Veggie Gardening
Summer's Harvest In Review
While it’s fresh in your mind, it’s a good idea to record what is happening in your veggie garden to make next year’s garden even better. Reviewing your notes and pictures before you plant next spring is invaluable. We're including some advice on what to take special note of now, so you can make any needed changes before the next planting season. We’ll talk crop rotation, water, and drip choices.
Crop Rotation
Crop rotation is changing the places where you have been putting your veggies in the garden bed. By rotating you can stop many diseases and pests, and greatly improve soil health. It turns out that those diseases and pests are smart—if they found a good place to make trouble this year, they will head right for that same spot next year. By switching up veggie placement, plant-specific diseases and pests are left without anything on which to survive and they die. As an incredible bonus, rotation allows soil depleted by one plant type to recover, greatly increasing yields by impressive amounts.
Two good rules of thumb:
- The same type of plant can’t be in the same spot for more than two years in a row.
- Give the soil two years before you put that same plant type in that planting spot again.
Water
Sometimes we find that our plants and soil are thirsty nearly every day. This is a leading cause of low fruit and flower yields. The garden soil might be too loose, letting water drain out almost as fast as you put water in. Adding a layer of mulch does wonders to hold in irrigation. Our gurus recommend E.B. Stone™ Organics Earthworm Castings—just an inch thick on the surface, to keep soil moist longer, provide excellent organic fertilizer and to suppress weed growth. Apply castings twice a year, when you initially plant, and again three months later.
Drip Irrigation Choices
As a reminder, veggie roots grow wider to match the canopy edge as the season progresses. This means we keep adding emitters. This can lead to a lot of drip emitters all over the planting bed, with monitoring and repairs for broken or clogged emitters. Consider drip soaker tubing. Drip soaker tubing is easy to use and frees you from having to add or replace drip emitters, all while providing efficient water savings and a clean, tidy look.
Notes For Next Year
A few other ideas to make next year shine:
- Take pictures or snip samples of any problems you have now and bring them in for our gurus. We can help you get ahead of the problems by recommending steps for fall, winter, and early spring.
- Write down which varieties you planted this year. You might want to try something slightly different next year!
