Parsnip Archives - The Gardening Adventure

Relocate mature plants Garden journal – September 2020 Part 2

During the second half of September, we had a few days with temperatures in the 80s and I was able to do some work in the garden. I had to relocate mature plants to make space for the cool season plants. I didn’t want to be late with my cool season plants like last year, so I decided to start early.

One of the tomato plants was getting infested again with a lot of spider mites. The spider mites love the heat and low humidity weather that we’ve had lately and they multiplied fast. I removed most of the leaves and sprayed the plant again with neem oil.

The cucumber plants that were in the ground stopped producing fruits for some time. So I decided to remove them to allow more sun to get to the peppers and eggplants.

In order to make space for the cool plants in the garden beds, I removed and relocated a few mature plants. I removed the celery, arugula and strawberry plants from the garden bed where the big tomato plant is. I purchased a new type of garden soil, Amend from Kellogg, and I mixed it into the existing soil. Afterwards, I planted parsnip, carrots, beets, onions and radishes.

Because my seedlings are not ready to be transplanted outside yet, I purchased 6 seedlings of purple broccoli and transplanted them in the same garden bed.

I used the homemade compost in another garden bed. Because it was enough to cover only about 75% of the space, I will use planting mix and manure for the other 25%.

Relocate mature plants

Last year I compromised my cool season plants because I didn’t remove or relocate mature plants and I planted the cool season crop between a few leftover plants from the warm season. Another mistake was that I transplanted seedlings too late in the fall. Hence this year I decided to do it right and start fresh with my garden beds and a little earlier.

Relocate strawberries

As space is always a problem in my garden, I was planing to relocate the strawberry plants in pots. But after I read an article on Greg Alder’s blog in which he had transplanted strawberries next to the fruit trees, I got inspired to do it the same way.

First I prepared the new location next to my apple tree, by removing the layer of wood chips. Afterwards I watered the place a few times to be sure the water gets at least 4″ deep and made holes for the strawberry plants to go in.

Next I removed the plants from the old location and cut all the runners to have only individual plants and placed them in holes in the new location.

Next to the strawberries I had a few arugula plants that needed to be relocated also. I decided to move them into the other bed with homemade compost. I also watered the new location until the water got at least 4″ deep into the soil, and then I relocated the arugula plants.

Relocate parsley

Because I moved my blackberry plants from the 5 gallon pots into bigger ones, I also had to relocate the parsley plants. As a result of that, I moved them next to the arugula plants as the space was already prepared.

Transplanting blackberry

I created the new potting mix needed to transplant the blackberry plants. In order to do that I took the old potting mix from the parsley plants and mixed it with bark, peat moss, perlite, fertilizer and garden lime. The experiment with the potting mix tried during the quarantine wasn’t successful, so now that I could get all the ingredients, I did it by the original recipe.

In the beginning of the month, when we had the record heat wave, I moved the blackberry plants in the shade next to some trees. And surprise, all the tips the touched the soil developed roots. I cut them and placed them in 4″ pots, hopefully I will get more plants by next year.

I decide to transplant the other Blackberry plant directly into the ground, so I can see if it will be a difference between the plants next season.

Blackberry plant transplanted in the ground

Transplanting raspberry

A friend planted a few raspberry plants last year and he harvested a lot of fruits this year. Since my kids love to eat berries, I want to give it a try. The variety that I found is called Willamette.

Next year I should have strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries if everything goes well. We’re all looking forward to it!

Another project was to fertilize the papaya, dragon fruit and artichoke plants. I finally found some chicken manure at Armstrong gardens.

This month I tried for the first time the air layering of cherimoya and fig trees, hopefully I will have positive results in a month or two.

Garden journal – June 2020 part 2

I continued removing yellow and brown tomatoes leaves in the second half of the month of June.

It was also the time to harvest more parsnip plants. The leaves grew too big and the tomatoes plants next to them didn’t have enough air flow.

I transplanted the last eggplants seedlings also. They were long overdue but I finally created some space after removing celery plants.

I harvested onions for the first time and I started the curing process as it can be seen in the picture below.

Since the cucumbers that I transplanted in pots are not doing well, I decided to plant some more and this time my potting mix is 90% home made compost. Part of the reason why they are not doing well is because I didn’t have the right ingredients for the potting mix and I had to improvise earlier this year. This time, I filled the pots with 90% compost and on top of it I used thin layer of potting mix to plant the seeds.

Preparations for 5 days of rain – April 4 2020

We are expecting 5 consecutive days of rain in a few days. I had some projects that needed to be finished before then:

find a place for the new grape vine that I received from a friend
transplant the last tomato seedlings
empty the barrels for rainwater collection
plant cucumbers and radishes

Below is a picture with my newest addition to the garden: a Kyoho grapevine that I received from a friend. My garden is almost full and the gravine needed a place with full sun, so I decided to place it next to the house. This is probably a temporary location for this year. I built a small wood structure with the materials that I already had, and which I plan to extend as needed.

The next project was to transplant the last 3 tomato seedlings. Below is a picture with one of them. They needed to be transplanted, because they were growing too big for their pots. I was trying to postpone the transplant because I have parsnip currently growing in the location where I wanted to put the tomatoes. I was hoping that I could delay it by another 2 weeks, but as you can see in the second picture, the roots were very close to be root bound.

This is the location that I had planed for my last 2 tomatoes seedlings. I removed 2 parsnip plants to make room for the tomatoes and probably will remove the other ones in 2-3 weeks.

In the picture below, if you look very carefully, you can see the new tomatoes. I bent the parsnip leafs for the tomatoes to get more sun.

I planted the last tomato in a 15 gallon container.

My plan for this year was to plant tomatoes only in the ground and have less than 20 plants total. But because of the coronavirus, I will plant a few in containers also, to have extra produce to share with neighbors and friends.

This is my rain water collection system. I emptied the barrels to make space for the next round of rain water.

The cucumbers that I transplanted in the garden a month ago have died because I transplanted them too early outside. We had very nice weather at the end of February, but in March it was raining a lot and it was cold during the night. Cucumbers need night temperatures of over 50. I planted new cucumbers seeds and I plan to keep them inside for now, because we will have another week with temperatures below 50.

I also tried to grow vegetables that grow faster, so we wouldn’t need to go often to the grocery store during the quarantine. I planted radishes wherever I saw an empty space, like between these peepers and eggplants.

Today in the garden Dec 20 2019

Today I built a structure around my papaya plant to be able to cover it with plastic foil at night when the temperature will get close to freezing.

I also removed the late planted pumpkin (the experiment has failed, I had probably 2 pumpkins that didn’t grow over 1″ in diameter and fell off). I decided to plant some radishes in its place.

I removed the top 10″ of the soil, I put two 5 gallons buckets of compost in the hole and covered it with the soil. The compost will help feed the tomato that I will plant in the spring in that spot.

Failed pumpkin experiment (the plant got infected with powdery mildew)

I covered the seeds with soil and watered them

Today I also planted more parsnip seeds. I think it’s the 3rd time planting in the same place, because only a few seeds germinated.