Farmer: Sod Busted Daily

From Garden 2010

Placed my final seed order for the season today from Territorial Seed. The garden will consist of:
• German Johnson (suburban)
• Mortgate Lifter (country)
• Precocious Hybrid SE/se (country)
• Supersweet Jubilee Hybrid sh2 (country)
• Beer Friend Edamame (suburban)
• Baby Yellow Potatoes (suburban)
• Fountain slicing cucumbers
• Pepperoncini

Plants:
• Roma
• Green Bell Peppers

Also, I finally received my VeeGee thermometer which is very sturdy and works like a charm. I will try to post my soil temperature on future journal entries. Currently the "cold spot" (in the shade 90% of the time) is 47 F and the suburban garden is 52 F.

Germination of basil and tomatoes will begin in approximately 1 week. The plan is to plant/transplant May-9 (suburban) and May-17 (country).

From Garden 2010

I've begun gearing up for the spring. Friday placed my first seed order from the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog and bought a soil thermometer from Nova-Tech International. On Saturday I picked up an inexpensive electronic soil tester and let my little girl choose a few seed packets for her "miracle garden".

This morning I added entries to my Task list for everything garden related through the end of the year. Next up is a little yard maintenance.*

From Garden 2010

A few updates to the country garden. During the week the red clover was cut and plowed in to the soil. On Saturday I conducted a soil and nutrient test. The reading was a soil pH around 6.8 a moderate amount of nitrogen and a deficiency of phosphorous and potash.

The plan is to apply a small amount of 10-10-10 within the next 30 days and to apply further fertilizer as needed based on crop growth stage and nutrient requirement. No soil amendments or pH correction is planned at this time.

From Garden 2010

The cold snap from early December has turned into a full fledged sub-freezing event that managed to finish off my lettuce and turn the root crop "pithy". It was cold today but I decided that it was time to call an end to the radish and turnip crop and to till in two straw bales from last season.

Using the hoe I chopped up the remaining plants, with the exception of my yellow multiplier onions and French gray shallots, and turned the soil over a few times. Then, with the help of my faithful assistant, broke up the two straw bales that I grew Aunt Ruby German green tomatoes in this summer. I removed the roots and remnants of the tomatoes earlier in the fall so all that remained was a well decomposed core of straw with a few drier, loose pieces on the outside.

The straw should continue to decompose and help lock in moisture to the bed. When spring arrives I'll till the remnants into the soil and help to enrich it further. I recently read that you can use straw, hopefully fresh, to cover winter hardy spinach plants so you'll have fresh greens earlier in the spring. Obviously this depends on your local climate and of course if you don't have any unusual cold snaps like most of the southern United States is experiencing.

One final note, I continue to read that soil temperature is key to knowing when to plant. While I plan to order a laboratory grade thermometer in the next few weeks there are alternatives as well. Here in North Carolina we have a web resource called ECONet which was set up by the State Climate Office. Among other things you can get a graphical representation of soil temperature across the state as well as search several years of observations. It is fairly straight forward to use and I was able to get an average soil temperature in my area, by day, for 2007-2009 in a matter of minutes. All of this will better help me plan the 2010 garden, with the help of my trusty Blum's Almanac of course.

Check out the ECONet map at: http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/dynamic_scripts/cronos/map/index.php

Or Blum's Almanac at: http://www.blumsalmanac.com/