Weekend, gardening
Jun. 2nd, 2021 03:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unicorndukeThis weekend I farm-sat for a coworker who was going out of town. Since it was Memorial Day, I also had Monday off work. I arrived with Mara around 2 on Friday and it immediately started raining.
It was chilly and rainy all weekend! Didn't really get above 50F by much. Honestly, it was kind of relaxing. I spent a lot of time reading, listening to music and baking. Because coworker gave me free rein with the kitchen and there was SO MUCH counterspace. I made two batches of homemade fig newtons, doing some experimenting with fig types. Delicious.
It stopped raining around noon on Saturday and the wind picked up. It was still chilly but by 5pm or so, the wind had dried out my garden enough that I was able to walk in it without mucking things up.
No pictures this week because nothing is really doing much right now.
My peas and garbanzos are growing, the mustard made it and so have some of the carrots. I didn't get around to weeding them, but it's not super helpful to weed when it's very wet and going to rain more. I have plans to weed some more on Friday if I've got time. Next week will also be good because it's going to get above 90F and weeding in the mornings before it gets hot kills weeds very nicely once I've pulled them.
My potatoes are flowering and I can't tell if it is because they didn't like the containers or what but it will be interesting to see what they do.
I finished planting the whole garden though. It was good to get it done. If you have any sort of open space that is relatively large for a garden, I would recommend picking up an Earthway seeder. They can be a little clunky but they speed up planting by a lot, even if you are doing five feet per variety. I used it to plant a bunch of peas for work and I planted 10 varieties of 10 feet each in the time it took my coworker to do 2 varieties, 10 feet hand planted.
I planted two varieties of peanuts (110 days or so is close in our area), two varieties of sorghum that are apparently good for short seasons, a bunch of my favorite cowpea, a couple of bean varieties, one mung bean experiment where the pods and plants were hairless and easier to process, four types of squash, two melons and two watermelons. I planted an argyosperma squash for the first time and as it turns out, the seeds were as big as the first joint on my thumb. Wild! I'm hoping to save seed from the squashes since I planted one of each type and for the most part, they don't cross pollinate between types (pepo, moschata, maxima). And same thing with argyosperma.
The watermelons and melons are for eating and they will be tasty.
I still need to lay drip lines for the next bunch of rows but it isn't urgent because we've gotten plenty of rain and it's supposed to rain again tomorrow. Might need to have it done by next week but honestly, it's emergency irrigation for when we haven't gotten rain in 3-4 weeks. Hopefully the plants will do something interesting soon and I can get some pictures.
It was chilly and rainy all weekend! Didn't really get above 50F by much. Honestly, it was kind of relaxing. I spent a lot of time reading, listening to music and baking. Because coworker gave me free rein with the kitchen and there was SO MUCH counterspace. I made two batches of homemade fig newtons, doing some experimenting with fig types. Delicious.
It stopped raining around noon on Saturday and the wind picked up. It was still chilly but by 5pm or so, the wind had dried out my garden enough that I was able to walk in it without mucking things up.
No pictures this week because nothing is really doing much right now.
My peas and garbanzos are growing, the mustard made it and so have some of the carrots. I didn't get around to weeding them, but it's not super helpful to weed when it's very wet and going to rain more. I have plans to weed some more on Friday if I've got time. Next week will also be good because it's going to get above 90F and weeding in the mornings before it gets hot kills weeds very nicely once I've pulled them.
My potatoes are flowering and I can't tell if it is because they didn't like the containers or what but it will be interesting to see what they do.
I finished planting the whole garden though. It was good to get it done. If you have any sort of open space that is relatively large for a garden, I would recommend picking up an Earthway seeder. They can be a little clunky but they speed up planting by a lot, even if you are doing five feet per variety. I used it to plant a bunch of peas for work and I planted 10 varieties of 10 feet each in the time it took my coworker to do 2 varieties, 10 feet hand planted.
I planted two varieties of peanuts (110 days or so is close in our area), two varieties of sorghum that are apparently good for short seasons, a bunch of my favorite cowpea, a couple of bean varieties, one mung bean experiment where the pods and plants were hairless and easier to process, four types of squash, two melons and two watermelons. I planted an argyosperma squash for the first time and as it turns out, the seeds were as big as the first joint on my thumb. Wild! I'm hoping to save seed from the squashes since I planted one of each type and for the most part, they don't cross pollinate between types (pepo, moschata, maxima). And same thing with argyosperma.
The watermelons and melons are for eating and they will be tasty.
I still need to lay drip lines for the next bunch of rows but it isn't urgent because we've gotten plenty of rain and it's supposed to rain again tomorrow. Might need to have it done by next week but honestly, it's emergency irrigation for when we haven't gotten rain in 3-4 weeks. Hopefully the plants will do something interesting soon and I can get some pictures.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-03 02:50 am (UTC)Those squash types sound like one of those Hungarian folk tales that starts off "there were three brothers".
It always sounds like a huge garden and then I work out the distances and that you're doing this with one of you, part time, and it goes to seriously huge garden.
Going to try making beer from the sorghum?
no subject
Date: 2021-06-04 12:22 am (UTC)I actually use the sorghum for flour! It's the main flour in my gluten free flour mix and I've got a flour mill. I've got one good consistent variety that matures in my climate but I'd like to have a couple of others for different tastes. It's difficult to find grain sorghum plus short season, since most sorghum is dual purpose or for syrup and pretty long season. We don't really get enough heat units to mature a 120 or 130 day sorghum, just doesn't get hot enough for long enough.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-04 01:08 am (UTC)While I acknowledge the caveats, more than five hundred feet of row length will continue to seem like a lot from this corner.
I had no idea you could home-mill sorghum! (like, at all, not you specifically.) And, yeah, not enough heat units is impossible to finesse. (large buried greenhouses cannot be described as "finesse". :) I hope you get bountiful results!
(I looked into home milling of arepa flour, "harina PAN" usually after the first commercial source; pre-boiled white corn flour in the Colombian and Venezuelan style. There was a promising web hit, company very proud of the compactness of their processing system. Minimum ceiling height, 26 feet; only 12 machines (to perform the 14 necessary steps) and you can get the system in any processing capacity you like between one and fifty tonnes per hour. I'm sure it's impressively compact for what it does, but not very counter-top.)
no subject
Date: 2021-06-03 03:58 pm (UTC)Oh, well, how descriptive of what's going on here. We're deeply into mosquito weather here now: cool and dreary and dank. My seedlings (3 kales, chard, 2 beets, and orach) haven't set true leaves yet, the peas are huddling on the ground, the runner beans just look confused and are wondering whether they've slipped into an alternate universe, and the marigolds can't be arsed to bloom. I'm hoping things will pick up, but without a good punch of May warmth, which we didn't really get, June tends to be a pause rather than the boost plants need to be ready to harvest before the August frosts. I guess it's just going to be That Year. At least my perennial bed is full of vigor and hope.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-04 12:23 am (UTC)