Muscles sore after yesterday's start: planting a vegetable garden for my sister-in-law's family. After I suggest she put in a vegetable garden, she decided to gang-press me into it, as well. Once her family decide to go for it, they were excite to get started. So yesterday we seeded Nante Half-long carrots, Purple Top turnips, collards, Fordhook swiss chard, red potatoes, and set plants of cabbage, broccoli, Buttercrunch lettuce, and Grandex onions.
Still have the remaining potatoes to plant, and after handturning the plot just for the area we planned, I'm seriously thinking of a roto-tiller. We did about 30 x 45 feet of the plot. Soil is sandy, typical of northwest florida, but since I did 70% of the shovel work, it was still heavy work.
Now for some questions: my first attempt with swiss chard. Any pointers for success? I'm assuming its typical of more vegetable greens - a little more nitrogen to support leave growth, and havest by cutting leafs as they mature, so there will be several cutting from each plant?
Never had luck with any lettuce in the past here in NW Florida, but the wife want to try again. Normally it heats up fast in Florida so lettuce is bitter. Maybe this time...
Getting back to the plot; the sis-in-law has 5 acres, and the area her husband set aside is 45 x 100 feet. And they will go bigger at the drop of a hat (only because they haven't found out how much weeds love our Florida sunshine). Brother-in-law used a little disc attachment on his riding mower to cut up the sod, but it only gets maybe 2-3 inches deep. I better get to shopping for a tiller
Still have the remaining potatoes to plant, and after handturning the plot just for the area we planned, I'm seriously thinking of a roto-tiller. We did about 30 x 45 feet of the plot. Soil is sandy, typical of northwest florida, but since I did 70% of the shovel work, it was still heavy work.
Now for some questions: my first attempt with swiss chard. Any pointers for success? I'm assuming its typical of more vegetable greens - a little more nitrogen to support leave growth, and havest by cutting leafs as they mature, so there will be several cutting from each plant?
Never had luck with any lettuce in the past here in NW Florida, but the wife want to try again. Normally it heats up fast in Florida so lettuce is bitter. Maybe this time...
Getting back to the plot; the sis-in-law has 5 acres, and the area her husband set aside is 45 x 100 feet. And they will go bigger at the drop of a hat (only because they haven't found out how much weeds love our Florida sunshine). Brother-in-law used a little disc attachment on his riding mower to cut up the sod, but it only gets maybe 2-3 inches deep. I better get to shopping for a tiller