Radish Harvest!.... (Not quite)

Yesterday was the 30 day mark for our French Breakfast radishes. (Top front row, right hand side.) They're a little behind schedule... but not by much. 23 days after planting we were thinning the crop and enjoying the sprouts in dinner salads; so we've discovered that planting radishes has a two-fold harvest! :) I'm not too bothered by the delay in maturation, this is the beginning of spring after all... planting this variety again in mid-summer will be interesting study.

The peas directly behind this crop of radishes are the faster 55 day Sugar Sugar snap peas. We'll have to put up the lattice for those reasonably soon. I think that we may be able to get one more planting in front of these snap peas - but it will have to be something with a fast maturation. Once the snap peas get bigger, the space in front of them will be overwhelmed and will have to be left alone for the rest of the season.

A second crop of radishes, "White Icicle Heirloom" was just planted in front of the 90 day Sugar Star snap peas. These are super fast- just 23 days. (!!) I'm trying to get better about off-setting the plantings so we have continual harvests, so I only used half the pack. At the same time, this is the first planting where I was really trying to be mindful of seed dispersion and spacing so as not to waste seeds. (This was a bit tricky for assistant Cyrus, who was not particularly mindful as to how the seeds landed...)

I've been researching succession planting- which is different techniques for maximizing the space you use. Thanks to the calendar, I'm able to quickly see what has been planted when- so that makes planting in timed intervals much easier. Another succession planting technique is re-seeding a space immediately after harvesting a crop. (A cold season/warm season planting) This will take more research to make sure the vegetables that get planted are complementary in terms of soil management. There's also inter-cropping, which involves two or more plantings in the same space at the same time that complement each other. The Three Sister's technique, developed by the Iroquois is an example of this. I'd really like to try this if I can get the new terraced garden done by the beginning of June.

Strawberry Bed Preperation

Finally finished getting the strawberry bed cleaned up and fertilized. Untangling runners is distinctly not a fun task. =P

Last year the strawberries were one of the big success stories of the garden. For a couple of weeks during the beginning of July we could take our a salad size bowl and fill it nearly to the top *every day*. We'd like to see that again this year.

We're not sure exactly what variety we have- but they are an early season variety with nice big fruit. We did have some ever-bearing plants mixed in, but the early season varietal is much more aggressive and has pretty much taken over the entire bed. I've got a project in mind in the future where I'll create an additional strawberry bed... when that happens, I'll go for mid/late season plants so we can have a longer harvest season.

I found a great write-up called STRAWBERRIES IN THE HOME GARDEN published by NC State. Included in it is a month-by-month guide to strawberry care that is really fantastic. I'll probably reference this in the future.... in hindsight we should have thinned the plants back in September and fertilized well before now. Oh well. Pretty much between now and September we just need to make sure this plot stays well watered.

Over-wintered cabbage

We had several cabbages that were planted in fall by the Seattle Urban Farm Company (Great guys...)

The cabbages survived a particularly harsh Seattle winter, and come spring started looking great... but then the vast majority of them bolted. :( Researching why this happened, we found that it was either due to a sudden change towards warmer temperature... or an over-abundance of nitrogen at the wrong time. We had both. =P

We fertilized the cabbages at the beginning of April *and* we got a pretty good uptick in temperatures (compared to winter) at the same time. Very sad. For future reference- don't fertilize vegetables that have over wintered.

We did get a solid dinner out of one of them- a yummy Asian chicken salad. :)

Blueberries

The blueberries were actually planted in early spring 2008 (4/22/2008)... but they didn't do so good last year. I'm determined to make sure they do much better this year- we have 6 plants in our blueberry row... if we can get these things to take off, we'd have so many blueberries!!

Blueberries like well drained, moist soil. The first part isn't a problem, as the bed that was created for them is on a hillside and has a mild slope. The second part however.... they had only a single drip line dedicated to them last year, and the timing cycle for drip line was attached to the same cycle as the lower vegetable garden. Definitely a problem there. I'd intend to dedicate 3 drip lines to them (or perhaps sprinklers), and give them an independent timing cycle- that should solve that problem; but irrigation is an issue for the month of May...

I've discovered blueberries don't just prefer acidic soil- they absolutely have to have it if your going to have proper growth. Typical pH recommendations range from a 4.5 to 5.5... although I've seen some say that a pH as low as 4 is OK. Just to get a sense this- the Ph tester I purchased only goes down to a pH of 4.5 and identifies that as "Very Acidic". Aiming for a pH of 4.5 to 5 seems like the way to go. I did three tests on the soil of the blueberry bed. Each test was done in the middle between two bushes, along the irrigation drip line, working may way from the top of the hill to the bottom. Each test showed the soil had a pH ranging from 6.5 and 7.0. That's pretty bad- and it is definitely part of why they did so bad last year. (I suppose at least it wasn't alkaline!) It looks like the blueberry bed is going to be my first experience in adjusting soil pH.
When this bed was established, the soil was imported planting mix- which was then composted, turned, and had sulfur added. In an ideal world, we would have added some acidic peat to the mix before planting, but we didn't really research things last year. Oh well... 20/20 hindsight and all that.

To amend the soil for the year I did 3 things:

1) To acidify the soil in the short term, I used aluminum sulfate. This was not my ideal... but the nursery was out of elemental sulfur, and I only had one afternoon to get this done. I've read warnings about using aluminum sulfate to adjust pH on several sites- it is easy to overuse it and damage the roots. So knowing this I erred on the side of using less rather than more, and used a tsp. to do all my measurements.

2) Next I fertilized the beds with Dr. Earth's Acid mix (4-3-6). Supposedly it's a good mix for plants that want a low pH.

3) Finally I mixed a bag of peet moss with a Cedar Grove compost and applied as mulch to the top. Hypothetically, the peet should assist in the longer term efforts to lower the pH of the soil. However, that impact takes much more time. More immediately, mixing in the peet should help capture more moisture and keep the root systems cool when (if?) we get hot days in the summer.

A final problem to fix this year is that the labels got mixed up when they were planted, and so now we don't know which bush is which. I'd like to sort that out.

The plants....

(2) five year old Bluecrop
- Considered best for consistent yields.
- Dainty, waxy, bell-shaped, white flowers in May.
- Spread of 4 - 6 feet.
- Light blue blueberries that ripen in early august.
(1) two year old Northland
- Small dark blue fruit with a wild berry flavor.
- Spread of 3-4 feet.
- Clusters of dainty, waxy, bell-shaped flowers bloom in spring.
- Fruit ripens in summer.
- Reddish stems during winter.
(1) five year old Jersey
- Large, light blue berries with a delicate flavor.
- Late spring flowers are lavender pink.
- Height of 4-8 feet.
- Fruit ripens mid-season to late.
- Self-infertile. Requires other blueberry varieties to be in area.
(1) two year old Spartan
- Light blue, tangy-sweet berries that get as big as a quarter. (!!)
- 5 -6 feet high.
- White flower blooms in spring with orange and red fall foliage.
- Begins fruiting early and keeps going for a long season.
(1) three year old Chandler
- Fruit the size of cherries. (Worlds largest blueberry!)
- Large white flowers, dark green foliage in summer.
- 4 - 6 feet tall.
- Long ripening season that provides fruit for over six weeks from mid to late season.

Rasberries

Got the Rasberry prepped for the season! Weeding was minimal, then I laid down Dr. Earth Fruit Tree Fertilizer 7-4-2. It took a whole box to cover of the entire 50' row (1lb per 10 feet). Once that was done I put a 2-3 inch layer of Cedar Grove compost on top. (used about 1/3 of a yard). I've read several methods for taking care of rasberries.... since this is a new bed, the method I decided to go with was laying down fertilizer, followed by a 2-3 inch layer of compost on top.

Other than getting the irrigation system in, the rasberries are now good to go.

Some history...

During October of last year, my boss (Bruce) wanted to shrink his (huge) garden so that it would be more manageable. So we were the beneficiary of enough raspberry stalks to fill about half the bed of the (F150) truck.

I built a post and wire support system using 4x4's and 14 gauge galvanized wire & straining bolts, based on a design from the book The Fruit Expert, by Dr. D. G. Hessayon. Bruce turned me onto this book- it's fantastic. It (and it's companion book about vegetables & herbs) is actually geared towards England- but they have a very similar climate to us. It is *dense* with great information and illustrations.

Once the post and wire system was in place, I built short raised bed that would allow us to import some planting mix to combine with the not-so-good dirt that was already present. A bonus is that the post & wire support system doubles as a perimeter fence for the edge of the property... which is a 4' drop off of a retaining wall. We populated an entire 50' row with Raspberries! (well over half the width of our property)

These are Heritage Raspberries, which are ever bearing... so the should have two crops, the first crop matures around the beginning of July, and the second crop ripens after September 1st, continuing until first frost. (yum!)

The fruit is huge, and both disease and drought resistant.; and even better- they're thornless!

The canes of raspberries are biennial- so the new canes produced one year yield fruit during the second year. I'll have to study a bit more when the time comes for pruning.

RainCity Soil & NPK 101

With spring comes prepping the beds and amending the soil for preparation of planting. Since this is only the second year we've maintained a significant garden, we had some learning to do.... Initially I didn't even know what 10-10-10 meant!

RainCity Soil

According to "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades" (by Steve Solomon) our soil here isn't really very good (Or more accurately, it has very poor balance). This due to our heavy and persistent rains, which have leeched a great deal of nutrients out of the soil. "Unfortunately, the nutrients that provoke plants to become highly nutritious- calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus- are the ones most readily lost." (p27) The second problem is that this leeching effect has not been done equally with all nutrients. On the other side of the equation, soil here has "an overly high level of an otherwise useful mineral, potassium. Our soils usually have lots of potassium- maybe too much". (p27) Presumably, this means that when we are amending the soil in our garden, we need to minimize potassium that goes in.

Mr. Solomon recommends that all garden soils in our region need to address the issue of calcium and magnesium deficiency, as this is what gets leeched out the most and has the biggest impact the nutrition of what we're growing. One recommendation for this is using equal parts of two different kinds of lime - calcium carbonate, and dolomite lime, and using 50 lbs per 1,000 square feet on a garden that is new, or has never been limed. Thereafter, he recommends regular, smaller soil amendments of calcium and magnesium to maintain the availability of those nutrients in particular (p32).

So the soil in our little corner of Earth has some unique characteristics to consider....

I'm a data-oriented sort of person... so I need to understand *why* we need to amend the soils. Generally speaking it's to 'feed the plants what they need'- I got that, but I prefer a bit more detail.

NPK (Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium)

N (Nitrogen) I found Nitrogen: The Essential Element published by some folks over at the Center for Environmental Research at Cornell University. It's not long, but supplies some history, the role of nitrogen, The Nitrogen Cycle, and some pointers on use. It's a great write up.

Plants use nitrogen to produce protein (I can see how that's important), but according to the Nitrogen Cycle, the quantity of nitrogen in the soil is perpetually in flux (being used by the plant and flowing away into the environment). Beyond getting my head around the Nitrogen Cycle in general, my main take away is that by using organic matter to amend the soil and provide nitrogen, the Nitrogen Cycle is slowed way down so that a continuous supply is available as the organic material decomposes. This slow and steady application of nitrogen (via decomposition) is preferable to chemical alternatives, which blasts the plant with a one-time pulse of nitrogen, and then quickly leeches away in water or converts to gas and escapes into the atmosphere.

Nitrogen at the time of planting (particularly the pure chemical kind) pretty much goes to waste; The time the plant really needs it is when it's really producing. It's my sense that it's pretty hard to provide too much nitrogen -though not impossible. The worst thing I could find about excessive nitrogen was that it could over stimulate leafy production in the plant, skew it's nutrition content in a negative manner, and make it taste not so good. Clearly this isn't what anyone goes for, but essentially the downside is "grows too fast".

P (Phosphorus) Phosphorus is required for all forms of life. One of its key functions is energy transfer at the cellular level. It is also needed for manufacturing nucleic acids (DNA & RNA). Neat huh? Maybe I should have taken bio chem...

Given it's biological role for life in general, it is no surprise that phosphorus plays a key part in the the process of photosynthesis. It is pivotal in stimulating early growth and root formation in plants... ultimately speeding up maturity, flowering, and seed production

The availability of phosphorus for the plant gets complicated- just because it is present, doesn't mean the plant can absorb it. Unlike nitrogen, which flows away in the water and air constantly, phosphorus likes to bind with other things rendering it into a 'solid state'. As plants absorb phosphorus along their roots and the concentration in the soil surrounding them decreases, more phosphorus diffuses towards the area to correct the imbalance. This is called a "concentration gradient". The problem here is that phosphorus has a very low solubility and it likes to link to other minerals. The concentration gradient lends itself towards making the phosphorus more immobile and difficult for the roots of a plant to absorb, because it is constantly passing by minerals that it can easily bind to, rendering it inert. Further complicating this is that the solubility of phosphorous is linked to soil Ph. The more acidic a soil is, the more likely phosphorus will bind to iron or aluminum to form compounds that are insoluble and unavailable to the plant. The more alkaline, the more likely phosphorus will bind to calcium... and (wait for it) render it insoluble and unavailable to the plant. This means for phosphorus, the ideal soil Ph is 6.5 to 7.5 (as neutral as possible). Oh yea... soil temperature also impacts this whole equation as well. I've decided not to delve to deeply into that for now.

Given the issues with binding, absorption, and diffusion, the more incorporated phosphorus is with the soil overall, the better it is for the plants (to minimize the negative effects of the concentration gradient). The time to amend soil with phosphors is prior to planting. Furthermore, given the impact that Ph has on the solubility of phosphorus and its propensity to easily get trapped in a solid-state form (when Ph is anything but neutral), it seems quite worthwhile to focus on the Ph of the soil. If the soil is too acidic or too alkaline, the phosphorus is likely already there, but entirely immobile.

It appears that the most limiting factors that can be actively controlled in relation to phosphorus are the Ph balance of the soil, and the level of nitrogen in the soil, which plays a key role in the plants ability to absorb phosphorus. (A plant deficient in nitrogen will quickly also be deficient in phosphorus.)

K (Potassium) Potassium plays a variety of functions in plants. It's involved in protein synthesis, cell development, regulation of water absorption, energy, carbon dioxide, and electrical balance. In my layman's understanding of things, it's a key element that controls the plants metabolic state. When potassium is absorbed from the soil, it produces a concentration gradient (like Phosphorus) so that potassium from further out flows in to restore an equilibrium. (Thus, it is good to have potassium evenly spread throughout the soil.)

I'm still trying to get my head around the Potassium Cycle- but here's a shot at it: Potassium has a distinct relationship with clay. (And here in RainCity, the glaciers scraped everything down to the clay bed during the last ice age, so we've got plenty of that. I know. I've had to shape it with a spade.) There is 'inorganic structural K' caught inside the clay, 'exchangeable K' that binds to the surface of clay, and 'solution K' that plants can readily absorb. The key here is that as plants absorb potassium (remember the principle of the concentration gradient), potassium from the 'exchange K' on the surface of clay moves into the solution in the soil, creating a ripple so that 'inorganic structural K' then moves into place to equalize the 'exchangeable K'... repeat infinitely. In the Potassium Cycle, 'solution K' does leech out of the soil easily via weathering, but if the soil has a high clay content, the impact of weathering is effectively negligible (it's always being replaced); One article went so far as to refer to it as "musical chairs".

I think that the reason that Steve Solomon said that when working with soil west of the Cascades we have "maybe too much" potassium is because we are all pretty much gardening on the clay bed that the glaciers left us... so potassium is uniquely captured (and diffusing) into our garden in a nearly infinite loop. Joined with this fact is that plants *love* potassium, and will happily absorb more than they require with no toxic effect. The problem here for those of us growing well balanced, nutritious vegetable gardens is that excessive potassium intake can result in calcium and magnesium deficiency due to competition between the nutrients. I believe the conflict in nutrient absorption, coupled with our abundance of clay, explains his "maybe too much" assertion.

My favorite sites that helped me with my rudimentary bio chem education:

Information on Soil Fertility A 'basic science' site hosted by NASA.

Fertilizers and Plants A education page hosted by Ballance, a New Zealand fertilizer company.

The Real Story of N-P-K (Plus) A really solid little write up that helped me allot.