Hello, hivers and gardeners!
As I'm writing this, there's 3 days left of June, and then it's on to hot July, mid summer in the northern hemisphere. That means that it's time to write my end of the month garden journal post. This post covers the plots that I'm renting at the local community garden.
I haven't written very much about my plots in June because there wasn't really very much to write about. The only thing I planted at the community garden this year was potatoes and a few pumpkin plants. I didn't get the pumpkin plants into the ground until the middle of June. I had started them in the greenhouse in May, and they took their time sprouting and growing large enough to transplant into the garden bed. The pumpkin plants seem to be doing ok now, I think they've pretty well recovered from their transplant shock. These pumpkin plants are the only thing in this bed, except for the weeds that I'm trying to kill with the black plastic.
I used to have 2 plots at the community garden, this spring I got a third plot so that I would have some fresh ground to plant potatoes in. It's not good to plant the same crops in the same place every year. It depletes the soil of the specific nutrients that the crop uses, and the plant diseases that affect that crop tend to build up and affect the plants more.
I planted potatoes in the new plot first this year. I planted 4 rows of Kennebec Red potatoes and 3 rows of Yukon Gold potatoes. After you plant the seed potatoes, it seems like it takes forever before they finally come up. It's usually at least a week, and often longer. These potatoes are all up and doing well right now.
I think it was at least a week after I planted the first plot before I planted the potatoes in the second plot. These have been slower to come up. I planted 4 rows of Russet White potatoes and 4 rows of Adirondack Blue potatoes. For the blue potatoes, I used leftover small potatoes from last year's crop. I did not get the best results from those seed potatoes. I think that only a bit more than half of them came up this year.
These are all the blue potatoes that have come up so far, but there may be a few more that come up. We have a fairly short season here, so any potato that hasn't come up yet, probably won't produce potatoes if it does come up.
Like last year, a friend of mine is using one of my plots for her own gardening. She planted sweet corn, some kind of beans, probably a hard bean variety, and some kind of squash.
There are also some volunteer potato plants, apparently I didn't get all the potatoes when I was digging them last fall.
Another thing I'm trying this year is straw bale gardening. I've been reading about it for several years and thought I would try it. I had these 2 straw bales at the garden last fall, and they sat there through the winter. I had originally planned to use them for mulch this year, but I decided to plant them and see what happens. You're supposed to prepare the bales for planting starting in early spring to get them to compost internally to give the plants something to grow on. I'm not sure if I prepared them very well, but I planted them anyway. I dug out a trench in the center of each bale and put dirt in the trench to give the plants something to start growing on, and then I planted 2 seed potatoes in each bale. All 4 of the seed potatoes came up, and seem to be doing well enough. I planted these after all the potatoes were planted in the garden, so they're not as big as the other potato plants yet.
I also brought a couple of borage plants up to the community garden this year. I wanted to plant them to attract the bees. They don't take well to being moved and transplanted, but they survived and are now growing pretty well. I planted one of the borage plants in the empty space at the end of the straw bales. I put a bit of fence around it so it wouldn't get stepped on by accident.
The other plant got planted in an unused part of the garden area. I'm hoping it does well this year. If it does well, it will spread it's seeds around and I won't have to plant any more of it. It is a self seeding annual plant and will come up every year from the seeds.
That's all I have for my garden journal end of June community garden plot report. I hope you found it interesting!
I've seen straw bale farming in my village. Looks cool!
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It seems that straw bale gardening is getting more popular, especially in places where the ground is poor for growing food.
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This is looking really good Amber, I don't know where you get the energy to do all this work. I guess the organic food provides it!
It's a ton of work to get it all planted, but after that, it's mostly making sure it gets watered when it doesn't rain for several days, and picking weeds here and there. Until it's time to start picking the ripe stuff...
everything is looking great
Thanks!
Yeah, borage does not like transplanted. I found a lot in the herb garden and moved them to an empty bed. Only 1/3 survived.
I still have new borage plants coming up where I planted my tomatoes last year. The plant that was in that area last year was rather large...
Very cool you are able to rent a plot for a garden! I would so do this due to the lack of sun in my backyard. If you do not mind me asking, how much does a plot go for?
The local community garden here is run by the city. They charge 25 dollars per year per plot. If you have more than 1 plot, there's a 5 dollar discount for each additional plot. Water is provided by the city and included in the yearly fee.
I really am interested to see how the straw bale potatoes work out. Good idea to plant for bees... confrey, oregano and thyme do that for me. Thanks for sharing!!!
I got a few volunteer potatoes too and also at work. It seems you can never get every last one! Unless you plant in some sort of container. I couldn't wait any longer and planted my potatoes a week before St Patrick's day. They are blue potatoes as week! Looking forward to see future updates and also the results of your straw bale experiment! Good luck!
I do like the blue potatoes! 😊
I've been thinking about straw bale beds, not least because they're raised up. I thought they would be a good intermediary for some parts of the garden where I would like to grow vegetables but haven't got to organising yet.
Borage is a really pretty plant, I love to see it.
Another thing about using straw bales for growing veggies is that you can compost them in the fall after the end of the growing season, and then add that compost to the regular garden the next year. You could also use the compost to fill a raised bed.
Yes, great ideas - I have a terraced patch and the back where I am gradually improving the soil each year. I like the way straw bales break down over time, fulfilling lots of roles on the way.