Garden report from Midwest

 I noted the comments below at ENENEWS

I also have an organic vegetable garden in Zone 5A.    
I have a TON more weeds than last year.   Including a boat load of nasty thistle.

Plants in the greenhouse sprouted well, the second time, after I gave up on my ammonia batch of "potting soil" which was compost that overwintered outside, and then I added fertilizer which just massively turned in ammonia.

I amended the garden with 10 yards of concrete sand, and 15 yards of 3 year old compost from the local government.

90% failure on all direct plant seeds, this was very odd as the soil seemed just great.   We did have some wet and cold spells.    Very disappointing as I wanted to skip a step of container planting.     I quickly batched out the whole greenhouse again and much of that is now ready to go the garden.

I bought a soil test kit, and spent about 2 hours feeling like I was back in high school chemistry.   I wasn't convinced of results but definitely my method became better with practice.    I will compare my results to some samples sent to UW Madison for real lab tests.

2.5 weeks ago, say June 10, none of the transplanted plants in the garden seemed to be "taking".    I did an application of fish emulsion fertilizer, and continued to fight the enormous amount of weeds.

We also had noticed "flea beetles" right out of the gate.    These affect small plants the most and with many plants not "getting their legs" so quickly, they were small and some took damage.   I did not see any flea beetles last year that I noticed anyway.   I wonder why there was a bumper crop this year.    

Finally last week, June 23 and 24 I mulched the whole garden, mulching directly over weeds after pulling the worst of them.    3 days later everything starting looking great.    Prior to the mulching, lots of lettuce type things has already bolted, I didn't recall that from last year, until maybe late July.   

I get a professional grade mulch almost for free, 2 tons for $5 but I have to pick it up in imagine that, a big pickup truck.    You can't mulch too early on as mulching is 3 to 4 inches deep to be effective, and when the plants are small you may just crush them or lose them.    But it is clear that mulching needs to be a procedure every year.      

The mulch from last year all "broke down" self composted and was tilled in.    So the mulch becomes future fertilizer.     Last fall I did not till in fall, but will probably try that this year.    Towards the end of last season, we stopped fighting weeds and these weeds just died in place.   I also left a big pile of Zucchini, eggplant, Okra, Swiss chard and other pulled plants in a pile in the garden, probably a mistake as this help some bugs or molds/diseases to "overwinter" meaning survive the winter.    As the mulch starts to breaks down it absorbs nitrogen from the soil, and then as it really breaks down, you get all that nitrogen back in addition to the nitrogen that was in the mulch itself.     So the trick is to apply some slow release nitrogen just prior to the mulch, in other words, chicken manure, I used a processed type bought at a big box store.    It would be nice to find a chicken farmer, and we do know one so I will ask.

I also did quite a bit of property improvement at 2 flower gardens that really needed help, and at one "tangle" just a huge mess of stuff that when removed, we foudn there was nothing there at all.    It is a neat area right at the entry to the property.  Highly shaded by a willow, cool, and good moisture, so that is now the "Willow Grotto", trying a ground cover, Shasta Daisy, and for now, lettuce and mint.

The "prairie" areas were overrun with weeds, and a lot of good plants look like weeds so it was very difficult to decide what to kill/remove.    Now the earliest flowers are showing and I am making a leaf "book" to identify.    I did not cut down the wildflower areas last year but will this year.    I did harvest maybe 20,000 coneflower seeds but have not planted them at this time, other priorities.

I did not get to plant the orchard this year.     1 have 1 apple, 1 pear, 1 peach.    The peach was put in last summer and immediately started to fruit, it is 4' tall and lots of new growth just last 2 weeks, but no flowers or signs of buds.    It is a Gerogia Belle and maybe it needs a companion to fertilize?    There are no other peaches in the nearby areas, and I mean miles.

I will plant the Orchard this fall.    Plum, Cherry, Persimmons, another apple such as Honey Crisp, maybe another pear, and possibly others.   I missed the pre-emergment oil this spring as I was highly distracted by business interests in Hawaii and just not around.   Apple

Status of Garden June 29, 2015.     After a very worrisome start, things are looking great, especially after the mulch.   It just seems like the plants were a ton happier after the mulch, maybe there is something weird like weed pheromones that upset the vegetables?    There are a number of areas of failed direct seed that are waiting for greenhouse plants to be popped in.    

I never knew what peas in a pod were supposed to taste like, now I do.    Now it will be impossible to ever eat that "pea type product" they label in a can, LOL.

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Checkmate

June 27, 2015 at 12:50 pm · Reply

Food Update: South central Wis. about organic food effected by Cesium. The asparagus mentioned previously, first cutting were unreasonably full of fibers and inedible (90% bad). The strings got wrapped around the teeth and also upon swallowing just a little- felt like it wrapped around internal throat flap or tonsils. The second cutting was about half as bad- probably due to a short exposure in the field. Last week first turnip pickings: noticed the turnip greens had same as mentioned above. All turnips had like a l/8th inch shell around it of very heavy fiber. The second pickings still had 100% bad greens but the turnip didn't have as much fiber in the shell only about 1/16 inch, but it was still there. The Napa cabbage was totally fiber and inedible- a total disaster. Will keep you informed of the continuing season as things are picked. This all from an organic certified farm.
Previously, I had mentioned about the asparagus coming from South America being bad. Also the string beans from Guat. being bad and loaded with this fiber.
It isn't GMO doing this as I know the organic farmer and I have organic asparagus growing wild and it is happening to that. These products have unbelievable fiber and I don't know if they are healthy to eat or swallow as they wrap around your teeth (and maybe your internal organs?)…I appreciate any input…
Fuku is really starting to take effect in changing and destroying the Midwest vegetable crops. Farmers and careful eyes see it.

• alasanon

  June 29, 2015 at 11:35 am · Reply

  Wow…Those are interesting reports!!.. After watching over these years, recorded measurements from rain & snow up there did seem to indicate that some of the Midwest was getting hit hard by fallout.. especially, anecdotal evidence from Michigan!!…I couldn't believe their readings and stories of exposed people/severe symptoms–!? It must have something to do with Wind/Jet stream currents & precipitation patterns…
  i think a few of the local organic farmers' market goods seem a little different on the East Coast, too?…maybe smaller or larger?…more insect holes?..dunno. One of my garden plants has several crooked or bent stems, but that may be its susceptibility to the severe storms we've had out here nearly every few days this year… (I just remember this flower being so straight before–could be the storms though) My other plants are growing intensely, but are not "funny looking" or bent at all. I dunno.
  You can get paranoid. To be honest, I have not noticed any bad reaction to eating the local stuff after washing. I have noticed something when forced to eat W. coast origin food-? (I detox & try to reduce risk, so that helps.)
  Remember after Chernobyl, one of the proven best authorized cooking methods to reduce Cesium was BOILING foods, including meats. It reduced 80% of the radioisotope deposits in tests…plus, good for taters!
  Need more enterprising greenhouses, filtered hydroponics!!
  We need to get into indoor home…
  
  

  • alasanon

    June 29, 2015 at 11:38 am · Reply

    (cont.) gardening/Greenhouses!!! *Climate proof!! This weather has been crazy, too…
    
    

Checkmate

June 27, 2015 at 12:58 pm · Reply

Also the first spinach crop was good, probably because the growing time is shorter and it was in the field less time…

Checkmate

June 28, 2015 at 10:03 am · Reply

Organic broccoli after cooking- noticed the lower part of small stalks of small broccoli heads getting about 10% of fiber creeping up the stems on about 20% of the bunch.
Last year noticed that about 80% of a cabbage head purchased from a store imported from Michigan was inedible. Since it was not organic, I attributed it to GMOs or the spider gene put in the plant. But if it is happening here, where I know nothing is altered, than it is definitely being caused by Cesium in the soil, which has accumulated so much that it is rending vegetables totally inedible. Which means in this case that the only thing left to do in the coming future will be to juice all vegetables and toss all the collected fiber away left in the juicer. It is a matter of time- I give it at the most 2 years before the Midwest vegetable crops (and probably the entire world crop) are completely inedible and everyone is juicing whether organic or not…
And the Jap radiation won't stop as it has been increasing year after year and the soil is collecting more and more untold amounts of Cesium fallout from the rain as the Jap Fuku keeps smoking and screwing up the world with the untold college Nuke experts and genius sitting on their thumbs, saying we didn't know this would happen. Kind of like buying a car and not expecting ever dent the fenders or get in an accident. The China Sy. movie should have been the wake-up call and these jerks should have thought about that- certainly the guy that wrote it did!!

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from Dud, a link on fertilizers

http://www.growinganything.com/organic-garden-fertilizers.html