My vegetable garden woes
I wanted to share some pictures of my garden and ask for advice! I have a lot of time to devote to this but am new to gardening. Any help and comments from gardenlady and any others who know about plants would be greatly appreciated.
I started this vegetable garden in early April with a combination of the native (clay) soil, 50 or so 40b bags of topsoil, organic compost with cow manure, and unpasteurized dry horse manure. It contains a lot of cool weather vegetables (lettuce, cabbage, brussels sprouts, turnips, radishes, kale, collards) and a few other things, and herbs around the edges. Here are some early pictures. (The one in the top left corner is obviously the earliest, from right after I finished digging. I just found it and added it to this post while adjusting my pictures.)
It's been a few weeks since then and parts of the garden have really filled out, but some parts haven't. For instance, the little black trellises had peas planted under them, and the instructions on the pea packet said they would absolutely love being planted when it was still chilly, but they never sprouted. :( I planted red and white swiss chard and the red is now thriving, but nothing happened with the white. Everything else seems to be growing, including some tomatoes and peppers I started indoors and added later.
Question: I am just wondering why some veggies didn't sprout. Is it possibly the soil composition? Or should I just not worry about it and resow them?
Thanks and I hope you enjoy the pictures!
Looks like you'll have some food come harvest!
Let's hope so!
Great pictures and sorry you have not had perfect success, but hey, that's gardening. We try and sometimes don't succeed, but hopefully we learn. At least you are doing well with most of those crops. Peas and chard, though, hmmm...those should be easier than some of the other plants that are going well for you.
My questions:
(1) Were there any birds in the area big enough (crows?) to eat pea seeds? Squirrels/chipmunks? Is it possible the seeds did sprout, but that something immediately ate the foliage that peeped up above ground? Rodents of any sort or raccoons or birds are possible there.
(2) Where you live and during this period, did your garden receive rain or did you water it thoroughly so there was moisture in the top few inches of soil? Seeds can't be allowed to dry out or they won't sprout. That's a fairly loose soil mixture you probably have (aside from the clay content), so not sure how long it holds the moisture.
(3) Did you buy fresh (this year's) seed from a reputable seed company? Chard seed normally lasts a few years, but the germination rate with peas and beans goes way down after one year. If you bought these from a seed rack at a store, it is possible they were sitting there for a while. Some stores will keep them on a rack for years, literally.
(4) Soil composition sounds great. You could get it tested if you want, but even if it were (just for sake of argument) imbalanced in terms of pH or nutrients or contamination of some sort, the seeds should germinate in it just fine. The others did.
Those are some initial thoughts.
Thank you! It's fun and I don't mind everything not being perfect. I did think of it as a way to save money at first, but after the cost of the topsoil, all the gardening tools, and the seeds (not to mention the time spent), I think this is a financially neutral activity. At least we'll have organic home-grown veggies to eat!
I don't have a lot of experience with vegie gardens (I leave that up to my my associate!) but it looks like you are off to a great start with a few unfortunate incidents :-( Trial and error. One thing that I know we do at one client is, in the fall, we ask the lawn mower guy to mulch/mow the fallen leaves along with the grass and we put that mixture over the vegie garden- it makes GREAT soil for following year.
Yes, it's a decent start. I find the digging and weeding kind of relaxing and enjoy reading the Farmer's Almanac and actually paying attention to the cycles in nature. :) Do you focus on flowers and landscaping?
Thanks for the tip! I'll try it when I plant the fall garden.
We do garden maintenance, re-design, and installation. There are 4 of us. We do all the work ourselves. We install all the annuals, perennials, shrubs and sometimes small trees. We are not landscape architects, iow, we do not do hardscaping (installation of patios, etc). Most of our clients are within a 5-10 mile radius here in the leafy suburbs :-)