Are you planning big changes, or minor tweaks to a working system? Are there new-to-you plants you’re excited to try your hand at? Let’s share our dreams and goals and inspire each other!
Are you planning big changes, or minor tweaks to a working system? Are there new-to-you plants you’re excited to try your hand at? Let’s share our dreams and goals and inspire each other!
I’m planning to devote about half of my fenced garden space to trying a three sisters patch, and this year I’m going to be more strategic about where I put my potatoes so they don’t shade out everything around them early in the season. I haven’t grown beans or corn before but my squash did great last year so I’m looking forward to more of that!
I didn’t have great luck with brassicas last year so I’m hoping to do better by starting earlier and figuring out how to fight the cabbage moths.
I also have tentative plans to build out a patio/fire pit area on the site of a pool and deck I tore down last year. I want it surrounded by raised beds with various perennials like blueberry bushes, and maybe someday a grape trellis. I have plenty of wood from that deck so I may also build random stuff like a bench to go inside my squash tunnel (:
This was a good reminder that I should start putting together a planting schedule and a seed order soon!
I tried the three sisters two years ago and none of my gourds grew and my beans didn’t get very high but the popcorn did great. Last year I did just beans and popcorn which did a little better. The beans didn’t fully climb the corn as planned and racoons ate my popcorn but I got a good bean harvest. Make sure you get the spacing and timing right with the three sisters. Corn goes first and then beans climb it up. I think gourds go last but I can’t remember
The cabbage moth solution I see everywhere is low tunnels with a fine mesh to exclude them. We were gifted a hinged low tunnel and I’m planning to use that for our frame, I’ll let you know how it goes
All of this sounds amazing, I can’t wait to see your results!
Good to know! A contractor we had doing some work on the house last year left behind a roll of thick poly sheeting so I was thinking about using that to make some floating row covers anyway.
I’ll be sure to post lots of pictures this year! I also started a personal website recently for fun so I’ll probably be putting stuff there.
Not all poly is equally UV resistant. If your roll has branding information on it I would highly recommend checking that before using it. Cleaning up the pieces of the wrong poly is a huge pain because it fragments more while you’re trying to pick it up.
If what you have lying around isn’t up to the task, ask around at your local greenhouses for offcuts from their last greenhouse skins. The box stores will try to sell you rolls from the paint department, and that’s no good for this. You could also try any local dance studios about tulle they didn’t use - plenty of folks use fabric mesh to do their brassica low tunnels.
Good to know - thanks!