Interplanting Planning & Cold (achoo) Delay Outdoor Planting
Interplanting Instead of Mono-Culture on a Small Scale
My new perspective on planting the potatoes takes planning. Interplanting is an idea new to me, shared at the last Organic Garden Club meeting. To confuse the bugs and make the most of the soil minerals, I'm told to break up the plot from the mono-culture concept (one type of plant in each plot) and plant many different plants which "get along" in the same area. Keeping it mixed up year to year.
This info broke a mental stalemate I was in, uncertain where to plant what, and how to keep to a crop rotation when we do not plant equal amounts of plants in the varying categories to do it "the correct." I'm so fastidiously trying to do something "right". Usually I work hap-hazardly, which sometimes works, and other times, not so well.
My gardening friend said that she was reading a book called Solar Gardening, which gives the ideas of which plants will take the sun now, get harvested before their neighbors need the sun. Also she said that the concepts from Square Feet Gardening which advocates placing many different types of plants in small spaces.
If my description of these books seems rather weak, you are reading clearly. I have not read the books, I heard the idea from my friend, and combining those ideas with the help of companion planting book Carrots Love Tomatoes (which I do have and read and consult quite frequently), this year's garden plan is looking very different.
Of course, its late to be planning, and time to be doing!
Here's some of my beloveds waiting until its warm enough to dig in to the soil. These are tomatoes which I will attempt to plant with carrots (though its late to seed them). And the carrots like to be near parsley which is also ready for planting.
All the plants go out to the sunshine for hardening off
And then get put back in the greenhouse for a safe night's rest
Next day same thing, over and over
They are beginning to tell me that they wish to spread their roots deeper into the soil,
let's go already gardener!
"Achoo" I tell them, and find the energy to take another nap.
I hope you are not too bored, looking at these trays. I'm not showing all the plants which are impatiently waiting to be planted!
Yes there was some planting done since my last post.
To place the onions and leeks at the correct distance, I made up a Plant Measure Stick from the stalk of last year's sunflowers, straight and light weight (so if it rolled onto the plants it wouldn't hurt them). I marked 4, 5 and 6 inch intervals with a marker and used my wonderful Hori Hori knife to make the planting hole.
A soon after planting not-interplanted bed of onions. Some of them are now (one week later) more vertical, some not.
And the new strawberries also were planted.
Finally I did take the strawberry companions out to join their buddies in the soil. Chinese Greens and spinach do well with strawberries (so says the companion planting book). Also the borage herb was moved to their place beside the strawberries.
As evidence of how tired I felt, I did not even think to take a photo, though the camera was in my fanny pack. I'm almost done with these cold symptoms and the next few days will be good for planting. I have my list of what to mix in with the potatoes. The plot is ready, with string marked rows and deep straw. Just have to figure out the spacing between the plants and how many companions I have to mix in. Its a very exciting time for me.
Dear Readers, another reason for the long space of time between posts is that I've been trying to figure out WordPress as this blog software, RapidWeaver, does not integrate very well with Blotanical, a gardeners' blog central which I enjoy. But instead of studying tonight, I prefer to share, even if all the bells and whistles do not yet function.
May all energy, focus and timing flow through you in synch with Nature's rhythms.
Triage Garden Tasks - Plants to Save Come First!
The list of jobs is ever growing
from one thing to another I've been tossed
If there were a master gardener here
Tasks would be wisely bossed.
Perhaps the last freeze is past,
though not the final frost
Any plant outside now
might become a harvest lost.
Seedlings beneath the lights
Plants too big for seedling tray,
Some can live there for a while
Others suffer from delay.
I turn my head and plainly see
Too many jobs to do
Even when planted outside
The work is never through.
There is a need to choose a path
A time to make decision
Decide the fate of each dear plant
A choice, I pray, by highest vision.
As I make my "Sophie's Choice"*
between this life and that
I hear the term in Hot Lip's* voice
as if I wear a doctor's hat.
A term I learned decades ago
from Hawkeye* and the crew
Triage - to choose who lives or dies
by how well the cure might do.
The plant that cries the loudest
Finest flavor on my tongue,
The plant most rare and precious
I choose to help that one.
Evening comes, the sky is darkening
I'm still outside with my hoe
working the soil to welcome
All the beautiful plants I know.
I'll take you each in turn
Before it is too late
Triage is only a place in line
To grow in love for all, is fate.
by Rachel Claire
* respectful credit to whomever owns the intellectual property mentioned
Dear Readers,
This blog has been having some technical issues between an upgrade of the blogging software (RapidWeaver 4.2.2) and a new feedburner link and trying to function with Blotanical.
Hopefully this link will feed both into feedburner, blotanical and have comments available through JS-Kit.
If not, I'll try again. If you were able to see this post, please let me know below on the comments.
May all your decisions bring Peace and Joy for all!
Multitudes of Grasshoppers & Morality Questions
Here’s that spindly seedling again from the post on the Widger, which is shown in all its glory tucking a red cabbage into its next home. We addressed the plight of the stretched out little plant in the previous post Leggy Spindly Seedlings.
Now, lets explore what might happen to these guys that could distress them long before they enter the brine for sauerkraut, or are thrown in the steam heat before freezing. Oh, its horrible what I plan to do to these plants I really love! I can’t help but give thanks for the fact that I didn’t have children in this life. Imagine how I might treat a child I loved if this is what I plan to do to the plants I nurture even from seed. Its a horrible thought, worthy of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”. If you don’t know the essay, or have a strong sense of moral outrage, or a weak sense of humor, I don’t suggest you go there.
I find the awareness of love, nurturing and tenderness for these green beings and my hungry plans for them once they reach the fullness of their lives a bit duplicitous. However, I recall, at the end of the growing period, the plants and I have such a loving regard for each other, and the awareness that the purpose of the plant is to give its fruit (or vegetable), that at the time of harvest I feel only gratitude rather than guilt.
Also, I try to save seed, and in this way, contribute to the continuity of life of these generous and beautiful plant creatures.
We’ll see how these cabbages will do, even with their stretched out beginning. They have yet to withstand the onslaught of hungry catepillars, the ravages of intense sun, pounding of fierce rain and all the gentle blessings that Nature gives when she is nurturing to growth, not just to toughness. So I hope that they will make it to fertile ground and that the care given to them sustains them throughout their season.
I’ll give you a foretaste of one of the challenges to come: the bug situation.
It may be that last year was a plague year that no one else around here mentioned. I didn’t hear anyone else saying that there were multitudes of grasshoppers afflicting their gardens. It was the first time in many years that the yard which is now mine had not had a flock of chickens eating everything that moved. This means that everything that moved converged on the first plants I had out there - the cabbages and broccoli in 2008. This is how it looked:
Yikes!
And I still don’t have a flock of chickens to feast on these critters. I’d need to have more fencing first; know that I could grow feed for them; want to get out at the crack of dawn to care for them, and have every plant I care about behind fencing. In other words, I’m not ready for chickens. But will my garden thrive without them?
I’m hoping that last year was an aberration, and this year will not find waves of them fleeing as I walk across the yard or through the garden.
