Text 17677, 99 rader
Skriven 2014-10-03 14:37:16 av Janis Kracht (1:261/38)
  Kommentar till text 17650 av Ruth Haffly (1:396/45.28)
Ärende: Peppers
===============
Hi Ruth,

>> small > bed up along the fence; we're debating keeping that & making
>> it into a > kitchen garden. The fence is too short to really deter
>> deer so we're not > sure if we'll try anything like tomatoes or
>> peppers. At any rate, it'll > be too late to do anything this year.
>> Next spring we might work on
>> > improving the soil, then planting the following spring. It looks
>> like > there was a compost heap going at some point; we may try to
>> restart it > or clear it out and start a fresh one. There's no garbage
>> disposal in > the kitchen sink so I could set aside peelings and
>> suchlike to help get > one going. There's a lot of decisions to be
>> made over the next few
>> > years.

>> If you just work a few bags of peat moss into the soil (or one if the
>> area is really small), you can pretty much plant your kitchen garden
>> the same year ... that's an advantage over using cow manure as that

> We can start somewhat earlier than you, provided the weather behaves.

Understand :)   but  there are few months of the year when there is nothing to
do "in" the garden.. In January, you can start tomato seeds indoors, so your
plants are good and stocky by March, for example.  Even through the late late
summer and the in the fall you can still plant hardy vegetables like beets.

Sometimes I do that because beet greens are so much better for you than
spinach, and I don't really care at that point if we see a beet that late in
the season :)  Of course spinach is really easy to grow as well, and if you
can't find late growing varieties, you can order them from seed houses.  This
year I was so late getting the garden in, I found late season summer squash,
which worked out really well.  We are still getting them now though normally
one wouldn't if I'd gotten an early summer variety.

> This past February we had a lot of ice and snow so we wouldn't have been
> able to do much. Usually by the latter part of March we begin to warm

It seems your planting schedule is not that far off from ours, all in all.
http://www.caes.uga.edu/extension/carroll/anr/documents/VegetableGardeningCalen
dar.pdf

You can "beat the weather" by doing some fall preparation for things like peas
that go in in mid-march.. I always go with sugar-snap peas because I had to pod
peas once, that was enough! haha.. I've always planted them on the day after
St. Patricks day. In the fall, when the ground is warm, you dig a trench then
in the spring no matter what the weather, you can plant peas in the trench just
pushing them them into the soil.  You don't want to bother the dirt too much
before the soil is "ready", so you just push the peas seeds in the dirt.

The soil will feel like chocolate cake when you grab a clump in your hands -
that's when it's ready for normal planting. So that trench you dug in the fall
is already done, you don't have to harm the consistency of your soil in early
early spring.  The peas will sit there through the ice and snow and will even
pop up through the snow <g>  You stick some twigs in the dirt later for
support, and let them take off.

> up, but this year was cool on into April.

Sometimes you can benefit from that coolness, planting lettuce, spinach, etc.
They love cool weather and start to bolt when the summer heat hits.

> We're planning to close in the
> latter part of November--might be able to get a few decent days to do
> some yard work before the end of the year.

That will be great.. fantastic time to move in.. Christmas just around the
corner :)

>> needs a year to sit in the soil to be safe.  The first year I planted
>> a garden the soil was in such bad shape, I followed the Victory
>> Garden's example of just tilling in a lot of peat moss, and it really
>> worked well.  Another year at our house in Louisville, I only turned
>> in tree chips from a tree that had been pulverized, and that worked
>> REALLY well that first year :)

> I think we might be able to get some chips from the town of WF from time

Look to see if neighbors have put a tree through a wood chipper.  They may be
happy to have you remove the resulting pile of smashed tree :)   If you are
going to add pulverized wood to your soil, you want it to be 'ground' up finely
:) You can use wood chips (larger) as mulch.

> to time, just have to keep my eyes & ears open. Thanks for the
> information; we've usually just "winged it" on gardening. I'd like to
> have tomatoes and peppers besides herbs but I know it's going to take
> some work.

You can start your tomato and pepper seeds according to that chart in the PDF
in early spring... This year since I started at the end of March, I went to our
local Agway Farm supply store and purchased healthy-looking pepper and tomato
plants.  I had about 5 earth-boxes so rather than drag out the tiller, I used
those for my "garden" filling them with a soil/peat moss mix. Next year I will
have those boxes all ready for early planting, so that is something <grin>

Take care,
Janis

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