Organic gardening – Page 7

The Honeyberry is blooming

We had some very lovely warm and sunny spring days before a new cold frond came and, luckily, brought some much needed rain.

Growing season 2024: Compost beds in our garden 4

“Wild gardening” at its best!

In preparation of the garden season we divided a few loads of cow manure over the compost beds in the winter and worked that in with the rotary tiller. In 2024 the wetter was “against” us and we planted potatoes no sooner then early Mai. We planted a few rows of potatoes on one side of the larger growing area and they where already sprouting.

Sprouting potatoes positioned in a planting ditch

After a proper watering we covered the growing area with a good layer of hay to keep the moisture in.

Planting area, partially watered and partially mulched with hay

End of May we planted a bunch of corn seedlings we grew our selves.

Garden patch mulched with hay, with corn seedlings planted in it

We also sowed a lot of green manure over the entire patch. The idea was that the green manure would suppress the “weeds”, improve the soil and prevent the soil from drying out in the summer heat.

Beginning of July the garden patch looked like this.

Chaotic garden patch with a sunflower and a pumpkin in the front

Pretty chaotic, but the potatoes where growing good and even a pumpkin grew well. We also had planted some zucchini somewhere in this chaos. It took them a while to take of, but once they settled they produced nicely. After the green manure plants where done blooming and fell over, we where even able to find the plants and harvest the zucchini’s.

Centre of a zucchini plant with a zucchini ready for harvest

Underneath all of that chaos the potatoes did surprisingly well. We did have a ratter big Colorado beetle pressure, but where we could reach we collected all of the larvae and beetles off. The plants where not completely eaten and I think the damage wasn’t too bad.

Healthy looking potato plant with a lot off Colorado beetle larvae on it

At least we where able to dig up a nice potato harvest with a lot of small to medium sized potatoes and also some bigger potatoes. I think the problem with the smaller potatoes is that we planted them a little to close together. That is something we will have to pay attention to this year.

Bigger and smaller potatoes lay free where they grew underneath mainly hay mulch

Beside the Colorado beetle, the garden patches where filled with life which gives hope that nature will provide a healthy balance between pests and predators.

And then there was the corn. We planted the corn in a big block and sowed some runner beans on a few spots between the corn.

A block of healthy looking corn plants with some runner beans climbing the stalks

The corn did well and we harvested a lot of corn cobs, let them dry and took the cornels off. I ground them to flower and backed an American cornbread. Unfortunately we did not like the taste of it, so next year I will grow sweet corn instead of a flower corn (I just liked the colour so much).

I found that the runner beans influenced the growth of the corn stalks it was climbing in negatively, but with planting enough corn that is no big deal. What we will have to do differently this year is leaving more space in between the rows of the corn, to make it more easily to harvest the runner beans, since we could not really reach them without damaging the corn. Also we will sow the runner beans along the outside of the corn patch instead of one or two rows inwards. This will also make it more easily to reach for the beans while harvesting.

To close the season, my husband flail mowed both patches end of September. After that he spread a good load of sand over the soil, since we felt that the soil was way to heavy, and he rotary tilled it in. After sowing both patches with green manure, so the soil would not be bare over winter, we planted a block with Jerusalem artichoke that came free from a raised bed we removed in our garden 2.

A small pile of Jerusalem artichoke on a sandy garden patch

The green manure came up, but did not grow much anymore, since it already was to cold, but that is no problem. The main thing is that the soil is somewhat protected over winter.

Finishing this post with some flower pictures from these patches

A sunflower head at the end of its blooming time against a blue sky

A chaotic garden patch with a bunch of phacelia blooming in the front

Growing season 2024: our hügelbeds in garden 3

What about the blight struck tomatoes and some other notes?

Our garden season 2024 was all about gardening the “wild” way and I think my approach about gardening the “wild” way was a little to literal. In the early stage of the plant growth I am not always sure what plant it is, so I let everything just grow up to the point where I was overwhelmed and did not know where to start in finding the plants I actually wanted to grow.

This is how things can end up looking like.

Overgrown garden bed with a red poppy, sunflowers, potato plants and lots of weeds

Middle auf August I harvested the potatoes in this hügelbed. It was difficult finding the plants and it was difficult to harvest because of all of the roots of all the other plants. While harvesting we “cleaned” most of the hügelbed by pulling out most of the weeds. We left most of the sunflowers for the birds, which have been eating on the sunflower seeds already. One important thing we have to note for the future is no sunflowers this close with the potatoes, since the potatoes close to the sunflowers where so much smaller as to the once further away from the sunflowers.

Harvested potatoes in a white bucket and a small pile on the ground in a partially freed garden bed with large sunflowers in it

I the other garden beds there where a lot of self sown red beets and amaranth, which was nice. Beginning of July we did a big clean up round with these hügelbeds, since the weeds also had taken over here. In two hügelbeds we freed the tomato plants and in the other hügelbed we found self set potato plants ready for harvest, some pumpkin plants and some flowers I had sown.

Hügelbeds with green plants on a sunny day

In this last mentioned hügelbed I had sown a lot of different things directly, but it took until early July before things started to sprout and grow. For the pumpkins this was too late. They did not give a harvest before fall came, since the wetter turned to cold for the pumpkins to ripen. Some basil, dill, nasturtium and other annual flowers did well. With our climate I, unfortunately, will have to pre-cultivate a lot of plants, unless we have a very warm and early spring. Well that means, keep a close eye on the wetter.

After the clean up I also sowed some carrots, spring onions and red beets. Obviously this was way too late, but the kid’s loved eating the small carrots in the fall anyway. I will relocate and plant out the spring onions with some spacing this spring to use this year.

Small carrots and spring onions surrounded by weeds

I had mentioned the blight struck tomato plants in a post last year. After I cut back everything that was diseased we got some nicer and dryer wetter and the tomato plants did give a harvest after all, but I did need to keep a close watch on them and cut diseased parts back now and then. Since the tomatoes did turn out ok, we will be growing tomatoes again, but I will start them a little later in the greenhouse and I will plant them in a different, airier garden bed.