Green Thumb Up My Nose: Lessons learned from 2023

Summary of the Year

Growing season was about like last year. It started out cold — not hitting 70F until early May — and then turned scorching hot, with record-breaking warm into early October before crashing to killer frost at the end of the month.

Lessons Learned from 2023  

1. Add screws to furring stakes before you put them in. Makes it easy for plants to grow up them
2. Either don’t plant the center row, or plant them early, so they don’t get shaded out.
3. Put down more fertilizer earlier — as soon as I can work the ground.
4. Harvest winter Tromboncinos as soon as they turn brown.
5. Don’t bother planting potatoes.
6. Plant more Delicata squash. Only planted one, and that only had one fruit.
7. Don’t bother with Zucchini. Cocozelle is better.
8. Don’t bother with Pattypan. Hard to cook and tastes about like Summer squash.
9. Don’t use old cocoa or chips containers for seedlings. The metal rims make it hard to transplant.
10. Weed whackers with plastic cutters work well on chopping up tomato and squash remnants. I can bury the detritus into the soil, or into grow-bags.

Results of Lessons Learned from 2022

1.  For some reason, possibly because of shade from plants on the furring stakes, the plants in the middle column didn’t do well. That means we should only plant 8 plants per section, or maybe plant the central row early. I forgot to do this, and had the same problem.
2.  Planting singleton potatoes in 10″ pots didn’t work out. Possibly too cold. Planted potatoes in Section 4 and got lousy yields.
3.  Planting carrots in a cooler works pretty well. Did not try that this year. 
4.  If I want to plant late harvest (October) determinate tomatoes, I need to plant out seedlings in early/mid July (except that the nurseries close out in mid June). Or buy seeds and start them in early-mid May. Forgot to try this.
5.  Cut spaghetti squash along the lines of latitude and cook the ensuing donuts. This works very well and makes nice single servings.
6.  Soaker hose doesn’t cover a lot of ground, so young seedlings a few inches away get dehydrated. Maybe try a sprinkler hose, instead. Tried sprinkler hoses, but they all leaked.

Green Thumb Up My Nose: Plans for 2023

We are at the tail end of a fairly strong La Nina year out in the mid-Pacific. The winter was cold and a little wet, with snowfall being near average and the snow that fell around Thanksgiving was still on the ground coming up on President’s Day. So, given that we’re still a little early for definitive plans, here’s how I see things going.

Continuing my two-field rotation, I’ll put squash in Section 1, and tomatoes in Section 2. I’m going to try putting early tomatoes/squash in the center row a couple of weeks before the rest so that they get a head start and stay unshaded.

For squash varieties, a recent YouTube I watched said that standard Zucchini were really too wet and seedy, and that specialty variants, like Trombocini, Scallop/Pattypan, and Delicata were a better investment. For winter squash, Acorn, Buttercup, Butternut, Spaghetti, and Pie Pumpkin. That makes eight, and since my seed starter has 32 cells, I’m starting four of each and winnowing down to one or two seedlings. Since I’m planning on only nine posts in Section 1, the last spot will be a store-bought Summer Squash.

A different YouTube listed the best tomatoes for our hot and dry, short season location. They included the locally available Early Girl, Beefsteak, and Champion, so that’s what I’ll be planting.

Current layout is:

Section 1: squash
Section 2: tomatoes
Section 3: lettuce, carrots, peas, whatever else strikes my fancy
Section 4: corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes.

House containers: tomatoes, sweet potatoes, potatoes, cucumber, peppers