That's terrific that it is working so well. You are always so busy creating ways to grow more food to feed the hungry. Your creativity is awesome!

Johnny Coleman,

Do you sidedress corn with this bucket?

authereray,

No, I apply it dry immediately before hilling the corn. I try to hill the corn when it is about a foot tall.

If I am side dressing with compost tea, I use the bucket.

This morning I was doing a combination side dress and foliar feed with the dribble bucket and 2% N solution (2 pounds of UREA per 5 gallons of water). Some of my onions are behind schedule.

Johnny

authereray,

Our 12th Street garden is surrounded by 40 foot trees. That is one of the reasons I like it so much. We grew 10 foot tall corn there last year and only lost three stalks to wind.

We still have a long way to go on the soil there. We will be spreading many tons of wood chips there soon.

Early this Spring, we spread 16 tons of composted stall muck. That only helped about 1/4 of the garden. Folks have been taking hay off that land for a very long time and putting nothing back in.

Long way to go. I reckon it will take another couple of years to repair that soil.

Johnny

But the soil will be so beautiful and productive once it is restored to proper health and nutrition, so it is worth it!

We had an evil little storm last night that did its best to wreck my onions and corn. The wind blew hard for several hours, with max gusts of 58 mph that brought down limbs and trees. Amazingly, only a handful of corn plants lodged, and most of them already have straightened up (mostly) on their own. They are about waist high so I thought more of them would get blown down, and was pleasantly surprised that it didn't happen.

The onions suffered more casualties, with maybe 40 necks completely snapped. I'll go ahead and harvest those and chop them and then freeze them in cooking amounts that I can use in future months once there's no fresh ones available. I haven't side dressed the onions or corn, but both are fine without it so far. The onions are about 24-30" tall and most have 10-13 leaves. The early daylength ones are popping right up onto the surface of the ground as they near maturity. I gave them an extra heavy layer of grass clipping mulch on Saturday, hoping to protect those exposed bulbs from hail.

I do need to spray the onions with a fungicide. They are staying so wet with this constant rainfall (and heavy dew every morning) that I see definite signs on the foliage that indicate disease. If I ever can get a day where it isn't raining (maybe tomorrow!), I'll hit them with a fungicide.

autheray, When you say that some onions don't size up, do you mean that within the same variety you are seeing some that do and some that don't, or do you mean that all the onions of a given variety fail to size up nicely? I'm trying to figure out why that might happen.

Johnny, my corn doesn't have windbreaks close to it, so I was so pleased that it held up so well to the strong winds early this morning. The onions? Ha ha. They have windbreaks of tall trees on three sides of the garden and showed a lot more damage. Sometimes things just don't happen the way we expect them to.

Dawn

Dawn,

I have a lot of experience with oopsies and "Darn it, I knew better"

We had a great brunch Saturday. Vision Farms contributed a lot of good food and I was one of the official tasters.

We just completed the last hilling of our potatoes yesterday. We expect to loose about 1/4 to 1/3 of our crop to field bindweed. However, we plan to can and freeze enough potatoes, carrots, bush beans, PEPH peas and corn to provide brunch every Saturday until the next harvest. That will be a lot of canning and freezing!

I am sitting here eating home made bread and 100% honey. Washing it down with unpasturized, whole Jersey milk. YES!

Yes, it will be a special day when our 12th Street garden is as good as our main garden.

Johnny

PS Thanks for the encouragement.

Oh Johnny, I hate to hear that. With field bindweed, it is so hard to control in a little garden that I cannot imagine how one controls it in a big field. Some states have released bindweed gall mites that prey on the bindweed. I think Colorado might be one that has done that. I don't think the bindweed mites are available yet to the general public if you don't live in Colorado though.

Supposedly grass will crowd it out, but I don't see how you could raise potatoes with a living groundcover of grass and expect the spuds would outcompete the grass and produce well.

I try so hard to get all the bindweed out, but since the seeds can survive in the soil for 50 years, I'll bet I'll be fighting that nasty weed for the rest of my life. Bindweed is a good argument for no-till/low-till farming.

I have just read about an interesting technique for eradicating bindweed. Build a fence for chickens. Put a portable chicken tractor inside the fence. Leave the chickens there for a year.

Every time bindweed puts up a sprout, the chickens will take it off at ground level. Eventually, the root system will use up all of its energy reserve and die.

I suspect pigs or goats would also root out bindweed. The other thing that has worked (further north, I think) was to plant the field in pumpkins. Vine borers would kill the pumpkins too soon here. The second post here may be of interest. permies.com .

My chickens free range in an area with plenty of bindweed and I've never seen them eat it. Maybe my chickens are too picky. I do grow lettuce and many other greens for them, so maybe they have a refined palate and no longer will eat bindweed. Regardless, even if the chickens nip off every plant at the ground, some of the plants will regrow (I know they regrow when I tug them out jf I don't get the whole root out of the ground). Then, of course, there's the 500 million seeds in the soil that remain viable for 50 years and sprout constantly all summer long. I've been yanking out bindweed since 1999 and still have just about as much every year as we had in our first year here, so it doesn't seem like we've made any progress towards eliminating it. There is no easy way to control bindweed. In some areas, the plants form huge mats of roots below ground and you can yank it forever but the mother root system survives.

Some people say they have had success with Round-up, but I know others who say it hasn't worked for them. I won't use it in my garden since it is a probable carcinogen. I know some old farmers/old ranchers here who've had bindweed all their lives and haven't gotten rid of it yet.

The gall mites that are said to control it are not available to folks like us. People in Colorado can get them from an insectary there, but the supply is very small and the demand is very large, so even Colorado residents have to get on a waiting list and hope to eventually move high enough up the list that they can get the mites.

Even when I try to yank out every single plant that sprouts, I start losing control of it at midsummer when I'm busy canning, and it starts sprouting and growing and hiding amongst climbing vines. Eventually I notice it and try to get it out, but when it is intertwined with vining southern peas, beans, melons, cucumbers, winter squash, etc., it is hard to spot it all early and get it. I certainly go after it vigorously when it begins to bloom (which shows me plants I hadn't noticed before).

We'll all be dead and long gone and the bindweed still will be sprouting and growing and driving another generation of gardeners totally nuts, along with bermuda grass, Johnson grass and crab grass. There are some weeds for which there is no good control, and many of the anectdotal "cures" or "fixes" that I've read about simply have not proven to work in my garden.

AmyinOwasso,

Thanks, I have read about pumpkins before and am still considering a test planting. Pumpkin seed is not expensive. Also, folks buy pumpkins every year here. I don't know why, but they do.

Dawn,

I think some of the techniques that work well for me may be inappropriate for normal size gardens. All of our garden plots are at least an acre in size.

I have noticed that the areas I rough plowed last Fall (exposing the roots to freezing temps) show very little Johnson grass now.

Johnny

Okie Dawn,

I was referring to onions of all the same kind. I don't have room but for one kind. It's probably just the way my luck runs or the way I farm. Something interesting I saw on Growing a Greener World on ch.13 PBS. Saturday morning. Dr. Lee Reich horticulture - Weedless Gardening. He has a garden that has not been tilled for over 30 years. He uses lots of compost. He is 15 miles from New York. It would be of interest to all no till gardeners.

Most of my garden hasn't been tilled for quiet a few years. I did till a small portion for the potatoes, and another small portion where I needed to work in some manure, but for the remainder, I just dig a small hole and plant.

authereray - My onions are like that this year. Blocks of them look amazing, then there will be a chunk that are much smaller and don't have as many blades. The ones in the ground are much more uniform, with the problem much more obvious in the new raised beds. The soil is exactly the same all through the beds, but the onions show a difference. Almost all of them are Candy. It is as if the onions from one bunch are growing better than the onions from the next bunch. This is the first year I have noticed that. On the positive side, I have not had any bolting in the raised beds and only a few in the ground. Those that did bolt were the very largest plants when I put them in so bolting was expected from them.

According to the daylight charts we hit 14 hours of daylight today but my onions aren't bulbing yet. It probably will not be a great year for onions from my garden. Of course I am so far north that I am much later than most of you. Overall my garden looks good though, tomatoes are blooming nicely and I never expect ripe tomatoes until the end of June. My gardening friends here tell me that the goal is regular sized ripe tomatoes by July 4th, but I normally beat that by a week or two. I usually have snap peas for most of May, but this year they are just now in heavy bloom. My peppers are in the ground but are not showing much growth yet.

soonergrandmom,

Thanks for the observations. I think you helped me figure out the problem. We bought a complete case of Dixondale Yellow Granex. Some are really struggling some are quite happy. Our rows are about 200 feet long and the soil has been uniformly worked and supplemented with compost. The onions that are not happy are in groups in the rows. Some are large groups, some are small groups.

I have been trying to help the slow plants with nitrogen. The rows may go along for 100 feet happy then the next 20 feet are just very sad and short. Then, the next 50 feet may be quite happy.

I think you have figured out the problem. Thanks!

Johnny

bindweed! My new vexation!

i have a new "no til" garden. Cut and removed sod, laid down cardboard, then one foot high raised beds on top with wood mulch in the lanes... The cursed bindweed just kept on coming. In less than a month it is poking up through my raised bed...very discouraging. I am yanking it up diligently, I did hope you wise people would have a magic solution for me.

Okiedawn, my father in law is a agricultural researcher/. He said even round up does nothing to it.

Johnny, The place that Johnson grass drives me crazy is in the garden fenceline. It sprouts directly underneath the fence. I can dig it out, but then that leaves the soil at the fenceline soft and loose and bunnies can tunnel underneath it. Anywhere that we can mow or cut with the stringtrimmer, the Johnson grass remains under control. It doesn't like being mowed, so continually cutting it seems to work really well, but you cannot cut it where it springs up in the fenceline. There's one corner of the back garden that has had a bad Johnson grass problem since day one. I'm going to cover that corner with 6 mm clear plastic and solarize it this summer to see if that helps.

Autheray, I have Dr. Reich's book, Weedless Gardening, and have read it. I do not have as much weed trouble in notill beds, but no-till is not a magic solution here where we live on a slope and neighbors' weed seeds wash down into my garden every time we have enough rain to produce heavy runoff. Already this year I have had over one inch of soil wash into my garden where it settles at the lower end of the garden on top of mulched, planted areas. There's nothing like coming out after heavy rainfall and finding your mulch buried under silty/sandy/weedy soil from the place next door. That's the area where I have the most trouble with bindweed too. It isn't so much of a problem in raised beds that I plant and mulch heavily, but in grade level areas that get lots of runoff from the higher ground next door, it is a real problem. I just accept that a part of every day I am in the garden will be spend yanking out bindweed seedlings. My goal is to remove them daily as they sprout, before they have a chance to grow and become established.

With onions that are underperforming, I just pull them throughout the spring and use them as green onions or as young onions in cooking. If they obviously are lagging behind other onions that are doing better, I can be pretty ruthless and yank them out for immediate use. I grow so many that I don't wait for them all to size up---I use them at any size during the growing season, and we still harvest more mature, full-sized onions than we ever can eat fresh, so I end up chopping up a lot of them and freezing them in 1/2 cup and 1 cup quantities for cooking. All the onions are individuals just like people are---they are not identical clones---so some do better than others. It has always been that way and I used to be perplexed by it until I just decided that was the way it was and that I needed to get over worrying about it.

fitzjennings, Bindweed is the devil! I hate it, and feel we'll never be free of it. Our place was part of a farm for many decades before we bought it, so we have all the weeds common in disturbed soil.

Some people in Colorado, where bindweed seems to be even worse than it is here, have reported some success with diluting Roundup per label directions and pouring it into a cup. They set the cup on the ground next to a bindweed plant. Then they take the bindweed plant's growing tip, and put it in the cup of Roundup. They say that the plant slowly absorbs Roundup over time and it eventually kills the plant. I cannot say whether this works as I've never tried it, but some of those folks who use this technique swear by it.

Dawn

Wonder if that Roundup technique would work on poison ivy? Wonder how long it would have to sit there. Someone mentioned dipping pruners in Roundup and clipping poison ivy and bind weed with them. I don't want Roundup sprayed any where, but I could live with clipping them that way, so I hope to try it this year.

Only thing I've found helps me control bindweed is a commercial weed-eater and strong edging along the fence line and mowing so the bugger cannot get very tall. It seems to be all interconnected below ground The bindweed along the fenceline or other places where it can grow and reach the sun seems to FEED IT ALL.

In the garden: a compost pile helps for a little while. perhaps it is the neutral pH. Same for bermuda on that matter.

Okie Dawn,

I am glad that you have the book on Weed less Gardening because I didn't know if I was telling it right. But I did think it was very interesting though. I am also glad to hear that you are saving the soil being lost from your neighbors water eroded property. One of these days the lower end of your garden will be built up and even with the upper end. (Just trying to find a little good in everything.) A little sediment humor. Soil that washes away is generally supposed to be good dirt. Sorry it covers up what you have planted there. Some of my smaller onions may be some that were seeded late in the bed as there were a couple of bare spots in the seed bed and I scattered some seed in them and they filled in. According to OSU the larger onions in a bundle are more prone to bolt than smaller size ones. Well I guess I've done all the damage that I can do here for now so I will go.

Amy, If I wanted to get rid of poison ivy and I was willing to use a herbicide, I would use a brush killer that contains Triclopyr. However, I won't use a product containing Triclopyr (or any other herbicide) near my garden, and the northwest corner of the garden fence is where the poison ivy is creeping through the fence and into the garden, so I'm sort of stuck and undecided about what to do about the Poison Ivy.

Bon, That is the issue in Colorado---the bindweed forms huge mats of roots underground and no matter how much bindweed you yank out or pull up, more sprouts from the massive root systems.

Autheray, I try to remain philosophical about the runoff and the way it carries everything into my garden, but I do hate coming out to the garden after a really big rain event and finding inches and inches of weed seed-contaminated soil heaped up on top of mulched plants at the north (lower) end of the garden. The worst year ever was 2009, when we got almost 13" of rain in 24 hours and I found several inches of that eroded soil sitting on top of the mulch that I had around my artichoke plants, and the mulch was 4" thick itself. There was nothing I could do at that point, so I left the soil on top of the mulch, put down a new layer of mulch, and fought fire ants in that area like crazy. At the end of the growing season I rototilled it all together. I don't mind capturing my neighbor's eroded soil, but he'd better not come over and ask me to give it back.

With a different neighbor who is east of us across the road, the creek runs through his land, underneath the bridge on our road, and through our property. Apparently he has sandy soil, whereas we have clay. Bit by bit, his sand washes down into our creek. It used to be a rocky creek, but now those rocks are buried under several feet of sand. Sometimes Tim jokes with him and says "you need to come get your land out of our creek". It really isn't funny, though, as they lose a lot of topsil to erosion despite having spent a lot of time and money to have the land graded and regraded and regraded to slow down the erosion. Seeing how the sandy soil erodes like crazy does give me a new appreciation for our clay.

I agree that larger onions are more prone to bolt. If they are larger than the size of a number 2 pencil at planting time, I plant them tightly in a single row along the edge of the raised bed and use them as green onions because they are likely to bolt. I've had less than a dozen onions bolt this year out of over 800 planted, so I can't complain. All my Dixondale onion bundles were greatly overpacked, as if to make up for the fact that some of the onions were obviously too big, so even if I had discarded all the ones that were too big, I still would have had plenty.

Dawn

Where do you buy your UREA?

Tommy Paone,

We usually buy it here. http://www.stillwatermill.com/index.cfm?show=10&mid=91

Thank you Johnny, I'll check with our local Farmer's Coop.