Friday, August 7, 2015

Late summer plantings

I have a couple things I just planted and am looking forward to harvesting and hopefully freezing for winter.

This is a little 3 sisters style bean patch I'm using to prep my garden bed for planting a viburnum hedge later in the year once the heat of summer has passed.

I planted this probably 10 days ago in the trench I dug earlier this year and added four bags of cheap compost and cow manure. I didn't bother to mix the manure with the natural dirt/sand in my yard, just dumped the bags in the trench and planted seeds right on top.

I like to grow field peas because they are hardy, heat and drought tolerant, and grow super quickly. They also taste great picked early as snap green beans or left to mature on the plant then shelled for the peas. I got the seeds from my family in Lake City, FL where a man named Mr. King has been growing these peas probably longer than I've been alive. He give bags of the fresh plump beans to my family every season and they shell them and freeze them. My aunt saves several pounds of the dried peas to plant in her garden and sends some down south for us to grow in our gardens. They are called Acre Peas and are a bush bean type plant.

This is a patch I planted over a month ago and they are vining out a bit and will soon flower. I don't stake them or help them along. Just plant them, water them, and pick them. The aphids get to them eventually, but usually I can spray off the aphids with the hose and then a million lady bugs come along to feast and help out with the infestation.

I have a very exact method for planting these peas. Not really :). I take a handful and toss them over the the raked and prepared bed with little regard to spacing, then I sprinkle a couple inches of garden dirt on top from a bucket or the bag and water it well everyday till they sprout once they are established I only water if it hasn't rained in several days or a week.

I planted acre peas, okra and Waltham butternut squash in this bed. The ham next to the bed was a volunteer. I kinda cared about spacing the half dozen or so okra seeds in the middle of the bed insomuch as I purposefully threw them into the dirt and said that was good enough. I did intentionally plant six butternut squash seeds with four under the palm tree and two more planted as an afterthought on the opposite end.

I've got some plans for planting my raised bed, but first the gutter and downspout needs to be moved. My attempts at protecting the garden from it did not work and between the compression and breaking down of my layers of hay and the torrential pour of the downspout, I lost 8" of dirt. So I'll need to build that back up before planting again.