Seed starting
In the townhouse I started most of our veggie, herb, and flower plantings from seeds for each of the last few years we were there. At the new house, I took the same approach with dismal results. I don't know that any of our tomato plants survived and none of the tomatillos, flowers, or herbs survived. Only a few of the peppers made it.
After a bit of thought, I've come to the conclusion that I think they died because of our water. We have "hard" water at the new house and use a salt system to soften the water. With that in mind, it would stand to reason that the water I was applying to the plants is a bit salty. The next question is what that is doing to our bodies, but that's for another forum.
Going forward, I intend to collect and keep the water coming from the basement dehumidifiers to use for watering our started seedlings.
Crop List
Tomatoes
We planted a number of varieties of tomatoes in the garden. Of those varieties, only the Roma (San Marzano) and Early Girl were ones I would grow again. Here's the catch: Early Girl is a hybrid and owned by a company under the Monsanto umbrella. Because the vast majority of my seedlings didn't make it, I purchased seedlings from a store near us and was labeled as non-GMO.
Unfortunately, the "Monsanto" label kills it for me. Much as I thoroughly enjoyed the plants, I won't grow them again. And, being a hybrid, I can't start them from seed, anyway.
Peppers
The few pepper starters that survived their salt-water demise didn't produce much. I keep trying "California Wonder" and never get anything larger than 1.5". I need to do more reading on why they do what they do. I did purchase some supplemental peppers that went red and got sweeter with age. I don't recall the variety, but it doesn't really matter. They also didn't get all that large, either.
Beans
As with previous years, I grew Kentucky Wonder pole beans and Scarlet Runner beans. The Wonder did great and we have a number of bags of trimmed/blanched/frozen green beans from them. The Scarlet Runners didn't do much of anything and didn't produce. I suspect a large part of that was due to my planting them late due to all the yard rehab we had to do this year.
Potatoes
Wifey and The Boy thoroughly enjoyed harvesting the potatoes (both sweet and regular). The Yukon Gold Seed Potatoes and Carolina Ruby Sweet Potatoes seem to be winners. Wifey also planted some variety of purple potatoes, but I can't figure out where she got them. Not Baker Creek or Southern Exposure according to my records.
Onions and Garlic
The continuation of the Egyptian Walking Onions are doing reasonably well. I expect there to be even more next year once they're better established.
The garlic did nothing this past year. I discovered that I had mulched (leaves from the property) too heavily and buried the cloves. Thankfully, they didn't rot but they also never developed into anything usable for this year.
We planted Yellow Potato Onions in the early fall for next year. Supposedly these are perennial onions so I look forward to seeing how we can cultivate more for future years.
Asparagus
We planted a number of crowns (3 bags' worth) in raised boxes. A number of them have come up. We're following conventional wisdom to leave them alone for a few years to expand to usefulness.
Strawberries
This fall my parents gave us a number of cast-offs from their strawberry patch. I planted half of them in the downslope side of our garden. There wasn't room for more without crowding.
The Orchard
Apple Trees
I really goofed up this year by not putting deer netting up around the apple trees until late-spring (or was it early summer?). As a result, they were decimated by deer. They all rebounded for the most part, but we didn't harvest any apples; the deer had them all. I have since removed the deer netting and relocated the supports to provide a larger diameter around the trees. I will be hanging new netting this weekend.
Blueberries
In addition to the 4 blueberry bushes we had last year, we planted two more in the spring. I'm tempted to plant two more in 2018. Yes, they'll get large enough in time to provide for the family, but I just like the idea of having plenty. Besides: why not?
Raspberries
Raspberry plants were a new addition to the burgeoning homestead this year. I planted 4 "Royalty" purple raspberry starters in September followed by 6 transplanted red raspberry canes transplanted from my friend's property. I don't know much about the red raspberry canes other than that she said they produce twice a year.
From the University of Maryland webpage about raspberries and blackberries.
Red raspberries produce new canes as suckers from the root system, so they are usually grown in a hedgerow. They are the most winter-hardy type of raspberry and may be either of two types:With that in mind, I think I have primocane-bearing raspberries.
- Summer-bearing types have the typical biennial life cycle of a bramble. They fruit from late June through July of their second growing season.
- Primocane-bearing types, also known as everbearing raspberries, are an exception to the bramble life cycle. Primocane-bearing types have the ability to fruit in the early fall of their first year on their primocanes. They then fruit a second time, in June, on buds below those which fruited the previous fall. The fall crop, however, is more abundant. Therefore gardeners treat the canes as annuals, rather than biennials, by mowing the canes to the ground in winter after the fall harvest. This keeps the plants more manageable.
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