A novice's attempt to get 15 percent of his food from his suburban fifth acre
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 29th, 2009
When crops start small, they start vulnerable. This was an essential weakness of my warm season crop: 90 percent of the loss occurred early in the plant’s development. Birds pulled just-sprouted veggies from the ground to eat the seed off the bottom, leaving the first inch of growth to wither in the would-be garden. Rabbits [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 22nd, 2009
I could have planted 125 square feet of Calabrese Broccoli. And 30 square feet of Jiu Cai Garlic Chives. And 25 square feet each of Correnta Spinach, Marvel of Four Seasons Butterhead Lettuce, and Q’s Special Medley Mesclun. Put another way, I could have grown 400 White Lisbon Bunching Onions, 300 Yellow Sweet Spanish Onions, [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 15th, 2009
When I wrote a few weeks ago about the preponderance of male flowers in my winter squash as the culprit behind the failure my cucurbits to fruit, I had also spent some time researching another symptom that had been plaguing those plants. The fruitlessness is the result of insufficient pollination, as I previously indicated. The [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 7th, 2009
Who would have guessed that seed-grown is not the way to go when it comes to most fruits, including avocado? Apparently, even a plant can be untruthful. A little more than two years ago my mom passed on to me a little potted avocado tree, about a foot tall. A neighbor with excellent gardens and [...]
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