Getting Crops In The Dirt : Corn, Bush Beans and Celery

One by one the garden beds are filling with my future harvests.  As the weather has warmed up over the past few weeks I have been starting various crops depending on how hardy they are.  Onions, spinach, potatoes, lettuce, peas, carrots and turnips have all been planted and I finally got the broccoli transplanted a couple of weeks ago.  The last frost date is fast approaching, so now is the time to get the warm weather crops going in the garden.  I tend to plant things that come up slowly a few days before the last frost date.  I try to give things as much of a head start on the season as I can, though sometimes I end up replanting them if a late frost comes and kills the sprouts.

I planted my corn first since I know from experience that corn can still tolerate a light frost if given a little protection.  I want to do a companion planting of squash with the corn, so I want the corn to get a head start before I even plant the squash seeds.  If the corn can get tall before the squash spread out and shade everything then both crops should do well.  This year I am trying to grow Glass Gem corn.  I didn't have much luck with it last year, but there was an irrigation glitch in that bed, so hopefully they will have better success this year.  The squash I intend to plant with the corn is a winter squash named Ute Indian Squash.  The Ute tribe lived in this area in the not too distant past so I think that this variety of squash should do well here.

Planting the beans was the next project.  That was a simple operation of leveling the chosen bed and setting up the irrigation for it before making shallow trenches with a hoe and planting the bean seeds.  I used three varieties in this bed this year.  One was the Calima Bush Bean which is what I planted and replanted several times last year.  One was a purple podded variety that I saved from seed in the past couple years, but I lost the variety name. The third was a white seeded variety called Tenderette that was also seed saved from previous years.  I am interested to see how each variety does this year and based on how things grow this summer I will save seeds for my future plantings from the best plants.

The bed that I transplanted my celery into was the very last of the short beds in my garden.  The celery starts have done quite well since they were planted all those weeks ago back in January.  They were finally big enough to be transplanted to their permanent home for the summer.  Some pots held multiple plants, so I separated them as gently as possible and gave each plant it's own space.  I ended up with a row on either side of the bed spaced about a foot apart and had three plants that I spaced out down the middle row.  In this middle row I generously planted parsnip seeds in the large gaps between the celery seedlings in the hopes that they will provide me with a good supply of tasty root veggies in the winter.

A Change of Plans

The weather has been uncommonly windy this spring and yesterday was no exception.  We have been having such rough winds that I had to use rebar stakes to keep the chicken coop from scittering across the yard as it had in previous wind storms already this year.  Yesterday, not even the stakes were enough.  A thunderstorm blew in suddenly and the wind picked up.  A huge gust of wind tore through my yard, picked up the chicken house and flipped it over the fence and into the road.  I wasn't home when it happened, but I had guests that were and they said it sounded like a tornado came through the yard.  They did what they could to drag the heavy pen back into the yard so it wouldn't blow away again.

When the gust of wind flipped the large pen it also tipped the nesting box over onto it's side with a chicken still inside.  The poor chicken little trapped inside probably thought the sky really was falling.  Luckily none of the chickens were hurt and they didn't seem any worse for the wear after the event.  That night I didn't have time to set up a good shelter for them, but they all managed to squeeze themselves into the nest box by dusk.

I spent what daylight I had left dismantling the ruins of the coop with help from my guests.  The cattle panels that made up the sides and roof of the coop were still in good shape and I will reuse them when I rebuild the coop.  The weak point in this design was the old salvaged wood that we used to build the frame.  Had the chicken wire that wrapped the sides of the coop not been wired on so tightly I think the whole thing would have just collapsed when the frame broke.  There were quite a few things about this coop that needed to be improved and I think this is just supposed to be my incentive to do something about it.  My next coop will still be the same hoop house style, but I am brainstorming ideas about how I want to improve upon the design.

Since I don't want to leave my chickens without much shelter I decided to bring in the first small chicken tractor that I built to use as a temporary shelter for them.  It isn't very big and it's low to the ground, but it will give them a place to get out the elements and a dry place for their food and water.  It will also give them a small space to perch on when they go to roost for the evening.

It isn't ideal, but it is better than nothing and it buys me time to construct a better chicken coop for the future while still providing some shelter.  Thankfully chickens aren't too particular about their living quarters as long as it covers the basics.

Spring Sprouts

It has only been a couple of weeks since the peas and onion sets went into the dirt and already they are making progress.  They both took a little over a week to germinate and I expect them to really take off in the warmer weather we are expecting in the upcoming days.

The onion seeds I planted are looking like a no show at this point, but I will give them one more week before I buy more sets to plant in that bed.  I was really hoping that onions from seed would work for me this year, but it does not seem to be in the cards for this year's garden.  I may try planting seed again in the fall to see if I can make my own sets for next year.  I have read that you can plant the seeds very close together and they stay small and can be saved for sets the following spring if you plant them near the end of summer.



 The carrots are starting to make an appearance and I am finding plenty of dill volunteers coming up from last year's crop too.  Dill is one of those things that you only need to plant once and they will keep reseeding themselves year after year if you simply neglect them.  They also have a small root system and feathery growth habit, so they generally don't intrude much on other crops.  They are something that I will allow to be a weed in any of my garden beds since they don't do much harm and I use it for seasoning many things in my kitchen.

If I look really closely, I think I have seen the first of the lettuce sprouts and a handful of turnip sprouts coming up.  The turnips in this particular bed seem to be having a problem with flea beetles, so this crop may end up being a wash this time around.  I am hoping the lettuce comes in quickly so I can add more variety to my salads, and right now the spinach is producing enough to feed me a small salad nearly every day.  Once the days start to get hotter my salad days will be numbered as these crops tend to bolt in the heat.  I will try to stagger some lettuce plantings to extend their season a little while, but salad generally won't be on the menu once the heat of summer hits.

The potatoes have just begun to show themselves in the last few days.  The purples were the first to make an appearance followed by the reds and then the yellows.  From the looks of things I will have a bumper crop of potatoes again this year as long as I can keep up with watering.

Week by week the variety of things that I have growing in my garden will be increasing.  I look forward to eating my way through the growing season simply basing my diet on what I have available to me.  I am only limited by what I choose to grow and I like to grow a lot of different crops that are ready at different points in the season.  I can extend my harvest by freezing, canning or dehydrating, though none of those things compare to fresh picked fruits or veggies.  I will eat as much as I can straight out of the garden and then do what I can to preserve the rest for winter.

Transplanting Broccoli

The winds have died down and the weather is warming quickly so it seems like a good time to transplant the first of my early started seedlings.  The broccoli has developed strong roots and has gotten big enough to hold it's own in our fickle Colorado weather.  It was time to move it to it's permanent home in the garden.

The bed it was going into was turned over last fall and mixed with a healthy dose of leaves that composted over the winter.  The soil was still soft and crumbly in this bed so I only had to level it with a rake and set up the drip lines and the bed was ready to be planted.

The first thing I did was figure out the layout that I wanted for this bed.  Broccoli can get quite large when it is happy so I try to give the plants enough room to grow.  Ideally the spacing would have been closer to 18 inches between plants, but I staggered them so they would fill in the bed when they are fully grown.  They are a little over 12 inches apart in this layout.

When they went into the dirt I spread them a little wider where I could and I think they will do well in this bed.  The gaps between each plant were filled with a few fast growing crops of beets and turnips.  I am hoping that I can harvest these things in just a couple of months before the broccoli takes over the bed.  While they are growing they will be a bit of a ground cover to help control weeds in the beds.  I also planted a handful of carrot seeds in the gaps of the middle row.  The carrots will probably be a crop that I harvest much later in the season, probably after the broccoli is done for the year.  I like to plant carrots throughout the garden where I can since they don't have to be harvested at any particular time.  They store in the dirt quite well and they generally get sweeter after a frost which makes for a nice treat in the fall.

Cover Crops and No Till

This year in the garden I want to try a more regenerative approach to my gardening practices.  I know that my soil is in pretty bad shape and very compacted so I want to do what I can to improve it.  I have added compost and mulch to the beds in the last couple of years and that has helped some, but I know that I can do better.   I have been watching videos about soil ecology posted by Living Web Farms on You Tube.  There is a wealth of information there and I have only scratched the surface, but with my background in biology and ecology I am eager to learn more.

In my garden I have mixed crops together in beds, but I have never really done any cover cropping.  I always figured that my small garden beds wouldn't work the same way as a large farm field.  This year I want to try growing cover crops if only because they will hopefully lower my work load as far as mulching, watering and weeding goes.  The information that I have been learning about recommends a 50/50 mix of legumes and grasses for cover cropping with greater diversity being better overall for improving soil health.  The particular species to use depends on what you are wanting to do to improve the soil and what season you are planting for (there are different cover crops for warm or cold seasons).

I am going to start small in my garden with my limited budget so I purchased some buckwheat and hulless oats.  I also have a peas, radishes and turnips that I want to try adding to the mix.  I want to break up the hard soil with the root crops, use the peas to add nitrogen to the soil, use the oats to add carbon, and the buckwheat to attract pollinators.  I am still thinking about how I want to incorporate this type of cover cropping to my small garden, but I am leaning towards using this mix in a couple test beds to see what happens.  I may have to rethink my planting plans for each of my beds to make sure that I have enough room for everything that I want to grow.

I also want to plant this type of mix in the paths between my garden beds to act as a buffer zone around each bed.  I don't want weeds to grow there, but bare earth isn't good either.  Last year I mulched the paths heavily which worked well, but I want to try a living mulch this year.  If things are going to grow anyway, I might as well make sure that what ever is growing is useful.  In my case all of those cover crops can double as food for my small flock of chickens.  I often throw them all the weeds that I pull in the summer anyway, so giving them nutritious filler instead is a win win.

Things are going to get messy this year, but that is one of my favorite things about gardening.  There is so much to learn. Each year is a chance to try out new ideas and hopefully make changes that grow into something better than what was there before.  This year will be the year of the cover crop for my garden.

Setting Up Some Irrigation

Planting season is fast approaching here though the weather seems to be a bit indecisive right now.  We keep alternating between nice days in the 60's and 70's and blustery days that barely clear 45.  Night time frosts are becoming fewer and fewer, though we did have a night in the low 20's just this week.  The wind has been another issue.  We have been hit with windstorm after windstorm for the past few weeks, so even though the temps have been suitable for cold weather crops like broccoli, I haven't planted them out yet because I don't want them to get beat up from all the flying debris coming through the yard.  The high winds make working outdoors unpleasant to say the least.  It makes watering harder, digging too dusty, and planting tiny seeds impossible.  I finally had a break in the weather that coincided with my day off so I took advantage of the opportunity to start laying out my drip irrigation.

This year I am trying to revamp my system now that I have a better idea of the layout that I want for my yard.  I have a hose that reaches to the far side of the middle of my yard.  At the end of the hose I have a series of hose splitters that direct water to different sections of my garden.  The line that I focused on today was the section of long garden beds that will hold my tall growing warm weather crops.  I am trying to standardize having three drip lines per bed and I also am making sure that each drip line lines up with the edges of the bed better than the way I had them set up before.  I don't want to be watering weeds at the ends of my beds if I can help it.  For this section I recycled the lines that I used in these beds last year.  Most of the drip lines didn't drip consistently so I took the time to poke holes in them every couple inches with a thumb tack which was a tedious chore.  I have found that doing this works well to revitalize clogged lines and saves me from having to buy fresh lines every year.  Last year I didn't have three lines in each bed so I will be adding a couple new ones as I go along.

So far I only have lines plugged in to the beds that I have planted already.  I don't want to start watering empty beds because that will just give any weeds in the beds a head start.  The first two beds I have planted with corn.  I try to get corn in early so that it can get established before I add the companion crop of squash when the weather gets warmer.  It may have to tolerate a few cold nights after it germinates but the weather forecast doesn't call for any nights below freezing for the next few weeks so I hope it will be in the clear.  If worst comes to worst I can always throw a sheet of plastic over the bed for some protection.  The next bed that irrigation was set up on was the potato bed.  I have been hand watering this bed and others for the past few weeks, so this should make things a little easier for me.  The last area that I irrigated off this line was my perennial bed by the compost pile.  This will guarantee that these plants are watered every time I water the garden which further simplifies the work I will be doing in the garden this summer.

The next section of irrigation that I worked on was the section of short beds that made up the original footprint of the garden.  This section got a brand new main line that was custom fit to the length of the garden on this side.  My goal this year is to have fewer lines to trip over as I work my way around the garden, so I made sure that there are no hoses running down the central path in the garden.  Maybe this year I will be able to get a lawn mower in there to help control the weeds too.  Each of these beds will also be standardized to three lines each.  I think that having three lines in each bed gives good coverage with watering and makes it easy to plan where to plant things.  In this section I focused on getting irrigation on the beds that were already planted: garlic, onions, peas/carrots, and lettuce/spinach/turnips.  I will add more lines as the crops go into the ground and in a few more weeks the garden should be completely irrigated.

I have one hose that I will be using to move around the yard to water the different sections of grass as I plant them and I plan on getting one more hose splitter so that I can set up irrigation for my flower bed.  My goal is to make watering my yard as easy as possible with as little water waste as I can manage.  Drip irrigation is nice because I can water the base of my plants right where they need it without worrying about the water getting on the leaves of the plants or blowing the wrong way and evaporating off before the plants can use it.  The drip line that I am using can be on top of the soil, or I can cover it with mulch and it will still water my garden just fine.  As dry as it is here in this high desert every drop counts.  I have to pay for my water so I want to use as little as possible, yet still have a productive garden.  I will mulch beds where I can to help conserve water even more and help extend the length of time between watering.

Keeping Busy Making Hats

The last couple of days have been a windstorm outside which makes getting outdoor projects done very difficult.  I opted instead to spend the days inside relaxing in my chair making hats.  I am proud to say that I was able to finish these three hats in just two days.

All of these hats are made from yarn that I had left over from previous projects.  This is one way that I can increase my inventory while I decrease the size of my yarn stash.  I would rather have a hat stash than a yarn stash anyway.  All of these hats are very warm and thick and I am hoping to find buyers for them at the local shops in town.  I still have many more partial skeins of yarn in my stash, so I will keep trying to work my way through them when I can find the time.  It is fun to try different color combinations working with what I have on hand. Hopefully by fall I will have plenty of new hats to round out my inventory.  I don't think that there will be much more indoor down time in the coming months, but I will try to take advantage of days like this when I can.