Dry-spell gardening

The calendar says its time to plant fall veggies! The weather on the other hand...

We haven't had a substantial amount of rain in weeks. My co-worker and I text each other rain gauge reports. The last comment I had was 1.4 inches on July 24. Before that, it was July 4.

Not much moisture in the ground to help get seeds sprouted. Here's my strategy:

1. Prep the furrows. I'm going with snow peas (already planted, the darker area running the length of the bed), beets and kohlrabi. This bed is one that is in shade by mid November so I need veggies that will mature quickly. I'm doing another bed the same day with carrots and parsnips.

2. Pre-water the furrows. Seed germination is dependent (among other things) of the seed being in contact with a sufficient amount of moisture so the embryo can do its thing. But if I water the seeds directly (especially little ones like kohlrabi and carrots) the large water drops could move them around and mess up the spacing. Better to wet the soil first.

3. Plant seeds and cover with soil. Sorry, forgot to take a picture of that, but you know the process.

4. Water again. Actually, I'll end up making several passes over this area for the next hour. My goal is to apply enough water so that it soaks all the way down to the seeds. And repeat every day or every other day until seedlings emerge. Its so hot and dry right now that the moisture is evaporating out of the soil.

With any luck, I should have little sprouts starting to poke through within two weeks.

Flowering carrots!

Yes! Carrots can produce flowers! How else do you think they produce seed for planting?

Do the flowers remind you of something else? Like maybe Queen Anne's Lace (aka wild carrot)? They have the same genus. Maybe parsley that's been allowed to flower? They are from the same scientific family.

Anyhow, back to my carrots. I left them in the ground a long time, so it makes sense that physiologically they thought it was time to flower. Like five months.

But what's beneath the surface tells another story.

As impressive as the tops were, the roots are rather puny. My pinky finger is the same diameter as some of these. Fertilizer is a good thing, but I didn't put it out often enough for these guys. Which also goes to show that what's in the soil around here is not enough by itself to grow a garden.

Why I'm not organic

I know there are some people who get into gardening because they want to take an organic approach to their food production. Great. I'm not one of them.

Don't get me wrong, everyone has the right to pick and choose how they garden. I'm just one of those who thinks the requirements to be truly organic is more than I want to deal with. And, I really like my Miracle Grow fertilizer.

The greatest gardening advance ever. OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a little.

Growing up we hardly ever used fertilizer on our garden. A good amount of rotted cow manure worked into the soil before spring planting was all we needed. Soil here is a different story. If I don't fertilize, sometimes as frequently as once a week, garden productivity is next to nothing. 

Alabama has notoriously poor quality soils. They don't contain much organic matter, which means the soil's ability to retain certain nutrients like nitrogen is not good. On top of that, the soil is usually quite acidic, which also messes with plants' ability to effectively utilize soil nutrients.

The basic fertilizer is a 28-8-16 formulation. The tomato and veggie version is an 18-18-21. Compare that to one of the organic products on the market that has an 8-8-8 formulation - I'd need to apply 2-3 times the amount of the organic product as I would need to meet what the synthetic version can do.


And then there is pest control. Now, I will admit that most of the products I use for bugs and disease are labeled for use in organic gardening, but I use them because they work so well.

What?!? You can use pesticides in organic gardening?? Yes, yes you can, if they are labeled for it. Case in point, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) products use a bacterium normally found in soil that is very effective against leaf-eating caterpillars.

Don't get me wrong, I have a good supply of Sevin dust in the tool room too, but what I like about the Bt product is that I can apply it with a sprayer wand - really helpful for tall and hard to reach areas. Sevin dust works great, but when your tomatoes are five feet tall I don't feel like breaking out a step ladder to get ahead of the hornworms using a powder. Bt does have it's limitations though. It's most effective when the worms are little, so you need to watch the garden closely to get the stuff on at a time when it will work.

Bt will get this itty bitty armyworm, but not his big brother

So, if you are into gardening because you want to try your hand at organic, go for it. It doesn't work for my situation, and I really enjoy the advances of modern agriculture. Just remember to read the label regardless.

Great stuff for controlling aphids and mildew, but need to wait two days before harvesting veggies