The importance of fertilizer

Hmmm, methinks that manure does not count. When I planted in mid-april, I turned everything, added some new soil and amended with manure. Two things were in the back of my mind: 1) Why do they mention manure AND fertilizer as something you amend the soil with? 2) 'soil' that has a lot of wood chips in it robs the soil of nitrogen. Too bad this was all I could find.

See the problem there?

So after a month everything I had looked pathetic. Half of the crops didn't come up either. A brief tally:

Ye Olde Pumpkin Patch
Potatoes: yes and doing very well
Pumpkins: yes but weak

Main Bed
Spinach: yes! and very well. Already harvested a batch VERY tasty!!!!!
Onions: yes, but hard to tell the status since its just that one string of green popping out of the soil.
Lettuce: Nope
Tomatoes: 2 very weak plants.
Carrots: none, but 2 survivors from last season
peppers (thai and jalapenos) : none

Main bed 4 sisters
Corn: yes but weak (about 12 of 36)
Pumpkins: nope
Lima Beans: 2 out of a possible 36
Sunflowers: 3 out of 9

Driveway bed
Mammoth Sunflowers: yes and very tall
Eggplant: none
Cantaloupe:7
Cayenne: none
Sweet peppers: none
Bell peppers: none
Strawberries: none

Now I am suspecting that the wild temp swings killed out some of the sensitive stuff (i.e. no lettuce or strawberries) because it was 90 one day and then had a frost the next night. Also, all of the varieties I planted were Heritage. As in, there are not just not GMO but are also not hybrids. As in the "original" crops. Which is kid of a misnomer since 'original' corn is teosinte and that has but 4 kernels on it. But I digress.

So, when I got back from the beach on June 1, I did a second planting.

Ye Olde Pumpkin Patch
Added more pumpkins in Ye Olde Pumpkin patch.

Main Bed
Added more of 3 of the 4 sisters (no more sunflower seeds, but there are lots of mammoths anyway) Also planted squash instead of pumpkins in 1/2 of the mounds
Planted Broccoli to replace failed lettuce.
Added more tomatoes
Added more peppers
Replaced the failed sunflowers with something that escapes me at the moment.

Driveway bed
Replaced the Strawberries with 3 bean salad beans (the varieties escape me)
Replanted the Bell peppers
Replaced the sweet peppers with Dragon peppers (I know super hot)
Replanted cayenne
Replanted the eggplant
Scattered broccoli about.

But... I also added fertilizer. Sadly it was viagro non-organic. 10-15-10. I know, but I couldn't find organic fertilizer at the Despot and was pressed for time.

Suddenly...BAM!!! I mean the next bloody day the pumpkins doubled in size and the sunflowers were taller than the Littlest Giant. Everything that was 'weak' is now vibrantly green. The corn is higher than my knee and the beans (the two that made it), are now racing to get taller than the corn. I may have to cull them so that they don't fight the corn for water. Interestingly, I am seeing carrots pop up where I did not plant them. I am thinking that they got shifted around in the soil when I added the fertilizer (I raked the bed). Now I am thinking that I might suddenly have crops all over the place. Possibly the seeds that did not germinate at the original planting may come up now. If they do, its gonna be nuts!

I hope it was just the lack of fertilizer that made for such a pathetic start, because I would hate to think that the heritage variety (the most genetically diverse by definition) was to blame. Last year when I said that I had to fertilize at planting I thought that was manure. It wasn't. It would have to have been either my worm compost, or fertilizer.

I am hoping to get organic fertilizer for the next feeding which I guess is July 1 or sooner depending on who you talk to. Also I need to see about replacing the apple tree with 2 new ones, but I need to talk to the guy at the nursery. Also, the azaleas will be replaced with blueberry and raspberry bushes.

Yeah I know at lot of work, but the apples and berries are perma-culture, so I don't have to do it every year.

Deer fence is up, but was too short to surround the main bed. So I need to get some more posts to finish the job. I also need to make sure it doesn't sag or overlap because I needed to save a bird and bee yesterday that refused to fly backwards to get out.

Drip irrigation is useless since the beds are just too big. I need to think of a better system, since the pump works great.

Pics as soon as I can take some, probably today.

Garden 3.0 Update

The Higher Mind of New England has released me, for now, so I will actually have some time to write again (I guess I'll need it since I completely lost a manuscript I was working on. *sigh*) I had some pictures of the garden set-up but they are really bad. "Hey great! Murky water and dirt whoopee!" So I will take better pics probably this weekend. Everything has sprouted, except that I don't remember what I planted in most places. That might present a problem no? :) We had another frost, but it wasn't bad. Of course the spinach is already getting chewed by something as well.

Sadly, the apple tree in the front of the house was cut down. All that snow this year (37 inches total) really beat up the plants in the area. The tree split in half and then the other half was dying. That and 3 azaleas were cut down yesterday. So that one tree will be replaced with 2. Probably in the fall, so it gets planted dormant. Now I just need to decide which tress I want. (apple tress can fertilize each other, and can be different species. You won't get Granny Delicious or anything though.) I do need 2 since self-pollinating trees make crappy apples as the ones of the old tree illustrated.

I'll get some good pictures up soon. I'm just glad I don't have a paper to do, for at least 4 months. :)