Raising Sweet Corn, Pumpkins, and Squash.

[RSKY]

I forgot to add that the easy part is planting the veggies and stuff. The hard part is fighting weeds and insects for two or three months. The hardest part is picking all the peas, beans, and corn. Processing all the veggies for canning or freezing is both time consuming and plain hard work.

This fall my wife bought about a dozen plastic bowls at Wal Mart for fifty cents each. We ended up going back and getting several more. They held a little less than two gallons. We used them for everything in our processing. Still use the granite steel bowls for cooking and cooling the corn but the plastic ones made transporting and temporary storage much easier. Since we quadrupled the size of our crop we needed more movable storage in our kitchen. The proper item to have is the blue speckled granite bowls but they are expensive.

A question for Green Power. Have you ever raised a garden before?

RSKY

 

[Green Power]

I plant my corn rows 3' apart. We use one of the hand pushed planters with changeable plates for different seeds. Makes for much straighter rows. Some types of corn cannot be planted together because it will cross pollinate and the results will not be what you want. I don't know enough about the subject to even begin to talk about it. I just look at the seed package or the info online in the seed catalogs.

My plans for next year are as follows. In early March I will use the old Ford tractor to disc the garden three or four times. A week or so later, depending on the weather I will take my little Kioti in with my 4' tiller and till it north-south three times until the soil is very fine. Right before I plant an area I will run the tiller east to west to help mark off the rows. I have to back up into the garden to do this because of fences.

I am planting, from north to south, four types of English Peas. I have never raised these before and am relying entirely on the online catalogs for instructions. I'm planting four different types to see what everybody likes best. Then the next year I will concentrate on that type. They are to be planted in double rows 1' apart with 4' between the double rows. First row will be two staked varieties. Next row will not be staked. These will be planted sometime in late March. At the same time I will plant the first row of potatoes. The English Peas take from 60 to 70 days to be ready to pick. The potatoes take between 90 and 110. All this depends on the weather.

Next will be four rows of Early Sunglow Hybrid corn. This is a very short stalk, very quick maturing variety. It will be planted in mid April. Should be eating fresh corn on the cob by the first of July.

Next is at the end of April when I do my big planting. There will be another row of potatoes. Then three rows of Kentucky Wonder Green Beans (there is no other kind in my opinion) which have to be staked. Then there will be an experiment with Lima Beans. Wife says easier to buy them because she hates picking them but I'm going to plant several different types to see what the family likes the best. There will be half a row of King of the Garden, half a row of Willowleaf, half a row of Fordhook 242, half a row or Jackson Wonder, and a full row of Thorogreen. What will probably happen is what happened to one of my wife's cousins. He planted several types of green beans to see what he liked best and his wife mixed them all together. Too much trouble is what she said.

On the same day I will plant four rows each Honey Select Triplesweet, four rows Peaches and Cream, and four rows of Kandy Korn sweet corn. All these can be planted together.

All rows are spaced three feet apart with a skipped row between plant types. Also the beans have a skipped row between them so there will be 6' between the rows of green and lima beans. I made that mistake last year with my KY Wonder green beans and we had to walk on vines to pick them.

The same day or the day after I plant my main garden I will move to my oldest daughter's house and plant the pea patch. Daughter is 31 and she would eat purple hull peas at least two meals every day if they were available. They are her favorite vegetable. Since the deer ate all 650 row feet of peas I planted last year we are moving them to her house. I will plant three rows each of three different types of purple hulls and three rows of black eyed peas. Rows are 80' long, spaced 3' apart with a skipped row between types. There will also be four rows of Bodacious corn. As far as I'm concerned that is the best type to cut off the cob for cream style frozen corn. I will also leave space for some tomatoes, straight neck squash, and maybe a watermelon plant of two. Had a smaller garden there last year and the four year old granddaughter would go out all the time and eat the cherry tomatoes until her mouth would get sore from the acid. They had to make her understand that she could only raid the plants every other day. Gonna make sure all tomatoes there are bush type.

Next I go to the youngest daughter's house. She has the least space and only has tomatoes, squash, peppers, and such. I will probably move the bell peppers there too.

Finally I will till up the small patch at my house. I have only about a 25' x 15' space and that is pushing it. My vine type tomatoes for salsa and spaghetti sauce go here. Also several cucumber vines for pickles. Squash for the grill and to be fried. Okra in two different varieties will be planted.

I am negotiating with a friend who has commercial chicken houses to get a couple trailers of manure for the gardens. Much better than getting cow manure. The chickens are raised inside and their waste does not have seeds in it. Got some cow manure two years ago and put it on my little patch at my house and some type of weeds nearly choked it out. Had to Roundup the entire spot three of four times to try and kill it out.

I am going to try a gutter garden at our house and maybe the youngest daughter's too. We are going to try carrots, tomatoes, hot peppers, bell peppers, and maybe even some peanuts and cantaloupes just to see how it works out.

My wife works at the local university during June and July. She leaves for work and I leave for the garden about the same time. I work from 8:00 to about 12:00 and then call it a day, I am retired you know. If all goes to plan I will start in early March and not finish until late September when we usually take a two week vacation somewhere.

All this work is to provide fresh and preserved food for three families. We also give away a lot to other relatives and friends. Watermelons, pumpkins, and usually cantaloupes are usually more trouble and take more space that they are worth for me to try and raise. Better bought at Wal-Mart. Peas, limas, and corn is usually frozen while green beans are canned in a pressure canner. Pickles are done in a water bath canner. Have read of several ways to preserve potatoes but usually they will all be gone before winter.

I got carried away writing this but I was finalizing what I'm planting and getting ready to order seed when I read your post so typing this has helped me plan it all out. I put it all on spread sheets anyway.

RSKY

It sounds like you will keep yourself busy and then some. Between everything you planted you'll have yourself a couple acres to deal with, but i imagine it will all get used.

 

[Green Power]

I forgot to add that the easy part is planting the veggies and stuff. The hard part is fighting weeds and insects for two or three months. The hardest part is picking all the peas, beans, and corn. Processing all the veggies for canning or freezing is both time consuming and plain hard work.

This fall my wife bought about a dozen plastic bowls at Wal Mart for fifty cents each. We ended up going back and getting several more. They held a little less than two gallons. We used them for everything in our processing. Still use the granite steel bowls for cooking and cooling the corn but the plastic ones made transporting and temporary storage much easier. Since we quadrupled the size of our crop we needed more movable storage in our kitchen. The proper item to have is the blue speckled granite bowls but they are expensive.

A question for Green Power. Have you ever raised a garden before?

RSKY

I am glad i have my family to help me with this. My mom already owns all the stuff for canning so i dont have to worry there. She makes some really good chokecherry jam.:thumbsup: Yes i have some experience with gardening but only in a 196 square foot garden. So this will be quite a bit larger.

 

[Green Power]

So currently i am thinking that i will try raising Pumpkins, Sweet Corn, Squash, Potatoes and Tomatoes.

 

[charlz]

For butternut squash I like Burpee's Butterbush as it is a compact plant. I use diatomaceous earth for squash bugs. It works OK, not total kill but it keeps the population down and is safe for consumption. I treat every squash plant and then if I see groups of bugs I dust them. I use an old baby powder bottle and 'puff' it onto the plants, you can buy an applicator as well. The baby powder bottle works pretty well if you are careful so you just dust and not 'spray'.

For potatoes I run a trench with a middle buster, lay in a drip line, sprinkle some 16-16-16 down the trech, place the seed potatoes and cover. When they come up you can start hilling them. The last hilling I use compost real thick which helps keep the weeds down and builds the soil. Harvest time I pull up the drip line and run the middle buster down the row again. Just want to make sure that when you plant you are not going full depth on your middle buster so come fall the tip will be running below the potatoes and not through or scalping them. I like to bust the soil will just a narrow tongue on the middle buster in the spring before tilling the beds to make sure I break up any hardpan and can get deep with the middle buster for fall harvest.

 

[RalphVa]

What I did when I had the big garden was to plant my corn 1/2 rows about 8 days apart. This spreads out the harvest nicely. You can do about 5 rows this way, by the 6th row, it starts getting too late. This is starting the 1st 1/2 row in mid April here in Virginia, zone 7.

You can do the same thing with beans. Plant a few at a time over about 10 days or so between plantings. Bush beans. Pole or asparagus beans just get planted after last frost.

Ralph

 

[RSKY]

My entire garden, all four spots, total less than 4 tenths of an acre.

We try to have everything coming in at different times so we don't have corn and beans at the same time.

 

[Green Power]

What is hilling Potatoes? I'm sorry i hadn't mentioned it before but i want to plant NON GMO heirloom varieties, that have stronger insect and disease resistance, more nutrients and not cross pollinated.

 

[charlz]

Hilling is the process of mounding up dirt around and on the plant. Potatoes, like tomatoes, can grow roots from the green parts if they are buried. This gives you a stronger root system and with potatoes may result in an increase in production. Since potatoes turn green and become inedible when exposed to sunlight it also helps ensure there is enough dirt over them so they will not poke out and turn green.

When you transplant tomatoes one technique that utilizes this feature of the plant is to bury almost all of the plant in a horizontal trench so promote root growth. You just leave the top couple leaves poking out of the ground.

 

[charlz]

I'm sorry i hadn't mentioned it before but i want to plant NON GMO heirloom varieties, that have stronger insect and disease resistance, more nutrients and not cross pollinated.

I think you are referring to Hybrids, which are not the same as GMO, and GMO in the same sentence. Hybrids are crosses of two parent plants which don't normally produce 'true' from seed. Each time you want to have seed for that hybrid you have to cross pollinate the two parents. Heirlooms or 'open pollination' are the result of cross-pollination that have produced true from seed and thus become their own little part of the family. Their pollination just happens in the garden by bees etc and when you save and grow the seeds you get the same plant as the parent. Heirloom cross-breeding to produce other Heirlooms (open pollination types) and Hybrid breeding (closed pollination types) is how we have hundreds of tomato varieties for example. There is nothing 'scary' about Hybrids, you just won't be able to save seed and replant the following year, you have to buy seed each year.

GMO on the other hand is where genes from a completely different plant or organism are introduced for the traits they express. An example would be bt-Corn where genes from a soil organism (BT) are spliced into the corn to make it toxic to things like corn ear worms.