Gardening

Over the past week I have been pulling up plants that have gone by and no longer producing in the garden, and started planting a second round.

Living in South Carolina the climate affords a pretty long growing season. Honestly – by this time of the year I am pretty sick of weeding and picking. We get WAY too many vegetables to consume ourselves and give away lots. I plant a second round to continue to practice, learn, and I just can’t stand seeing that empty ground knowing the potential it contains.

When you are making your garden plans, remember that there is a pretty good chance that you will have long enough to grow more than one crop.

Typically every year I plant cucumbers (National Pickling), Crookneck Squash, Zucchini, potatoes, tomato’s, cantaloupe, watermelon, and onions. This year – like every other year – I had successes and failures. I am speaking like the season is over and it’s not – I still have stuff growing and lots of veggies left to pick, but most of my plants which I started in April have gone by.

One of my compost bins is overflowing!!! Yes – I keep it in my garden. History tells me my second round of plantings do not do as well as my first. There are many reasons for this but I suspect the main one is extreme temps and sun exposure. I have considered rigging up some shade out of PVC and weeding fabric – just not a lot of time.

Second plantings this year consist of cucumbers, tomato’s, zucchini, and yellow squash. Some are by seed and some are transplants bought locally.

I am already thinking about my Fall garden – gonna make it a good one.

For all of the hype about square foot gardening and raised beds, when two of my sisters, both avid and experienced gardeners (better than I am) stopped by last week, we had a little discussion and all decided that raised beds and square foot gardening is less productive and harder than the time tested standard row garden.

I can hear it already, “Heresy!”

So, here is why three sisters in Minnesota are going back to row gardening:

1. The raised beds dry out faster and hence need more water.
2. The raised beds aren’t high enough to stop the back breaking work of weeding.
3. The raised beds get just as weedy, if not more so after a few years of use, than regular in-ground beds.
4. With the intensive planting of a square foot garden, if you go on vacation for a few days at just the time the weeds are coming in, you can lose a whole crop of root vegetables (carrots, onions, radishes, etc.) because as you pull out the weeds the intensively planted fledgling veggies also come out.
5. Raised beds need tending at least 3 times a week. A standard row garden and you can get by with once a week weeding.
6. It is a lot easier to work a hoe between rows of plants while standing up than to sit and constantly be bent over weeding in a raised bed.
7. It seems to be actually easier to manage the fertility of the soil in a standard garden than in a raised bed – we don’t know why, we only know what is…
8. It is easier to water the whole garden than individual plants.
9. Intensive planting in small beds leads to more conflicts with companion planting.
10. Lots of paperwork recording when you planted what, where, how to plan rotations, companions, etc.
11. Expensive and time consuming to put in and get the right mix of soil in them.

I recently got this private email that Phil said I could share…

“Well I’ve been an SFG addict since I first read Mels first book, became a SFG certifed instructor and have been doing SFG ever since, and I couldn’t agree with you more.  
 
As in any system there good and bad things.  Everything you say about them is true.  My wife had a stroke 2 yrs ago in June and I had left my garden in beautiful green plots and when I came back to my garden the weeds had completely taken over. The soil/mix is so rich the weeds out grew my veggies and had gone to seed.  
 
When I had laid out my garden, I laid weed barrier down and then covered it with wood mulch and now I have weeds everywhere.  In desperation I have sprayed industrial strength vinegar, weed whacked, used a blow torch and finally I lowered myself and used some Roundup.  
 
I’m thinking I will have to pull up everything and go back to doing it in the dirt.   However, if one has the time, and energy to pamper their garden, you will get some fantastic results. but not massive amounts.”

-Phil

Don’t tear up everything! Just cover it with black plastic for a month and that should kill all of the weed seeds and anything else bad. I use black plastic and tarps to clear an area before I start a new garden – it works!

All that said, what is good about raised beds and square foot gardening?

• Great for small areas where you don’t have room for a row garden.
• Fewer tools and no rototiller or cultivator needed.
• Good for wet areas.
• They can be very attractive.
• Great for someone who has the time and is obsessed with their garden – picking at it every day and never leaving home.
• It is easier to build little mini-greenhouses over the beds thus extending the growing season.

So, what do we three sisters see that could work?

• The original square foot gardens were in-ground – retains moisture and uses the soil that is there.
• Intensive planting and vertical growing can save a lot of space in a small garden plot.
• It is easier to fertilize and water a small garden.
• It is easier to fence a small garden and protect it from wildlife.
• You only need a shovel to dig it and because you don’t step in it the soil doesn’t compact.

We three sisters from Minnesota….. think Mel got obsessed and made a good thing too hard and complex. 

I am a true lover of Kentucky Wonder pole beans, I’ve been planting them for the last 30 years. They are a non-GMO bean so you can save your seeds.

They are also wonderful for green bean teepees for the kids. I always inter-plant them with Morning Glories for a truly stunning arbor vine, but this year the Morning Glories didn’t do so well.

I thought this might give you some ideas on where to plant pole beans in your garden! These photos were take on 8.2.14 in my garden:

This is the main entrance to my garden. The beans on the right are planted in the ground. On the left, they are planted in pots with Borage.

Here is a closeup on that arbor.

I just leaned some old sheep fence up against one of my garden sheds and planted 3 beans at the base.

I’m not super happy with this curly willow arbor yet, but the beans are growing up it!

Here is one of my Three Sisters gardens with corn, pole beans and squash. The beans lock nitrogen into the soil so the beds can remain in the same place every year.

Sometimes stuff happens and the garden becomes a low priority. I’m writing this with a variety of scenarios in mind…

• A SHTF situation, you bug out, come back a week or two later and NEED that garden to produce.
• A personal SHTF situation and you come back and are overwhelmed by the weeds.
• You discover someone else’s garden in weed mode and are trying to salvage it.

Whatever the reason, weeds happen. This is a small horseshoe garden area of – guess from this picture – that I put in this spring to salvage some plants. I am beginning to think my problem this year is the 3 year old composted horse manure I used as everywhere I spread it I got crabgrass and similar weeds.

I’ve ignored this spot, not even watering it in the now 6 week drought we have going, but I decided to do a show and tell and this will work well.

I timed myself – 10 minutes in this garden.

First I took the water wand and watered for about two minutes and then sat the wand down on one particularly bad spot in the weed patch. Weeds pull up a whole lot easier when the roots are wet. They are also less likely to disturb the roots of the desirable plants as you are pulling the weeks. Root crops don’t take well to being overrun by weeds and then doing this technique, but even with them you can often tuck the onions, etc. back in and get a harvest that you wouldn’t if you do nothing at all.

Here we are about 6 minutes into the 10 minute weeding. I knew I had planted strawberries, but could YOU see that? Unknown garden, attempt to identify what the crop is. Pull weeds ABOVE the crop if possible as an “overview weeding” to see what is left and get a feel for the roots/stems of the desired crop you do not want to weed out.

Four more minutes. I called time at 10 minutes. Lots of the weeds are out including the creeping charlie and violets that can look similar in structure to the strawberries.

This is not a perfect weed, but a lot of the strawberries are still there and thriving! Any I pulled out, I poked back in. They are starting to send out runners now. Shortly I will be starting a whole new strawberry bed where the potatoes are being harvested.

This little garden I am hoping to make into an outdoor potting area and lettuce garden – sheltered from the full force of the sun – next year.

So, now you know how to do a quick weeding and salvage your crop even if stuff happens and the weeds get the better of you!

On April 17th just north of the Twin Cities there was 15 inches of snow. To refuse to get down about continuing snow I decided to bring in the first harvest of the year. Parsnips!

Very early last spring I got that heavenly nudge to learn to grow parsnips. I had never even eaten parsnips much less grow them, but I know the nudge so I began to research.

At one of the early farmers markets in late April when there was hardly lettuce, yet there there was a farmer and his wife with parsnips.

I asked him if he was from around here, because I thought parsnips were harvested in the fall best after a frost. He said that they were good then but if you leave them in the ground and they go through the long hard winter they are even sweeter harvested in early spring. I felt the nudge again that many of us are like that too having gone through long hard winters of life and come out better the other side.

I grew parsnips and they are wonderful. I left some in the ground to test the word on overwintering. If they could make it through this winter we have had they could make it through any winter. I did not cover or mulch them at all.

I decided today as it was snowing a little here to harvest some and it is true. They were great roasted for lunch.

If you can grow them in your climate just think, early spring and the fresh potatoes and squash stores are eaten and no crops ready, yet but you can go dig fresh parsnips.

What an amazing provision!

If you have a small garden plot and don’t like digging it up every year, Three Sisters gardening may be for you!

This is a Native American gardening technique that is at least 1,000 years old and can be varied to climate conditions.

So, What Are The 3 Sisters?

The Three Sisters are corn, beans, and vined squash. 

Corn is a heavy feeder and susceptible to high winds. The pole beans fix nitrogen into the soil and provide additional support for the corn. The squash also provides nutrients to the soil, but is grown for a living mulch and to keep the deer and raccoon out of the corn.

In wet or cold (a mound will allow the earth to warm faster and hence you can plant earlier) climates, you want to mound your plants. In dry climates you want to dig a depression to retain as much moisture as possible. If you are getting the normal 40″ of rain per year that most vegetables desire, just dig a circle.

Check out the layout depicting the placement of corn, beans, and squash.

Corn – planting and growing

Corn needs other corn in close proximity around it for best pollination – no pollination and you get no kernels of corn. This is why you never plant corn in a single row. By planting corn in a tightly confined circle you will get optimum pollination of the plants.

Pole Beans – Gotta Have That Structure!

If you have ever planted pole beans, you know that they will just take over a climbing structure. The pole beans will bind the corn together providing maximum wind resistance. The flowers on the beans will also attract pollinator insects.

Squash For Moisture and Pollinators

The squash will help retain moisture in the ground and stunt weed growth by shading the area. Its flowers will also attract pollinating insects.

Getting Going

Ready to give it a shot? Awesome.

Plant:

1. Corn first
2. Beans about a week later (to give the corn a chance to get up and growing, and
3. Squash a week after that

Let’s say you want one or two meals of corn on the cob for X weeks. Plant X mounds successively and you will have Three Sisters dining for as long as your growing season holds. Depending upon how YOU like to put your veggies up, you can plan for some work all summer or just work at canning the whole crop in a few days.

Also, for the most part, squash will winter quite well in a cool, dry area.

Here is a garden pot sunk in for watering. Six corn are planted around that pot. The beans are on the outside of the corn a week later, and 4 squash plants are planted a week later from the beans.

Don’t sweat this one, just have fun, and enjoy some sweet, sweet, all-American calorie crops.