June Garden Update

I have several posts in the works, but I thought I would bring up to date some of my successes, and failures for this season so far in the garden.

Some problems this year: 

1.    Over amending the soil
2.    Too much water
3.    Bolting bok choi

      The following two are only problems because of the wet, wet spring

•    Over mulching
•    Cornseed Maggots

Next Post...
Fun experiments and successes

1.    Hugel kultur
2.    Greens in the hoop house 
3.    New hydroponic nutrients
4.    Babies working in the yard

Too Much Poop/Water
I don't have any particular method I follow when amending my soils. Because of this, I really have no idea how much I should add of anything, or what all I have put in.  I know that straight chicken poop can "burn" crops, but I have had success in the past growing corn in a bed with a lot of coop scrapings.

I am sure that I added to much to the wicking bed in the hoop house.  Nothing would grow in it, and there were mineral precipitates on clods of soil when they dried.  Another problem here is that we have had so much rain this year, and I have set the reservoir to be filled by runoff from the hoop house, that the soil is always totally wet.

Solution: Cover Crop

I planted buckwheat in the wicking bed to help condition the bed for a winter planting of spinach,  Over time my mistake of adding too much chicken poop would be fixed as it broke down into more available nitrogen, but this will help expedite the process.

What else does it doe for me?

• Phosphorous: Buckwheat can extract phosphorous from the grow medium that is in forms unavailable to other plants.  After I chop it in September, that phosphorous will be available to the crops that come after it.  
• Soil Conditioning: Buckwheat puts out a lot of roots into the top 10 inches of soil (which is the total depth of my bed), and leaves the soil much more loose and friable than if nothing had been done. 

Too Much Water/Mulch
After making sure my garden would be as drought tolerant as I could make it, it has been raining nearly every day.  This has caused the soils to remain totally muddy, and my mulch to start rotting quickly.  Also, it has been really cool, and the combination of wet and cool has been a problem for starting squash directly in the soil.

Once the soil is warm, squash seem to pop up the day after they go in the soil.  Otherwise they can become food for maggots, which happened to my entire first planting of squash.

It was fun to dig up the seeds and find them eaten from the inside out.  Now that it is warm, I will have plenty of squash.  To be fair to myself, I knew that I had planted early (late April), but some years that would have worked just fine.  It was as much a Hail Mary that I would be able to have some really early squash, as it was naivete.

Bolting Bok Choi/Poor performing kale
I am not sure what accounted for the immediate bolting of the bok choi I planted in April.  It could have been a combination of too much water and wood mulch, and perhaps an over amending of the soil in that raised bed.  The kale in that same bed is not growing well either, and usually I have felt that kale will grow no matter what I do to it.

I decided to split this post up so that it doesn't get too long.  Next I'll talk about what is working, and what has been fun.