Gardening is always a learning experience. Sometimes you learn from your mistakes. And sometimes you don’t. This fall I knew not to wait too long to get all my fall veggies in the ground. Did I do that? Nope. My second planting of crops has been a complete failure. So this time I’m writing everything down so hopefully next year I don’t forget. You can find previously posts here and here.
1. Suck it up and plant everything at once if I’m going to plant by the moon cycles. It doesn’t allow succession plantings when time is of the essence.
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| Chard Leaves |
2. Apparently Swiss Chard and Lettuce aren’t as sensitive to the schedule as brassicas are. They seem to take off no matter what. After mid-September the Brassicas get stunted.
3. Squirrels are particularly awful right now. Chicken wire doesn’t help. The only way to keep them away from seed trays is to keep the trays by the back door – of course where there is no sun.
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| Tom expanding our potato bed |
4. Plant twice as many potatoes than you think you need. Same goes for onions and garlic.
5. Chickens don’t eat pumpkin and squash seeds. If they are doing the compost you MUST screen it or your garden will be inundated with squash plants.
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| Our poor guinea pigs for bitter eggplant |
6. Pick those eggplants young! Or they become horribly bitter. We were unfortunately surprised by this at an urban farmer potluck we had not too long ago.
I think that’s all for now. What have you learned this year?
What have I learned this year?
I learned so much:
– How to be patient with my garden
– I learned about insects who help and who destroyed my garden
– that with my garden, I meet other gardeners.
– and so many think
But I know one thing is that I will learn more the next year and that why I never will get bored in my garden.
Have a great day.
And I am back on Blotanical, with my new blog.
You probably already know this, but it's not actually the absolute size of the eggplant that's relevant. Rather it's the size of the calex (the cap) in relation to the size of the whole fruit. A ratio of 1:4 seems to work out alright for many types, though for tai eggplant and other long, skinny types it has to be adjusted slightly.
What I learned this year is that I'm utterly confused by SF weather. It was my first year in the bay area and it's utterly different from the east coast. My turnips wouldn't grow until about a month ago and the eggplant never set fruit or really grew much. The sunchokes did better than I've ever heard of though and the peas were amazing, as were the green beans. I think I need to plant the acorn squash a little later though, and plant full sized potatoes instead of fingerlings…. that was a pain to dig.
Jess, This year's weather was really Really REALLY odd. So I wouldn't base subsequent years off of this one.