A garden tour this morning with photos taken this morning. We got down to 39°F and we've got peppers, corn and tomatoes growing. We made out good.
A brief description is posted just above each photo. The flower pots in the garden are for collecting rocks.
Top Chop hybrid collards. 40 plants total.
Hybrid broccoli 'Green Goliath'. About 60 plants total.
Jade E. Cross Brussel Sprouts. When you see the leaf change in the row, that's the end of the Brussel Sprouts. About 40 plants total.
Two Better Boy tomato plants in one cage. Started from seeds on 2-15-2024. Note the cage is on 4 ft. erosion stakes. Keeps them from rusting in the soil, makes weed removal easier, makes them six inches taller. More work but if you don't love it you're in the wrong hobby.
Two 50 ft. rows of Yukon Gold potatoes planted on one foot centers in the row, rows 5 foot center to center. Our 30 'invisible' beds are on five foot centers and are three feet wide by 50 feet long. Dug 14 inches deep by hand and marked at each end with a permanent square steel stake.(banisters auctually) Those are three kinds of onions in the bed to the left, tomatoes to the left of the onions and peppers in the bed on the right.
Waltham broccoli started from seed on 2-15-2024. About seventy plants total.
This is a 3ft. X 50ft. bed of Waltham broccoli on the left, an old heirloom and Green Goliath broccoli on the right, a modern hybrid. We are comparing the two. The rows are 50 foot long with maybe 40 plants in each row. To consider the root zone of these types of planting I plant each row 9 inches off of the center line string I use with planting beds. This gives each row in the bed 9 inches for root zone before it hits the walkway on one side, and the competeing root of the other row in that 3ft. bed on the other side. I plant corn exactly the same way. In fact my main stainless steel digging trowel is marked at 9 inches on it's handle making it a handy measuring and digging tool. A row of tomatoes on the right side alternating with 'Better Boy' and 'Hossinator'. Trailing of course. If it can't beat 'Better Boy' then it doesn't make the cut next year. The seeds to 'Hossinator' were 50 cents each but they sent 13! making them only 38 cents each. 'Better Boy' seeds were $5 per 50, so 10 cents each.
The 'A' garden taken from atop a truck box 12ft in the air. Six beds 3ft. wide X 50ft. long. Two kinds of garlic, three kinds of multiplier onions, flowering collards, collards 'Top Chop' and 'Top Bunch', cauliflower 'Twister', Brussel Sprouts 'Jade E Cross', and a smathering of broccoli 'Green Goliath' and 'Waltham' to fill in missing cruciferous (LOL) plants to fill out rows.
The 'B' garden from the truck top. Seventeen 3ft X 50ft hand dug beds. Our main garden and our first gardening area 20 years ago.
Truck top view of 'Waltham' and 'Green Goliath' broccolis in the 'B' garden.