All Devon's Mad Garden Experiments

[devonaviola]

Hi all!
My intention with this thread is to make a journal of sorts where I will post descriptions and pictures of all my landrace experiments in one place. This is probably the only way I can keep organized enough to share with the community what seeds I have and what I’m doing.

I will return at planting time to post more info about each individual crop, including the mix of varieties, past year results, and specific methods and intentions.

General description of the garden:

New Jersey, Zone 7 (formerly zone 6). 160 frost-free days.

Above-national-average precipitation.
Summers are becoming drier and we often have droughts in the growing season, but typically the ground stays wet throughout fall, winter, and spring.

Sandy loam soil.
I am planting in overworked agricultural land with relatively poor drainage, as far as sandy loams go.

Methods:
No till, minimal dig, direct seeding as much as possible. No irrigation. Weeding when I feel like it. No or minimal fertilizer depending on the crop.

The crops I am breeding:
Tomato
Tomatillo
Potato
Chile pepper
Corn (Sweet)
Corn (Grain)
Pole Bean (P. vulgaris)
Hopniss (Apios americana)
Sunchoke
Watermelon
Melon
Cucurbita moschata
Cucurbita pepo
Carrots

I am selecting for:
Dry growing season
Wet harvest season
General pest and disease resistance
Direct seed
Early maturity
Flavor
Lots of seeds
Pretty colors
Partial Shade

Aside from those listed above, I am also planting a bunch of other stuff including C. Maxima, Favas, Chickpeas, Brassica Mix, Amaranth, Sorghum, Sesame, Cacti, Herbs, and Trees.

Thanks for reading and I hope to have lots more info to share soon on all of the above.

[YrtheArts (Brent Hopkins)]

I also am using cardboard for site prep. In addition, I’m using repurposed silage tarp. In general I don’t like plastic, but this stuff works just great for passively killing weeds. The silage tarp is faster and easier to lay down than cardboard. You might be able to score some from local farmers after they are done with it.

[devonaviola]

Fabas planted today.
This is my first time planting fava beans.
They are the GTS mix for 2023…! because I forgot about them until too late last year.
I’ve put them in the small garden plot where last year I planted corn/beans/squash.

The weather forecast:

The earliest sign of spring around here is the blooming of crocuses. They bloom when hard freezes are still expected for a few more weeks.
When I was a kid crocuses bloomed in March.
This year they started blooming mid- February, and are almost finished for the year.
Last year they bloomed in January!

One week ago on Feb 17:

[devonaviola]

I work on a vegetable farm and we have silage tarps, but they are all very much in use at all times, lol!

[devonaviola]

Favas have germinated, and the 9 elderberry cuttings I planted in fall are waking up.

Now I’m planting Carrots, Reckless Brassica Oleracea Mix, Onion mix, Garbanzos, Peas, Cilantro, Dill, Potatoes, Sunchokes, and Hopniss.
Just moving the cardboard and using a furrowing hoe to make furrows.

Today I transplanted out last year’s potatoes grown from true seed.
The tubers were mostly quite tiny, but I was impressed with a few normal-sized spuds. They all stored excellently in the fridge, even the teeny ones.
In addition to these tubers I collected exactly 4 potato berries.

I’ve also started a new tray of potato seeds in the greenhouse, and I’m going to try direct seeding some TPS later and see what happens.

Transplanted out my favorite fall carrots. They stored ok in the fridge. Perhaps I should have removed the foliage, some of which started to rot in February or March.
I’m in the Carrots in Clay club, although this year they’re going in a sandier spot.
They were taste-tested by variety-- and then from the varieties that tasted decent, I saved the best looking individuals. As they cross in subsequent generations I guess I will have to taste-test individuals and then replant them.

[devonaviola]

Hey, a shame I didn’t update this til now, huh?
Between work and finishing my degree, the time really got away from me.

In summary, the whole garden did terribly! Brutal year of selection. But the things I was able to harvest seeds from, now I know they’re tough.

Favas produced a seed increase, but not enough to eat yet. By the time they bore green pods it was hot out, and about half of them died. The remainder produced mostly purple and green seeds. It was interesting to see ants farming black aphids on the stems.

Looking forward to growing them again soon.

[devonaviola]

I was pleased with garbanzos. First time growing those, too. The plants were so small I expected nothing, but like the favas, they did produce a seed increase.

[devonaviola]

Lofthouse sunroots grew barely taller than shown here. But they still produced more tubers than I planted. I didn’t manage to kill them, even by planting them in shaded sand…

Corn also did very poorly in my shady sandy field. Some intrepid plants grew tall anyway, only to be devoured by deer. I planted corn elsewhere that did much better. This photo is one of the few special corns that survived shade, sand, drought, and deer.

Peppers did quite well-- the same varieties that did well growing under the shade of my corn last year. Buena Mulata and Fish Pepper, which are heirlooms from nearby. I also planted piri-piri this year, and they were great too. No other varieties were productive.

DS tomatoes grew and they produced fruit on small, skinny plants. Currant, cherry, and a few salad sized tomatoes in red, pink, and yellow. A couple of the fruits were hairy. Tomatoes were not plentiful nor tasty by my standards, as someone who doesn’t like currant tomatoes. The hard part is getting them to also be tasty.

Carrots did ok.

I tragically harvested no potatoes at all. No pumpkins, no sesame, no hopniss, no melons, no tomatillos, only a smattering of beans.

[devonaviola]

My best crop in this field is beach plum seedlings. I harvested fruit from the wild in 2023, planted the seeds and got over 100 seedlings. So now I’m a beach plum nursery.

For 2025 I’ve moved to the next plot over, which is somewhat sunnier. I am applying a modest amount of compost followed by leaf mulch. I am also planting a whole lot more Northeast US native trees, which I will need to thin out by selling or trading most of them.

[Joey (Joey Slinger)]

Great stuff, I too am a student and a young farmer. Are you using any tricks to ensure proper carrot germination while dry farming?

[devonaviola]

I seeded them heavily into slightly furrowed ground. That worked well enough. The furrow holds onto moisture a bit longer after it rains.

Covering them LIGHTLY with soil or mulch can also help, but if I recall I didn’t cover them at all this year.

[Soeren (Søren Holt)]

What kind of deer eat your corn?
I have roedeer visiting my garden at least once a week, and still they don’t eat my corn. I wonder, if they will start to eat my corn in future?

[devonaviola]

Around here we have white-tailed dear, which can reach the maturing ears and love to eat them. They also knock down some of the tall plants. People even grow corn just to lure deer for hunting… But I’m reading that roedeer are quite small, so I imagine they are much less likely to bother tall corn.

[Soeren (Søren Holt)]

So your white tailed deer eat from the corn ears, but not the leaves. That is a relief for me, as that just select corn for higher sitting ears, and that’s feasible in my garden

[stephane_rave]

here the roedeers very numerous don’t eat corn including on low varieties…On the other hand, wild boars make a lot of damage in the corn fields.

[Soeren (Søren Holt)]

Thanks. I’ve noted, that “my” roedeer take a few years to start feeding of a new plant species in my garden. Like squash they stayed clear of them in 4 years, then for two years nibbled a bit on the leaves, and now they eat all leaves within reach. I can grow squash by protective cloth for the first 4 feet upwards, so now I grow them on a high trellis. When the tops are above roedeer reach, I remove the ugly cloth.
I justy try to fin ways to well ome the roedeers, and still harvest something in my garden.

[Hugo (Hugo Morvan)]

Interesting. I read on Permies that as populations in the countryside dwindle and age there are less and less hunters and more and more deer which makes gardening very complicated without expensive high fences.
Hunters where i live average 60 now.
Wolves are slowly moving in though.

[stephane_rave]

It’s not that easy!

Hunters have a role of deregulation of wildlife while they think they do well by regulating.

Many hunters like big animals here…but the more they kill the more the game population also increases because a very hunted species will make more small.

Today there are so many big game here that the forests do not regenerate anymore, all trees from 2/3 years are systematically destroyed by the great fauna. It’s a huge problem

They also systematically eliminate large predators that try to come back like the wolf and lynx, which are natural predators of big game.

So when all these seniors have retired, the dynamics may take the next turn :
1 expansion of roedeers and wild boars that will do very big damage
2 Spread of epidemics in overcrowded herds and return of large predators (I look forward to the return of the wild bear in France! )
3 Return to the natural balance that we have not experienced for centuries.

[devonaviola]

Deer are a huge problem here as well. We run into them with our cars all the time. Somewhere between 3,000 and 6,000 people get lyme disease every year, just in the state of New Jersey, from the ticks carried around by deer. Growing native trees absolutely requires protection from deer, so the forests can’t regenerate themselves without human intervention.

That being said, the northeast forests of north america have always grown with human intervention, as native americans lived here since before the northeast forest existed. Thus it seems pretty clear to me that in this region, the only way to restore balance is for humans to manage the forests with care indefinitely. The dominant culture is slacking on that.

[devonaviola]

Planted Vicia faba in the same spot as last year. This time I planted them slightly later, in the first week of March.

Crocuses also came up later, at the end of February / beginning of March. That means we had a normal winter by historic standards, but it was much colder than I or my neighbors are used to at this point.

I had a lot of greenhouse plants perish.

For 2025 I’m doing the main garden plot without occultation, but the no-dig experiment continues: I’m piling compost and leaves directly on top of the winterkilled grass. We’ll see how much that helps with weeds. It should also help a bit with the nutrient-poor sandy soil.

Beach plums were nibbled by deer, but they’re nontheless pretty tall for one-year-old shrubs:

These are the needy barn cats that hug my legs while I work