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.

Success with cabbage

In spite of the challenges, a beautiful cabbage.

In spite of challenges from frost and pests, we had an excellent harvest of cabbage, and were able to donate many cabbages to the food pantry.

Our results are due to the care that has been taken to maintain our soil fertility while being observant of pests and applying control measures recommended by our Horticultural Advisers.

Spring garden progress is happening

Snow peas!

The spring has brought its share of challenges, beginning  with earlier than normal warm weather in February, drought, and killing frost in March.
 
 Lately we've been so busy in the garden we haven't had time to post.

 


Overall the weather enabled us to clean
up the garden and prepare the beds. We harvested  most of the winter onions as green, leaving some to mature along with garlic which we had also planted last fall.

The first spring crop to be planted was snow peas, and we built an improved pea support using bamboo. Working with bamboo was another challenge, but it did go up and is serving its purpose.

Snow peas support

Red and Green Kale

The drought slowed germination and growth of crops. Timely rains have finally arrived, and now that frost danger is past we'll have our irrigation on again. We have an abundance of greens and have begun harvesting lettuce, spinach, kale and snow peas. We are grateful for the abundance of early produce.

Our current challenge is cabbage loopers which are raising havoc with some cabbage, but we are working to limit the damage using BT a biological control.

                                                                   There is never a dull moment at Koinonia Community Garden.

Spring in the air

Hi,
Today was a great day to garden. Despite short notice, 5 gardeners came to the garden and got started preparing the soil for spring crops.
Cover crop of oats cut down, and snow peas were planted in Bed 16 (former pepper bed) and plans were made to build a support using bamboo so that peas can grow up strings.
The clover cover crop that had been planted in the former corn bed and our winter cover crop was mowed and plowed under and left to rot.
Lots of weeding and weed suppression (using paper and mulch). Broccoli harvested. 
--Kris

June harvesting and planting

Our garden is beautiful and bountiful these days, as spring gives way to summer.
As the days grow longer and the temperature rises, it is good to go early in the morning to work before the heat builds. This morning was nearly ideal, as the early morning temperature was down into the 50s overnight. So when we got to the garden it was still pleasantly cool.
As spring gives way to summer, we are blessed with an abundance and variety of early produce-- lettuce, beets, peas, and spinach that we have been harvesting already.  Tomatoes, Swiss chard, carrots and herbs are growing.  Tomato supports have been set, and some sweet corn is planted and coming up now.
--Deborah