- Joined
- Aug 25, 2017
- Messages
- 175
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- 44
- Location
- Portland metro area of Oregon
- Hardiness Zone
- Zone 8b
- Country
Greetings!
This year will be my first solo grown spring garden. Though I am getting a lot of technical help from my mother. I did a late fall garden last year. Many of the kind of folks on here offered me excellent advice. I hope to draw upon that wisdom again this year. I suppose this thread will serve as a sort of blog, for which I apologize.
My garden:
It consists of a mix of raised beds and the native soil. The raised beds are filled with imported top soil. The soil in the beds is quite nice. I think it's a sandy loam. Regardless, it has a nice structure and freely drains. It doesn't hold water as well as the native soil but that's fine with me.
The native soil is awful, heavy, red clay. I believe it is technically known as jory soil. Apparently wine growers like it but I kind of hate it. It's slow to drain, slow to warm up, roots can't penetrate it, and it's never grown good vegetables. Still, it's what I got so I have to work with it.
At some point I'll take measurements of the square footage of the beds and the native soil.
My location is Oregon City, Oregon. As part of the Willamette Valley we get rain about nine months out of the year. The weather doesn't really warm up until June and doesn't really dry out until July. The rain starts again in September. It's been an even wetter winter and cooler spring than normal.
I officially started the spring garden. Today I put in some softneck garlic and sowed kale, spinach, cabbage and lettuce. Once things warm up some more I intend to follow on with carrots, more lettuce and spinach, peas, arugula, and maybe some endive/escarole.
Sometime in mid April the plan is to sow and transplant more stuff. I got a pretty diverse selection of seed this year. My weird experiments are going to be celery and ground cherries.
Also, I'm trying cover cropping for the first time. I realize cover cropping is something that is mostly done in the fall. I didn't know that at the time so I am attempting to make up for lost ground by sowing some oats and buckwheat. Right now it's mostly oats. My hope is that the oats, if they grow, will generate give me some organic matter to till back into the soil. In addition, I hope they will loosen up the soil a bit.
My enemies are legion. Last year I had serious problems with slugs, birds, whiteflies, and cabbage worms. I expect to have at least those pests to deal with this year. The only thing I was really able to get under control were the cabbage worms, using BT.
I got one pound of oat seed. I've probably used half of it so far. Germination in the current cold and rainy weather is iffy. Though I think I already ran into other problems.
I was looking over the oat seed I had raked into the soil yesterday and noticed many of the hulls were already open and apparently empty.
Now I don't know if that means the seeds already opened and rotted instead of germinating. It may also mean that the birds found the seeds and are eating them.
I know the birds are problem because for years we have had them pluck out seeds and seedlings. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that the birds would eat the oats.
I have two options for dealing with the birds. Both of which have been of limited utility in the past. I have metal chicken wire fencing and plastic bird netting.
I threw some of this on the beds this evening but it doesn't want to stay put. And my mother previously observed the birds going under the netting to get at the seeds and plants.
If I'm right and the birds are eating the seeds it's probably already too late. Most of the oat seeds I could see were damaged. Nothing has germinated yet but I figured it was asking a bit much for germination in just one day.
It could also simply be that it's too early for these poor oats to germinate. Once May rolls around I can use the buckwheat more. I don't know if it will germinate and grow in these temperatures which is why I mostly used the oats.
The other worry is the slugs. They tend to get onto and destroy everything. I've been putting out Sluggo regularly for months but it doesn't seem to lessen their population. I suspect the rain washes away much of the Sluggo. Last year the slugs at the tops off of my new seedlings and destroyed them. Then the birds had a crack at the next batch.
I know our soil has cutworms. I found one the other day when yanking out spent cabbage plants. And the reason my parents and I built the raised beds years ago was because cutworms killed all of the seedlings we put out. I have some hope that my spraying of BT over the fall and winter might have lessened their populations. But who knows. I have a small supply of Sluggo Plus that I hope does some good but again, who knows.
So... how I deter the birds? Flash tape doesn't work anymore, if it ever did. The netting and wire fencing are difficult to keep held in place but I am trying. I also don't have enough to cover everything.
And does it sound like the oat seed just popped open and rotted or that the birds have been at it?
Later on I'll add a list of all the seeds I have. They will be planted slowly throughout the year.
Thank you very much in advance.
This year will be my first solo grown spring garden. Though I am getting a lot of technical help from my mother. I did a late fall garden last year. Many of the kind of folks on here offered me excellent advice. I hope to draw upon that wisdom again this year. I suppose this thread will serve as a sort of blog, for which I apologize.
My garden:
It consists of a mix of raised beds and the native soil. The raised beds are filled with imported top soil. The soil in the beds is quite nice. I think it's a sandy loam. Regardless, it has a nice structure and freely drains. It doesn't hold water as well as the native soil but that's fine with me.
The native soil is awful, heavy, red clay. I believe it is technically known as jory soil. Apparently wine growers like it but I kind of hate it. It's slow to drain, slow to warm up, roots can't penetrate it, and it's never grown good vegetables. Still, it's what I got so I have to work with it.
At some point I'll take measurements of the square footage of the beds and the native soil.
My location is Oregon City, Oregon. As part of the Willamette Valley we get rain about nine months out of the year. The weather doesn't really warm up until June and doesn't really dry out until July. The rain starts again in September. It's been an even wetter winter and cooler spring than normal.
I officially started the spring garden. Today I put in some softneck garlic and sowed kale, spinach, cabbage and lettuce. Once things warm up some more I intend to follow on with carrots, more lettuce and spinach, peas, arugula, and maybe some endive/escarole.
Sometime in mid April the plan is to sow and transplant more stuff. I got a pretty diverse selection of seed this year. My weird experiments are going to be celery and ground cherries.
Also, I'm trying cover cropping for the first time. I realize cover cropping is something that is mostly done in the fall. I didn't know that at the time so I am attempting to make up for lost ground by sowing some oats and buckwheat. Right now it's mostly oats. My hope is that the oats, if they grow, will generate give me some organic matter to till back into the soil. In addition, I hope they will loosen up the soil a bit.
My enemies are legion. Last year I had serious problems with slugs, birds, whiteflies, and cabbage worms. I expect to have at least those pests to deal with this year. The only thing I was really able to get under control were the cabbage worms, using BT.
I got one pound of oat seed. I've probably used half of it so far. Germination in the current cold and rainy weather is iffy. Though I think I already ran into other problems.
I was looking over the oat seed I had raked into the soil yesterday and noticed many of the hulls were already open and apparently empty.
Now I don't know if that means the seeds already opened and rotted instead of germinating. It may also mean that the birds found the seeds and are eating them.
I know the birds are problem because for years we have had them pluck out seeds and seedlings. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that the birds would eat the oats.
I have two options for dealing with the birds. Both of which have been of limited utility in the past. I have metal chicken wire fencing and plastic bird netting.
I threw some of this on the beds this evening but it doesn't want to stay put. And my mother previously observed the birds going under the netting to get at the seeds and plants.
If I'm right and the birds are eating the seeds it's probably already too late. Most of the oat seeds I could see were damaged. Nothing has germinated yet but I figured it was asking a bit much for germination in just one day.
It could also simply be that it's too early for these poor oats to germinate. Once May rolls around I can use the buckwheat more. I don't know if it will germinate and grow in these temperatures which is why I mostly used the oats.
The other worry is the slugs. They tend to get onto and destroy everything. I've been putting out Sluggo regularly for months but it doesn't seem to lessen their population. I suspect the rain washes away much of the Sluggo. Last year the slugs at the tops off of my new seedlings and destroyed them. Then the birds had a crack at the next batch.
I know our soil has cutworms. I found one the other day when yanking out spent cabbage plants. And the reason my parents and I built the raised beds years ago was because cutworms killed all of the seedlings we put out. I have some hope that my spraying of BT over the fall and winter might have lessened their populations. But who knows. I have a small supply of Sluggo Plus that I hope does some good but again, who knows.
So... how I deter the birds? Flash tape doesn't work anymore, if it ever did. The netting and wire fencing are difficult to keep held in place but I am trying. I also don't have enough to cover everything.
And does it sound like the oat seed just popped open and rotted or that the birds have been at it?
Later on I'll add a list of all the seeds I have. They will be planted slowly throughout the year.
Thank you very much in advance.
