Friday, May 16, 2008
Seeds of wisdom
One of my favorite things about gardening is watching my carefully sown seeds start to sprout. It never fails to amaze me how you can stick a tiny dry little seed into the dirt and a week or 2 later there is a beautiful little plant growing in it's place. I understand the science behind it, but for some reason, even after our very successful garden last year, I still feel that I don't really know what I am doing and that there is no way all the seeds I planted will actually sprout. This year, when 90% of the green beans I planted didn't come up, I knew it was my fault for somehow not planting them right and that I was a failure as a farmer. Shawn told me that it was becuase we had so much rain in the week after we planted that some of the seeds may have drowned, but I was skeptical...how come the corn he planted on the same day came up just fine then?? So on Tuesday I decided to swallow my pride and try to replant all the green beans. As I dug up the dirt in the row, I discovered that Shawn had in fact been right, I found many of the seeds I had planted, and they had sprouted and even had some tiny leaves, but they were yellow looking and they had never breached the surface becuase they got stuck under the hard crust of clay that builds up after hard rains, and so they drowned...poor little things. Sad as it was that there was a mass drowning in the garden, I still felt happy becuase I knew that it wasn't directly my fault, it was just the damn weather, again! And I also realized that the reason the corn didn't drown was becuase it had already come up before the several days of downpours came. OK, so maybe I'm not a failure after all... but won't be sure until I see my new set of green beans come up, keep your fingers crossed!
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4 comments:
So Sean and I are planting our first veggie garden, and I feel like you; like i don't know what I'm doing and that I'm doing it all wrong.
We started our seeds inside w/a little germination kit. I transplanted the peas and green beans into the garden this past weekend. The peas look like they are doing ok (they grow on the ground as opposed to growing 'up' right?), but my green beans seem to be breaking over in the wind and rain. The stalks aren't totally breaking, but they looked more like they are 'pinched'. Do you think these plants will still grow, or should I just pull them and plant new seeds?
Hmmm...peas ususally grow "up", although they don't get very tall (maybe 12-18"), they aren't supposed to lie on the ground like squash or cukes, so you may have a bit of a problem, but it's hard to tell without looking at them...if can you email some pics of your plants then I might be able to say whether it's time to chuck em or if they are doing OK...
So....most of my beans died, so I just planted more seeds (fingers crossed). I figured that this was going to happen anyway. As for the peas, I think I'm going to just replant those too because I have some peas from seed that are coming out really nice, so I just might start that row over. They are really limp and starting to brown. I guess my question now is which veggies require support? Like I know tomatoes need support, but what else does? Do peas need a string or something across the top of the row, like a few inches above the row itself? What about beans and corn? Glad I have a buddy to discuss gardening about :)
I think you'll get the best results from sowing your bean, pea, and corn seeds directly in the garden, where hopefully it will stay warm enough (and not too wet) that they won't rot. I think both peas and beans would benefit from having some physical support, but it also depends on the type of plant you planted (for example pole beans usually are grown on poles that are set up tee-pee style, but others can be grown with a string system like you mentioned (usually referred to as bush beans). Pea plants are a little more delicate than green beans, so if you were going to string up anything, I would do the peas. Corn shouldn't need any support, but you will need to fertilize those plants several times during the growing season (corn is a heavy feeder).
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