Sean Straw wrote:
songbird wrote:

the package says "average soil" which around
here the average would be hard as a rock right
now and mostly clay.

No, that's "poor" soil.

it was a lame attempt at a joke.


fertile: loamy
poor: sand/adobe
average: everything in between those two

i find the clay to be very fertile. i'd
never call it poor soil. just has certain
ways of being that can be worked around at
times. main trouble is when it gets too
dry at the surface. as much mulch as i
can find for free i can always use.


Ma asked me what it was like and i said,
"Yummy, like beets, but greener!"

When I grew chard, what I found was that it had an inverse
relationship to eating healthy. Prolly because everyone I asked about
how best to prepare it responded with "first, fry up some bacon..."

we won't have that trouble here... neither of
us does that very often at all.


like this, but now it's in. i'm looking
forwards to learning yet another thing this
year.

Every year, I like to try growing a few things I didn't grow
previously. Not merely a different variety of something, but an
entirely new thing. This year, it's Okra and Rhubarb. Also looking
to pickle cucumbers, so growing types good for that. Last year was
Cardoon and Eggplant.

rhubarb is one of those great plants if you
really like it, comes in early enough to be
a good source of vegetable/fruitlike filling
early in the season. tastes a lot like apples
if you can ignore some of the texture and
aftermouthfeel aspects. later in the season
it goes well with a lot of other things too
or it can be put up plain. i give a lot of
it away and i only had one bunch of plants
last year, but i still gave away 60lbs of
the stalks last year. this year i have four
bunches (moved one bunch and divided it up).
so i will be able to put some up again. have
to move another patch this fall. that should
give me six to eight clumps.

remember not to harvest too close to a
hard frost (oxyalic acid moves from the
leaves down to the stalks), give it a week
or two to recover.


Dang good thing I've got the space to grow lots of things.

this year well be doing okra, bunching
onions and onions from seeds (to grow out for
next year if they don't get too big this year).
we'll also be putting in onion sets too. we've
done them before. red peppers we hope to be
doing this year along with the green peppers.
for peppers and tomatoes we get them from the
greenhouse. he does a good job and we always
have had good results.


i think they will be a good refuge type plant
for the good bugs.

You're welcome to think that. As a point of reference though, leaf
miners - a maggot-like larval stage of certain species of flies and
other insects, ends up eating the tissue from between the thin outer
skins (epidermus) of the leaf to the point that the leaf would be
transparent, excepting for the frass the critters expell, will love
'em. Stay on top of that, cutting off and destroying leaves showing
that type of damage. They'll also attack beets and spinach too.

i've not seen much of that sort of damage in
the past and we've grown beets for years. we
haven't grown spinach much. last year it grew
well for a short period of time but bolted even
though the package said it was not supposed to.


should be in the full sun or close to it.
shaded a little right now by flowers and some
trefoil, but i can trim that back if it looks
to be taking over.

Mine were always in the full sun.

even the most shaded patch should get
6-8hrs at least of sun when the sun is
out.


let grow untouched first year and harvest
next year?

It's a biennial - you want to harvest it while it has good leaves, but
before it goes to seed, at which time things will turn bitter. On
plants which yeild leaves which can be harvested without killing the
plant, I let them establish sufficiently, then I harvest a few leaves
here and there. When you have multiple such plants, it's usually easy
enough to harvest without setting them back.

if i get a good germination rate i should have
a few hundred plants. then i will thin as it
goes and i can see what kind of spacing they'll
need. i'm assuming the seeds are similar to
beets too in that each clump planted will sprout
several plants. i.e. that the seeds are not
individual seeds...


Are these biannual like beets?

They're so like beets that they share the same pests and can cross
pollinate (if you save seed, you should pay close attention to that,
because the next generation of beets (those from the saved seed) may
very well not actually produce a beetroot, though they may appear to
have beet greens).

yes, i'll have to watch this, as we do grow beets,
but rarely do the red round root kinds flower, we
put them up and if we miss a few in the ground they
go to mush over the winter.


says the seeds want even moisture for sprouting, that might be a challenge in
sandier soil.

Most plants like even moisture. If it's an issue for you, start them
in germination trays, then transplant out when they're big enough.

seeds in the ground already. will keep tabs on
watering. the surrounding garden will need some
watering at times too.


how hardy are they when it gets hot and dry?

They'll need water. I use drip irrigation for all my raised beds (on
an irrigation timer), as well as some moveable runs in the in-ground
garden (moveable because the larger space is subject to crop rotation
as well as tilling).

*nods*


do they get deep tap roots?

My plants grew to about 8' tall (from the level of the soil), and were
in a raised bet with less than 16" of soil depth, and a fabric
weed/root barrier on the bottom. They did wonderfully well there, but
the soil was well amended with organics. They were a bear to pull up
when I went to remove them, but they didn't have a carrot-like taproot
scaled to accomodate their topside growth either.

probably just chop the crown off and bury
things to rot.


My native soil is sandy loam. It is plenty fertile (doesn't hurt
being in an area where there was chicken farming for a long time), but
to improve the tilth, I amend that with vast quantities of organic
compost. For my 4K+ square foot garden, I have 40 cubic yards of duck
manure and rice hull compost on order right now (the last go was 20
CY), waiting for the delivery driver to get over his unease about
driving across the property after the rains). Lots of compost
improves almost everything.

noway can we afford that. i have to
grow as much green manure as i can and i
have a worm farm chewing up veggie scraps
and chopped greens for organic matter.
whatever free stuff i can get that i know
the owner didn't spray the lawn or had
animals then i'll take leaves and shredded
branches or bark. i've had good luck this
past year in getting about 20yards of
materials brought right to me here. i'll
be giving them beans and strawberries this
year if they'll want them.


flower second season? spread by root division?

Propagate by seed.

we'll see how that goes. might be a
challenge. Ma tends to like getting
rid of plants i'd like to see flower.


i know i can look this up on-line, but this is
a conversation space.

Why not look up the basic traits online, then ask for discussion about
best practices and experiences?

it's nice to have a conversation once in
a while when i know i know very little
about the topic. i mean while i've grown
houseplants and gardens for many years and
know quite a bit in general and have studied
soil sciences, biology, botany, ecology,
chemistry, etc. it still doesn't mean i
know everything. it's good to be
humble once in a while.


teach me, i'm a grasshopper at your knee.

Gaaa! Locusts! Get the torches!

*grins*


songbird