Sunday, April 09, 2006

Gardening Day

I got a chance to spend some time in my garden today. We have had much rain lately and my garden has been mushy. The big part of the garden is still too wet for tilling, but I was able to plant a few things in the raised beds today. In this bed I have the first of the tomato plants, marigolds, and seeds of basil. Some dill self seeded from last year so I let it stay.

I am experimenting with companion planting this year. I have done rotational planting and some companion planting in previous years, but never on this scale. The garden will not have a planned look. I cannot visualize how it will look but am determined to do it anyway. I feel sure we will still get vegetables and if the garden is too difficult to work or looks terrible I can always revert to standard practice next season or mid-season.

I plan to run my green beans and lima beans up the corn stalks. I read somewhere that the beans make the corn less accessible to the coons. I do know that the beans will feed the heavy eating corn. I am going to plant squash with dill, marigolds and tomatoes. I will plant basil with eggplant. Does this sound like a disaster waiting to happen?

I planted french filet beans in another raised bed block. I also did some much needed weeding and harvested a few radishes. In this bed are lettuce, radishes, carrots and beets. I plant these in rotation. Today I planted more seeds for each of these veggies and will again in another few weeks. After that it will be too hot here for anything other than tomatoes, peppers, beans, okra, melons, and eggplant. Spring vegetables have a short season here.

2 comments:

mull-berry said...

Planting corn, beans and squash together make up the "three sisters garden." It is a Native American custom and the plants help each other grow. You can find a ton of sites with a google search.

Wisteria said...

You are right! There is much online companion planting information. Even as many of the plants have emerged, I feel like this is a disaster waiting to happen. The chaos of the whole garden is scary.