This is madness. I have 44 varieties of plants I am going to attempt to grow in 2015. According to conventional wisdom, its just plain stupid to be trying to do this in as little space as I have. In some cases I am already predicting fail: for instance, my red orach is doing very poorly and I have never had any luck with spinach. My red romaine is lackluster and much beloved of caterpillars. My objective however is to gain experience in growing as many useful things as I possibly can, and in some cases to gain useful samples of materials for experimentation - growing yarrow for medicinal purposes for instance. The varieties I am planning on growing are: peas tansy yarrow basil sunflower peruvian purple potatoes oregano parsley chickweed purslane arugula mandan bride corn golden amaranth salad burnet watermelon seminole pumpkin marigold cucumber lipstick pepper poblano pepper cilantro spearmint peppermint strawberry blackberry butter lettuce romaine lettuce purple broccoli watercress garden cress sweet woodruff chamomile bee balm thyme tsygan tomatoes cherry tomatoes beit alpha cucumbers red orach ? catnip brussels sprouts spinach ? astrakom eggplant cherokee beans pima cotton chufa ? I couldnt harvest last years crop of chufa because a volunteer blackberry started growing in the chufa bed and I decided not to uproot the blackberry to harvest the chufa, but in theory at least some of the chufa will likely come up again next spring. Whereupon I will... still not be able to harvest it because the blackberries are growing there now. ;) Partly I am hoping I can manage these high densities through intensive foliar feeding with the miracle Lizard Juice, making the back yard almost equivalent to a hydroponics bed rather than a normal garden. In the case of the watercress which I am hopefully going to be starting in the near future when my seeds arrive, it really is going to be virtually a low-tech hydroponics setup: daily immersion of a pot of compost media into a bucket of water followed by a thorough draining. I have stones and leaves at the bottom of the pot to allow it to drain without sucking all the compost down and out of the multiple drain holes. I have saved seeds from last year for tsygan and cherry tomatoes, eggplant, beit alpha cucumber, marigold, basil, lipstick pepper, poblano pepper (a donation from Jeanette), sunflower, purslane, and I have bean seed but I am switching varieties from white to black, so I wont be using that seed. My parsley still hasnt gone to seed but its still alive and doing decently, so I guess it will seed when it is ready. Wish me luck. ;)
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 21:54:05 +0000
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