I have three “Tree Sisters” patches, with 10, 15, and 25 squares. In all the patches, I planted or I am planning to plant 2 beans in each corner, then either 2 corn in each square or 4 corn in every even square, and either 1 pumpkin in each square or 1 in every odd square.

So I crunched some numbers to see how much of the full capacity of these areas I am using concerning each plant:

~80% for the beans
~90% for pumpkins
~30% for corn

So overall, I am using only half the area that I would need if I were growing each of the crops separately at optimal spacing. Which is one of the points of using the companion-plant system.

I do not know whether this ratio is good, bad, or ugly. To be completely honest, I did not look it up, and I am playing it by the ear. I planted the beans as a main crop because I have marginal soil, and I know beans thrive on it and will improve it. Then I planted only as much corn as I had receptacles for. And I might plant even more pumpkins than I initially planned because one of the seed suppliers had almost a miraculous germination rate and I loath to toss a viable plant.

That last point is still not entirely decided. I already planted 10 marrow squashes, and so far they have survived and started to grow. Today I also planted the first 3 Hokkaido because they had three true leaves and thus should, hopefully, be sturdy enough to survive slugs (I will add slug pellets around them anyway). The butternut squashes still have a huge question mark over them, but if they survive, I might have to establish a solitary patch for some of them. I do have the place,  although I do not know if I will have the strength.

I will probably have to add some liquid fertilizer to the irrigation water due to the marginal nature of my soil. The improving effect of beans will only show up in the subsequent years. I do not know if the plants will grow to their full capacity or if the capacity of each species is going to be diminished. Unless it is reduced by more than half, the patches should produce more than separated ones would.

Based on past experience, if grown separately, I should get around 70g of beans, 50 g of corn, and 5000 g of pumpkin on average from one plant. So if all plants grow well, I might be looking at about 30 kg of beans, 5 kg of sweet corn, and 150 kg of pumpkins. I will only believe those numbers when I see them, and out of all of these, I am most inclined to believe the first and the last one. Of all these, it is usually the corn that performs the poorest.

I did try corn as a companion plant to potatoes about five years ago. I did not write about it, but it was a success – the potatoes grew at 100% capacity, and thus all the corn was extra, albeit a small amount. Shame that it is so much more work to grow everything here. I could get a lot more use out of my garden if I could just toss seeds in the ground and let them grow. It is one of many downsides of living in a semi-mountainous area. Sigh.

Now I’m going outside again.

I already mentioned my woes with beans this year. Unfortunately, with the late frost, they only got exacerbated. I planted all my yellow beans, and we unwisely ate the rest, so I had none left. Thus, after they froze, I bought new seed packets. I will have some yellow beans, but nowhere nearly as much as I would like to.

I was always fairly confident in the germination rates of seeds, both bought and homegrown. When I wanted to grow 100 plants, I would buy somewhere around 100 seeds. For whatever reason, that was not the case this year. Homegrown seeds have a 90-100% germination rate, but bought seeds have between 0-50% germination rate. All other variables – temperature, light, substrate, watering – are identical, so it definitely is the seeds themselves. I noticed that many of the bought seeds had necrotic spots, and even when the germ itself was intact and the seed sprouted, the resulting plants are often tiny and sickly-looking.

Those are the remnants of over 100 seeds planted two weeks ago. Only a handful sprouted, and the plants are still tiny, some barely poking out of the ground.

Compare that with these black beans, planted from my own, two years old. These started to poke out of the ground just yesterday, and already some are bigger and healthier-looking than the older ones. And although it is not clearly visible in the picture, there is actually a 100% germination rate, I checked every receptacle.

These last ones are yellow beans grown from newly bought seeds, sown before those homegrown in the previous picture. Yesterday I went through them all and I sorted out about 50% of the receptacles where the seeds were either dead or completely rotten away. That is the best result with bought seeds this year. If I were buying seeds and sowing them directly into the ground and then waiting for them to sprout, I would have an empty garden this year.

These are different varieties, but it is the same species (Phaseolus vulgaris), and the yellow and black beans are similar in seed size.

Two years ago, I was growing beans too, mostly from bought seeds (that is how I acquired the black and yellow beans), and I do not remember having this trouble. This year,  I bought seeds from three different suppliers, two of whom I had a positive past experience with, and they all had trouble.

Then there were pumpkins. Since I decided to expand my growing this year, I knew that I wanted to grow three varieties of pumpkin. White marrow Cucurbita pepo “Květa”, orange Hokkaido Cucurbita maxima, and butternut Cucurbita moschata. I had some leftover seeds of Květa from last year, so I put those on a wet paper towel to germinate (a method that we used for pumpkins since I was a kid), and they all germinated within a week, and nothing else needed to be done. At the same time, I put in the same conditions some fresh butternut and Hokkaido seeds. After two weeks, none of those sprouted. So I bought new ones from another supplier. Some Hokkaido sprouted, but butternut did not. So I bought butternut seeds from the same supplier that I had the old Květa seeds from.

Those started to germinate in 3 days, and within a week, 80% germinated.

At this time, I was getting pretty pissed and I tried to break off the tips of the seeds of Hokkaido and butternut. When doing that, I found out that some had rotted in the shell as they became mushy and soft. Some did not rot, but they also did not germinate. But breaking of the tips did induce germination in at least a few, so I do not need to buy additional seeds, I should have enough plants for my garden, and perhaps even to give some seedlings to my neighbor.

The funny thing about all this is that the white runner beans I wrote about in First Fails (Phaseolus coccineus with germination just 20%) were actually from the same seed supplier I had the excellent Květa and butternut seeds from. So, at least as far as the beans go, it does not seem to be a supplier issue. Still, it makes me wonder what is the cause of these troubles. In essence, I had to buy three packets of seeds to get one packet’s worth of plants, and that is really not something I remember happening in the past.

I harvested the spinach all in one go, if such a fancy word can be used. I got just about one serving. It was delicious, but definitely not worth the money I spent on the seeds, let alone the work. I read up on the issue and I am convinced it was due to a too warm and dry April. I will try to sow some again in August for a fall harvest. In the meantime, I had to go with an alternative plan not only for these patches, but also for those where I planned to put the failed bush beans.

That alternative plan is peas. Lotsa peas. Peas here, peas there, peas everywhere. I sown overall 500 g of peas. I filled every square dm of available soil. It is an unknown supplier, so I do not know if they germinate, although I fervently hope they do. However, pea is a true wonderplant – even if it does not germinate, it still enriches the soil. If it grows but fails to bear a crop, it still enriches the soil even more. And if it bears crop, it still enriches the soil.

I hope this year to have some success with peas because the frosty winter and dry spring have at least one good consequence so far – I am not up to my eyeballs in slugs. I only find two/three a day, and they did not destroy the peas that I planted earlier. The variety I have sown now should grow from germination to harvest in just two months, so two harvests should be possible. Therefore, I bought an additional 500 g of seed for that.

I mowed the grass in my coppice last week, and yesterday I raked it out. I still took out more dried tree leaves and old grass and moss than the fresh mown grass, thus I de facto acquired a second big compost heap.

I did not have fresh grass to mix in it this time, so I mixed in it ca 500 g of calcium cyanamide and wetted it thoroughly. We will see if it starts heating up in a few days. I also turned the first pile over, because it cooled to just 20°C about 10 cm under the surface. Deeper inside, it still had 40°C though. It is still soggy and fibrous and won’t be of any use for a while yet.

As I said, I already planted some corn and some beans outdoors. Most of it froze, but those planted near the south wall of my house survived, albeit some plants did get mild damage. I also started more corn, and I’d like to write a few words about it.

Corn has very delicate roots, and it does not take very well when they are extensively damaged during re-potting. Ideally, it should be sown directly into the ground, but I have had bad experiences with that. Last year, half the corn germinated several months later; it was stunted in growth, and it developed a wild teosinte phenotype, including the two-row ears. I did not know that corn phenotype could be influenced by weather this way. In retrospect, I should have taken pictures, but I only realized what the peculiar-looking grass was after I ripped it out as weed and threw it in the compost.

But I digress, I need to start corn in the greenhouse, and I need to plant it outdoors with minimal damage to the roots. Simply planting the seeds in the containers does not work well because it is difficult to get the root system out of the container without damaging it. Unlike beans, pumpkins, or tomatoes, corn roots do not bind the soil together strongly enough for that. Thus, I tried three ways to do it this year. All work well and have their pluses and minuses.

The first idea I got was when some of my old planting pots cracked lengthwise. I am using old yoghurt pots for my seedlings because they cost me nothing, and I accumulate quite a lot of them each year. They hold for several seasons, but eventually, they crack. I took a cracked one, I cut the bottom off, and I inserted it into another. It works very well for starting corn because the 500 ml cup offers enough space to get a substantial plant before the roots poke out of the bottom, and it is easy to get out without damaging the roots. It seems to be the best method so far; the plants behind my house were started this way, and they are already over 20 cm tall. Alas, I could not use it for all my corn because I did not have enough cups for my rather magnanimous plans this year.

Necessity is the mother of all invention. For the second idea, I used some corrugated cardboard that was left outdoors in the rain until it delaminated, and I lined some cups with two layers – one flat layer on the inside and one corrugated layer on the outside. Again, it does help to get the whole root system out of the cup easily. But the soggy cardboard does not keep the roots together as well, and more care is needed when planting and handling them. On the plus side, the cardboard can be left in the ground, and does not need to be carefully removed like the plastic lining in the previous method. I cannot let the plants grow as big as with the previous method, only because I had to use smaller cups.

For the third method, I collected paper towel tubes, cut them in half, arranged them in a flower box, and filled them with soil. When the plants are a few cm tall, they can be either put into bigger containers or directly into the ground. The downside of this method is that the plants need to be moved pretty soon, otherwise the roots crawl under the tubes into the flower box and get intertwined. The upside is that each plant can be easily and quickly plucked and replanted. The cardboard tube holds together well and need not be removed; it too will dissolve in the ground.

Overall, I hope to grow over 100 corn plants this year, discounting the ca 20 that froze (grrrr).

 

 

This morning, I wished I could cry. I got seriously depressed instead.

I do not remember getting frost in the last week of May. Ever. We got it last night, and it might repeat today.  That means that potatoes, which had just started to emerge from the ground, some recovering from one bout of late frost already, froze again. I tried to protect them with canvas, but it did not help much.

I also planted some beans and corn already, as well as basil and oregano. Most of that is dead; tonight it might get the coup de grâce.

Several days of work down the drain, and I am back to square one. The problem is that if I start beans and corn now, they might not mature enough before the first frost in the fall. I will still try, because that is all I can do, but so far this year, I am only counting my losses – first crappy germination rates and too hot and dry April and now this. Fuck this insane weather, this really is not normal.

The raspberries that grow around different places in my garden and behind my hedge are two-year varieties. First year shoots sprout from the ground and grow in height to 1-1,5 m. The second year, these shoots sprout short twigs with blossoms that bear fruit. In the fall, the whole shoot dies and dries over winter. The growth can become pretty overcrowded and inaccessible if these dead shoots are not removed. It was difficult to remove them without trampling some of the one-year shoots that will bear fruit any given year, so this spring I thought about it a bit. I decided to make a new tool specifically for this task, thus I took an angle grinder, hammer, and forge to an old shovel (first used to make a rondel dagger accessories back in the day) and I carved, forged, and ground a small-ish bill hook. I sharpened the inner side of the curve as well as the forward-facing one, and I affixed it to an approximately 1 m long handle. I can grab the dead shoots, and cut them off at or near the ground level without bending down and without going into the growth and damaging it.

Today, I was facing the problem of fast-growing weeds (mainly Veronica chamaedrys) among my onions that I could not remove with any tool currently at my disposal, and that would be too onerous and time-consuming to pull manually. I still had a bit of the old shovel left, so I cut an outline of the tool and heated up the forge again. It is a sort of tiny mini-shovel, just 5 cm wide and with a sharpened V-cut in the face. It too has an approx 1 m long handle and I can carefully push it between the rows of onions, cutting the weeds several mm under the surface without damaging the crop. The weeds will dry and die and eventually decompose. It is not 100% weed removal, but it did allow me to undercut most of the weeds in all of my onion patches in under an hour, and that is a definitive success. Veronica chamaedrys is impossible to remove once established, so I am not even trying anymore. I only do my best to suppress it enough so it does not choke out the crops.

 

This post will be a bit of a downer, I am afraid. Like every spring, it is a bit nerve-wrecking to buy seeds without actually knowing if something comes out of them. In hindsight, I now know that I could have saved a lot of money.

I had several packets of different pumpkin seeds – pattypan, butternut, courgette “Květa”, and hokkaido. I put all of them on wet paper towels to germinate before putting them into the ground, and so far, only the Květa germinated pretty well. Butternut and pattypan failed to germinate at all, and of all the hokkaido seeds, only three germinated. And those three did not emerge from the ground yet, so I do not know if they are still alive. Thus, so far I have about 12 plants of Květa and exactly 0 of others. That is pissing me off, but not as much as the next thing.

I planted beans and sweet corn behind the house. These are red runner beans that I have grown successfully there for years now. I had a 100% germination rate with seeds sorted out of the previous year’s harvest. I also had the luck to find white runner beans on the internet, and I bought a packet of 20. Only four germinated into sickly looking plants; the rest rotted in the ground. In the fall, I bought two varieties of bush beans and a new variety of pole beans to try out. They all rotted without germinating. On the same website, I bought some sweet peas and sweet corn. Both had a germination rate of about 30%. And do you remember the failed onion seeds? The same website. It is a real disappointment because it is the same site where I bought my seeding garlic that turned out well (so far). Not the wintering onion, though, that too mostly failed. Needless to say, I won’t be buying seeds from that company again, except maybe the garlic.

All this means that I have essentially nothing to plant on my big prepared three sisters patch. So I bought several packets of seeds of beans, pumpkin seeds, and corn from a different supplier, and now I am again in the nail-biting waiting stage, if something sprouts. I also planted an additional 160 red runner beans from my own seeds since that seems reliable.

If it were not for the 100% germination rate for my own beans, I might be inclined to blame a failure on my part. But 100% germination of my own seeds and 20% germination of bought seeds of the same species proves that I did nothing wrong.

The spinach is also a bust. Not only did it have a poor germination rate – about 50% – but most of the plants that did emerge were tiny and sickly looking. And some are already going into blossom, despite being barely five cm tall. I am completely at a loss to understand how this could have happened. Maybe April and May were too warm and dry. I honestly do not know, and it is a real head scratcher. This really pisses me off. I like spinach, and I was really looking forward to growing my own. I might still get some out of the few plants that look healthy and do not go into bloom, but I will be lucky to get enough for one lunch. I still have some seeds left over, so I might try for a fall harvest by planting them in July. If I try that, I will plant the seeds in an egg-tray first.

Carrots started to sprout, though not all that I planted. And yesterday, voles dug under one of the trays, completely destroying it. I hate those fuckers.

Potatoes sprouted too early and froze. Funnily enough, nothing else did, not even nearby oak trees, which are also susceptible to late frost. They seem to be recovering and are sprouting again now.

At least the muck heap continues to rot successfully. I turned it over on Tuesday, and this time, it did not heat up as much and as quickly.

It is still warmer than the outside temperature though. Today it had over 30°C when the outdoors was barely 10°C. I will continue to monitor the temperature, and I will probably delay turning it again until it starts cooling off.

To make liquid fertilizer, I took an old plastic canister and an old solar-powered aerator, and I built this contraption. I will put some shredded weeds in there to ferment and dissolve. Then I will add it to the watering cans for citrus trees and tomatoes. On YouTube, some gardeners swear by this “compost tea”, and some say it is a waste of time and resources. I looked up scientific studies on the subject, and I found one meta-study that said that aerated compost tea is actually a good fertilizer, and since I had all the necessary components lying around, it cost me nothing. I should have no shortage of nettle leaves and other nitrogen-rich weeds to feed it.

In the past, I was making only anaerobic compost tea. That stinks to high heavens, which is a bad thing even if it bothers no one. The smell means loss of nutrients (mainly sulphur and nitrogen) due to off-gassing. Allegedly, this should not be a problem for the aerated method. We shall see, or more precisely, smell, if that is the case. It has been three days and I smell nothing so far.

To end on a hopeful note, if the weather remains frost-free, I might have apples, pears, and walnuts again this year. If, however, frost comes in the second half of May – something that I do not remember happening here, ever – it will be a catastrophe.

Soooo. Yesterday I turned the muck pile. I wanted to do it today, but I changed that plan. Tomorrow I am leaving for a few-day’s trip and I did want to be at least a bit rested before the several hours-long drive.

When turning the pile, there were visibly different forms of decomposition taking place. There were hot spots, all wet and mushy. And there were also cold spots, full of white fungal growth. It was visible that the pile was unevenly watered, which is understandable since I was watering it with cans without the shower spout. Looking at it and realizing that even the dry-ish spots are actually decomposing in the environment made me think that an inconsistently wetted compost pile is perhaps not a bad thing. The wet spots get hot and decompose, and the dry spots allow for gas exchange with the environment. It still had 50-70 °C all over before I turned it and mixed it anew, and since it was cold outside, visible steam rose from it. Unfortunately, I was unable to take a picture of that.

In the days before that, I prepared this, the bean-growing patch. I tilled a grid of 25 squares, approx 50×50 cm, spaced approx 50 cm so I can go between them with a lawn mower. That took me several days since the lawn is tough. Not only due to the ancient grass-growth, but also due to the high content of quartz stones. A fact of which I will never cease to remind you. I collected two full 10 l buckets of stones over 2 cm in diameter.

When the squares were tilled, I planted tall poplar poles in each corner, and I bound the tips over them. I stripped the bark from the poles at about 20 cm at the bottom, and I left them dry for a few weeks before planting them so they do not take root.

I can plant up to two bean plants near each pole and a few corn plants along the edges, too. In the middle, I plan to plant pumpkins. This is an experimental patch for the “tree sisters” system. All three plants should be able to grow fast enough to outgrow the weeds and the grass in the tilled patches. We will see how that goes. At least for the beans, this system is actually tested, and they should thrive in the grass. I am growing beans in the grass for years by now, on the south wall of my house.

I still have about 80 poles left unplanted. I can either put them somewhere dry to save them for next year, or I can make another patch. I still have plenty of unused space left. I will decide what to do when I return from my trip.

I repotted my citrus trees and laurels. While I was at it, I harvested all the laurel leaves/bay leaves that I could. It is not a huge harvest, but it is enough for our needs for the whole year.

My last big apple tree started to blossom.

This is a graft from the dead tree that I grafted a few years back on some unspecified apple tree that sprouted from the roots of another dead tree planted by my grandfather. The rootstock is very hardy since I originally tried to kill it, and only when I failed, I tried to graft it. It is the only successful graft I have ever done.

The compost pile was heating up very unevenly, so I decided to not wait until Friday and I turned it today. I also added all the grass clippings and dead leaves I had elsewhere. Now it is all in one huge pile of moss and grass, and leaves, approximately 2 cubic meters in volume. When forking it over, I also noted that the moss started to heat up and decompose too, but unevenly as well – there were completely dry patches in it where nothing happened whatsoever. So when I was done turning and mixing it all, I poured approximately 200 l of water into it from the seeping pond at the end of my sewage cleaning facility. When I measured the temperature at four different points in the evening, it was already over 30°C  in all of them, so it is heating up. I might pour some more water on it during the week since it is not raining, and it should not be possible to overwater a compost pile.

A little note on making a compost pile – it is important to lay the material in flat layers and for the whole pile to have a flat top, especially when making it from longer dead grass like old hay or straw. If you pile it in a cone or round heap, the grass on top can work like a thatch roof, effectively shielding the center of the pile from water.

This morning, the compost pile was steaming slightly, and although my nose cannot detect it, it probably also smells of ammonia. It attracted some flies and one dung beetle, despite being completely dung-free.

I feel slightly sorry for the poor fellow searching for their shit-snack in vain.

The first potato plant poked out of the ground. That is slightly premature; frost is still possible. I am watching the weather forecast like a hawk every day.

The spinach is so far growing very, very slowly, and it does not look like much. Preliminarily, I am skeptical about this crop.

I started to harden off the basil by exposing it to direct sunlight for a few hours each day. So far, no plant has been burnt and they look healthy enough. Once the danger of frost is over, they go outside.

The first beans are emerging from the soil, too. We shall see how many will actually sprout. I sown a lot.

I did not have much luck with sweet corn these last two years. So far, I have just 25% germination rate this year. I really hope that more emerge from the ground, otherwise I will be pissed.

Clusters of shallots look promising.

And so do the onions.

Teensy tiny carrots have shown up in most, although not all, egg baskets.

And lastly, peas sprouted today, too. They are a good indicator of slug infestation; they are literal slug magnets. So far (knock on wood), the slugs have not shown up this year. I have seen only three, which I killed instantly. It is possible that it is due to the much colder and frostier winter and much sunnier and drier spring. Even so, I have spent the winter researching slug traps, and if they start to show up, I will try a few things.