by Noel | Aug 22, 2020 | CobraHead, Gardening, Vegetable Growing
This small bed has 5 wire grate trellises. It’s planted with cucumbers, smaller squashes, small melons, and tomatillos. The wire mesh is a concrete reinforcing insert which is readily available and not expensive. Like the T-posts to which they are attached, they last indefinitely. Jute Connection Everything is tied together with jute twine which I much prefer over plastic twine or plastic wire ties. Jute twine is inexpensive and biodegradable so there is no...
by Noel | Jul 15, 2020 | CobraHead, Gardening, Vegetable Growing
Our vegetable garden is divided into south and north areas. The south area is geometric consisting of 18 open raised beds. The North garden is more fragmented and contains a large and no longer maintained asparagus bed, five smaller beds in production, plus several patches of Jerusalem Artichokes, weeds, and a compost area. Carrots and Beets, Tomatoes Here are a couple north beds. The closest bed gave us some greens, radishes, spinach and...
by Noel | May 18, 2020 | CobraHead, Garden Tools, Gardening, Vegetable Growing
I plant my potatoes in trenches which I make with my old five-tined cultivating hoe. I loosen the soil with the cultivator and scoop it out of the trench with a flat spade. Potato Trenches It doesn’t take long to make trenches about eight inches deep and eight inches wide. Planted Potato Seed I run a row of seed 12 inches apart on one side of the trench and a row on the opposite side, offset 6 inches. This year I planted five varieties, 2.5 pounds of each...
by Noel | May 13, 2020 | CobraHead, Gardening, Vegetable Growing
I set up a hoop tunnel on April 30th and began moving plants into it the next day. Double Hoop on Tunnel Ends This year, I made the ends double, using two pieces of PVC tubing at each end instead of one. This provided a lot more rigidity to the whole structure and made for much easier venting and closing using welders clamps. Trenched Onion Starts The first plants into the tunnel were onion and leeks, which I transplanted from flats to trenches. Sweet...
by Noel | Apr 22, 2020 | CobraHead, Gardening, Vegetable Growing
Here are Anneliese and Andy planting peas. Andy previously had set T- posts 36 inches apart across the width of the beds and 24 inches apart along the outside edges of the bed to give us 10 trellises spaced two feet apart to work with. Lacing in the Trellis. 24” landscape fencing cut to 5-foot lengths is laced in between the posts to create the 10 individual trellises. The peas are planted 2” apart and 1/2 inch deep along each side of the trellis. Yardsticks...
by Noel | Apr 7, 2020 | CobraHead, Gardening, Vegetable Growing
I plant 17 or 18 sweet potatoes plants every year. For the past quite a few years I’ve started my sweet potatoes using sprouts from 2-year-old roots purposely allowed to sprout in the basement. This year, I had a request from our son Geoff, who is in New Haven, Connecticut, for some starts for a community garden he works with, and I also started a few for a friend who lives close by. Under Plastic Normally, I start one box of 25, but this year, we’re going...
