Planning for 2011

So as previously posted there is one bed already planted in garlic. I have two others. The bigger one will be all sweet potato.

The smaller one will be divided into four sections:

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|             |              |     watermelon        |
| parsnips    |    beets     |-----------------------|
|             |              | gr.dr cuc | ln gr cuc |
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The gr.dr cuc is Green Dragon Cucumber while the ln gr cuc are Long Green Cucumber. I have the rough planting schedule as follows:

• April 1 Start Cucumber indoors, start 7 of each type
• April 6 Start watermelon indoors (5 seeds)
• May 10 Start Parsnips indoors (24 seeds)
• May 19 Beets, sow direct outdoors
• May 26 Sweet Potato Slips (plant all)
• May 26 Plant Parsnips outdoors (16 best seedlings)
• May 26 Plant cucumbers (4 of each)
• May 26 Plant watermelon (3 best seedlings)
• July 20 Start spinach indoors (30 seeds)
• July 27 Stop watering garlic
• August 15 harvest garlic
• August 15 plant spinach (plant all)

Note that the spinach planted on August 15th will be going into the garlic bed.

Garlic planting for 2011

So this bed had in it the tomatoes which didn't go anywhere this summer. I've planted the entire bed with garlic cloves that are the product of the garlic I grew from last year. Last year I planted 11 cloves, this fall I planted 21. Before planting the garlic I took some fresh finished compost out of my composter and mixed it into the bed.

Sweet Potato harvest

So I decided to harvest the sweet potatoes today - the nights are getting colder and the one thing sweet pototes don't like is cold. Here is the result of the harvest. Probably I should weigh the lot somehow to take a proper measure of the harvest.



I am going to attempt to grow my own slips for next year, here is my starting piece. Today is day zero of the rooting session.

Sweet potato growth update

On September 5th I took the photos below - the sweet potatoes grew flowers!

Sweet potato growth update

I have high hopes for the sweet potatoes. If my sweet corn squirrel research yields no easy solution, and if the crop of sweet potatoes looks good, this bed may be entirely covered with sweet potatoes next year.

roma tomato growth update

In previous photos I showed a few roma's, here are the only two currently growing.



I am rethinking where I will plant the tomatoes for next year. Probably put the garlic against the hedge and put the tomatoes further from the hedge.

Sweet corn update

So, as a buddy of mine warned, the squirrels would most likely get to the corn before I would. I came home on Friday and found a squirrel at it. The first two photos show the damage done.





I managed to pull three surviving corn just so I could investigate their growth. They were obviously premature, here they are pre and post peeled.









I ended up throwing these into the back yard to let the squirrels have them. I'm going to investigate what can be done to protect the corn from squirrel invasion, and if my research yields many different failed attempts, I may not attempt to grow corn again.