Planting the Solanum Bed

Monday I deserted my relatives for a few minutes and planted out my tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos. These take a long time to plant as I actually dig a deep hole for the tomatoes and amend the bottom of each hole. I put in one cup of 5-3-3, one cup of bonemeal, one cup of powdered eggshells, and one cup of Azomite. Above you can see how I protect my tomatoes from cutworms. Those are hosta flower stems from last years flowers. I like this way of doing it as the stems just rot out over time and they are very quick to stick in. I used to use cutworm collars made out of newspaper, but were just too fiddly to get right. Occasionally the cutworms will climb the stem and cut off a branch, but not often. We get a lot of cutworms here. I even killed about 12 cutworms that I found in my onion bed. I'd never seen them in the onions before, so didn't check. They killed about a row of the plants and severely set back a few more. I mean really? Onions? Onions are supposed to help repel these things.

After I was done I still had a flat of tomatoes left. I'll plant one of each variety at the new house in the bed behind the wall, but I still haven't had a chance to do that yet. I'll probably get to it this afternoon as we are getting a warm spell and the tomatoes will just take off with the heat. The 10 day forecast has lots of mid 70Fs to lower 80Fs with nights in the 50Fs and 60s. This is very warm weather for May.

Behind every other tomato plant I put in some Ground Control marigolds that were from seed I saved last year. They grew quite well. Now I don't amend the ground below these at all. They can get rather large and unwieldy. If anything I keep them cut back during the year to control them.

I planted out 12 peppers. I only have 25 total. So the other house will get 13. I'm contemplating if this is enough or not. I can always buy more seedlings. I'm so used to growing them again that I don't think about it, but I think I will get a few six packs of nasturtiums so they will start off bigger. I have seed, but never even thought about starting them. I think some nasturtiums trailing down the wall would be pretty.

I also planted two of my four tomatillos. I keep wondering how big they will get. I told myself I would always support tomatillos from now on, but I don't want to buy supports for both houses. Last year my cages were tossed as after 19 years they had rusted through and didn't support well anymore. I might just stake them. Stakes are cheap. As you can see the tomatillos are a bit yellow. They have been growing so fast and struggling with my treatment of them. I accidentally left them inside (with the lights turned off) for two days. The poor things have been recovering, but they still aren't happy.

At the end of the bed I planted out some really tiny basil plants. I have no clue as to why they didn't grow well for me. Maybe they just needed more time. Or maybe they needed more fertilizer. I've found the fertilizer that I add to my soil blocks lasts about three weeks in the small blocks and four weeks in the larger blocks. I need to get some liquid fertilizer for next years seedlings if I keep making my own soil. The Fort V soil from the Vermont Compost Company was better soil than I made. Things grew better in it. I just wish I could buy the large bags somewhere here around where I live. The small bags cost too much and if I ship it costs too much.

But now the plants are all out in the garden. I tried to row cover as much as I could for a couple of days. It helps with transplant shock as it protects from the seedlings from the wind. Sadly I don't have a large enough row cover to protect the whole bed. I think today I'll remove the cover as the weather is supposed to be so good. I think the direct sun will help them grow fast. Grow tomatoes, grow!

Three Sisters Garden Planted

I finished putting my Three Sisters Garden in the ground yesterday. It started last winter as an idea. I wanted to try more interplanting techniques to try to get a better harvest out of my garden and the most classic of all companion planting is the Three Sisters Garden. The corn is the support for the pole beans, while the pole beans provide nitrogen to the soil that the corn takes out. The squash provide a mulch for the soil and its prickly vines help to keep intruders out of the garden. It in turn likes the partial shade from the other two.

Throughout the winter I collected seed for my garden. Corn, which was the first seed planted in the garden was from Pintree. It is Bon Appetit, a hybrid sweet corn that I thought my husband would love. It was germinated in soil blocks on April 16th.

From the Ottawa Gardener I received seed for a Vermont Cranberry Bean and Cherokee Trail of Tears. The latter was reportedly carried on the trail of tears and seems apropos for a traditionally Native American garden. The last bean is Kentucky Wonder, which I've grown for years in my garden and is my favorite green bean. These were planted out three days ago, after the corn had been hilled up. At the time of planting the hilled corn was 6-8" tall. I planted one hill of Kentucky Wonder and three of each of the other beans.

The last of the sisters is the cucurbits. I received my Armenian cucumber (really a melon) as a gift from Wintersown.org. My Diamant cucumbers are from Johnnys. They were planted last night after being germinated in soil blocks. Not all of them germinated. I'm still missing three blocks. I hope they make it. The cucumbers are being grown up a trellis that is at the end of the bed and goes between two hills of corn. Usually in a Three Sisters Garden the plants would sprawl on the ground, but I really like my cukes trellised, so I'm breaking from tradition.

For my other cucurbits, I have four varieties of squash. Two of zucchini and two of C. moschata. The first zucchini is seed from last year. Dark Green Zucchini did very well for me last year and still produced even with some vine borer damage. Costata Romanesca was a gift from Ali. I thought it would do well in a Three Sisters Garden because unlike most zucchinis, this one puts out runners. It doesn't have the bush habit like Dark Green Zucchini does. And one of the points of the squash sister is that she covers the ground and helps to mulch the soil.

I'm growing C. moschata instead of my typical C. pepo that I usually do because C. moschata is resistant to the evil and frustrating vine borers. They usually take down my pumpkins before I get any fruit. The first C. moschata I picked was Neck Pumpkin. It is very similar to Butternut, but has a much longer neck. I planted one hill of this. The last two hills were reserved for Magdalena Big Cheese. This was the one seed that I got through the Seed Saver's Yearbook. I felt I had to have it. It is often said to be one of the oldest varieties of squash still being grown. I'm hoping that means it has been grown in Three Sisters Gardens for hundreds of years. Its description is that it is very insect resistant and makes great pies. Yum! Pies!

Yesterday I planted out the squash seed in hills (the ones in the front are the squash hills, the ones in the back are the corn and bean hills). The hills are different than the ones I made for the corn. The corn started low and got hilled up. The squash starts out on a hill. First I dug a hole about a foot down. Into the hole I threw about a cup of coffee grounds and filters. It isn't fish, which would be more traditional, but I get more than I can use free, so it is my fertilizer of choice. I added a bit of lime since coffee grounds are acidic. Then I mixed it well in the next 6" or so of soil. The hole was filled with a five gallon bucket of compost. Then soil from the hole and some of the surrounding soil covered that up.

My hills are really mesas. They are flat on top and have a slight depression in the middle to catch the water. I've thrown my half finished compost all around the outside of the hills as a mulch, but not on top. Those seeds need to be able to get out of the soil.

You might notice that there are plants in the bed that are not Three Sisters plants. I have marigolds between every two hills of corn to help protect from nematodes. The other random green you see is cilantro. Cilantro self seeds all over the garden, but mostly in this bed. I tried to leave as much of it as possible while still making my hills. The rest was harvested.

The other weird non traditional thing you will see in the garden is posts here and there in the corn hills. Each hill had four corn plants and when one of them was very weak, I pulled it out and replaced it with a pole. That way the beans can still grow up the pole even without the corn.

I'm really very excited to be growing a Three Sisters Garden for the first time. I'm a bit worried that the beans will outgrow the corn, but the first year of doing something is always a learning experience.

Solanaceae Crops

I have three main beds in my garden. I've already talked about my three sister's garden. The other one is the greens garden which will also have onions, brassicas and some herbs in it. The last one that I've yet to talk about is my solanaceae family bed.

I love all the solanaceae. Well the wild nightshade that grows around here I could do without, but the rest is delicious. In the past I've grown mostly tomatoes and chili peppers. Last year I added on eggplants. This year I'm adding more. I liked Slim Jim eggplant. I'll plant that again, in addition I'm going to plant Lavender Touch. I haven't figured out what tomatoes I'm going to put in. It might be all seeds saved from my Sungolds. Or it might be plants from Verrill Farm. They sell about 30 varieties of seedlings in the spring. But I can make up my mind later.

In addition to tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. I've decided to grow potatoes for the first time in years. I ordered Kennebec from Pinetree, which is a nice all purpose potato. I wanted French Fingerling too, but I really don't have room for more. And yes they didn't grow well when I planted them before. I've mostly forgot the pain of it all. So time to try again.

The potatoes come in a 2 1/2lb unit. They claim this plants about 15 square feet, or to me that would be a 4'x4' area. I have about a 20'x4' area for all the solanaceae crops. I need at least 10' for my tomatoes and peppers, 4' for my eggplants. I don't have room for another 4'x4' area. But I do know what other plant I want.

I've grown tomatillos before too. They used to be a staple in my garden, self seeding every year. A couple of years ago they died out. I hadn't saved seeds. Why bother when they grow themselves? So this year I'm going to buy them again, but with a twist. I'm not growing the regular tomatillo, but a pineapple tomatillo. This sounds more like a ground cherry to me than a tomatillo but what's in a name anyway? What I do know is that it says they get to 3' across and spread. Hmm maybe I need more than the last two feet. I'll probably grow them next to my potatoes and when I harvest them they tomatillos can grow into that space.

The one problem with the solaneceae family is that they don't do exceedingly well here. Last year when I pulled my carrots I found nematodes on the roots. Not horrible, but enough to slow down growth. These nematodes are also bad for tomatoes. So this year I'm going to have a slightly different set up. On the north side of my 4' wide bed will go the tomatoes. At the front will go the chili peppers. In the middle I'll plant the carrots and dotted around will be marigolds.

Marigolds are supposed to be good for lots of things, but one of their best properties is nematode control. Pinetree has a variety just for this purpose, called Ground Control. I've planted marigolds at the edges of the tomato beds before, but this year the carrots and marigolds will be in the middle of the bed all mixed up. Hopefully the companion planting will succeed. I wonder if I can fit in a couple of basil plants too. It is also a nice companion to tomatoes.

Seeds for a Three Sister's Garden

Well it is after Christmas, so it is time to start looking at what I'm going to grow next year. Some years I don't plan and just grab whatever is available at the local nursery. Since my favorite one (with the best seed selection AND plant selection) closed down, I've decided I have to start growing from my transplants from seed again. So I need a lot more seed that usual. When I really plan things out, I tend to order from a couple of seed houses. My favorite is Pinetree. It is a New England (Maine) company, so fairly local to me. Plus it has seed packets for about a dollar each, so I can get more varieties.

This year (I suppose it is really next year, but in my mind the gardening new year has already begun) I've decided to do more companion planting to try to eek out more veggies from my garden. The first step to this is a three sisters garden. This will take up one of the three main rows in the garden.

I've been wanted to do a three sisters garden for most of last year. I've never done one before, and I always love trying new things. So first off I need corn. Tall corn. Since I haven't grown corn is YEARS, I haven't a clue as to what might do well here. I read the descriptions and picked out "Bon Appetit". My husband doesn't each much from the garden, but he will eat corn and he loves the really sweet corn. I like bicolor corn because it looks pretty. This one matched both requirements. It grows to 80" or just over 6 1/2' tall so it ought to be tall enough to support the beans.

Next are the beans. I will continue to grown Kentucky Wonder beans. I love the taste. They grow like crazy and best of all I still have seed left over. I may plant some left over Fortex beans, but maybe not. Even with those, I can only eat so many green beans. I will have four hills of four corn plants. Each hill will have 6-8 bean plants. One or two hills will meet my green bean needs. The other two hills I will plant dried beans. But which ones? Pinetree doesn't have any good dried pole beans. Nor does Johnnys (another of my favorite places to buy from - but expensive). Seed Saver's Exchange is perfect for dried beans. They have so many wonderful varieties. I love black beans, so Cherokee Trail of Tears seems very appropriately historical. But is my second going to be Brockton Horticultural or True Red Cranberry? Both are historically New England seeds. I've chosen True Red Cranberry because of my love of kidney beans. In a way it seems silly to me to only order two different seeds from a company. The shipping costs almost equal the cost of the seed, but I really really want Cherokee Trail of Tears, so I'm just going to have to put up with the shippng cost. Luckily beans are mostly self pollinating so in future years I can just save seed without much issue.

The third sister is squash. I'm actually going to have some cucumbers on the side, the same cucumbers that did so stellar in my garden last year - Diamant. I'm ordering it from Johnnys. I'm hoping for tons of pickles again. They will grow up and along the fence. The squash I'm growing are two zucchinis and neck pumpkin (really a butternut variety). The first zucchini "Dark Green Zucchini" is left over seed from last year. It was very prolific. The next zucchini is Costata Romanesco. It and the neck pumpkin are supposed to be resistant to the vine borers that are so problematic in my garden. The neck pumpkin I can get from Pinetree, but Costata Romanesco comes from Johnnys. So again I'm ordering just two seed packets from a company. Sigh. At least I'll have a large order from Pinetree. But I'll get to the rest of what I'm planning in a later post.