Get those harvests in now!

Here in southwest Missouri, October is a time to try and get as much of your 'temperature tender' crops in as quickly as you can. Pictured above are banana peppers, long red cayenne and some basil leaves that will be left out in the sun to dry.

Utilizing small corners for great veggies!

Whenever I plant my gardens in the early spring, I always keep an eye out for out of the way spots to throw in a vegetable or two or three. Doing this seems to often times throw off those insects that otherwise might decimate the more formal planting locations where larger numbers of similar plants may attract them.

I've done this type of planting for years and have had great success. The four plants pictured above, (2 long red stir fry cayenne and 2 banana peppers) have been productive all season long. This very small area has supplied me with all the peppers I've needed to make daily and chili dishes!

My garden did just fine in 2013!

This spring and summer, for the first time in my gardening experience brought onto me a realization, actually a couple of things dawned on me. First, I was getting older and therefore presumably wiser. I'm not at all sure that one is working out for me. Secondly, I realized that in years past, I always seems to have way more vegetables than I could eat or even pass around. I was, after all, eating for only one.

So, I resolved to throw out a few seeds, plant a couple of store bought transplants and call it a day. Sure, I did think to weed and water, but all in all, nothing was much of a chore. And, my garden looked it too. Not a thing of beauty with a lone cucumber plant here and a scraggly tomato plant or two there. Don't even ask me about the peppers! (I never gave them any special care and they never produced very big fruit, so we came out about even). Still, there was a steady flow of something to put in a stew pot or salad starting on about mid July. And, lo and behold, I was using just about every bit of produce or herb that my beds produced! At the end of the day, I thought that to be a little bit of progress...

Onion in a pot harvest day!

Well, it's been some time since I planted an onion set in a pot just to see what would happen. I wasn't sure that an onion would even grow in such a limited amount of space. Turns out, the onion did just fine!I harvested it on July the 25th and the useable portion weighed in at 107 grams - not too shabby!

So, while it's not really economical to grow onions in this manner, it was still fun and I ended up with an onion that got sliced and put on a great tasting hamburger!

Onions and potatoes for everyone!

Of all the garden vegetables that us non-green thumb folks can plant in the spring, potatoes and onions can make you look good! 

 

Trust me on this! Just a little plot of garden soil, a feed seed potatoes and onion sets can make even the most inept wanna-be gardener look like a pro! I use both just about every day and by mid July I've got a good supply of both that can stay in the ground until they're needed.

Earlier this year, I prepared a space of about 2 feet by four feet in on of my raised beds, making sure to have plenty of space soil off to one side of a shallow trench I made with a spade. Into this went some store bought 'seed' potatoes, at a local store, that promised to produce a red variety that was good to either bake or boil. At the same time, I purchased about a pound of onion sets that were of the white variety. The seed potatoes were cut into pieces and allow to dry for a day while the onion sets were haphazardly stuck here and there around where the potatoes were to go and which were spaced about three inches apart. This was a small investment, money wise, maybe about $2. I made sure to weed and water the bed as needed, but other than that, I didn't pay much attention to what they were doing. Before long, the potatoes sent up sprouts that flowered in May and June and then died back in July. The onion sets, likewise, grew long shoots which also died back at about the same time. Representatives of this effort can be seen in the picture above. And, while neither the onions or the potatoes were particularly large, there were to be found in abundance!

Now the question can be asked. 'Did I save any money compared to just buying a sack of potatoes and onions in the store?' Probably not. But, I do have the satisfaction of ignoring these items when I shop (every little bit you save helps) and I know with out a doubt that these vegetables are pesticide and chemical free!

Where did they all go?

It's just a day before the official start of summer and those pesky Japanese beetles that most always made an appearance in early June are nowhere to be found in 2013! Tis a puzzler for sure.

Also, AWOL are the ticks (hunters have killed all the deer in my area), the grasshoppers. mosquitoes and the other irksome insects that generally make gardening such an irksome battle! The only real problems I've encountered, thus far, are tiny flea beetles which took an early and lasting liking to my potato plants. The shotgun appearance of the leaves, pictured above, are testament to their collective hunger. In spite of that, the tater plants seem to be surviving just fine.

This 'insect free' situation has made for a very pleasant spring down here in southwest Missouri. But, it makes me also wonder if this is natural for nature – i.e. some cyclical species variation, or is this a trend that could prove deleterious down the road? You know, like the honey bees that are disappearing worldwide. A side note: i.e. means "that is". It's from the latin "id est"!

Home grown tomatoes! This year for sure!

While I've never been accused of having a green thumb, I generally do alright in the home garden arena. Over the years, I've produced bumper crops of romaine lettuce, Kentucky pole beans, onions and even some potatoes just last season. But, its tomato growing where I've consistently fallen on my face. I'm not sure what it is I'm doing wrong, but something always seems to go wrong. One year it was deer that ate all my plants down to the ground, and then over the past couple of seasons ,it's been both the deer and some hungry Japanese beetles that have left me having to resort to farmers markets in order to sate my appetite.

But this year is going to be different! First off, all the deer have been killed by hunters and not only are they not around but the tics that generally accompany them have bee absent too. That just leaves those pesky beetles and they are due to show in just a few more days! But, I'll be ready for those little critters with lots of grow cloth or as its commercially known reemay. And, any deer that might show up will have to cut their way through some chicken wire. Wish me luck!

A radish growing experiment!

Like onions, radishes are easy to grow. Just sow some in standard soil, water well and in about a month's time you have a tasty addition to your salads. That's the theory anyway...

Just plain old everyday soil that has not been fertilized or heavily amended is supposed to be okey-dokey with most radish plants. According to the experts, too much nitrogen will give you a lot of tops with no root development. The same goes for overcrowding the little guys too! You need to sow them about 2 to three inches apart just below the surface of the soil, water on a regular basis and supposedly that's about all you have to do. Did you know that the tops are also edible (a little known fact) and also make a great 'peppery' addition to spring salads? I've gotta try that one myself!

The problem with some radishes, it seems, is that sometimes the roots just don't develop very well if at all! Or, they might be pithy or hot! I've been given all sorts of reasons why this might be so. The two chief being overcrowding and too much nitrogen in the soil. Other reasons have included very hot weather and under-watering. To find out if these were true, I wanted to do a little experiment to quantify this effect by tracking some of the variables that might affect their growth patterns and ultimate development.

---------------------------The Experiment

For this experiment I chose the Cherry Belle radish variety as it is very popular in my neck of the woods and tastes great! For the growing area, I chose a one foot square are in a raised bed in mid May 2013 (cool temps) where I planted one seed two inches apart from its neighbor – this arrangement allowed me to place 25 seeds inside the foot square area in such a manner that there was no other plants growing any closer than 2 inches (see chart). A situation that satisfied the requirement that many say a radish need to reach its full potential.

The soil I used was the soil that has been in place in the raised bed for a number of years. After digging below the surface, I determined that there were earthworms present (a great indicator that the soil is somewhat fertile as worms will not hang out in poor soil or soil that been over fertilized). So, the requirement that the soil not be nitrogen rich was also checked off.

The test area was watered by hand on the days when it didn't rain and a cover was placed over the area on days when the temperature got above 80°F. So, then, all the variables were covered pretty well. As a part of this experiment, I maintained a log of these factors in a data file, the results of which will be made available as a pdf document.

-------------------------The Variables

On a daily basis, I measured the following factors: 1) the daily hi and low temperatures, 2) the soil temperature at mid day two and a half inches down in the root zone, the condition of the soil (wet, damp, dry) each morning and 3) the general condition of each of the 25 plants whereby any root development was noted.

Recording all this data meant a rather demanding schedule to maintain for a whole month, but it seemed worth it to me to see if I could figure out which radishes developed well and which did not (and if not), why not!

------------------------Day One

As a part of the initial preparation, I assembled a simple planting grid using firing strips, nails and

some string. The grid was set up so that each seed would be at least two inches away from another seed, so as to allow for lots of growing room. This assembly took about thirty minutes.

Next, I lightly dug up a square foot area in a raised be out back. I then used my finger to make 1/8 inch depressions in the soil below each of the grid crossings. Each depression received just one seed and was then covered over lightly with soil. The soil was then patted down to insure a good soil to seed contact and watered the area lightly.

I also constructed a simple data file using FileMaker Pro to help me keep track of the variables I described earlier in the text. Here is a sample of what one entry might look like at left. Clicking on it (or any graphic) will enlarge it for easier viewing. 

Update: Three days later, on May 16, six radish seeds had germinated. 

Update: March the 24th and the radish plants now are developing true leaves! Click on the picture to enlarge it!

I WILL UPDATE THIS ENTRY FROM TIME TO TIME OVER THE NEXT MONTH SO AS TO TRACK THE PROGRESS OF THIS MOST BURNING QUESTION...

Update: June 15 2013 - Well, baring some last minute miracle, I'm sad to report that this experiment was pretty much a failure on just about all counts. Of the 25 onions that were seeded, only one has amounted to any thing. It was 2 cm wide and about  about 3 cm long and weighted in at only 5 grams. I plan to do this experiment over again, but will change two factors; 1) I plant to double the growing space between the radishes by cutting the number planted in half (12 this time around) and 2) I will be using a blend of Miracle Gro potting mix and sand to grow them in!

My 2013 vegetable garden is off to a shaky start!

A brave pepper begins its journey of growth!

Cool springs are a ying and a yang for us vegetable gardeners. The ying is that the cooler temperatures generally also mean a wet spring which has been the case so far this year. The yang has been later plantings as a result of the soil being both too wet and too cold early in the season. But, now that it has finally begun to warm up a bit, I've learned to plant on the days when it's not actively raining.

So far, at least as of May 2013, I've manage to get the following into the ground:

Onions planted as sets in March

Seed potatoes that were also planted in March

Radish seed in April

A small group of Romaine lettuce starts in mid April

Bell pepper and hot pepper starts that look a bit stringy and lanky just this past day

Nantes carrot seed on May the 7^th

Four cucumber starts on the same day (good luck with these making it)

and a lone Brandywine start that was transplanted into a large pot out front!

I still have a four pack of basil and a few more bell pepper starts that need to go out and which I hope to get done on May the 8^th even though more rain is threatening.

The National Weather Service down here in southwest Missouri is just now beginning to hint at a dry and hot week coming up! That would be good news just as long as we don't slide back into a drought condition like what plagued the Midwest last year!

With rising food prices now more or less the rule, I'm hoping to bring in a fairly decent home crop this year! Right now iceberg lettuce is going for $2 a head and a lone bell pepper is close to a dollar!

An onion set in a pot!

For reasons that still elude me, I decided it might be a fun thing to plant a lone yellow onion set into a ceramic pot and watch it grow. I did this on March 25 and used Miracle Gro potting mix, (something that may come to haunt me later on).

The little guy sat there from that day of planting until after the first week of April when I happened to notice that a green growing point had erupted from the top. Wow! I moved the pot, at that point, to a location on a balcony where it could get some sun. That was on April the 7^th, if I remember correctly. It measured 4 centimeters from the soil line to the highest point at that time.

Not long after, on April the 8^th , I took another measurement and noted it was now 6.4 centimeters tall and and then today (the 10^th) I found the highest point to be 11 centimeters! This baby is really growing strong! Once again, however, I'm worried that the added fertilizer will affect any bulbing in a poor way. Onions, it seems, like to be stressed both nutritionally and in terms of water in order for them to reach their maximum 'bulbing' potential. When those factors are not present, or when it gets too hot, they are more likely to bolt or to grow lots of tops with no real onion 'bulb' developing at all.

I'll make it a point to track the progress of this little guy over the course of the next couple of months to document how it does. Uh oh, here's come the evil Dr. Brussels. I'd better hide my onion!

 -------------------------------------

Hello! - This is DanO's psychiatrist, Dr. Brussels. DanO is currently residing at the Sunnybrook Sanitarium and is doing very well, or so we had thought. For some reason, though, he's become fixated on onions to the exclusion of most everything else. And, while we were confident of his release earlier on, the staff has reached the conclusion that perhaps it would be better for him to stay at Sunnybrook for the time being.

Dr. John Brussels
Sunnybrook Sanitarium
Forsyth, MO

Update: I received a mercury injection and am feeling much better now! This picture of the onion in a pot wa taken on May the 8th. Like me, it's still hanging in there!

May 18, 2013 Update: My onion in a pot is still growing well. It now has eight 'leaves' and is not showing any sign of bolting.  

June 15, 2013 - The onion has really grown well in this

potting mix! 
















 Here it is early July and the little guy is still doing pretty well with a the guy now about 5 and a half centimeters across! I'll do a followup post of this onion when I harvest it later in the month! See the harvest day pictures here!

 

Onion Set Experiment YS3213 Update!

It’s been close to a month now since I planted thirty six yellow onion sets in a small raised bed on March 2, 2013. They are part of an experiment to chronicle how close to a perfect onion I can get. In past years, I’ve been frustrated in that many of my onions failed to significantly bulb up, while others bolted early on in the growing cycle. (See my ‘Onions are Easy to Grow’ video for some idea of how they have often looked)! The prior post can be found here.

For this experiment, I’ve used a loose soil and made sure to keep the plants well watered early on. I’ll need a cool spring too, for the best growing performance envelope, although I won’t be able to control that.

The planting grid I used here followed advice I found on the Internet that suggested each onion set be placed in columns spaced four inches apart with rows separated by six inches. Here is what that planting grid looked like pictured at right.

The weather, especially during the last couple of weeks of March was much colder than normal and so not much growth occurred. However, just recently, it’s begun to warm up nicely and good rates of growth have ensued. This picture at the top is a close up of a few of the larger plants (pictured are cells 12, 22 and 32). As you can see all of these sets are healthy in appearance with the 'large' set at top looking the largest. The only 'problem sets' consisted of a missing set in cell 26 (it was replaced) and a set that got somehow inverted - this was also corrected.

Scale is in centimeters

I measured each onion plant in terms of gross height just for comparison purposes. Row 1 consisted of the largest sets while rows 2-4 were medium in size. The bottom rows (5 & 6) contained the smallest sets of the lot. 

Interestingly, after I graphed out the results, I noted that most of the plants were relatively equal in size (± 2-3 cm) with the exception of the really large sets. 

So, everything is growing nicely. My next update will be on or around the end of April 2013.

Click on to enlarge

May 8, 2013 Update: Well it's been about 60 days since I planted the onion  sets and as you can see, they have grown quite a bit. At this time, I haven't seen any evidence of bulbing. The lower stem portions of some of the onions measured about 12 mm across.

May 22, 2013 Update: A fourth onion (cell # 4-4) had bolted and was harvested on this date.  The other three had bolted a week earlier and all of those were from the 'large' sized onion sets. This one was from the 'medium' sized sets. Of note too is another onion experiment that was started on the 17th of March of which there are also 25 plants - none of these have bolted. All the onions are about the same sized and none have shown any inclination to bulb up even as this experiment is entering the 80th day.

August 18, 2013 Update: I've been pulling onions out of this space for a couple of weeks now with plenty more to go. The average size was fairly small weighing in at about 43 grams. The picture here of three peeled onions weighed in at 130 grams. These guys, though small, were still a good investment as I have plenty to use for the next couple of months.

The high cost of online seed!

I’m not sure how companies like Burpee Seed manage to stay in the online seed business. I went to their site to order a packet of romaine seed yesterday and discovered that not only was the cost high ($4.95), but the shipping costs for that one small packet was also $4.95, bringing the total for this purchase to $9.90! Wow! A packet of seed for just under $10? What’s wrong with that picture? No way could I afford that kind of price structure. Especially, considering the fact that the very same item is should be soon available at a local Home Depot garden center for about $1.99!

Now, it’s true. For me to actually get to the seed, I’ll have to burn some gas. In my case, it’s a 30 mile round trip (I live in the country) and the cost in gasoline ($3.52 a gallon) would be about $6. So, unless I was going there for other purchases, I’d end up paying almost the same. Blame it on the skyrocketing cost of gas. (A problem that’s sure to get worst with a left leaning Administration bent on banning all fossil fuels).

I found that a better alternative would be for me to shop locally for seed. Every year about this time, my local Country Mart and even the hardware store down the road, have a few seed display racks out. And while the selection is rather limited, at prices as low as .99 a packet, that’s still quite a bargain.

An experiment in growing onion sets!

Yes, each onion is numbered!

As a part of my desire to grow bigger and better onions from sets, I've decided to see if I couldn't quantify the results of me trying to grow 36 yellow onion sets that came in three basic sizes; large medium and small. I wanted to get a feel for how the starting size of a set could possibly affect the end result at harvest time.

So saying, I selected 36 onions that sorted out as follows:

Diameter is in cm & the weight is in grams

Other information that is pertinent to this effort was the purchase price of these sets at a local grocery store which came to .17 cents each (or 61 cents for all 36 sets). Also, note that the diameter of each onion was expressed in centimeters and the weight was in grams. 

I am planning on setting these guys out in about a week or so, or after the weather warms enough for me to work the soil in one of my raised beds. Just prior to planting I will amend the soil with a bag of composted manure and sand. With onions, I want a loose soil, but not one that has an overabundance of nitrogen, a situation that would grow large tops and small bulbs! So, no fertilizer, just well aerated and manured soil to start.

The spacing for these sets will be a rectangular area that is three feet by two feet. This will allow me enough space to plant six columns of set spaced four inches apart with each column set 6 inches wide. In other words, each little developing onion will have plenty of room to reach its full potential, whatever that may be.

To complete the start of this growing process, I plan to much the area to help preserve moisture and will cover it with a grow cloth to help keep the birds from plucking out the starts (something I'm told they enjoy doing). I'll also make sure to monitor how much rain falls, so that they get at least an inch of water a week. and, that will be about that with the exception of occasional weeding as the need calls for.

In order to track how large each onion gets (or doesn't get), I've made a data file that will contain information pertaining to starting weight and size and then what each set achieved at harvest time. To that end, each onion is numbered and will go into a known location in the bed when planted. 

In future installments that will follow this experiment (designated YS3213), I will be reporting on the progress of this little group of yellow onions. Later in the spring, I plan to do a similar setup for white and red varieties. So, stay tuned! To track this series, just do a search using YS3213 as a search term!

Growing the perfect onion in southwest Missouri!

And I should state for the record, that I’m going to try growing that perfect onion down in southwest Missouri where I'm sure it will be an interesting challenge!

Some years ago, I did a YouTube video titled ‘Onions are Easy to Grow’ in which I chronicled an attempt to grow a crop of onions from some locally purchased onion sets. In the video you can tell that many of these often-grown vegetables of the genus Allium were not very big even at maturity. And, while I didn’t complain, I wondered if perhaps I could do better a few years later in 2013!

To that end, I researched the growing of onions and quickly learned that although I could grow them from seed, the long growing time (4 months or more) made raising them in a Zone 6 garden somewhat problematic. I’d have to start them indoors early on and that seems to be a lot of bother. Instead, I opted to go with a batch of partially grown yellow onion sets that would require much less time in the garden before maturing. One cravat that I came across was the admonition to select sets that were at least ½ inch across as these would be ‘less likely to bolt’! I also read that I need to select ‘short day’ onions for my location here in southwest Missouri. Apparently, onions are sensitive to the length of the day to tell them when to bulb up. Interesting, I thought.

After I settled on using locally purchased onion sets, I next wanted to pay some attention to the soil I was to grow them in. I read that a ‘loose fertile and sandy loam’ type of soil was best and that I would need to keep the area weed free for best results. I also would need to make sure that the soil around the young plants was covered with mulch to help preserve moisture. Apparently, onions also need about an inch of water per week to keep them from ‘splitting’. Another tip concerned the application of fertilizers and or nitrogen. Apparently I would want to skip these as the added nitrogen would tend to promote lush top growth at the expense of the bulbs. That’s definitely not what I wanted to do! Finally, I was advised that once the tops begin to turn yellow, that I needed to take a rake and to bend them over – this action prevents the sap from flowing to the leaves and hastens the bulbing process.

OK! With this advice in hand and a bagful of onion sets, I was ready to get out and prep an area of one raised bed that I had set aside just for this effort. It was early March and I was ready to get out there and do my thing…

Next installment – Mid March 2013

Vegetable gardens that make an impact on personal finances!

When I say a vegetable garden should have lots of impact, I’m talking about that term in the context of the year 2013, a time when food prices may skyrocket.

Today is March the 1^st and two things come to mind; 1) this is the day when across the board cuts in both the government and the military are due to start and 2) a visit to the grocery store reminded me of why a vegetable garden can have some import on ones life.

Iceberg lettuce at $2 a head, bell peppers at $1 and even yellow onions going for .99 a pound were things that struck me this day. A fellow shopper and friend I ran into also remarked at the insanely high price of vegetables while showing me his pitiful pile of purchases resting in the bottom of his shopping cart. I smiled (inwardly) and agreed with him having gone down that same isle myself at little earlier. Only, for my part, I passed on the bell pepper for a buck deal. Way too expensive for my meager budget.

In another post, I talked about trying to grow the ‘perfect’ onions from sets. Actually, that may not be fair, as I feel any edible vegetable to be ‘perfect’ in some way. The main thing is to make sure you prepare you garden soil as early in the spring as you can work it and that you make a plan on what to plant and follow through. I.E. – that you actually end up with something for the plate or stew pot that also doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg! In my case, and for this season, I’m going to focus on high impact vegetables that will reduce the pain at the produce isle as much as possible! Here are my top five are in no particular order:

Potatoes – sure at $2.99 for a five pound bag, you might not think the lowly potato a good choice. However, given the fact that they are so easy to grow and that they offer a calorie per gram, I’m making sure to sow a four by four foot area this spring.

Carrots – When you talk about a vegetable that is both highly productive and nutritious, then the carrot goes far in my mind. An added plus is the small amount of space needed to produce a harvest that can keep over the next winter in the ground to be used a needed!

Bell Peppers – This is a ‘must have’ item in my book – I use bell peppers a lot in my salads during the summer as a substitute for celery which I cannot grow and which seem to remain high all year long in terms of cost. Due to the long growing cycle, I also purchase these as starts and don’t bother to grow them from seed. The small added cost in the spring is still offset come fall when these guys rise rapidly in price. They also can be chopped and frozen to be used in chilis and such over the winter! In this category are included a few plantings of Habanera’s and Long Red cayenne’s.

Romaine – These hearty versions of the watery iceberg lettuce I buy at the grocery store are much more nutritious and even a small planting, when properly spaced, go a long way! I plant this easy to grow veggie in the spring and then again in the fall. For the winter period, I also make sure to start some in cold frames in October so that they get to edible size and then go into ‘suspended animation’ inside the closed frames over the winter months!

Onions – When grown from sets, onions are almost a no brainer vegetable to grow. They can be planted together or thrown around into odd places all around the garden. And, while they may lack a bit in the nutritional department, they more than make up for that in terms of versatility around the kitchen. I used them in salads, as a topping on hamburgers and in most of my vegetable soup creations!

Well, that rounds out the list of my must have, high impact vegetables for the spring of 2013. And, while I surly will plant some other varieties (cherry tomatoes come to mind), I think these five will have the biggest impact in terms of saving a few bucks over the coming year!

So! What can I plant in February in Zone 6?

Planting out in February mostly depends on where you live and what ‘zone’ you happen to fall in. Something that’s become a bit more confusing of late as those growing zones have changed! A new map put out in 2012 has basically shifted the numbers to the north a bit. I understand that my location in southwest Missouri which used to be Zone 6 is now Zone 6b which puts me a tad closer to Zone 7! This was all courtesy of global warming or so I’m told. Now, I guess what that map means is that I can plant stuff outside a little bit earlier in the year than I could before. But, is that really such a good guide?

Traditionally, most folks in the Midwestern States would wait until at least mid March before risking any seedlings or plants that could be killed by frost. Better still, Zone 6 people were advised to hold back until the first week of April as a late frost could still occur. I’ve always tended to follow that plan with the exception of onion starts which can be placed out just as soon as the soil can be worked. These cold hardy plants benefit from early plantings in good rich soil so they can be the best they can be by summer time.

I’ve already begun to keep an eye out at my local grocery stores for those bins filled with red, white and yellow onions, so that I can have them on hand during the next brief warm up outside. Last year in 2012, I saw them out in the first week of February and wrote a post on it. Those guys turned out really well and I enjoyed harvesting some as scallions as early as April of that year.