Selecting Seeds

It is 44F outside though it feels at least ten degrees colder. The wind is blowing and it is raining steadily. It is a typical gray and dreary day in Western Oregon and I love it! Yesterday was sunny and I took a 4-mile hike and loved that too. But these cold, wet, dreary days are wonderful for cozying up to the fire, reading a good book, or even writing a blog entry!

It is also a good day to peruse the seed catalogues, both on paper and on line. I have  been looking through the Spring 2018 catalogue from Territorial Seed Company, one of my favorites. I still have a fair amount of seed left over from last year and I also want to get some at Nichols’ Nursery here in Albany so I will not be ordering a lot from Territorial this year but I could not resist a few of them.

Since my growing space is limited I will try Mascotte bush beans this year as they promise to grow very compactly.

Though I’ve not had great success with beats I shall try Early Wonder Tall Top this year just to see if it might do better. It says perfect for early spring planting so I may get those in by mid-March if Mother Nature cooperates.

Finally I will get some Lincoln (sometimes called Homesteader) shelling peas this year. I usually plant snow peas or sugar snaps but I thought I’d try some shelling peas for a change.

Everything else will either come from starts or seeds on hand as well as what I pick up at Nichols this year. As I mentioned in an earlier post I hope to plant more intensely this year and am even thinking of a limited fall/winter garden of cole crops, onions and garlic in the fall. We shall see how ambitious I feel in the fall.

Now I need to plan the garden and I do that on paper. In the next few weeks I will start some seeds in the green house. I had mixed success last year, let’s hope it is better this year.

Happy Gardening,

Dan Murphy

No Till Gardening II

Last June I posted my No Till Gardening post about how I had red Weedless Gardening by Lee Reich and studied his no-till method of gardening. I used that method last summer and found it quite successful. Though I do not have a significant weed problem in my garden boxes there were even fewer with no tilling.

My favorite British gardening videos recently discussed this. They call it no-dig gardening. They show how to create new garden beds without digging as well. It is certainly much easier than digging, and far easier than double digging.

This winter my boxes have a healthy cover crop of red clover. I am not sure yet whether I will try to pull them all out by hand or dig them in. My aim will be to dig as little as possible. One of the advantages of cover crops is to dig in the green material to benefit the soil. So there seems to be some conflict between these two methods. In the past I have removed the cover crop tops to the compost pile and only left some root material behind. I shall try that this year I think. That will avoid deep digging.

So have a watch of the video below about no dig gardening and consider using this method. No digging, no tilling – it is definitely easier and better for your soil.

 

 

Happy Gardening,

Dan Murphy

Intensive Planting – New Goal for 2018

Every year this time as I peruse seed catalogues or websites I decide that this year I will plant and grow more intensely using succession planting, climbing plants, spacing plants more efficiently, etc.

And every spring and summer I fail to follow through and really do it. I plant my beds in spring and occasionally add something through the summer but I have not practiced the discipline to continue the process throughout the season.

Maybe I am a lazy gardener. Or maybe I just forget? I think I have set in my mind too rigidly that planting is in the spring and fail to consider the additional planting, especially the succession planting, that I could be doing all season long.

I fail to plan adequately. If I planned more intensive planting and more succession planting I would achieve a lot more. So that is my aim for 2018. I have a total of 64 square feet of planting space in my raised beds alone. I should be able to plant and harvest much more than I do in that space.

So this is my goal for this year: plant more, plant more often, and harvest more. Let’s see how it goes.

Now to learn more tips about planting more intensely watch this video by my favorite British garden guru—

 

Happy Gardening,

Dan Murphy