Going to Have to Replant Some of the Garden

Good morning to all this fine day! Isn’t the weather turning off so nice now? We hope you guys are doing just great, and welcome back to Coverin’ the Bases!
Going to Have to Replant Some of the Garden

Well, our big garden has come up out of the ground, and I have to tell you, that some are doing real well, but some aren’t, and I’ll be reseeding parts of it today.
The cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, speckled butter beans, green beans, and eggplants are all doing fine.

The fordhook limas are doing well, but are having to be replanted due to skips in regards to the seeder. What happened is that these beans are a little bigger bean, and the dern things were hanging up in the drop tube.

This simply meaning the seeds are dropped from the hopper, into a drop tube which spaces your seeds in the row. The drop tube follows the little plow like mount on the seeder. It cuts the furrow, the drop tube drops the seed into the furrow, then the wheel of the seeder covers the seed up.

This little seeder works great most of the time, but those dad-gum bigger size fordhooks were literally turning sideways in the drop tube and clogging it up. Thus, no seeds dropping into the furrow.

Oh, it’d work for 10-15 feet, then one would clog the tube, and you may have thought you’d seeded another 10-15 feet, only to discover you weren’t dropping any at all. Aggravating yes, but I figured we’d go ahead and use it, then if we had some skips we’d reseed them a little later.

I’d had my fingers crossed, hoping they would continue to pop up, but that’s not the case. So now, we’ll just go back today, and hand seed the skips. This by poking a hole with your finger about a ½ inch deep, then covering it up. No sweat! Well, let me rephrase that to, no problem, cause there will be sweat involved!

Now our corn was an entirely different story. I’m really very disappointed with our corn crop thus far. Though there is quite a bit up, we planted five 100-foot rows, there is a ton of missing shoots! I’m not sure if we’ve had a bad batch of seeds, but I don’t really think so, or we were just too dry?

I’m leaning towards the too dry theory, as first of all it was awfully dry to start off this spring. I like to say, bone dry, and it has been, but we had two really good rains last week, and it’s a 60-70% chance tomorrow, so I better replant today, plus the moon’s favorable again.

The corn is skipped up so bad, that I’m gonna set the seeder right up against the existing rows, and reseed the entire rows again. There will be corn rows literally side by side, inches apart, but I think there’s so many skips, it won’t affect the corn too badly. We’ll see.

I do know that last year we did have an awfully wet spring. So wet, as a matter of fact, our beans and, tomatoes drowned, literally! I mean we had A TON of water. But the corn seemed like, the wetter it got, the better it liked it.

We ate it when it was first coming in, like there was no tomorrow, and we still put up over two hundred ears, so the corn really liked the wetness. So this is why I feel the dryness and heat have taken their toll on it this spring.

I know this though, at this point the raised bed garden is kicking the bigger garden’s butt right this minute! I’m impressed. But a few different circumstances involved as well, that actually have made for better care, and it was helped off to a better start, too.

First off, in the raised bed garden we brought in a good topsoil, sand mix. For all three beds, we have two, eight by eights, and one bed, eight by twenty-four feet. All three beds cost us a little over 70 bucks for the soil.

The bigger garden is actually sugar sand. But initially we brought in 21 tons of chicken manure and tilled it in. Then tilled it probably another dozen times. We actually weren’t “tilling it in,” but discing it in with a small tractor and disc. We did this for probably a six month time frame, on account of the chicken manure being so hot.

This allowed it to leech into the soil, and then we planted our first spring garden in it. This was three years ago. We have continually added cow manure, some hay, and even built several fires from brushpiles we’d stack throughout the garden area, to add some potash to the existing soil.

Even with this help, the soil is nowhere near, at this point, as good as what we brought and put into the raised beds. This is obvious, even to the eye.
I’ve mentioned this to you guys earlier, but come this winter, we’ll be composting “the fire out of” the bigger garden. If not familiar with my Southern vernacular, this simply means we’ll be composting it regularly!

We have a lot of big oak trees on our place, we have hay for the cows, we will have plenty of grass clippings, vegetable scraps, and PLENTY of cow manure, among other things. You guys have CONVINCED me of the importance of compost, and now I’m sold on the idea! Thanks, guys!

In our raised bed gardens, after digging each hole for the vegetable plants, I refilled each hole, after setting the plant, with a cow manure, soil mix. This was store bought. But it’s obvious this was a great benefit to the plants too.

The larger garden again, even with poorer soil, and 95% of it planted with seeds, even the plant sets we planted aren’t doing as well as the raised beds. Also, I didn’t add the store bought mix to put into the holes for the plants we did set out in it. I anticipated the soil being better this year than last, but this hasn’t been the case evidently. Again, this is why every chance we get now, we’ll be shooting the compost to it.

The raised bed garden can be cared for, meaning the watering, fertilizing (we use miracle grow), and even the weeding is so much easier and less time consuming for us. Also, I just started yesterday of watering with cow tea.

The cow tea idea, came from one of our good friends in Mississippi, name Sandra, and I’m sure you’ve all seen from time to time her comments. She’s a BIG help, and is greatly appreciated, and seems to be one good person on top of all this!

Cow tea is simply getting some cow manure, putting it into a pair of pantyhose, and sticking this into a large plastic trash can, or barrel. You then let this sit, I let ours sit for two weeks, and it turns a nice shade of, guess what color? If you said pink, you’re wrong, but if you guessed brown, you hit it on the head!

Once its “cured,” you just dip it out, and water your plants with it, just as you normally would.

Sandra once stated, she’d lost her cow manure connection, so now when they pass a cow pasture, she hops the fence, cops some cow patties, puts them in a sack, then hops back into the car. The whole time her husband she claims, is holding his head in shame!

But, getting back on track, the raised beds are much easier to tend. The bigger garden once more, when we’re in a weather pattern as dry as we’d been having, there’s just no way to keep it watered as it should be. You basically are getting enough water down to keep it alive.

But you know what? That’s just farming. Even in baseball, the very best batters, don’t get a base hit all the time, it’s all part of it.

I love the bigger garden, and as much as I like the raised beds…so far…I’ll never give up my old style garden until I just cain’t continue to do it physically!

I want every one of you to have a great day today…ya’ hear? Thank you all so much for coming back to visit with us, we love it when you do. Take care and God Bless!
Dub and Deb