Experiments in the Vegetable Garden - Revisited

     In March, I introduced to you the Experiments in the Vegetable Garden we had in store for 2015, and since we're nearing the end of harvesting season, I'm revisiting the subject to tell you if any of our ideas actually worked.  So let's add to our list of "learning experiences" shall we?

Saving Money on Fertilizer

     It was one of those dreams we hoped would work out: a cover crop that would add the nutrient boost we so desperately desired.  After all, it had to work better than the bags and bags and bags of leaves we spread across the garden last fall and watered heavily, only to have them all blow away.  The buckwheat though just about had us screaming, as it finally decided to sprout around the same time we decided to plant the garden.  So, we never truly got the boost we needed, although we did till in what we could of the buckwheat.  The buckwheat that was left standing after we started planting was pulled up by the handfuls and tossed into the chicken coop.  The chickens absolutely loved it!  (And at least the buckwheat didn't go to waste, and we got "free feed.")  Which, also leads me to the, yes, we now have poultry and "free fertilizer," minus the cost of keeping the poultry, labor of "harvesting" the fertilizer, labor of composting the fertilizer, and labor of utilizing the fertilizer.  So much for "free," huh?

Whitey and Purrball watching the chickens dine on
buckwheat in their permanent run.

     Are we irritated that it didn't work?  Most definitely, but we're not ones to easily give up when we fail the first time (and it did actually grow eventually, so it wasn't a total failure).  So that nice tilled-looking section in the above photograph, that's now planted with rye grass.  In the words of William Edward Hickson, " 'Tis a lesson you should heed: try, try, try again.  If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again."  Here's to hoping the rye grass works...

Blossom End Rot

The hundreds of tomatoberry tomatoes that came off of the
vines this year were not effected by the blossom end rot.

     Stupid blossom end rot... yes, we got it again this year, but not on as many plants (and only tomatoes).  Can I call this a partial success?  Please?  When planting the tomatoes, I was tired (as per usual around here), and only remembered halfway through that I'm supposed to be planting them with eggshells!  Therefore, we only have half of the tomato plants planted with eggshells.  We ended up side dressing them (all of them!) with more eggshells part way into the season, before they begun to produce, and mulching them with pine needles (which would also give them an added acid boost when the needles started to decompose).  Unfortunately, even with these extra amendments, and also probably due to the decrease in plants from previous years (40 plants in 2013 went to 27 plants in 2014 and just 19 plants this year) we don't have as much of a crop.  We did pick the best producing varieties from years' past as well, but it still looks like we may be adding more tomato plants next year.  I really hate to think about that at this point.  I think I'm just going to be excited in the coming weeks when this years' tomato plants die from frost at this point.  (Soooo.... much.... processing....)

Weed Control

Cushaw pumpkin growing alongside the
weeds in the squash rows.

     Which then leads us to weed control.  That, well, kinda worked?  Yeah, we'll say kinda.  I am sick of weeding, I am also now sick of weeding straw, which happened to also have seeds in.  (Lesson learned.)  The bonus of weeding straw is straw keeps the ground moist so therefore the weeds are easier to pull out.  We used pine needles on the tomato plants, which worked wonderfully to keep the weeds out, and the grass clippings never made it to the garden.  Instead they were spread into the very muddy chicken run to help keep the muck down.  They do get cleaned out every now and then and make it to the compost bin, so they'll eventually end up on the garden one way or another.  The newspaper, well that blew to kingdom come during a wind storm along with all the wet straw on top of it.  (No, seriously.  I was picking it out of the neighbor's fence up the way.)  So it looks like I may start over with square one in the idea sector again next year.

     

Watering the Garden

     I'm happy to report that this seemingly worked!  We didn't have massive squash die outs, and everything got watered (including the weeds).  It would be nice if we really could pick and choose which plants get watered with our current system, but with an overhead sprinkler and multiple soaker hoses, we can't be so lucky.  The mulch helped keep the crops moist, and the hose splitters this year made life a lot easier too, so we weren't dragging hoses here and there for the entire summer.  We also had enough hoses (due to a stroke of unfortunate luck) to go around for once, so we didn't have to keep dragging those down the line as well.

     (Note about the stroke of unfortunate luck: We will say there was a tiny bit of an oops with the lawnmower and we ended up with multiple hoses as a result.  The lawnmower hurried along our procrastination in this sense as we were going to eventually get around to cutting some of the hoses to allow for less movement of them throughout the summer.  Sometimes mistakes can work out in our favor, although this was not the case with the lawnmower-tomato cage battle of last fall.  From that... we got scrap metal.)

View of the spring garden to fall garden from the old Pennsylvania barn

Hopefully, your garden saw some successes this year as well!  Well, until next time, happy harvesting!