Stupidest. Carrots. Ever.

I harvested my tiny carrot patch this morning. They were all such tiny little things – short and stout. Pathetic. I'm sure they could have benefited from having been grown under true full-sun conditions, but wouldn't lack of sun have just resulted in all-around smaller carrots, both short and thin? These were short and fat. Which makes me think it had something to do with the fact that their growth got stunted when I transplanted them from seedlings. I personally think that was a silly idea. Thanks, HtGMV.

D is for dig, T is for transplant

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I have been doing stuff in the garden, I've just had no time to blog about it. Pictures will come this evening! I can't take photos during the day because the middaylight makes things look crappy on film.

So, I don't remember where I was at in terms of number of raised beds last time, but I'm up to 5 now. I'm getting into the groove; it doesn't take me quite as long to double-dig a bed anymore. Here is the layout of the raised beds and what I have planted in them:

Yesterday I double-dug the fifth bed – the square-shaped one in the middle – and transplanted lots of things into it. I also transplanted more things into the bed on the right. I've managed to cram a lot of different kinds of plants into a pretty small space. We'll see if they like it!

My method of choosing where to plant what was rather ad-hoc, but I often make use of these three guidelines to help me decide:

• Companion planting: Which plants grow well together, and which do worse?
• Shading and space: How tall and wide to the plants grow?
• Age of seedlings: What needs to be transplanted most urgently?

The second guideline came in handy for the tomatoes, sunflowers, and squash. I know tomatoes and sunflowers can grow quite tall and produce a lot of shade, so they should be planted close to the north-ish edges of beds. Squash tend to take up a lot of horizontal space, so I planted them at the back of the yard so they could sprawl onto the back laneway.

For the curious, here's an exhaustive list of what's now planted in my garden, listed alphabetically:

• barley (Arabian blue)
• basil (sweet)
• carrots (Scarlet Nantes)
  
• chard (rainbow mix)
  
• cilantro
  
• corn (Indian blue)
• cucumbers (lemon, Pointsett 76)
• edible flower mix:
  • calendula
  • borage
  • cilantro
  • cornflower
  • sunflower
• flax (golden)
• lettuce (French heirloom Merveille des Quantres Saisons, black-seeded Simpson)
• melon (Pride of Wisconsin)
• morning glories
• peppers (Frank's sweet)
• pole beans (Blue Lake)
• poppies (Shirley)
• potatoes (white and red, though not sure exactly what varieties)
  
• pumpkin (small sugar)
• radishes, now going to seed
  
• spearmint
• spinach (Bloomsdale)
• tomatoes (Sweetie, Scotch Bonnet, Ruffled Red)
• zucchini

I've also been picking off the leaf miner-infected parts of my spinach and chard on a regular basis, and it's definitely helped. The plants seem to be happier, even though they've suffered much defoliating, and the leaf miners aren't making fast progress anymore. I was finally able to harvest my first spinach leaves a few days ago (which is accounted for in the list on the right).

Bed #3: Transplants galore

I double-dug a third raised bed in the back. I'm having to make the best use of space back there while making do with a gigantic cold frame dead in the middle of it. So far I'm doing pretty well, but something will have to be done with the cold frame sooner or later. I probably won't need it for that much longer anyway.

This bed is my biggest one yet. Into it I transplanted hulless Arabian blue barley, Indian blue corn, the rest of my rainbow chard, the rest of my Bloomsdale spinach, Simpson leaf lettuce, and Scarlet Nantes carrots. The bed is bordered on one side by a fence, which I lined with corn, but there are still pockets left between the corn for morning glories, which are almost ready to be transplanted. I also left room at the end of the bed for something that will sprawl or climb, like beans, cucumbers or winter squash. (I may settle for beans, as it will be a while before any squash seedlings exist.)

I also had several healthy-looking Shirley poppies ready to be transplanted. After my first failed attempt to raise poppy seedlings, I ended up sowing another set of poppy seeds in a flat full of soil the same way I sowed all my other seeds (the biointensive way), rather than into biodegradable cups as suggested by Elizabeth. They were quite delicate and a little hard to handle when transplanting, but not as hard as my carrot transplants, and I can see why people don't recommend transplanting carrots – long roots! I found a bit of extra space in my second bed behind the chard and spinach for the poppies.

HtGMV argues for doing as many transplants as possible, rather than seed things directly. Among the few vegetables they recommend seeding directly into the ground are garlic, horseradish, radish, and shallots. Everything else, however, they say to start in flats full of soil. Even most grains they recommend transplanting (but the amount of time required to accomplish this on a large scale scares me). They offer some compelling reasons for transplanting seedlings:

• It makes better use of bed space: During the time that a seed takes to reach seedling stage, something else can be grown in the bed in the meantime.
• You end up with few to no gaps between mature plants, thus again making optimal use of bed space as well as keeping the bare soil protected from evaporation and weed growth.
• Plants grow better if they are evenly spaced. Even the most carefully broadcasted seeds will form a random pattern, resulting in plants that are too close together competing for light, water and nutrients.
• Transplanting stimulates growth: The loose, nutrient-rich soil of a freshly prepared raised bed acts as a second "meal" for seedlings.
• Seedlings in a flat require much less water than seedlings in a bed.

I'm trying to picture transplanting a field of wheat or spelt by hand, in a hexagonal pattern, each seedling spaced 5" apart. And then oats, rye, and barley. Seems rather daunting. Once each spring to grow enough grain to last me the whole year. Hmm. I guess I'm up for the challenge...

Chard chomper & second bed

I noticed today that my Swiss chard seedlings were actually starting to get cut off at the base, just above the root. At first I thought it might be another case of damping off, but upon examining the soil close to the stem I caught a little larva-like critter red-handed. I did away with it appropriately (flicked it with my finger to nowhereland). A cursory Google search suggested it might be a darkling or rove beetle – assuming I lived in Arizona.

Whatever pest it may be, I figured the best way to handle it was to transplant the seedlings, seeing as their first true leaves (the leaves that grow after the seed leaves, or cotyledons) have finally appeared. But that meant digging a new bed, because I refuse to plant chard next to carrots and radishes if they're not going to benefit one another in some way (they aren't companion plants). So I double-dug a new raised bed in the backyard. It took a few hours, as I had to remove the plastic lining that lay beneath the gravel and penetrate the seriously compacted soil that it covered. Here is the result:

Into this bed I transplanted spinach and rainbow chard seedlings. To remove the seedlings from the flats, I used a short kitchen knife to help loosen the soil beneath them. Following the guidelines in HtGMV, I spaced the spinach 6 inches apart and the chard 8 inches apart in a hexagonal pattern (separately, don't worry). I realize now that I probably should have spaced them twice as close together and harvested the thinnings as soon as their leaves touched. I'll do that tomorrow. Immediately after transplanting, I watered the bed and sprinkled cayenne powder around them. By the way, I noticed that the radish leaves out front that had undergone extended contact with cayenne powder have started to curl. I'm trying to avoid sprinkling the powder directly on the plants now, which is much easier to achieve with 6-8 inch spacing.

Speaking of radishes, I thought I'd post a picture of how they're coming along. Note that the pattern would probably be flawless were it not for the rodents.