February.
Rain is a blessing...
28 x 80 Garden area rototilled. Pole beans in. bush beans in. First 4 rows of corn in. Cucumbers in. Zucchini in.
Life is good.
I feel like a slacker. My mom’s roses are blooming and they look beautiful. So nice to have them for Mother’s Day. Last year only three roses bloomed and so these “new” ones are just a delight to see and smell. All the plants I put in last year are thriving. I even had some surprises. I’ve not planted the tomato plants I started from seeds. I’ve not even got around to planting some shade plants I got for the front yard. Like I said, slacker.
Hello Everyone!
BEGIN INSTALLMENT 7 on SOILS
SOIL TESTS SERVE 2 BASIC FUNCTIONS:
1.) Provide base line starting point to develop soil improvement plans
2.) Monitor the nutrient levels to keep fertilizer program on track
TEST A MINIMUM of EVERY 3 – count ‘em: THREE YEARS [more often, like once a year - is ideal]
PROPER PROCEDURES: [in order to reduce errors – TAKING AN IMPROPER SAMPLE IS THE GREATEST CAUSE OF ERROR!]
1) The labs will use a tsp for the test sample. 1 acre weighs 2 million tons. Your tsp for an area will reflect the composition of the area you test.
2) Recognize that a field or garden area will have nutrient variability.
He showed a rectangular field or plot with different areas of nutrient concentration plotted. The top right corner showed a 45 lbs/acre concentration from a sample of that corner. A concentration along the right border shows a concentration of a hemisphere with 25 lbs/acre of nitrogen, with a ring around that of 28 lbs/acre. Along the left border is a hemisphere of 102 lbs/acre, with a ring around that of 75 lbs/acre. The rest of the field is about 34 lbs/acre of nitrogen.
How do you get around the Variability in a field or plot?
There followed a discussion in which he showed several fields with hot spots to illustrate Variability.
One of the pix was a field with several intermittent patches of vibrant green, with the rest of the grass being somewhat brown, or less intense green. Finally we were told (or someone guessed) that these patches were due to cow patty distribution!
So the way around variability is to take 20 cores from different areas of your field or plot to make a representative composite in order to get a good soil test result.
If you have a *field or garden plot, you need to take about 15-20 samples.
*For a flower bed, take 4-5 samples.
*For a pot, take a few from different areas of your pot.
3) How do I take the sample? Several different ways are available. Can use a bucket and a small auger drill and catch the samples in your bucket. Can also use a trowel with your bucket. OR can use Sample Probe. Check with county ag extension office to see if they have one of them available.
BE SURE TO USE A CLEAN [circle “clean” in red for emphasis!] BUCKET!!!!
BE SURE TO GET SAMPLES FROM 6 inches deep.
[In real time, the above info from start of installment 1 to here took us until our lunch break!]
After you have taken your bucket samples, you mix them very well.
Then you will place a much smaller amount into the sample bag. Check with your county ag agent if they have cloth sample bags available. Otherwise, a CLEAN ziplock bag would be adequate. [Texokie note: I do not seem to have written in my notes how much soil should be in the sample bag. Since they will take only a tea spoon for the test, about a cup would probably be max.]
MARK IDENTIFICATION ON YOUR SAMPLE BAG! VERY IMPORTANT! Place of course your name, etc, and critical to your ability to use sample info if you send in more than one, would be identify what the sample represents. Ie, “South 40” or “From the strawberry pot” or “Garden plot” or “Rose bed.” …etc [Texokie note: Again, check with your own county agent to find out what they want on their sample bag ids. There is also a submission form that Oklahoma labs require. I think the ag agent fills it out, but your state may be different. As you can see, your new best friend needs to be your County Ag Agent!]
Get it to your county ag agent to send to the lab. [Texokie note: In Oklahoma, they will deal with public directly, but prefer to have the agent be the intermediary. You will want to check with your own county to find out testing policies.]
WHAT DO WE TEST SOILS FOR?
At OSU, the ROUTINE TEST:
Primary Test:
pH, buffer index, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium - The prof noted that in Oklahoma, the tendency these days in most fields is that potassium is actually too high. It is rare any more to find deficiencies in phosphorus.
Secondary Test: Not routine
Sulphate, Magnesium, Calcium
Tertiary Test: Not routine
Micronutrients: iron, zinc, boron [re boron: when it is low, your plants will have deficiencies and be affected. If it is too high, it will be toxic and plants will be affected.]
Other Nutrients that can be tested for: sulfur, Chlorine, Copper, Molybdenum, Manganese.
Other Tests Available: Not routine
Soil Organic Matter
Texture
Soil Salinity - you might want to test for this if you have white powder precipitates. Rain can push salts out to evaporate. Pots can be very subject to this as well. Some salts can be leached out. Some cant be, and you must add gypsum. Not always able to remedy some salts. Crude oil is not very bad for soil as the volatiles will dissipate. However, salts can be more difficult to remedy.
WHAT WILL I SEE ON MY SOIL REPORT?
1) pH
2) Buffer Index – tells how much lime to apply. 1 acre = 43,560 square feet. This equation can be used as the conversion factor for the lbs/1000 square feet for smaller gardens.
***[Texokie SHOUT OUT to Johnny, Marcella, and other thread participants to help with the crunch conversion to obtain the amount for a smaller garden!THANX!]***
3) NO3-N (lbs/A)
[Texokie note: He was going like lightening here, and my notes are somewhat obscure. This is what I show under NO3-N:
Surface
Subsoil
Soil Test P Index
Soil Test K Index
Next up we will get into Soil Test Interpretation/Fertilizing strategies.
End installment 7 on SOIL
I do some of the biointensive and sq. foot gardening stuff.
I have around sixteen 3x4 ft beds, so not that much space, and I do plant everything as close together as I can. This helps to eliminate weeding, but if you get the plants too close together, the roots will invade each other’s space, and the crop will be impacted.
I don’t plant in flats, I use 3 or 5 oz. Dixie cups sitting in plastic lids(from deli cakes and cookies etc) to catch the water drainage. Peel off the paper cup and plant.
About half of my beds are too near a walnut tree, so I am limited in what can be planted, there. Plus, watering that area is difficult, so one summer crop and fall plantings for winter cover crops/compost material or mulch is what happens there.
My prime space is next to my patio and most of that has a retaining wall, and there is an electric receptacle there. As soon as a space opens up from harvest, I plant something else after giving it a good dose of compost and organic food. More or less using the sq. foot gardening method for distance between plants. These spaces get spring summer and fall plantings either transplants or direct planting. One or two are for the winter garden, the rest is fallow/compost heap of leaves and yard waste or cover crops.
In the fall, I plant my winter garden which is cold hardy lettuce, spinach, garlic, carrots - this will go under row covers, and additional protections as needed depending on the weather. I also grow winter rye, winter wheat, and vetch on a rotating basis. My corn is planted in the beds where I planted winter rye.
Sometimes I get a bit lazy, and don’t get it all done, but that means another compost bed for leaves etc.
Biointensive can quickly wear out your soil, unless you are attentive to replenishing it, which means a little more than half of your planting area is crops which have lots of compost value. Such as wheat, rye etc - lots of biomass/carbon.
I am doing a happy dance! The season has arrived! LOL
LOL. musloids? Don’t you mean Amish?
Nahhhhh...the Amish are a kind and gentle people...Ann Barnhardt’s ‘musloids’ works for me.
Dang snails! One pepper plant got whacked purty good. I DHSed the snails to the far side.
Tomatoes are growing gangbusters.. Lots of blossoms and fruit.. Most of the fruit trees look OK.. A couple are late bloomers.. Damn the drought.. And globull varming!!
I did, however get a BUNCH of herbs that I'm using in the kitchen.
Thank goodness for those. I'm doing home-made pizza tonight.
/johnny
BTW .. Where does one buy a good grain grinder these days?
We used to have Hugh ones on the farm in the granary.
I save my tuna cans and pour cheap beer in them for the snails and slugs. Have you ever tried that?
I had a passing thought on the beer. Lol
I am pretty organic .. Ain’t had tuna here in ages . ;-)
Its salmon these days.
Wednesday evening, it hailed. We were expecting rain, but the hail we were not. It battered the snot out of most of my garden, destroyed all but one hop plant, tore through the leaves on my squash and tobacco and beat down many of my tomato plants. I ran outside and grabbed as much as I could and started dragging it in the house, but by that point, the damage was done.
I've spent the last couple mornings before work nursing what's left, which ain't much, in the hopes that it will pick back up. Time will tell.
Cutworms - can’t remember what the exact name is at the moment, but there is a kind for which collars don’t work. IIRC can cut the stalk up about a foot from the ground.
Didn’t ever find a good solution to the problem other than to check them out at midnight, and pick the murders off the stalks to dispose of them.
Hubby was at our local Walmart the other day, and while most of the tomato plants were in the $3 to $4 range, they actually had a big plant for around $13 dollars. $13 dollars buys a lot of seeds.
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