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Asparagus For The Rest Of Us
After two or so years of asparagus curiosity, Joe and I have planted a row of Purple Passion Asparagus. Asparagus should be planted in this region from mid-February to early-March, so we were about a week late. After reading about optimum planting methods, we tried to stick to those but budged on the dimensions of the trench and had not prepared the soil a year in advance. 1. Joe dug a 25′ long trench that was about 8″ deep (give or take a few in places) and about 8″ wide. Ideal width is closer to 12″, but one man (recovering from a sulfa drug reaction) with a shovel a pregnant…
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Pea Planting Time
This time last year I began planting my sweet peas. It was cold, but I was told peas like cold and I went for it. It took them nearly two weeks or longer for that first planting to germinate. As I was waiting for what seemed an eternity to an eager early-spring gardener, I decided to do a little reading about forcing germination indoors. Interestingly, I came across multiple pot-growers websites before I finally found some classroom experiments in germinating peas. How to force peas to germinate indoors: 1) Take a damp paper towel or kitchen towel and space out peas across half the towel before folding the other half…
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Preparing the Soil in Raised Beds
If you haven’t already added compost to your soil for the upcoming season, now might be a good time to do so while it is unseasonably warm and the soil is workable. In raised beds, getting soil tested may not be necessary if you are using more topsoil, compost and supplements than the naturally occurring soil. Personally, I have not had my soils tested, but as I expand beyond the raised beds this year, I probably will. Last year, I had pretty good results with the combination I used in my raised beds. I took cues from “Square Foot Gardening” and from my pocketbook. Following is approximately what I used…
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Seeding and Planting Timeline
My brother recently requested that I let him know whenever I was planting something so that he didn’t plant too late this year. Last year I was an eager beaver planting earlier than most, which lead to my tomatoes coming in a month before most of my friends and my squash gave me a nice early crop before being ravaged by pests. Other plants were too early, and I either had to replant or just never enjoyed any yield from them. So I started revising my planting dates to prepare for Spring. This spring and summer I will be growing onions, peas, lettuce variety, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, a pepper…
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Time to Plant Onions in NC
It’s strangely warm outside, and I thought I’d look into onion planting dates for NC. Last spring I waited until March or April and my plants bolted and never bulked up. According to the Department of Horticultural Science at NCSU, the window for Spring planting is January 15 – February 25. For more information on planting onions, check out this information leaflet from NCSU.
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Let's Talk Soil Temp
Every spring, as soon as the sun begins to warm my face, I’m ready to put seeds in the ground. I cannot control the urgency I feel to begin planting. This past spring, I learned a valuable lesson: air temp does not equal soil temp. Every type of seed has an optimum soil temperature for germination. It so happens that beans like 75-80 degrees F, and at this optimum temperature, they will germinate in seven days on average. Planting them in March when the mean soil temperature was 46 was destined for failure as most the beans rotted in the ground. The ones I planted in April took nearly two…
