Field
Trips: If you want to attend either field trip next weekend and the
weekend after (see Newsletter #22 for details), please reply to this
email to reserve a spot on Sunday 9/13 (Mary Berglund's garden) or
Sunday 9/20 (Bruce Balgooyen's garden).
Fall
Garden Tips: The time to get your cool
season vegetables planted is NOW! For transplants, you can go to C
Bar D Feed on HWY 32, and some nurseries around town. If you have a
favorite store for buying quality transplants, please email us and we
can share the information. Any day now, I will be starting a BLOG, and
you will find details like that on the BLOG. Don't delay if you want
fresh home grown vegetables this winter. They have to get up and some
size before the days get cold and short.
If you
are direct seeding, I recommend sprinkling 1 to 3 times a day until the
plants are up. As soon as you can withhold the water for a day or so,
you can wheel hoe between the rows. As those who attended the fall
planting workshop at my house know, I have a terrible nutgrass
infestation, and needed to hoe repeatedly to prevent a complete crop
loss. I wheel hoed today, and in 30 minutes did my entire fall garden
(25' x 25').
With this great Vina loam soil, I
don't see a need for paths and raised beds, as long as you can do your
walking when the soil is not saturated. Raised beds would have been 10
times as much work to weed compared to the rows I was able to breeze
down with the wheel hoe and the 10" blade assembly. If you have a heavy
clay soil, double digging and raised beds may be very useful.
It
is important to thin your plants when they are a couple of inches tall,
so that you get larger stockier plants. The exceptions might be mesclun
mix, carrots and a few other things. Broccoli, cabbage, kale, lettuce,
spinach, chard and most others should be thinned to maybe 3 apart, and
then when a little larger thinned again to about a foot apart. Thinning
is a good time to do the in-row weeding that the hoe or wheel hoe
doesn't catch. Rows of the smaller vegetables can be 15" apart, and the
larger plants can be 24" apart. Since potatoes get hilled, they should
be about 30" apart.
Summer Garden Tips: If
your squash, bean or cucumber plants are tired, it is probably because
they exhausted the available nutrients. Use more compost and maybe side
dressings next year to extend the season. Also, a small second planting
in early June would have given you vigorous plants going into late
summer. Keep watering the summer garden and you should continue getting a
harvest until the cold weather hits.
As
the summer garden stops producing, take up the vines and weeds and compost them. Plan on broadcasting fava beans, or vetch or bell beans, or just mulching with fall leaves. This will make your garden area richer come spring, so it is more than simply tidiness. Mary's garden will show many summer beds still yielding, and some fall beds just started. Mary uses raised beds to good effect. Bruce is still bringing lots of heirloom tomatoes to market, as well as peppers, lettuce and more, so there will be plenty to see there as well.
I hope to see you in the garden soon,
David Grau
Valley Oak Tool Company
P.O.
Box 301
Chico CA 95927
telephone 530-342-6188
