Just be glad you aren't trying to start a garden in the Northwest, Dude! It's well into May here and we finally put some veggie seed in patio pots. The garden is just too soggy yet - another wet spring thanks to El Nino. We just hope it doesn't mean a repeat of last year's lousy cool and wet summer, where if anything did manage to grow, it rotted or got some fungal disease by September. Worst I've ever seen.
You should put a few sunflowers in your corn mix; I had sunflowers to 11 feet over 7 foot corn, with beans climbing them both and setting nitrogen, and squash as well. It worked well since all did great, but I had too many sunflower plants, and they muscled out the corn a bit for sunlight; it required some selective leaf pruning, so next time only one sunflower plant for every 4 feet of row. But it sure put on a show! And envious neighbor comments; now they will be disappointed if I don't do the same thing this year, as they love the view of the spectacular flowers high over the fence. My one grape cherry tomatoe plant was pushing 10 feet for some reason - that was weird but cool.
The wet summer allowed a black fungus to take out all my tomatoes in late September, so relatively few actually ripened. Never had that happen before in half a century of gardening/farming. Pray to your Sun God, Dude! (And maybe say one for me)
Comments for Getting ready for gardening
Just be glad you aren't trying to start a garden in the Northwest, Dude! It's well into May here and we finally put some veggie seed in patio pots. The garden is just too soggy yet - another wet spring thanks to El Nino. We just hope it doesn't mean a repeat of last year's lousy cool and wet summer, where if anything did manage to grow, it rotted or got some fungal disease by September. Worst I've ever seen.
You should put a few sunflowers in your corn mix; I had sunflowers to 11 feet over 7 foot corn, with beans climbing them both and setting nitrogen, and squash as well. It worked well since all did great, but I had too many sunflower plants, and they muscled out the corn a bit for sunlight; it required some selective leaf pruning, so next time only one sunflower plant for every 4 feet of row. But it sure put on a show! And envious neighbor comments; now they will be disappointed if I don't do the same thing this year, as they love the view of the spectacular flowers high over the fence. My one grape cherry tomatoe plant was pushing 10 feet for some reason - that was weird but cool.
The wet summer allowed a black fungus to take out all my tomatoes in late September, so relatively few actually ripened. Never had that happen before in half a century of gardening/farming. Pray to your Sun God, Dude! (And maybe say one for me)
You're the one with the brains here. I'm wathicng for your posts.