The garden soil we have was heavy on the red clay so I went to the dairy and got three pick up loads of manure and tilled it into the soil back in March.
The production has been prolific. I’m sick of eating squash and my neighbors and family have been getting the surplus.
The patty pan squash are a hit, better than crook neck for frying, IMO.
We actually got a few meals worth of broccoli which is an improvement over last year’s attempt.
Red skin potatoes have done great.
The Dipper Gourd arbor is covered and fruiting nicely.
The Bradford watermelons are finally producing. They took forever to sprout and get to the vine stage. So far I’ve counted three the size of a football and many more that are fist sized. I planted two hills then two more hills 3 weeks apart. The 2nd planting hasn’t fruited yet.
Several giant sunflowers are now 10’+ tall and are covered in honey bees, a good sign considering last year the bees were few and far between.
Cherokee Purple tomatoes are getting to be full sized with no blight—yeah! About 6 have ripened. They make the best fried green tomatoes I’ve ever had.
The grape tomatoes are flourishing and taking forever for a cluster to fully ripen. The top ones are ripe and the bottoms are still green. Maybe in another week? Oh, I tried fried green grape tomatoes. Yuch! Won’t do that again.
Okra is A OK.
Zukes got buried by the pumpkins and it’s hard to get into them. Put off picking them for a week and had to toss out several that were as big around as my arms.
Basil is starting to go to seed already, need to top those.
I tried the square foot method in a 4 x 8 raised bed with different types of lettuce, parsley, catnip, carrots, and radishes. The radishes, lettuce and carrots were successful but the rest of the stuff got overgrown with weeds and it was difficult to distinguish the weeds from the sprouts so I ripped up those and put in more basil.
A couple of bird bottle gourd volunteers from last year are like some kind of plant from a japanese sci-fi movie. Had to put up bamboo tee pees to keep them from running all over the garden.
The brussels sprouts didn’t do much. I’ll plant them again in august hoping for a fall crop.
Green beans out the ears.
Many pumpkins.
About a dozen mortgage lifter tomato volunteers from last year are fruiting but they are in the blight area so I’m not hoping for much.
All this in a couple of 4 x 8 raise beds and an 1800 square foot area.
Looking forward to trying the bradford watermelons.
Kudos on the report and your success in the garden. Would love to see a photo?
Well, all in all a really good return for your efforts. We have the red clay here too. Manure is great for so many things. Really fertile soil, and rampant veggie growth are the best solutions for weeds.
I get less weeds in my raised beds with the Mel’s mix. We don’t often have free manure. So I sometimes use a peat/manure mixture from Walmart. I also usually grow a cover crop to turn under each spring.
I have a composter, that I use for kitchen scraps, grass clippings, leaves, shredded paper, twigs, soil from potted plants.
Hubby has several pens of leaves, grass clippings, and wood chips.