stuff that grows bad for me

[littleminnie]

I have gardened 3 seasons on the land I rent. It is a coarse sandy soil that was a potato farm and it is very windy. Soil test last fall showed excess Phosphorous and good Potassium, estimated low Nitrogen but I supplement that.
These crops grow badly there but it isn't me since I grew them at home fine:
beets
spinach
cucumbers
melons (just ok)


Also I have vast amounts of lamb's quarters weeds but couldn't grow orach last year which is almost the same. I wonder what connects these crops, obviously beets/spinach and melons/cucs are related but what makes both groups do badly?
Could the lamb's quarters make other chenopodias not grow? Also squash and pumpkin grow great so why not cucs and melons? I just haven't had good crops of those at all.

Now I know you folks here are too smart to tell me the basics of soil and wouldn't do so since I have said all the other crops grow well. But can someone see something I am not catching?

[wildseed57]

First off don't feel bad it happens to all of us, since it was a potato farm the land its self is most likely deficient in needed nutrients and minerals, most likely nitrogen and various micro nutrients which you said it was. It sounds like you might need to add more compost both in the soil and on top as you may be loosing your ground water to fast. I grow almost everything now in raised beds this helps to keep needed minerals and nutrients from washing out when it rains and you can get a earlier jump on the growing season. Some vines need a certain amount of shade especially if the summer temps get to hot. I have been thinking of using shade cloth to help shade some of the bed from the burning summer highs.
Also Compost is very important as it helps to keep ground water in and as it breaks down it will release various nutrients and minerals, but you need to make sure that the compost is well rotted else wise it can steal needed nutrients from your garden soil while it is breaking down, wood chips and saw dust makes really poor compost by its self as it robs the soil of nitrogen when it begins to break down. As it is a dry mulch it takes a long time to rot and turn into a good compost.
As I have a good source of composted cow manure, I use it along with rotted hey and cattle feed.
This year I also added a lot of charcoal to the soil as I had a good source of it from where they had been burning brush and tree limbs. There is a good article about Bio-char some where in the forum here. I also spray the soil in my beds with a mixture of yeast, molasses and water which I let ferment some, this helps to feed all the good soil bugs. I spray this mix all over the soil in my beds, if you don't let it ferment it can attract ants. I at times will take a trip to the river not to fish but to dig earthworms to put in my beds. I'm at the point where I don't till the soil in the beds as it disturbs the soil eco system, as I have very few weeds I just remove them and add a new layer of top soil-Compost mix and then just poke holes into the soil where I want to plant my vegetables. I have heard, but not tried yet, and that is to interplanting my food crops with a cover crops that will feed and protect the soil. Also this method will help in trapping certain pest, as many cover crops just happen to be what a lot of garden pest would rather eat than your vegetables. I try not to plant the same vegetables in the same places as I did the year before, And if I'm getting a lot of bugs attacking a certain vegetable I will often not plant that vegetable for a year or two and follow up with planting a vegetable that the bugs don't like as well.
These are just a few things that I do that seems to help the garden to grow better crops, but then again I have found that no matter what you grow, it can all be taken out by the weather.
George W.

[littleminnie]

I brought home 12 truckloads of compost this fall along with the about 3 I made. In spring I will get 3-4 truckloads of composted manure. I have done this for 3 years in my heaped beds. Last spring I hand weeded then dumped and raked the compost but have to be careful not tilling in compost and manure because it can be chunky and dry. In fact I tilled the cow manure in the corn/squash beds 3 times before seeding and the seeds still had great troubles.

I used a lot of annual alfalfa this summer but wonder how people deal with cover crops without tilling them in.

I haven't had micronutrients tested. It is very expensive at the U of M and everything grows well except the 4 things I listed. BTW I believe the ph is about 6.7 maybe 6.5 now. I will stress again that the area is extremely windy.

[grunt]

Hairy vetch can be used as a cover/green manure crop, and just cut and left on top of the soil when 50% or more has flowered. I'd be doing it here, but I can't find seed for it here.

[heidihi]

do a search for analytical labs in your area ..they are great for doing soil testing and have sometimes substantially lower prices depending on the specialty

I have a friend who does all water and soil testing for the state in his area on a contract ..he charges private folks half what the "U" charges because he has all the equiptment set up and running anyway so in between big orders it is easy to toss a soil through or a dried plant ..he will also take my dried up rhubarb (I was so worried about our soil and rightfully so I had him test my plants to see what was in them ) he could tell me so much about what was in the soil or needed in the soil by what he saw in the dehydrated plants he analyzed for me ..it was really interesting ..I took beet leaves to him dried and he said he thinks it was our climate not the soil...

most of what I grow in is ammended to raise pH and keep the contaminants in the soil from chelating into the plants... or in raised beds with compost and stuff trucked in as we could afford it ...I found having my soil tested was essential for us due to the heavy metals but also for getting most of what I have gotten to grow beautifully ...I got the entire breakdown then researched for each thing I wanted to grow ...too much work huh? ...I still feel like I know less than nothing sometimes and even when it is all perfect and the moon lines up with the stars ..still ...argh ..

I adore beets so much that it makes me cry I can not grow them!!!! and I still can not grow them ..even though my soil is correct they are in a good spot ect ect...even if I could grow the beet greens I would be happy.. I love beet greens..and I can grow me some greens!!! all kinds grow like crazy all year here ..but beets ..argh ..I am actually going to plant some now in a hooped bed through the winter this year...and have added more sand to the bed ...and a few other things folks have told me to do....

I am so jealous of folks who grow beautiful beets

I make a wonderful borscht and unless someone drops beets in my yard from their garden I have to go buy them

ps no luck with cukes or melons but this year I did great with squash



since I mostly have raised beds I can tell you I do fork it a bit and turn the cover crop over ..but on my row gardens I just dump compost on top of the cover crop and call it good ..I do turn loosen and turn when I am planting and usually use the areas where I do this to grow my flowers, birdseed and sunflowers ..but now I have this new idea to try this year and I think it is going to work well for my efforts to grow even more sunflowers ...a friend of mine has a great system she she forms her rows ..plants her her cover crops..in the trenches between her formed rows she starts making compost ..she tosses the same ratio of anything vermin will not thrive on ..greens browns and rotted manure .....she never tills anything just keeps her garden in motion ...so between her rows is her composting (she tosses a few stepping stones to avoid stomping the compost and when she starts planting her rows she just turns the cover crop under and pulls anything excess out and puts it in the in between ...sounds like work but I have helped her do this and it was fun nothing was wasted and she did not have to keep or turn a compost bin ...it kept the rows she was growing in warmer and cut down on watering

I hope this helps and even more importantly I hope it is understandable! I feel like I am just rambling and filled a lot of space with it!!!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Nov 14, 2010 18:06:51 GMT -5 littleminnie said:

I brought home 12 truckloads of compost this fall along with the about 3 I made.

My local recycling facility sells several types of compost, all of which I consider to be unsuitable for growing vegetables... That is because they add wood chips to the compost. Then when the wood hits the garden it sucks up all available nitrogen leaving the garden malnourished. They do it because wood chips are plentiful and honest humus like leaf-mould is scarce.

They also offer compost from the sewer which I consider to be unfit and even dangerous to use in gardens because of all the medicines, and household chemicals, and industrial waste that end up in it.

littleminnie: how thick a layer of manure are you adding? I consider anything over 1/2" to be way too much manure, especially if it is immature.

heidihi: Does Swiss chard grow for you? It's the same species as beet. When I look at my neighbors gardens, the most common problem I see with beets is that they get planted way too closely together, especially since one seed pod might send out 8 beet seedlings. Then since they are crowded they grow poorly.

[steev]

I wonder where the cow manure comes from; if a feedlot, is it high in salt? Horse manure is much better, I think.

[littleminnie]

Does anyone know if beets do badly on sandy soil? I never grew them at home because I don't eat them. I see people from the next county with clay soil have beets at market. Except this year was really bad for beets all around and for early spring veggies since they all bolted too early. But really spinach has done bad for a couple years for me.
Anyway it is interesting to hear someone else can't grow beets either and had challenges with melons and cucs.

I should look into cheaper testing for spring and get the minor nutrients done. I didn't have a test done this fall.

Luckily the field I rent has all been sown with winter rye and hairy vetch from some time ago. I have a lot of vetch 'weeds' and all around me is vetch and rye with milkweed weedy in it. I could have worse weeds! They cut or disc in the cover crop yearly and more little vetch and rye come up.

The manure I have gotten in the last two years is from a friend with a shorthorn herd. It is very old and I am getting to the bottom of their pile. I put it on the brassica and melon/corn/squash areas this spring and the squash last year which was greens this year. The brassica transplants loved it but the corn/melons had a hard time germinating due to dryness. I usually have done all cucurbits as transplants but got talked into seeds this season. I am planning to get more very old cow manure and some year old sheep manure from my friends in spring. The sheep manure wasn't old enough this summer yet. I also tried to get llama manure but it is so hard to get anything free from people you don't know. I got some years ago and it was great! I eat little meat and am thoroughly against feed lot anything or even bonemeal.

When I look at my neighbors gardens, the most common problem I see with beets is that they get planted way too closely together, especially since one seed pod might send out 8 beet seedlings. Then since they are crowded they grow poorly.

I argued about this on another forum about beet seeds being fruits and have several seeds inside. Most people didn't believe it and said their beets never need thinning.

BTW Joseph, I have certainly gotten bad compost in the past, but now I know what and when to get it. In fall the compost is very rich and pretty finished. It doesn't have any wood chips fortunately. But the spring compost is all leaves and not rich and not done and way too dry. I get a couple loads to mix my green matter into. I never use compost from town anymore unless I hold it 6 months or more.

[bluelacedredhead]

Minnie, I had sandy soil for 15 years but I didn't bother growing beets because I can buy 10lbs for $2 in October to pickle and that's more than enough beets for me. Neither of us care for them other than pickled.

But Boron deficiency might be something to test for. There is something in the back of my mind telling me that this is a cause of poor beet production??

Also, here's an article from Cornell U about the basics of growing beets. pH no less than 6.0;
soil not too rich...
ecgardening.cce.cornell.edu/PDFs/Veggie%20Fact%20Sheets/Beets.pdf

[steev]

If one has poor germination of beets, one never has to thin; nevertheless, beet seed is a multi-seeded fruit, as can be easily seen by crushing a fruit to release the tiny black seeds.