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spring planting

Time for a Quick Crop of Radishes

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Plenty of gardeners in North Georgia wait until after mid-April to begin planting vegetable crops, but anyone who is a bit impatient can plant some radish seeds now.

Radishes from last spring’s gardening.   PHOTO/AmyGWh

Radishes grow best in the cooler weather of early spring, and they are ready to harvest just 4-5 weeks after they are planted. This makes radishes a great little crop to start the gardening year. Success comes so soon!

It used to be that most radish seeds in the garden centers and catalogues produced radishes that were just round and red.

Now, though, a whole range of colors and shapes are available, which makes pulling the little roots up at harvest time a great adventure. The same patch of garden that grew the pink and white (almost hidden under the pink) radishes in the picture also gave us purple, red, and yellow (!) radishes. All were delicious.

People who are Not From Around Here sometimes refer to radishes as a foolproof crop. I remember, when I first moved to Georgia, reading in more than one book/document, that “anyone can grow radishes.” That statement may be true in a sense, but the red-clay soil that is the base of my garden did not make a radish crop for the first couple of years, no matter how many seeds I set into the ground.

If your garden has been thwarting your radish-dreams, do not despair. The yearly addition of composts and other amendments, and having the soil tested to find out exactly what is needed to balance the nutrients for vegetable production, will soon enough bring plenty of these little beauties to your springtime table.

Are We Beyond the Last Frost? Is it Safe to Plant?

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After several warm days and moderate nights, we had a weekend of cooler weather that included a drop down below 30 degrees F.

Some years, such as in 2011, 2012, and 2013, our last frost has occurred before the end of March, and it is possible that the warm weather forecast for the upcoming week will seduce gardeners who remember those warm years into setting out tender transplants, like tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and tomatillos.

For all those gardeners, I would just like to offer the reminder that last year, the last frost for this area was on April 16. That dip to 30 degrees F (as measured at UGA’s automated weather station in Dallas, GA; in Alpharetta it was 28 degrees F) was preceded by a couple of weeks of warm, spring weather.

All the local gardeners who decide to set out tender transplants before mid-April should keep in mind that those plants may need some frost-protection on one or more days. Notice how I didn’t say, “Don’t do it!”

That’s because, in all honesty, I will be one of those gardeners who just can’t wait. 

It is closer to “safe,” though, to begin planting seeds of some crops, especially if they are set into furrows that offer a little shelter from breezes and cool nights. Seeds that I consider “safe to plant this week” include corn and beans. Cucumbers, melons, and squashes will follow the next week. Okra germinates more reliably in warmer soils, so planting time for those seeds will be closer to the end of April.

Soil temperatures currently are in the mid-50s (degrees F), which means that seeds for some summer crops are going to germinate more slowly than we might prefer.  While we wait, we can enjoy the always-amazing unfolding of spring.

Still Winter, but Dreaming of Spring

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It looks like this is going to be one of those awkward years when the plants and the weather aren’t quite in sync. Daffodils began blooming in my yard over the weekend, but there is a drop to 11 degrees F expected on Wednesday. That drop in temperature will make a mess of my daffodils. The pink camellia blossoms aren’t going to take that drop well, either. Wilted, drooping, soggy, browned flowers definitely are not part of the spring dream!

The hopeful news is that the tips of trout-lily leaves are beginning to emerge by the back fence. I use the blooming of those plants as a signal to begin planting peas, and then a week or two later the potatoes. Some years, the flowers of my trout lilies are up in abundance by the last week in February, but it may be the first week in March before I see many of those flowers this year.

Those two plantings — the peas and potatoes — begin the cascade of springtime activity in my garden. Lettuces, spinach, beets, and more cool-season crops will be seeded directly into the soil in that same time of beginning, and from there the planting flows fairly steadily on, right through May.

While I am waiting on the trout lilies, I have tiny plants to tend indoors. Tomato seedlings have begun their unfolding in the flat that I started on Feb. 8, a little more than a week ago. Tending those, and then the peppers and eggplants that will share the flat as they germinate and grow (always taking a little longer to emerge than the tomatoes…), will keep my gardening-energies engaged in the meantime.

Not Finished with Planting, and Still Harvesting Lettuce

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There has been a lot of Life in my life lately, which means that my planting isn’t exactly following my plan. I think that happens pretty much every year, so I am not surprised. Really, the year that everything else is so calm that I get the gardening done on a good schedule is probably going to be a boring year (except for the really great garden!).

In the “going right” column, I can list the continued harvest of peas, lettuces, and strawberries, along with a few increasingly spicy radishes. Some day soon, the beets will be ready to harvest. The tomatoes are planted, as are some of the peppers. The corn is up and growing, and so are the bush and pole beans. Germination of cucumbers was slow, but the little plants now are beginning to run.

The garlic, shallots, and multiplying onions still look great. The two tomatilla plants each have a couple of flowers. Cosmos are up about 6 inches in a couple of places in the garden, and several borage plants have been blooming well for a while.

In the “running behind” column, I can list the planting of zucchini, melons, winter squashes, okra, sunflowers, other flowers, the rest of the peppers, and some herbs (basil! parsley!). Sweet potatoes and peanuts aren’t planted yet, but they aren’t late. It is just about time now for those to go into the ground.

In a “looks like trouble ahead” column, I can list the lagging eggplants that are covered up in flea beetles and a possible problem already on some of the cucumber leaves.

More Life is expected for this weekend, which means the planting might still be behind next Tuesday, even after having a three-day weekend in which to catch up!

Meanwhile, in one of those moments of craziness that seem to strike all gardeners, I ordered seeds for pink bananas, American licorice, Siberian pea shrub, goji berry, and a wild black cap raspberry. Those have all arrived arrived in the mail, and most of them have stratification requirements that will keep them from germinating anytime soon. I’m looking forward to figuring them all out.

Hope all the other gardeners out there are having fun!

Almost Time for the Spring Planting Marathon

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April is the biggest planting month for home vegetable gardens around here, and getting everything done can be tough. First there’s the “waiting for the soil to warm up” part, and then there’s the rush to get as much as possible into the ground as soon as it is even remotely feasible.

I like to start with some bush beans because they are early producers. I usually am able to bring the first beans to the kitchen in May.

Right now, I have lettuces getting close to what I consider “harvest-able” size. I’m not a big fan of baby-sized lettuces, which means I end up waiting longer for the larger leaves. Some of the spring radishes are almost big enough to pull, but the spinach and beets are all still pretty small. In the longer-range category, most of the seed potatoes have sent up some green leaves, and the onion-family crops planted in October are all still looking good.

A couple of the garden beds in the side yard are ready for planting. I worked on those yesterday, along with hoeing and/or pulling weeds in most of the other beds. In what is probably a jumping-the-gun moment, I planted some seeds in one of those beds.

The dill and additional radishes aren’t at all early, but the little patch of bush beans and short row of cucumber seeds probably are. My reasoning was that seeds are relatively inexpensive, and I have more than I need this year. If we get a late frost and the little plants don’t survive, it won’t be a disaster. I can just replant those little sections. We are forecast to have rain for the next couple of days, which made the planting seem even more like a good idea — no dragging out the hose to water the seeds!

If it works, I will have a start on getting the garden planted. If we get as much rain as the weather-guys are suggesting, the ground will be too wet to do any more work in the garden for several days, but as the soil dries and warms up a bit later in the week, I will probably plant another little section with some kind of seeds.

Most of the transplants for tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and tomatillas won’t be planted out until I know for certain that the weather has warmed, but one tomato plant is already in the ground. All the seeds for that variety germinated, and I ended up with extra plants.

I’ll let you all know how it goes…

Potatoes and Lettuce and Peas (and More!)

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It’s been a beautiful day for getting things done in the garden, so of course I am running behind. I spent part of my day just sitting on the back deck, listening to birds and admiring the trays of seedlings that I had moved out to a dappled spot.

The good news is that the trout lilies are blooming in my yard, and that is my signal that the soil is warm enough that peas and other cool-season crops planted now will actually germinate and grow rather than rot in too-cold soil.

I’ve planted some peas, planted out some little lettuces that I had started indoors a few weeks back, and planted some radish seeds. If all goes well tomorrow, I’ll plant some more peas, lettuces, and radishes, and possibly also some spinach and beets.

Not all of the peas that I plant this weekend will be left in place long enough to produce peas; some are going to serve as a late-spring cover crop and will be turned back into the soil about six weeks from now. They will help get the soil in shape for the summer crops that will follow them.

The garlic, shallots, and multiplying onions all made it through the worst of winter and look good. I am hoping that the cold will actually help the hard-neck garlic! When the winter is warm, they don’t make as many cloves-per-bulb.

When those onion-family crops all come out in June, they will be followed by a late planting of tomatoes. The June-planted tomatoes won’t produce until late August, but they will give my tomato-supply a welcome boost when they finally begin to ripen!

I’ve also set out (possibly too early) some seed potatoes. On a quick run through Home Depot I saw a display of boxes of seed potatoes, and I found myself buying a pound of Kennebec potatoes in addition to whatever it was we went in for. When I got the box home, the seed potatoes already had good eyes, so after a few days I went ahead and planted them. They haven’t poked any green up above the surface yet, which is good, because there is more cold ahead, I’m sure.

I had already placed a small order through the Potato Garden for a pound of Garnet Chili seed potatoes (I grew them once before, and my recollection is that they were wonderful), a pound of Red Pontiac seed potatoes (good to eat and super productive in my yard), and a pound of Rose Finn Apple Fingerlings that a friend wanted a half-pound of, so we will be sharing those. The box of seed potatoes arrived in yesterday’s mail. None of the spuds in the box have developed good eyes yet, so it will be another week or two before those can be planted outside.

Really, though, the urge to fill the garden with cool season crops is very hard to resist; there is so much good food that can be planted and grown successfully now! Sadly, most of those crops wouldn’t be ready to harvest until sometime in May — well past the time when I will want to have some of my summer crops planted.  If I want those summer crops ready to harvest in a timely manner, I can’t fill the garden with cool-season crops now.

It helps that I spent part of my time at home in the last winter storm mapping out a plan for my 2014 garden; the map/plan supports my resolve to keep my hands off the packs of broccoli, collards, etc plants at the garden stores, so I’ll have space for all the peppers, squash, okra, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, melons, beans, parching corn, etc. that I have planned to grow in my little garden.

Hope that everyone else is enjoying the beautiful weather!

What Can I Plant Now?

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Gardeners have been calling the Extension office, from the beginning of January, wanting to know what they can plant NOW. Even when the ground was frozen and the forecast was for a drop down around 10 degrees F, the lengthening days, like a siren song that they couldn’t tune out, made them pick up the phone, call, and ask. Luckily, they ended up speaking with me, another gardener gone deaf to nearly all except the need to begin the new year of planting.

For those who can’t wait, I’ve assembled a couple of timetables. The first one is pulled from UGA’s Vegetable Planting Chart. The dates on the original chart are for “middle Georgia” (somewhere around Macon); I’ve shifted the dates by a couple of weeks to reflect our later warming here in Cobb County.

Crop
UGA planting dates
Asparagus
Feb 1- April 1
Beets
Mar 1 – Apr 15
Broccoli
Mar 1 – Apr 1
Cabbage
Mar 1 – Apr 1
Carrot
Feb 1 – Apr 5
Cauliflower
Mar 15 – Apr 15
Collards
Feb 15 – Apr 1
Kale
Feb 15 – Mar 25
Lettuce
Feb 1 – Mar 15
Onions, green
Jan 15 – Apr 1
Onions, dry bulb
Jan 15 – Apr 1
Peas, garden
Feb 1 – Mar 1
Peas, edible pod
Feb 1 – Mar 1
Potatoes, Irish
Feb 1 – Mar 15
Radish
Feb 1 – Apr 15
Spinach
Feb 1- April 1
Turnip
Feb 1 – Apr 15

The second timetable, though not actually in table form, is from John Jeavons’ book “How to Grow MoreVegetables …”

6-8 weeks before last frost ( Feb 15 – March 1), start in flats:
broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, parsley, tomatoes
5 weeks before last frost (Mar 1- 15), start in flats:
carrot, beets
bump up the lettuce seedlings to larger containers
4 weeks before last frost (5-20 March):
sprout/chit potatoes
bump up the parsley
3 weeks before last frost (15-30 March), start in flats:
peas, spinach
bump up seedlings for broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower
2 weeks before last frost (25 Mar – 1 Apr), start in flats:
dill, eggplants, peppers
transplant to garden:
broccoli, Brussels sprouts, peas, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, beets, lettuce, spinach
plant garlic, onions, radishes

A careful reader might notice that the two timetables don’t exactly match. This means that a gardener will need to experiment a little and choose for him or herself the best planting times.

One of the helpful features of the Jeavons’ timetable is that it includes times for bumping up and transplanting seedlings, very useful information for those of us who DIY our garden transplants. One of the hilarious features is the inclusion of carrots as a crop to transplant. I’ve tried it — it’s possible — but the carrots come out all bent and mangled.

Also, I usually bump up my tomatoes – and start my peppers – much earlier than indicated in his timetable. (He bumps up tomatoes – from the flat to pots – on the last frost date, which I count as about April 12-15.)

For my yard, parts of the UGA timetable seem a little early, but my yard is in a hole and stays cooler longer than much of the rest of the county. Other parts of the UGA schedule seem late. For example,  I can’t imagine planting collard greens as late as April 1!

For peas, I use an indicator plant; I plant peas when the trout lilies are blooming in my yard. The leaves of those native wildflowers aren’t even poking up above the soil yet, so this year the peas may get planted a little later than normal. Irish potatoes usually get planted in my yard in mid-March, and my onions and garlic get planted in late October or early November.

Based on both timetables, and all the possible timetables gleaned from other, local gardeners, there is plenty to start working with in terms of spring planting, beginning now. I hope the information is helpful!

 

Crazy Busy Planting Weekend — and I’m Still Not Done

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No pictures yet, but I was able to get most of the rest of the garden planted in summer crops over the long weekend.

On Saturday morning, before working on our own yard, we went out to the farm on Dallas Highway where we usually volunteer, and we weeded (a lot) and planted a couple dozen tomato plants and a couple dozen pepper plants in some of the raised beds.

Then, just when we thought we were leaving for the day, our farmer friend (Charles) said, “when you come back after lunch you can plant the rest of the tomatoes down in the field.” So we went back after lunch, and with the help of one other guy we planted two 150 foot rows of tomato plants. In other words, we started the planting-weekend with a bang.

I didn’t really start on my own yard until the next day, because I was kind of wiped out after that, but  planting in my yard included:

Half of the sweet potatoes (Beauregard, Purple Delight), the parching corn (Supai Red), this year’s round of the melon de-hybridization project (Amy’s Kennesaw Sweet Canary), a few of the “dwarf” butternut squash that I planted last year, watermelon (Luscious Golden), cucumbers (Burpee’s Picklebush, Straight Nine) to replace ones that didn’t come up when they were planted before, one more tomato plant, and some flower seeds. I also started some flower seeds in Jiffy Pellets, because I will need a lot more flowers for our bees.

After the corn is up and  looking good, I plan to plant peanuts in the spaces between. I still have some sweet potato slips to plant (Nancy Hall, Porto Rican Gold), and I’m expecting to harvest the onions and garlic within the next two or three weeks, which means I’ll be planting the Tarahumara Popping Sorghum soon, too. When the shallots come out, I’ll be planting more zucchini in their space.

Joe and I also worked on the “foundation planting” area that had been destroyed last summer when the tree smashed the house. The soil there was VERY compacted clay; breaking that up and mixing in the compost and other amendments required some seriously hard work. At the sunnier end of that bed we planted the bay tree that has been growing in a pot for the past few years, three perennial, purple-flowered Salvia, and a couple of Coronation Gold Yarrow.

The hard work will all be rewarded later in the summer, when the flowers are beautiful and we are enjoying the harvest, but right now I am a mass of sore muscles. Of course, I am also very happy to have accomplished so much.

Hope all the other gardens out there are doing well!

Around the Yard

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It’s been raining for the past couple of days – about four inches so far – which means I haven’t been able to get any gardening done.

Rabun County Garlic

I have, though, been out between downpours with my camera, to celebrate the good things that are going on out there.

To start – the garlic is looking very good. The stems are thickening nicely, which bodes well for the likelihood of my harvesting large cloves. Usually, plants that are more slender when the bulbs start to form make smaller cloves.

Since I am lazy and would rather peel a few big cloves of garlic rather than a whole lot of little cloves, this development is making me pretty happy.

Thicker stems on onions translates the same way – into bigger bulbs – but my onions aren’t coming along quite so well as the garlic. These things happen.

The lettuces are making nice, big bunches of leaves, and I expect to be having a lot more “yard salad” soon.

SloBolt Lettuce
Peony, bowed down in the rain.

The weather in the past month or so has been decidedly cool, which is a little bit frustrating in that the summer crops are lagging as a result.

However, I am expecting to see spectacular flowers on the peonies this year. When they bloom in hot weather, the petals open unevenly – the centers expanding more rapidly than the outer layers – and the flowers never make it to the lush, full bloom that they achieve in cooler springs.

This is definitely a cooler spring, so I have high hopes for some beautiful flowers.

In spite of the cool weather, in which we are still having nights with temperatures in the 40s (degrees F), the peppers seem to be doing well enough. Most of my thirteen little pepper plants have flower buds on them. When we Finally get some warmer weather, these should all do very well.

A Napoleon sweet bell pepper.

The potatoes are starting to send up little flower buds, which means that actual spuds are beginning to form below ground. If I were especially impatient for some little new potatoes, I could probably dig around under the mass of plants and pull some tiny potatoes out. I’m going to wait, though, for the big harvest in June.

Potatoes sending up flower buds.

The fall-planted strawberry plants that I got from a friend are making lots of flowers and green berries. I’ve put a frame around them that I need to get covered up with netting soon, before the birds figure out what I’m growing.

An ever-bearing type of strawberry, unknown variety.

The zucchini are making a slow start in the cool weather, but a slow start is better than no start! I am looking forward to the first harvest of squash; it’s so much better fresh than from the freezer.

Raven zucchini, off to a good start.

It’s also good to see the comfrey in bloom. Bees like comfrey flowers, and the leaves are a useful addition to the compost heap. Comfrey has a very deep taproot that brings up nutrients from much farther below the surface than many other perennials. The compost, when comfrey leaves are added, benefits from the dive down to the different layer of soil nutrients.

Comfrey in bloom.

I am hoping to make more progress on getting the summer garden planted in the next week. It’s a little weird to be waiting for warmer weather this far into the spring!

Garden Update

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Does anyone else have sore muscles today from all the garden-work yesterday? I amended and planted two and a half beds and set up the bird bath, and then I bumped up some of the remaining plants into larger pots.

The two completed beds are the two nearest the front door. Now, instead of weeds, the long curved bed has three eggplants, thirteen pepper plants, and some gladiolus bulbs to go with the bee balm that was already there, and the smaller bed shaped like a big slice of pie has six Swiss chard, seeds for zinnias and pickling cucumbers, and the birdbath. When Joe got back in the late afternoon from kayaking on the Etowah River, he was amazed at how different the front yard looked!

The “half” part of the two-and-a-half beds is one that is supposed to get tomatoes planted in it later in the summer, based on my newly-created rotation scheme, but it got a couple of Amish tomato plants early. I need for the Amish tomatoes to be separate from the rest to avoid any further cross-pollination.

Last year’s Amish tomatoes looked pretty different from the tomatoes of the first couple of years, and I am hoping that the older seeds (saved from one of the earlier years with this variety) that I used this year will produce plants that are more similar to the original variety. Keeping them in a bed across the yard from the rest should lessen the cross pollination problem.

Other activities for the day included admiring our new bees and cleaning my bunnies’ enclosures. My friend Cheryl stopped by to pick up some plastic nursery pots because she needed more of the 3-gallon size (I had plenty under the house) and she brought some bunny salad – which included some wheat plants – from her yard for Moonpie, Tiny, Burrito, and Holstein. They seemed to enjoy the different salad!

I’m expecting to plant most of the rest of the summer garden over the next couple of weeks, completing a little bit each evening after work. The sweet potatoes will be last, because they need reliably warm soil to do well.