Finally completed the Three-Sisters (Corn, beans, and squash) planting and got some slicing and pickling cukes in under the black plastic mulch. Still have buckwheat and black beans to get planted once we get a little bit of a dry spell.
Read more...So, our Ryobi Xpand-It curved shaft weed trimmer failed back in the beginning of June. Being the cheap ass that I am I was trying to score a used one on CraigsList fo' cheap. Being the even cheaper-ass I was waiting for one for sale that was within 20 minutes of driving time. Fast-forward 3 weeks, do you know what weeds growing along side garden beds can do if left unchecked for 3 weeks? It was starting to get a bit out of control so I broke down and joined Consumer Reports, read that the Echo series of weed trimmers was supposed to be pretty sweet and went out and got the Echo SRM-230. The thing is a friggin hoss. Given that weed trimming/weed control is about my least favorite task on the farm, it made sense to get the proper tool for the job. In the few days we've had it I can tell you that there is a reason you see Echo straight shaft trimmers on the sides of landscaping trucks and not other silly brands. What I will tell you is that it is not the best of ideas to weed eat along side of beds you plan on harvesting from the following day unless you wanna spend the time and water to wash the shredded grasses out of the folds of your lettuces and other veggies, ask me how I know.
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So, even though Cilantro was a pain in the ass to grow in Texas because it was too hot, I've had some success getting them started here in PA. What I don't know, is how long the weather can keep them from bolting. Given that the strain is an heirloom, I can select for late bolting (bolting is where the plant rapidly moves from the vegetative to the flowering state) but we do love some cilantro and dill. The dill will be awesomes for canning later on.
So, back in Texas I grew a bunch of Swiss Chard and the stuff was a battle tank, very easy to grow and you could pick leaves off it all season long. I saw other people growing the Rainbow variety and was a bit jealous cuz their stuff was so much prettier than the Swiss stuff. So when I got up here to PA I decided to give the Rainbow variety a shot. It's turned out well. The stuff is not only a tasty treat but you can take the especially colorful stalks and put them in a flower glass and enjoy the colors.
So, given that we are trying to turn virgin soil into viable organic agricultural soil, we need to grow a lot of cover crops such as oats. So's I ordered some oat seeds and planted them in with the peas back in early March. Normally I would have turned the oats under a few weeks ago but I'se trying to let them go to seed to do that whole exponentially expanding the amount of oat seeds I was in control of thus eventually leading to world domination thing. Here are some pics of the oat seeds. Bathe in their splendor.
Coming from Texas where suppressing soil temps was the goal, I am not used to having to try to keep soil temps elevated. But if you wanna grow peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, or melons in PA, keeping soil temps elevated is what you gotta do. To help you in this pursuit, you can apply 'black plastic mulch' which is basically big ole rolls of black plastic that put down over rows that you've hilled the dirt up in the middle (see pics below). The trick is to wait till after a good rain to get your hill an initial soaking then put the plastic down and secure it either with dirt, rocks, or pegs. Wait a week or so for the earthworms and other dirt dwellers to re-stabilize, then go down the row and cut a hole at the spacing rate for whatever you want to plant there. So far we've put in tomato, pepper and eggplant transplants. Sometime next week, I'll put some cucumber and melon seeds in and see how hard it is to plant from seed using the sheets.
Did you know that hop vines have to wrap themselves CLOCKWISE around the rope/string/whatever that they grow up? If one did not know this and one was going to begin growing their own hops and go through the effort of building their string trellis support system and wrap the young hop vines around the support string any old way (meaning some CLOCKWISE, some COUNTER-CLOCKWISE) one might be surprised to find that some of the hop vines grew fine up the rope and some of them got pissed off and had to unwind themselves. One might be confused until one realized that the vines that were initially wrapped COUNTER-CLOCKWISE were the ones that were having to unscrew themselves, literally. So young Hop Barons, take this lil pro-tip to bed with you and when your young hop vines begin reaching for their ropes to grow up, you wanna wrap them CLOCKWISE around that rope.
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