2024 garden season

[DJ54]

I hope you have a way to vent it more than the entry door. It's amazing the amount of heat you can get in there on a sunny day in the 50's. Even my little one gets pretty toasty and definitely have to watch when it gets into the 70's. I have to slide the windows open by 10:30 to keep temps in the 80's. Learned my lesson the first year when I got ties up on the landline and didn't get to it until around noon. By then it was 110º in there and killed all of the seedlings and had to start over. I know open them when I'm done with chores earlier in the morning.

Got new seeds ordered and should be here by early next week. Won't really be starting anything until later in the week. That will make 8 weeks until my target date of approx. May 1 to set transplants. I was reminded a couple weeks ago of an old saying about hearing thunder in Feb., you'll get a frost the same date in May. So that would make one the 3rd week of April. Probably get by with cabbage, peas and other cool weather items, but the rest will stay in the greenhouse, just have to pay attention to the long range forecasts.

Really looking forward to trying the Beet transplants. Don't care for them but grow them for some friends to put up. Hoping it works well to make them a little less work intensive. Tough to tell which is weeds and which are Beets coming up for the first 10-14 days. Plus the thinning. Should be easier to thin in trays and going to see if I can put the thinning's in other trays to save starting more. Will also leave enough room to hill them with the hillers on the Farmall 130 or 140 to save a lot of handwork. Need to order more Peppermint extract to keep the Deer from eating on most plants.

 

[Sonny580]

Its not all that tight. Right now I am fighting to keep it warn in there! I have an old hoghouse fan and a furnace fan that I can set in there if it comes to that later.

I never hill beets! Planting them thin enough is always a problem. Never tried transplanting them from flats. LOTTA work but would get spacing more accurate that way.
They are not hard to tell from weeds when they are young. Plant Detroit Dark Red and they start out red! lol!

 

[DJ54]

Its not all that tight. Right now I am fighting to keep it warn in there! I have an old hoghouse fan and a furnace fan that I can set in there if it comes to that later.

I never hill beets! Planting them thin enough is always a problem. Never tried transplanting them from flats. LOTTA work but would get spacing more accurate that way.
They are not hard to tell from weeds when they are young. Plant Detroit Dark Red and they start out red! lol!

Pretty much have to hill them as they seem to be a whole lot like an onion and push themselves up out of the ground. I am planting the Detroit Reds. Seems they have to get up to about 2" before the stem is a definite red. Pigweeds are nearly the same color.

Still like the idea of thinning in trays, and hopefully at least some of the thinning's survive getting reset. We'll see here in a few weeks.

 

[Sonny580]

for onions you GOTTA take dirt AWAY from them as the grow or they wont get very big.--- at least not here! They are a surface crop. For beets I never hill them either. The main thing with them is to get them spaced apart since they take up a lot of room in the row. 6" spacing for both onions and beets work for me.

 

[RB5]

Both my sons are dating ladies who are wanting to get into gardening, so I'll be putting one in for them and mine. Be a busy but good year. Both my grandsons will be right there in the dirt too. Going to be a good year!

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How do you keep the ear worms out of the corn? I have thin topsoil with clay just below it. I've been adding a large pile of compost from the hay I feed my cows every year. Last year I was able to finally get corn to do well, but the worms ate a lot of it. I've read about putting vegetable oil on the silk. Anything else I can do?

 

[RB5]

for onions you GOTTA take dirt AWAY from them as the grow or they wont get very big.--- at least not here! They are a surface crop. For beets I never hill them either. The main thing with them is to get them spaced apart since they take up a lot of room in the row. 6" spacing for both onions and beets work for me.

I've never had to remove dirt. I usually mound up a 3' or slightly wider row that has a lot of compost in it. I plant several rows of onion sets in it. Without the compost I would have mostly clay. I did not get them is as early this year due to the cold snap we had. I could not get out there and work the wet soil with my tractor. I usually plant 1015y sweet onions. One year when I got them planted in January I had some that were huge. We usually don't have to buy any onions until just after the new crop is planted every year. I planted 200 sets this year.

 

[DJ54]

How do you keep the ear worms out of the corn? I have thin topsoil with clay just below it. I've been adding a large pile of compost from the hay I feed my cows every year. Last year I was able to finally get corn to do well, but the worms ate a lot of it. I've read about putting vegetable oil on the silk. Anything else I can do?

I've used BT, it's an organic spray for worms & caterpillars. I use it on sweet corn & cabbage and does a good job on both. On sweet corn it's put on when ears form and silk just starts to appear. Then every 7-10 days unless you get a rain. It can be bought at places like TSC, Rural King, or any place that handles garden supplies. Proper name is Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) insecticide.

 

[DJ54]

for onions you GOTTA take dirt AWAY from them as the grow or they wont get very big.--- at least not here! They are a surface crop. For beets I never hill them either. The main thing with them is to get them spaced apart since they take up a lot of room in the row. 6" spacing for both onions and beets work for me.Although I grow my onion sets in a hilled row to keep them out of the water since we get some pretty good downpours at times, I have to pull dirt up around them too, until later in the season, and they too push themselves to the surface. At that point it's OK.

Although I plant my onions in a hilled row to keep them up out of soggy soil I keep the dirt pulled up around them so as not to get sunburned. When at the maturing stage, I stop and let them push themselves to the top. They are supposed to get around 2-1/2" 3"+ in size. As you can see in the picture that's pretty well what I get. Perfect size for one person when making whatever.

I've found Beets seem to do better in a hilled row too, keeping them up out of soggy soil at times. I tried 2 different plantings ans they did better in the hilled row. I replanted in the hilled row friends had just pulled from. Stirred in some triple 13 and planted seeds right before a nice soaking rain. They did very well. Actually, the best Beets I ever grew overall, since I managed to keep the Deer from eating the tops off. On the first round some got pretty good sized as my friends were tied up doing something else for about a week. A couple rains made a huge difference in size. I was afraid they would be getting woody at that stage but they said they weren't. The 5 gallon bucket was set beside them to give an idea how large they were.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

Getting ready to plant my cool weather crops this week. Kale, Lettuce, Spinach, arugula, onions, some herbs.

I am also very excited to try my hand at potatoes again this year. I do not have lots of space so I am going to give the vertical growing a shot. You plant the potatoes in the ground and as they grow up you place boxes around them and backfill the boxes with mulch of some kind. I plan on using shredded straw. I guess it tricks the potato into thinking that part of the stem is still underground and it will grow potatoes. I did it once and I was very impressed with the amount of potatoes I got from it. There are tons of websites that describe this method online.
Happy Spring Y'all!

 

[RB5]

I've used BT, it's an organic spray for worms & caterpillars. I use it on sweet corn & cabbage and does a good job on both. On sweet corn it's put on when ears form and silk just starts to appear. Then every 7-10 days unless you get a rain. It can be bought at places like TSC, Rural King, or any place that handles garden supplies. Proper name is Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) insecticide.

Thanks I will check into that.