Last year popcorn and dry beans did ok in my dry garden. Heavy clay soil, cold and extreme heat, I did not water May to September.
All early planted squashes were killed by squash bugs. Melons struggled at best and I got nothing. Potatoes I got 12 small potatoes from 28 plants.
Tomatoes mostly died but I got seeds from several plants. I even got a few basil seeds.
One parsnip and 5 rutabagas survived the summer and if they survive the winter I will encourage them to go to seed.
For 2025, melons, peppers and tomatoes will be moved into the woodchip area. Squashes will be planted early in the greenhouse and late in the woodchips. I will focus on cover crops to improve the soil, and do larger sections of corn and beans for seed increase.
New tests in the dry garden will be quinoa, amaranth, sesame, lettuce and brassicas. Cover crops will be wheat, oats, buckwheat and diakon. The hope is that these items will naturalize and reseed themselves, providing a no resource, no labor chicken winter garden. Flax is well on its way and seeding easily.
I badly need beet and lettuce seeds, so it looks like 2025 is primarily a seed increase year.
Curious how your melons will do with wood chips. Around here cucurbits don’t seem to like wood chips for a few reasons-- the chips provide habitat for slugs, increase surface moisture and fungal disease pressure, and rob nitrogen from the top inch of soil.
I am wondering if some of these problems are specific to the local climate and soil, or maybe specific to my gardening methods.
I have gardened in woodchips before but the climate was much more dry and I was gardening in almost straight sand.
Last year the watermelons did great in the woodchips and no sign of pests. There is usually not much rain between May and September, so the woodchips hold in the spring rains but the clay soil underneath doesn’t stay waterlogged.
I haven’t noticed any nitrogen problems, and I certainly didn’t when growing in sand.
I think part of the difference with pests might be that it’s not just a thin layer of mulch–I pile the wood chips 12-18 inches deep which tends to kill whatever is growing in the soil. So there’s literally nothing for slugs and rollie pollies to eat. The woodchips might be a good environment for them, but they live on decayed vegetation and there isn’t any.
A handful of the diakon radish survived the winter cold. I think our low might have been -20 F (-29 C) or somewhere in that range. I counted 6 survivors, there may be more.
One parsnip and a few rutabagas also survived so I should be able to get seeds for all three this year. First season adaptation to clay soil, drought, heat and cold.
I just planted more parsnips and I’ll get rutabagas in the ground this afternoon. Quinoa is also going in, around the edges of the dry garden. I think I had better wait a while for the amaranth.
I am aiming for a self-planting cover crop, to take advantage of the early spring rain. Flax reseeded itself from last year. So far this year I have planted lentils and cowpeas. We’ll see of either of them reliably reseed.
I am hoping they create enough cover to shade out some of the weeds. Then I can either mow them down or plant right into the mass.
I need as much organic matter as possible in the early spring and fall, to form cover during the hot dry summer.
I am doing a number of things differently this year. Since dry beans did well in the dry garden last year I am doing them there again. However, I’m doing a section of sweet corn in the main garden and I’m planting each spot with two corn seeds and two bean seeds. We’ll see what comes up. Six inch grid, the space is approximately 8x20.
I’ll be doing popcorn in the dry garden again. The area I had selected for the sweet corn was too thick with roots to work the soil. I’ll have to figure out something else for that area. I chose another area for the sweet corn, within line of sight of the popcorn but not in the path of the prevailing winds. We’ll see. I have some seeds from a friend who last year was unable to tend her sweet corn so it went without water for three months and still produced. I’m planting a block of those seeds.
I have 60 tomato seedlings, 30 each for the dry garden and the main garden. A few have already died for lack of water. I didn’t label the varieties, so all I know is that one of the starter varieties I selected is out of the gene pool. Planted 10, 3 came up, all died. I am hoping to get enough this year to do some canning. Joseph’s Big Hill is also struggling, although none have died.
I got one tiny pepper last year. None of the peppers survived in the dry garden last year.
I planted more plum and almond seeds, and this time I’ll let them grow out for a season before planting them in the ground. I need to wait and see if any of the fall planted pear and apple seeds come up before planting more pf them. But I do have Goji seedlings, so that’s a plus. Last year they all died before they even had secondary leaves.
The seedling peaches have leaves on them. I guess they’re technically not seedlings, since this will be their third summer. Teenagers?
I need to figure out potatoes and onions. They don’t like my clay.
Thanks for these notes, Lauren, we have similar gardens/hardiness zones so these give me some great ideas.
Regarding the potatoes, have you tried growing them on top of the clay? Put cardboard down, potato on top, some compost added, with some mulch on top of all that (Ruth Stouth method), perhaps even using some of your woodchips? That works well for me here.
I did some under woodchips last summer, and I’ll be trying that again. It got some potatoes, but most burrowed into the soil underneath and I started late in the season so they didn’t have time to mature. I’ll have to try the cardboard and see if that makes a difference.
I may have to wait on onions until the soil starts to improve.
Beans last week in the dry garden, and sweet corn in the main garden. Lentils are up and apparently thriving. Today quinoa, beets, spinach. Those last 3 are in a small area that I broadforked to see how it does. All of these have had the last water they’ll get from me.
I found two survivors from the diakon radish. Three rutabagas and one parsnip survived no water last summer, and then a cold winter. A few onions survived as well. No 2nd generation flax yet, and it doesn’t look like either the apricot or the almond seedling survived the winter.
Tomorrow I start planting popcorn. I think I’ll plant one or two rows per week and find the sweet spot where it does the best. Last year I planted in February and none of it came up. I replanted in May, which was far too late, but I still got a few seeds.
Potatoes are not exactly an adaptation project at this point. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to plant them, with heavy clay loam and 0 water during the summer.
This morning I planted Yukon Gold (probably won’t work long term), and Norkotah against the soil under 2 year old wood chip mulch. A random potato that survived from last summer is planted on the soil in the newly mulched main garden.
I am waiting for more of Norkotah and Yukon Gold to scab before I plant them. I’ll do at least 1 more row of each under the new mulch so I have a good test.
I do have TPS, but I don’t want to use them until I can actually get a harvest from traditional potatoes.
Like everything else, I am hoping for 0 water use.
Amaranth is a beast on my clay soil, makes a really good cover crop imo with nice tap root you can mow it down and let it rot. Last year we had excessive rain in the spring and drought conditions most the summer and amaranth couldn’t care less either way.
Lots of beans up. No amaranth or quinoa yet. I planted out the first set of tomatoes, under deep woodchip mulch. The hope is that if they get frosted (likely) they’ll be strong enough to come back from the root and perhaps confer a bit of cold tolerance to future generations.
All but maybe a dozen beans died in the freeze the other night. I will be replanting, but those that survived will be marked and harvested separately. It was supposed to get down to 30 F, but I suspect it was considerably colder.
6 more rows of popcorn and another set of tomatoes. 6 of the 12 I planted before survived the 2 cold nights, although they’re not happy about it. No sign of regrowth yet. I’m leaving the spots open jic.
The sweet corn isn’t up. I’m tempted to dig down and see if anything has sprouted, but not yet. It was planted pretty deep.
No sign of potatoes, but the onions are peeking out of the woodchips. I did sweet potatoes for soil amendment last year, just left the roots in the ground to rot…and forgot to harvest any for re-planting, duh, so I got some from the grocery store. I don’t think any seeded, but I’m keeping my eyes open for that. The slips won’t be planted out for at least another month.
I think I’ll try some of those under the woodchips as well. If they burrow into the ground I’m ahead of the game for fixing that clay.
Popcorn is up in the dry garden. Saw the first spinach and beet leaves. More beans are up, I may not need to replant as much as I thought.
On that topic, I’m torn. I want to encourage cold tolerance, but now I’m thinking it might be more (or equally) important to have plants that wait until the conditions are right.
Thank you, this discussion continues to interest and motivate me. I’ve been following your posts about the corn and bean schedule, and I’ve been planting similarly in Eastern Kentucky.
I’ve been thinking about a protocol around one bag with shifting ratios of seeds depending on how far the season has progressed. I haven’t gained any insight yet but I’ll describe my approach. I am envisioning a system where I’m constantly and incrementally sowing legumes and corn throughout the spring.
As you may also be alluding to in your latest post, I’m still not sure I can answer the question: would it be valuable to be able to plant these crops so early?
My approach has been planting seeds from this mixed seed bag into free space in beds that I’ve cleaned for spring.
I started in mid-February sowing fava beans and shelling peas into free space. In late February I added corn to this sowing bag: mostly popcorn with some saved grain corn.
In early March I added chickpeas and mung beans to the bag. Late March I took out the remaining fava beans and started adding phaseolus beans to the bag, and stopped adding peas.
A challenge for me is that I haven’t labeled these plantings so it’s hard for me to report the exact sequence of emergence. The changing mixture over the course of the plantings will hopefully help me keep track.
Here I’ve seen mostly fava and pea emergence so far, but I am pretty sure I’m starting to have some popcorn up as well.
