Direct sowing of pumpkins, which actually sprouted
A friend of ours was so nice to donate us a few trailers of cow manure. My husband pushed it together and hilled it to a long mountain. This spring, before we went on our trip, end of April, I direct sowed Hokkaido pumpkin in this mountain of manure. The nights where still very cold, but there also where some warm sonny days. I did not really expected much from this, but I wanted to try it out.
Surprisingly enough the second half of Mai a seedling appeared and a few weeks later another two.
Parallel I also sowed the same pumpkins in the greenhouse which I planted middle of June.
We luckily have enough rain this season, since I sowed ratter high in the mountain of manure and that dry’s out the quickest. I should sow and plant at the foot of the manure mountain.
Thanks to all of the rain (we have very much at the moment) the pumpkins are thriving and it looks like this at the moment.
Don’t mind the weeds in the back. I will have to tackle those before they form seeds.
An easy solution for a pigeon problem and growing lettuce
This spring I had sown a few things in my planter table, but nothing really came. What was appearing where dents in the soil and a dill plant that got picked of.
One day my husband saw pigeons feasting in the planter table. For that we have an easy solution. We tied a rope criss-cross over the plant space and pigeons can not land here anymore.
Now the dill can grow and I planted lettuce seedlings which grew well and we are eating off already.
The second planter table, strangely enough, did not get touched by the pigeons. The herbs I planted this spring and a second batch of lettuce I planted only recently as a succession planting.
Growing elephant garlic for the first time and planting tomatoes after the garlic
I have been fascinated by elephant garlic for a few years now, but was not willing to pay so much money for a bulb to start growing them. I ordered seeds that elephant garlic form around there bulb, but these where a total flop. Last fall I was so happy to find elephant garlic bulbs on sale for a reasonal price. I bought one that turned out to have only 4 cloves. I planted all 4 along with the other garlic I always plant (from home grown garlic cloves) last fall.
This spring I did my best weeding the garden bed, but I have trouble to bring myself pulling out all of the beautiful flowers, so end of spring the garlic was a little hard to find as you can see in this picture.
The elephant garlic is in the back
I always find it hard to determine when the garlic is ready, but after seeing several leaves turning brown I decided to harvest and that was good. A few garlic’s where hard to find underneath all of the flowers and also because they dried in completely already, but the harvest was ok. These are 2 different varieties and the elephant garlic is on the first picture above.
I think I should put a lot more manure/ compost with the garlic I will plant this fall. I hope on bigger garlic, but the garlic this year is already a lot better than it has been the last few years. Another thing is to select the best and biggest garlic cloves to replant this fall, instead of using these in the kitchen. In the past I did this the wrong way around, because I hate cleaning all of those very tiny garlic cloves I had been planting these. Also I need to plant a lot more garlic, since this garlic will not last us very long.
The elephant garlic also made a lot of seeds at the garlic bulbs. When I ordered the seeds online there was a manual as to how to plant them, the way how was a little surprising to me and it turned out to be a total fail. This time I will simply plant all of the seeds as I do with the cloves, well maybe just not as deep as the cloves, this fall in the same garden bed.
While harvesting the garlic, we also pulled out all off the faded flowers and planted some very sad looking tomato seedlings. I planted the variety Primabella and hope they will recover and grow; apparently the potting soil was not good for pre-growing seedlings.
Beautiful Chaos 