I am in a new area this year, going from sand-and-rock alkaline soil and 12 inches of water per year to heavy clay loam acid soil and 30+ inches per year.
Attached are pictures of my beans, watermelons, and zucchini x spaghetti squash. All planted directly into grass along the edge of the woodchips.
Cool! I look forward to seeing how long it takes them to adapt to your soil. If you already have a fair amount of genetic diversity, I’m guessing it won’t take too long.
Sounds like good soil for blueberries. Are you planning to grow some?
I don’t think it’s acidic enough for blueberries. Cranberry struggles and dies.
I do have a bunch of blueberry seeds I want to adapt to less acidic soil, but not this year.
I got about 75% germination on the zuc cross, about 50 on the beans and watermelons so far. Some are weaker, as you might expect. If you look closely there is one bean in that picture that is solid yellow. I don’t expect that one to survive.
The beans were just mixed grocery store varieties. The landrace seeds haven’t gone in the ground yet.
I have some blueberry bushes here in Provo, which I assume has alkaline soil. They seem to be doing all right so far. They haven’t flowered yet, but I just bought them and put them in last summer. They’re covered in leaves now and look healthy. Hopefully they’ll bear fruit!
I decided the smart thing to do would be to put them in shade under a living pine tree. I read online that old pine needles won’t acidify soil, but fresh pine needles will, so I figured where better to put them than under a live tree?
I have two there, and one next to our dead maple which had all the branches chopped off so that it would stop dropping huge chunks of bark where our kids were playing. To my surprise, that one has been doing well, too. I mulched it well, and it’s covered in healthy leaves. I wouldn’t have put it there if it were up to me, but my son bought it with his own money and said it wanted it put there, so okay!
I tried the blueberry bushes in pots first, and it was a catastrophe. They were completely dead within a month. Everything seems to have that pattern, actually. I think roots dry out from arid air and get cooked by hot sun when grown in pots here. Maybe white pots would be better than black ones, but the black ones are what I could get free, and I’m perfectly happy to put things in the ground, which is way more convenient anyway.
Today I put moschatas, pure spaghetti squash, canteloupe and sunflowers in the ground. Since I’ve grown all of them and have extra seeds it’s no loss if they don’t thrive. I am doing an actual cucumber project, and I don’t want to plant those until I can protect them from the chickens.
All I did was fork up a piece of grass and scatter seeds along the edges, then put the grass back.
I also put in my second row of the spag x zuc x pumpkin cross, and scattered 3 types of rice in a pit that keeps filling up with water every time it rains. I’ll be doing a dryland test as well.
The more of my seeds I can start adaptation for, the better for following years.
I can see flax, amaranth and arugula out in the main yard. I scattered those seeds in January. Flax and arugula are already seeding.
My property is pretty much a blank slate this year.
My pollinator garden is off to a good start. My orchard is in but I’m down to only one plum seedling. Somewhere I need to acquire more to try again next year.
Peanuts are growing, herbs are in the ground, tomatoes and peppers are struggling with too much water. It’ll be interesting to see how the survivors handle the summer drought.
“Wilded” sorghum is up but I think also struggling with too much water.
I may be able to collect some plum pits from a friend of mine’s plum tree this year. She has some lovely freestone plums (I think they may be Czar?) that taste delicious and are easy to harvest and eat. They’re ripe in I think September or October? If I do get some, I can put them in the Serendipity Seed Swap box.
Oh, that would be amazing. I got a pretty good germination rate, but only a few survived transplant into pots, and only two survived being planted out. One of those has now died.
The spag x zuc hand pollinated yesterday morning.
The largest of my watermelon plants, already producing male blossoms.
And that same zucchetti this evening. Almost ready!
Some things are adapting quite well, while others don’t. As expected, the genetically diverse populations all have a mix of reactions to the new environment, while the inbred populations are either all one or all the other.
The bees have finally found my squashes, so I can stop pollinating. Now I can just harvest.
I picked my first watermelon. The spoon leaf was completely dried up, the curly-q half dried, it sounded ripe but hadn’t started turning yellow on the bottom.
It wasn’t ready. However, it was so full of water that I suspect it would have burst in the next day or two. When I cut into it, it just cracked and spurted.
Flax, oats and arugula have wilded themselves and dropped seeds. Now to wait for next spring and see how they do multiple years.
Yay! I’m glad the bees found your squashes, so you can leave them to pollinator duties!
I’m sorry to hear the watermelon wasn’t quite ripe, but it sounds like it was the best time to pick it, anyway.
Watermelon is a desert plant. It’s traditionally dry farmed in the wadis in the middle east. It doesn’t like wet feet, and it needs the water pulled off during its final ripening.
It’s been raining here during the last month and they’re planted at the edge of woodchips that get the overflow from the neighbor’s yard, so lots of water. I suspect the others will be similar.
Most of my seed grown fruit trees came from what we call the used food department at big grocery. That’s the place they put the somewhat past prime fruit in big bags at greatly reduced prices. I just bought big packages of apples pears, peaches, plumbs in the fall and direct planted the seeds where I wanted a tree. I basically just put the seeds on very scantly prepared soil in the grass or weeds, toss on a bit of soil and cover it with a big rock or board. Next spring move the rock and poof, most things did very well.
I’m out of room for more trees but I do the same thing, only in a prepared bed for baby trees to sell. Two or three dollars buys enough seed to make fifty apple trees which we sell for two or three dollars apiece.
Come to think of it, deep mulch with wood chips may protect the soil from too much rain while the watermelons are ripening.
Picked my first pumpetti today. It ripened pretty small but there are two more on the vine.
The one on the right. The other two are zucchetti.
I think I am learning why I don’t like squash. Right from the beginning the zucchetti have been amazing, and I’m sitting here in confusion trying to figure out why THESE squash are ok and even yummy.
Many times I have told people that the best diet plan is just to pay attention to the texture of your food. So I look at a banana squash that essentially turns into mush at the application of heat, and zucchini do the same thing. But zucchini don’t have the strong flavor of the banana squash, so they’re easier to eat.
The zucchetti don’t turn to mush as every other squash in my experience has done. They have interesting flavors and a texture that doesn’t remind me of well pulverized baby food.
So maybe my problem with squash in general isn’t the taste (Mom grew the banana squash every year and we lived on them all winter–that smell makes me want to throw up) but the texture.
If you’re picky, it’s awesome to hear you’ve found some that are yummy!
It may be that there’s some kind of nutrient in them that your body needs, and is telling you, “Yes, eat more of this! This is good for me!”
Some of the stuff planted directly into the grass got watered for the first time yesterday. Some have died, I figured it was time.
