Seminole Pumpkin Babies
Even though it's still hot as Hades, it's time to start plants for the fall garden. Kim (community member) and I composted the last of the dried up sunflowers and began to remark the bed for the next planting. This season begins a more intentional plan for where we locate things in the garden. "Crop rotation" is difficult in the small spaces in which we've been gardening, but now that we have a larger garden, it's time to start incorporating it. In a nutshell, rotating crops helps preserve soil fertility and prevent transmission of diseases from season to season. Heavy feeders are systematically moved around the garden so they don't deplete one area of soil, and plants that may have attracted a particular fungus or pest are replaced by ones not as susceptible or as attractive. I like this six-plot plan used in a Texas garden where their crops are somewhat similar to ours.
Right now we have sunflowers and seminole pumpkins growing in flats and will start broccoli and beets next week. Blue Lake bush bean seeds are ready to go directly in the soil next week (I'm waiting for little Riley to come help) and will be planted in succession over the next month - so we won't harvest them all at once. In September we'll plant the pumpkin starts and seed lettuce. October is the month to transplant the baby beets and broccoli, direct-seed carrots and radishes and plant out some onions sets we'll get from the feed store. It's hard to imagine it's ever going to be cool enough again for this stuff to grow, but we're living for that first cool (even comfortable) day... and hoping for a late frost, the gardener's dream.
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