Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Now the garden is producing

One of this year's experiments was to grow carrots in compost from the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency to see if we could get straight, single root carrots.
The answer, as can be seen, is yes. These are cosmic purple carrots, one of two varieties that we grew. The other - purple haze - is longer and thinner and may have a tendency to develop a woody core. We planted carrots at four different times and the first planting, which was two rows each about 3 1/2 feet long, produced nearly six pounds of carrots. I thinned them to one to two inches apart and the rows were six inches apart.

I was interested to see how well carrots would grow just in compost, wondering if compost that was processed at 150-160 degrees would retain the microorganisms needed for good plant growth. I did amend the soil with a little green sand, bone meal and blood meal, but all of those take time to become available to the plants. It certainly appears that the carrots grew well.

We are now harvesting summer squash (and the patty pan squash has so far been much more productive than the custard summer squash), although both plants are huge. There is no sign of squash vine borers. I have planted more patty pan squash seeds (July 13th) in the area where I harvested the garlic. I will also seed that area with buckwheat as a cover crop.

We have been harvesting blueberries in every increasing quantities, some cucumbers (from the two plants that I started), beets, scallions, kale and lettuce, although the original three plantings of lettuce have now all been pulled. I did start more lettuce and transplanted it today. Who knows, I may finally have lettuce at the same time as tomatoes. The tomatoes and peppers are growing well. There is no sign of tomatoes ripening yet.

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