May 19, 2016

Good morning, HOW SWEET IS THE RAIN!!!!!!

Recently my normal supplier of Iron chelate was out of iron chelate so I bought another formulation. It wasn't a powder like my regular kind so I thought I would dissolve the iron granules first before mixing with some nitrogen fertilizer. It didn't dissolve. When all else fails read the directions. It seems that it is a time release formula. Not very applicable to how I normally use it. I like to use it on beans. They get a bit chloritic when they are germinating' especially when I resow “holes” in the bean bed. This would most likely not be a problem if I were to wait and sow in warmer soils. What can I say, I like to push seasons. Anyway I was trying to think what to do with this new iron formulation.

My gray cells reminded me that when I grew soy beans that they were intolerant of our alkaline soils. They would hardly get the first set of secondary leaves and proceed to turn yellow (iron chlorosis) and I would need to medicate them with iron on a weekly schedule to get a harvest. This has been several years ago. I have used a lot of compost since then. This may have moved the PH toward neutral (5.5 to 6.5). My PH was 7+. So I have found a soy bean that is 'broadly” adaptable (wide PH range) and after I sowed these seeds they were top dressed with this time release Iron. Time will tell. The variety is for edamame which could be a nice addition to the rest of my veggie selections.

More than likely if this works it will be quickly evident. I hope that this new soybean is as widely adaptable as it proclaims. As they say proof will be in the pudding!!!

By this writing the seeds are up and have a wonderful green color to them. They also have at least 2 sets of secondary leaves. They are looking good!! We will see if this continues!!

ritters in the garden are always an on going thing. Last year I had a problem ground squirrel in the sweet beds. It managed to ruin 40+ ponds of sweets. This spring it was thinning my cucumber plants. This was happening unbeknownst to me until I noticed some of the larger plants with chewed of leaves. I just thought the cukes were not germinating. I have weighted down the fabric around the edge, this appears to be working. This is only a stop gape measure, the cukes will have to be uncovered. I was hoping that the cat rectified this situation. I am in search of its active hole. If there gets to be a colony this could be a problem.

The sweets are coming along they have been weeded and chelated with nitrogen. They should really start to grow now. Plans are to succession plant another bed of sweets into the blub onion bed.. When I weeded the onion bed it looked like the tops are just about ready to start falling over. Scapes are forming on the garlic. The garlic harvest is on. I do plan to harvest the scapes separately. Scapes can be used instead of garlic in any of your favorite dishes or as one customer suggested used to make pesto. She froze it to use at a latter time and to knock down some of the garlic “attitude”.

There are some eggplant fruits enlarging and both my Nu Mex Big Jim and NuMex Joe Parker chili's have set fruit. Not sure if I will have any peas this week, but the beans are doing fine. The summer squash were planted into a known root knot nematode bed. I may not have started my Azagaurd treatments in this bed soon enough. Harvest quantities seem to be low and some of the yellow squash plants are on the small size. A pulled plant revealed that there was RKN, but not as highly infected as the last crop in this bed. The next squash succession will go into one of the pea beds.

There are blooms starting to develop on the okra. Since the first ripe tom, I have not seen anymore, but they are soooooo close! I just might get my July garden the first of June.

This week I anticipate to harvest chard, kale, green onions, carrots, lettuce, green beans and summer squash. Please email for quantities.