Mon, 25 Feb 2008
Radishes
This year in my particularly untidt winter garden I grew a few different varieties of radishes. I love butter and radish sandwiches so I always have a supply of the red roots during the winter. I grew 'cherry belle', 'white icicle' and 'french breakfast'. My garden was very weedy and infertile. The weather grew unseasonably warm recently, so some of the radishes began to bolt/flower. When radishes flower the roots can tunr woody or extremely spicy. For me, the 'french breakfast' variety was the best for competition with weeds and was slowest to bolt. It has a great flavor and looks pretty too. The other varieties did ok but this one stands out!
posted at: 13:51 | path: /colleen2008 | link for this entry
Sat, 09 Feb 2008
Intensive Planting Worked for Me
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You may have read awhile ago in my blog that this fall I hurriedly planted my fall vegetable garden in the dark one evening. I planted pole beans, broccili, cabbage, kale, radishes, turnips and collards. I did not prepare the soil at all! Well, a few lucky things happened. The beans produced really well and then I just left them and they died with the first freeze. All of the other plants did ok, depsite being planted really close together and never thinned and hardly ever watered. The leaves from an ash tree nearby fell into the veggie bed acting as a much needed mulch. What a nice surprize! And the weeds that grew are things that make a nice cover crop like clovers and ryegrass. Plus, the plants are so close together in an intensive style planting that not many weeds have room to grow anyway. I had a bad slug infestation, and they ate huge holes in the collard leaves but they left everything else alone. After awhile of seeing the collards devoured, I decided to treat the collards as a "trap crop", which means that the slugs and snails will eat them, but since the slugs and snails are so fat on collards they won't eat the other stuff. This garden is a testament to the true nature of a garden- SOMETHING will grow even if you don't look after it constantly. Today I harvested a bowl full of kale and radishes, and soon I will be harvesting broccili! MOral of the story- don't worry about the garden!
posted at: 20:00 | path: /colleen2008 | link for this entry