Uncategorized

See the red yarn on this okra? It tells us that this pod will be allowed to mature so we can use the seeds next season. (Attention Gardeners – if you see red yarn, don’t pick it!) We are attempting to save seeds whenever we can. In short, if a desirable vegetable produces seeds, is not a hybrid variety, and there are no other varieties it can cross with, then it’s a candidate for seed saving. We save seeds for many crops, including arugula, fava and lima beans, cilantro, ground cherries, malabar spinach, okra, sesame, some tomatoes and some flowers. For more information about saving seeds, visit the Seed Savers Exchange.

In a previous post from 2019, I measured the flow rate of our hose and nozzle and related it to the watering needs of the garden, as a guideline for watering. The guideline is based on a reasonable estimate of the need for water of most mature crop plants, which is about 1 inch per week. Since that post, we’ve changed both hoses and garden bed size, so this is an update. This is of course only a guideline, and watering requirements obviously need to take in account the weather and the particular needs of different crops.

Our main garden beds are nominally 4 x 23 feet, or 92 square feet. 1 inch of rain on that surface would be about 7.7 cubic feet which is about 57 gallons.

I measured the flow rate of the two hoses by timing how long it takes to fill a 4 gallon bucket. The hose and watering wand connected directly to the hydrant took about 50 seconds to fill the bucket, or about 4.8 gallons per minute. So to get 1 inch of water on the whole bed takes almost 12 minutes. The hose and wand on the other end of the garden took about 110 seconds, or about 2.2 gallons/minute, so 1 inch on the whole bed would take about 26 minutes.

Splitting those times into 7 days, that would be about just under 2 minutes or 4 minutes on each bed per day to get 1 inch of water per week, if there’s no rain.

The photo above is our kale bed on May 24, stocked with well-established seedlings started indoors in early April. The photo below is from May 25 last year. I don’t think we will go back to seeding kale in the soil. With our springtime weather, the results are far too unpredictable.

We’re in the second week of harvesting salad veg at the garden: lettuce, spinach, arugula and radishes. There’s really nothing like growing your own salad. Pictured above are five of our six lettuce varieties. (Left to right are Little Gem, New Red Fire, Salad Bowl, Pirat, and Kagraner Sommer.) Yum.

Opening Day at the garden was brisk, but dry. (One of the few blocks of time without rain in a while.) We planted radish and pea seed in the ground, and planted the fava bean seedlings started indoors in early March. The soil was prepped for next week’s plantings and we had a harvest of wintered-over parsnips, Egyptian Walking Onions, and (surprisingly) scallions. It felt great to be back at the garden!