Sweet Potato Time

This year's sweet potato harvest was a smashing success. Sweet potatoes are one plant that seem to thrive in hot weather, so they were not phased by the intense heat this summer.  Nevertheless, we weren't sure how the flash drought that came in September would affect them. We watered them as much as we could, and then when a cooler day came we tried a few hills with a fork to see if they were ready.  

We are very pleased and thankful for the results of our effort.

Changing Seasons

In gardening, one always has to keep a wary eye on the weather. 
We started our spring planting season in February with onions, snap peas, mustard greens and turnips.
The spring came slowly as much of February was rainy with below normal temperatures after the first week, which had seemed promising. So our spring crops took hold slowly and some weeks showed little progress. Onion plants grew slowly, and onion seed failed to germinate until nearly the end of March.  On the weekend of March 15, we planted our blueberries, as noted in the last post.
The blueberries remained dormant for the first few weeks as the soil temperature was still cold. That didn't matter, as winter conditions are recommended for planting them. They seemed to benefit from this slow start and gradually warming soil during April.  We did not lose a single one of our plants; all of them took hold.
We having our soil tested, we followed recommendations for amendments for the blueberries and other areas of the garden.

Sweet peppers planted among green onion and beets

What's new for us this year is a change of style from solid monoculture of plants per bed to interplanting of different crops within a bed. Along the same lines we're doing more succession planting. Instead of planting all of a type of plant at once, say for example cucumbers and beans, we are doing additional successive plantings at a later date. We'll have to see how this works out.
So far this has had mixed success.  Some times rain prevented us from getting back to plant when we wanted, so our second planting of peas went in late and they were affected by hot weather in May, which diminished their yield.  We had put row cover on the broccoli to protect from cabbage moth, but the sudden very warm temperatures caused them to mature rapidly under the covers and bolt.
In the bed pictured above, green onions were planted by seed in March, beets were planted in April, and peppers in May. As onions and beets are harvested, more space is created for growing sweet pepper plants.
There is always something new to learn in the garden.

Blueberries are in

Celebrating our successful planting of 14 blueberry plants to the garden.
After getting our soil tested, which thankfully revealed the soil in our patch to be acidic enough to plant without requiring the  addition of sulfur, we hacked and dug a planting space in the clay, and amended the soil with pine chip soil conditioner and fertilizer.
Then we planted the blueberries this weekend.
We're very excited to get them in, even though it will be a couple of years before we will actually be picking any berries.

Spring Ahead

This past weekend was the annual time to set the clocks ahead one hour, or "spring ahead" for daylight savings time.
As always in gardening, we've had to keep a wary eye toward the weather forecast. The weather in Feb. stayed cool and rainy for the most part, but in spite of it we managed to make progress.
Starting the first Saturday in February, we had to cancel twice on cold rainy days.  The second time a couple of us went out to the garden on Sunday afternoon.
Since the ninth of February, the garden has been springing ahead slowly, as we cleared mulch from the beds, weeded, planted some early seeds, and some onion plants.
This week we'll be adding some blueberry plants.  That project involves some digging into the clay soil, and adding pine chip soil conditioner, which we started last weekend.

Spring Dreams

It's been a while since we posted.
Much has happened, including a couple of major hurricanes passing through the region, though not so directly impacting our area of the Piedmont, except for some flooding here and there.
But our garden is still alive, and we're making plans to get started.
Checking our conditions at present-- the weather has been mild, but with a lot of rain.
Our garden is located on high ground, so we have fairly good drainage. Checking the beds this weekend they seem to be fairly wet, perhaps too wet to begin planting just yet.
We're making plans and getting ready though. First up is some maintenance needing to be done after the winter storms. We'll first be planting some snow peas and onions next month. Possibly putting in blueberry plants on our slope, which has been a long-term goal.
Starting in February we're resuming our work times, which will be Saturday afternoon from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm. Stop by for a visit if you're in the neighborhood.