M
Mr_Yan
Guest
The season is not all the way over but there are several things I learned that I need to record so I don't repeat them too much.
Community garden:
- Don't plant dense rows of sunflowers over squash. The dwarf sunflowers I planted were to attract pollinators to the winter squash but I failed to thin them out. With that the sunflowers out competed the squash and I will have next to no squash or pumpkins.
- Mulch is great but its all or nothing. Don't do it halfway.
- Switch from woodchips to chopped leaves for raised beds.
- Beets and carrots suffer if they don't have absolute full sun
- Onions worked well but move them to a raised bed next year.
- Don't bother with tomatoes or peppers unless they're where you pass them and see them daily.
- Don't grow so many varieties - one or two cultivars of peppers, potatoes, tomatoes (exception dry beans).
- Never buy the variety pack of seeds again (ie 6 types of beets, multi colour carrots, 8 types of peppers).
- Homemade seed tape worked really well for carrots.
- Stick with soil blocks for beets, spinach, cole crops, peppers, tomatoes, corn.
- Pre-germinate beans on wet paper towel.
- Walk each row with the wheel hoe weekly.
- Carrots only start nicely in the spring - don't try for a fall crop of carrots unless watered 2x daily.
Community garden:
- Raised bed 1 - Onions and carrots (beet late)
- Raised bed 2 - sweet potatoes
- Raised bed 3(?) - onions and carrots (beet late)
- Ground A - 25'x25' - squash with dwarf sunflower perimeter
- Ground B - 25'x25' - dry beans 12" between rows
- Ground C - potatoes, greens, cabbage, popcorn(?), cantalopue