I started planting in the hugelkultur bed today, and it was a little strange. Add a little water and you create an avalanche. So I tried a few things that seemed to work ok.
I took out a handful of soil, replaced it with compost, and planted okra in the compost.
I dug up the huge comfrey (bocking 14) that was in raised bed 3 and split it up into a bucket full of crowns. I planted one at the base of many of the fruit trees, and a bunch of them in the hugelkultur bed. I also planted a few melons (Ice Cream and Kajari), some lima beans, flowers, and 2 varieties of okra.
Some of my fruit trees are starting to show signs of fruit!
I removed the season extenders from my tomato plants. I planted the tomatoes 2 weeks early and didn’t need the season extenders at all this year.
Since I had to get out for essential materials at Home Depot, I walked through their garden section and picked up 4 of their outrageously priced plants: 3 peppers and basil. Aiden and I got them transplanted, watered, and piled a thick layer of old leaves around everything.
It’s was warm most of last week and has rained all this week. Lots of new green growth in the garden. Most of the fruit trees are flowering.
We are 2 weeks from the average last frost date, but the weather forecast looks like we will be safe so I planted 6 tomatoes. I didn’t have enough of the season starters (aka walls of water) to cover all of the plants, and one did break in the high winds that we had on Saturday.
See the GalliStead interactive map for locations. The big apple tree is a 4-in-1 from Bob Wells and has Dorsett Golden, Gorden, Fuji, and Anna varieties. The other apple tree is a Stark Double Delicious and has Stark® Golden Delicious and Starkrimson® Red Delicious. The tree is so small it is hard to tell where it is grafted though. The two Pawpaw trees also came from Stark Bros and are Potomac and Susquehanna.
I had some good information on a website that broke back in 2012. The content below is a partial recovery of that old website from the waybackmachine at archive.org.
The goal of this website is to share my knowledge of growing food in my backyard garden. I believe the skill of growing your own food is important and in danger as we move to a more convenience-based lifestyle and centralized food distribution model. I also believe in sharing knowledge, so I’m making an effort to document and publish my gardening activity so that others can learn from my mistakes and successes. I try to experiment with different techniques, use what works, and understand why things fail or succeed. One of the great things about gardening is that there is no single ‘right way’ to do something and you can pick and choose the techniques that work for you.
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