I always have writer’s block when starting a new post and starting a blank white screen. How’s this:
Hello.
Glad that’s out of the way. Yah know, something I’ve been realizing about this blog is that as summer kicks into full swing, it it becomes increasingly difficult to try and parse down all the things that are happening into a nice clean and tidy update. There are many fascinating things happening thus far on this short journey that are simply IMPERATIVE to share (in my opinion).
We start with the pacific northwest’s soil structure and how it was geologically formed back in the Cretaceous Period. Just kidding. Stay on target, Aaron. Stay on target. Let’s just get to 63P updates, in good ol’ Marx Bros fashion. For fun, I’ll attempt to summarize each bed into one word that exemplifies the past couple weeks.
Groucho: Awareness
Part of what makes vegetable gardening fun is the puzzle solving. It’s an exercise in awareness and deduction; identifying issues quickly, then figuring out what could be causing them. I suspect green-thumbed individuals aren’t only great at these noticing problems, but avoiding said problems in the first place. If a gardener’s goal is a bountiful harvest (‘bountiful’ in the eye of the beholder), then staying acutely aware of what’s happening is essential. I’m happy to say that I’ve had my first sip of success on both the awareness and deduction side of Groucho’s crops.
For my Awareness Win™️, I’ve noticed that something has been eating my cabbages, and whatever it is/they are, it seems only one of the varieties tastes scrumptious. As an exercise in reader awareness, see if you can identify which one below is tasty pest food.
Most gardening books state that it’s always a good idea to inspect plant leaves to stay on top of any surprises. Since the Primax seems to be a great meal for something, I started turning over all the leaves, looking at the bottoms, looking inside all the cracks and crevasses, and low & behold what did I find…
Slug eggs! A whole entire mess of these suckers. Had I not pulled each leaf down to inspect the epicenters of where leaves meet stalk, they would’ve been missed. They were scraped out, crushed and blasted with water to eliminate what I could. The Primax cabbage can breath a sigh of relief…for now.
My Deduction Win™️ has been equally rewarding. These two cabbages themselves have recovered nicely from the combined added amendments of nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizers when my mental deduction tree led me to poor nitrogen as the source of my sickly plants. For a refresher here’s a sad before and a happier after picture. You can tell from the color change alone that they’re happier.
The onions and shallots in Groucho are showing an increasing disparity between one another. There seems to be a more-than-coincidental correlation of shallots outperforming onions thus far. See if you can spot some of the shallots below.
After reading up, apparently shallots are generally less picky than bulbing onions about soil nutrients, moisture and heat conditions. Perhaps it depends on the variety, I’m not sure. In any case it’s rather obvious that there are a couple rockstar shallots that look like what I wish the rest of the bed looked like.
Many of the onions haven’t died though, and still show green so there’s ever-living hope that they’ll eventually pick up steam. Another dose of bone meal was sprinkled for long-term nitrogen/phosphorous release and watered in with more fish emulsion for more immediate nitrogen needs. Either the onions will respond, or what my additional amendments will burn them to oblivion.
The silver lining of starting with poor soil in all these beds is that my education about amendments and fertilizers is going up quicker, including mental calibrations of how much and how often to add them. Silver linings people, silver linings.
PSA: I interrupt this blog post with our first 2024 harvest of the season, radishes. That is all.
Finally, the carrot tops seem to be actually growing now, but it makes for a boring photo so I opted to skip that. Sorry carrots.
The hard part about conceptualizing Groucho’s progress is the question as to how much growth improvement is stemming from my contributions (amendments), and how much of it is tied to sunnier weather. It’s obviously a combination of the two, but the ratio is murky. That’s it for Groucho.
Chico: Shock
Chico earns best why the title of this post is ‘culture shock’.
cul·ture /ˈkəlCHər/: maintain in conditions suitable for growth.
shock /SHäk/: a sudden upsetting or surprising event or experience.
The list of times I put my hands on my hips, tilt my head and go “‘huh, well now I know that happens” is growing quickly. The latest list item on this hand-hip-‘huh’ing is watching more of my beautiful homegrown starts deteriorate into shells of their former selves. My Chico transplants have done just that, but at least they’re doing it with style.
The lesson here is that some herbs don’t like to be transplanted. These herbs are the herbs that I transplanted. Dear me. Cilantro and parsley both have taproots, and don’t like to be messed with due to this. If I could file but one fact away about transplanting starts, it’s taproot + transplant = bad. The cool thing is, watching them wither away is rather entertaining. They turn crazy colors!
If there’s one thing I’ve been consistently good at thus far, it’s stressing plants out. Most of the time I watch plant leaves turn yellow, which is what you’d probably expect as a visual stress indicator. However, cilantro turns red and parsley turns almost white. Very bad, but very pretty. The cilantro fared a bit worse between the two in this case. There is some new greenery forming at the base for both plants, so they’ll be left alone to satisfy my curiosity on whether they recover at all, but new seeds may be sown nearby as backup, and to observe the difference between these direct sown and transplanted herbs.
It’s not all bad news over in Chico though. The snap beans that were directly sown along the edges of Chico are starting to pop up. One peculiar sight is that one side of the bed is producing better sprouts than the other. The difference is pretty noticeable.
It’s rather odd because it’s the same bed with the same bagged soil, the same sunlight and the same watering cadence. Hence, this had been added to my list of hand-hip-‘huh’ing. It could be coincidental that the beans on one side simply germinated better, so a close eye will be kept on them all to see how they progress. I shall say, seeing this discrepancy did leave me a bit…shocked…and that’s where we’ll leave Chico.
Harpo: Trust
At a glance, Harpo looks boring right now. Aside from a couple adolescent and yet-to-flower nasturtiums, the only thing it contains is two young summer squash seedlings spaced 6 feet apart.
I’m banking on book knowledge for this one. There is fierce debate in the gardening world about crop spacing. Ok less of a debate and more philosophic differences. On one side there are the intensive gardeners who believe optimizing plant spacing to their maximum tolerance level produces the most overall yield and minimizes weeds from shade, while on the other side are gardeners who believe that more than respectful doses of spacing with fewer plants produces the most overall yield, and makes weeding easier with room to weed, etc.
Harpo falls more on the healthy spacing side, where although my urge is strong to plant more intensively, I’m banking on this notion that more spacing will allow each plant to thrive to it’s fullest (in my poor soil LOL). The only action footage I have for you for Harpo is a murder scene.
Aside from the obvious that each summer squash variety has been thinned to one plant, you may notice that these pictures were taken a few days apart since the original picture shows yellowing leaves, but have since recovered. If you noticed that, gold star for you. If you didn’t, you still get a gold star.
I always thought before I started gardening that if leaves started to yellow then they were most likely done for. Leaves are scrappy little bastards and can make full recoveries no problem. This idea feels like it could be captured into a motivational poster somehow and hung in high school hallways. Bye Chico.
Zeppo: Lifecycle
It hurts to say this, but our beloved 🎶 Charentais Superprécoce Du Roc 🎶 melon is most likely done for. Melons are notoriously finicky, so the poor soil, cold weather and transplantation were not the best combination for it. Since it’s in the curcubit family (a family that also contains squash, cucumbers and many other melons) it too does not like transplanting, just like the herbs. I think I started it indoors before I learned this fact, but am glad I learned this fact before sowing all the squash and cucumbers directly. Three cheers for learning things! Hip-hip-ok moving on.
The poor bloke hasn’t grown at all since I transplanted it over a month ago, and now it’s basically over life and turning completely yellow.
Now that there’s some soil amendment experience under my belt and the weather’s warmer, the plan is to hedge a bit. I’m NOT. GIVING. UP. on our beloved 🎶 Charentais Superprécoce Du Roc 🎶 melon. This sickly fellow will receive a dose of my favorite dish; bone meal with a splash of fish emulsion on the side, all while at the same time I’ll direct sow another 🎶 Charentais Superprécoce Du Roc 🎶 melon nearby and then we’ll see what happens.
My guess is that even if our sickly fellow miraculously recovers, it likely won’t produce much after recovering from massive early stress. I’ll give it a couple more weeks before pulling the plug. Sad noises.
Since Zeppo’s theme is ‘Lifecycle’, and we’ve explored the dreary side of 🎶 Charentais Superprécoce Du Roc 🎶 melon’s lifecycle, we can now shift our focus to the birthing side. Cucumbers!
Well, there it is. Not a whole lot to talk about with this guy. As you may have noticed above, I sowed two seeds. One is obviously more scared of being thinned. Since this photo was taken I can say that the little guy in the back has already been snipped. I included him in this photo to give him his permanent legacy here on the blog, as tiny a legacy as that might be.
The cucumber seeds took longer than anticipated to germinate. They should be some of the shortest to germinate in the cucurbit family, but instead they took about as long as the squash did. Seed age is not being factored in here though, as these seeds are from last year, not purchased this year. Might have something to do with it.
Similar to Harpo, the cucumber and 🎶 Charentais Superprécoce Du Roc 🎶 melon are also spaced 5-6 feet apart.
With one melon knocking on death’s door, one melon newly sowed, a cucumber seedling heartlessly thinned, and a healthy cucumber seedling on it’s way up, it felt fitting that Zeppo hails to the term ‘Lifecycle’ for now.
Gummo: Greenishery
Ok, I know this isn’t a word, but let’s go with it. Gummo hosts Gill’s Golden Pippin acorn squash as it’s main crop, but the stars of the show right now are the lettuces. They’ve all responded swimmingly to the last blood meal nitrogen boost, which is nice to see.
One of the benefits of working in a community garden is the ability to observe tons of different plots and what they’re growing. It acts as a fantastic reference for what’s possible, since everything is growing in approximately the same place with approximately the same conditions. Perusing other plots over the past three months or so, I’ve seen robust lettuces peppering the premises, many of which were of harvestable size over a month, even two months ago.
It’s definitely on the future goal list to get greens and radishes going much earlier in order to stretch the harvest season and partake in those early spring salads. That said, it’s better late then never amirite. What really makes the Gummo’s lettuces steal the show is the different varieties.
Above there are four lettuce varieties. The green variety is Parris Island romaine, the closest (and smallest) variety in the foreground is Rogue d’Hiver romaine (using seeds harvested from last year!), the pearly looking red variety is butterhead ‘Marvel of the Four Seasons’, and the darkest purple variety is a lettuce ‘Red Velvet’. Lettuce isn’t the most exciting crop, but to me it’s turning into one of the best ornamental crops in the garden and I enjoy growing it.
Next year, when my focus isn’t entirely centered around plot remodeling, I plan to get lettuces and radishes going much earlier. Now, the plan on succession sowing lettuce again shortly once the beans sprout high enough for partial shade shade. Speaking of beans…
Al Sheen: Heavens
As in, ‘good heavens’ and ‘heavens me’. These pole and runner beans are taking off towards the heavens. All of the beans that were planted with roughly 1″ spacing germinated nicely.
I’ve read various instructions about bean spacing. Some say to thin them 4 inches apart, and others saying don’t thin them at all. I split the difference and thinned from 1 inch to about 3 inches apart. Tabs were not kep on which bean varieties were thinned the most, so we’ll have to see which ones pop up down the road to see what we’ve got.
As soon as these guys get a bit higher, I’ll lash up some home-cured bamboo stakes to form tripod trellises. Trellising activity will be in a future post which I’m looking forward to sharing.
There’s about a foot of spacing along each side of Al Sheen where I sowed a few more radishes (hopefully timing with some lettuce harvests), and there’s roughly 6-8 inches in front/behind these bean seedlings that I may or may not do anything with. If anything goes there it will have to be ok with partial shade.
Chaplin: Healthy
We end this post’s plot 63P journey with our officially named big bed. The bed that’s historically gone by ‘The Mansion’. As the main act and biggest show in plot 63P, it felt fitting to assign it to a superstar performer in ye olden days, and nobody was a bigger star than Charlie Chaplin himself. So welcome Chaplin!
As the last blog post described, this season Chaplin has been assigned to winter squash duties, with hopes and dreams of kabocha and butternut squash. These squash seedlings are looking the healthiest, with no yellowing whatsoever.
The health of these seedlings intuitively makes sense since this is the only bed filled entirely with existing soil, so I assume it’s got a better selection of nutrients versus all the other beds filled with bagged soil (and some compost). Lucky you Chaplin. Don’t gloat about it too hard. It will be interesting to see how Chaplin’s winter squash (butternut, kabosha) ultimately perform in comparison with Gummo’s winter squash (acorn) which contains all bagged soil.
Since all these seedlings looked practically identical, it was difficult to choose which seedling to keep while thinning the rest. I opted for the middle one in the center of the mound. As your local real estate investor might say, it’s all about ‘location, location, location!’
This kabosha, combined with the butternut on the other end will hopefully fill out Chaplin nicely, with our beloved chive transplant acting as the centerpiece. Since Chaplin is relatively massive, it’ll be fun to come up with some trellis ideas to support these squash vines in a creative way using the cured bamboo back at the house.
Not much else is happening with all of these curcurbits in their infancy stage. Since this is the first season in 63P, I wanted to test the soil for each bed to enlighten me on soil nutrients, and have a frame of reference looking back as the beds change over time with plants, amendments, mulch, etc. It was now or never to get these baseline values logged.
I used mysoiltesting.com for testing each bed and each sample has been shipped off. The results will be shared in a future blog post once they’re sent back the analyses.
Enter: Lucy
Enter: Diller
Introducing the official names of the home-based backyard plots; Lucy and Diller! This is a switch from Abbott and Costello. I wanted to find some female comics from the earlier era to balance out the bros in 63P, and these two made the cut. Lucy is most obvious, as one of the most influential performers of the mid 20th century starring in I Love Lucy (a show that my sister loved when I was growing up). Phyllis Diller was a famous stand-up comedian, making appearances on the Ed Sullivan show where my family enjoyed watching her do various eccentric skits (also when I was growing up).
There will be more deets on these beds later, but this post is long enough. For now, here’s a couple photos of Lucy (currently hosting tomatoes and basil) and Diller (currently hosting potatoes). In summary, the tomatoes are starting to put on growth now that’s it’s warmer and will be one of the main subjects of my future post on trellising. The potatoes are starting to flower, which means we’re in the middle stages of their lifecycle. Even though potato foliage doesn’t represent fantastic tuber growth, it’s nice to see some lush healthy plants above the soil.
Well, that’s finally it! Thanks for tagging along on this early June journey. Until next time.
AA
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