Pearl Sutton wrote:When, due to health stuff, the garden is not planted yet, some of the beds were not even cleared last fall, none were done the way I want beds done in the fall to be ready for spring, so everything needs work before I can even find the dirt under the weeds to amend and plant it.
BUT!!
The main weeds out there are brown eyed susan, ox eye daisy, buttercups, yarrow, lots of asters as tall as I am...
You know you are a permie when you say "I'm not coping, but at least the bees are happy!"
Faye Streiff wrote:
Kate Muller wrote:
I am giving up on growing potatoes due to the large amounts of work keeping bugs and disease off the plants. (I also can get low cost potatoes in large quantities from my relatives in Maine.) I will continue to grow parsnips, rutabagas, sweet potatoes, diakon radish, and celery root. One or more of them veggies can be swapped out for potatoes in most of my recipes.
Faye Streiff wrote:
Kate,
Potatoes don’t like lime, but they do like gypsum as a source of calcium, as it has sulphur also in it. The sulphur in the gypsum doesn’t cause scab the way plain lime does, but also repels the voles which eat root crops. We use gypsum with a little soft rock phosphate and a small amount of wood ash, for potassium. One of your problems may be the wet soil. We have the same problem here some years, but sometimes it is too dry. Lately we never know what is going on with the weather. Makes it very hard to grow anything. This year I had some nice potatoes, but made deep furrows between them to drain the excess water from heavy rains. Just didn’t have very many of them, as I didn’t plant much. When plants get the minerals they need they don’t usually have much if any bug damage. Potatoes are moderately heavy feeders and need plenty of well finished compost mixed into the soil.
Sounds like you are doing a great job considering all the climate challenges.
I have been working on my soil for years and too much drainage is more of a problem since we are on glacial sand. We use lots of compost and mulch our beds once the plants are established to reduce watering needs. I hadn't thought to add gypsum to the soil since it is on the acidic side. Other than the gypsum we amend our soil the same way you do. We also add magnesium in the form of lobster and crab shell since our soil is very low in it and it makes a difference when growing nightshades. The oldest beds have the healthiest soil and every year they get better. If I could keep the wind from damaging netting and row covers I would just grow them under low tunnels. The wind gets bad enough to make low tunnels impractical for netting or row covers.