Tuesday, June 16, 2009

NEW PLANTS AND NEW TECHNIQUES

Boy, I can't believe it has been over 5 weeks since I have written anything on my blogs !!!!!

No excuses, but I have been quite busy with work the last few weeks, I hope you have continued gardening without me.

I have planted my entire garden, except for my flower pots and replacing my tomatoes and peppers that I burned up and killed. I have planted 17 sixty foot rows of sweet corn, and 15 forty feet rows of sweet and Indian corn.

SO LITTLE TIME
Yesterday I started to panic. There is so much to do and so much to write about, and so little time. But I realized that I needed to do one thing at a time.

This year I am trying lots of new vegetables. I may only do this one year because some of these may not be successful. I feel that I need to find out what crops do well in this area and from now on, try to plant only things that do well here in Eastern Idaho.

A few weeks ago I promised to tell you the 30 new items I was going to try and 20 new techniques. So here they are:
1. Romanesco Broccoli
2. Red Hmong Cucumber
3. 6" Radiand Green Radish (red on the inside)
4. 2"-4" white radish (red on the inside)
5. Bitter Gourd
6. Red Bean Horto Semi Bush
7. Yard Long Bean
8. Asparagus Bean
9. Garden Bean Royal Bugundy (Purple in color)
10. Lincoln Pea (Heirloom, I will save this seed)
11. Italian Tree Tomato (Will grow up to 25' tall)
12. Red Sweet Corn (Red sweet corn to eat)
13. Blue Indian Corn (Hopi Blue Flour Corn also a sweet corn)
14. Black Indian Corn (Black Aztec Sweet Corn)
15. Blue (small Indian Corn)
16. Peaches and Cream (Sweet corn)
17. Carnival Carrot (Red, purple, yellow, orange and white)
18. Lemon Cucumber (round yellow cucumber)
19. Mini Bell Mix Pepper ( mini purple, red, yellow peppers)
20. Regular Bell Mix Pepper (purple, red, yellow peppers)
21. Pepper Habinero ( very hot pepper)
22. Yellow watermelon (Yellow on the outside, red on the inside)
23. 7" rose red radish (salad giant)
24. Small Circular carrots (look like round radishes)
25. Stallions white cucumber
26. Radicchio leaf chicory
27. Russian Red carrots
28. Bright lights swiss chard
29. Cow peas
30. Peanuts

NEW PLANTING TECHNIQUES OR EXPERIMENTS
Here is a list of some of the techniques I am trying this year. I will go into more detail later as these techniques unfold.

1. Saving pea seed, (Green Arrow & Lincoln, I will grow these on a trellis, that way they will dry faster and better.).
2. Saving bean seed, (Blue Lake Pole Bean & Blue Lake I saved from seed last year)
3. Trellis planting (cucumbers, cantalope)
4. Trellis planting (peas and beans)
5. Tree tomatoes on a overhead trellis (this tree tomato should grow 15 to 25 feet tall).
6. Sack planting ( I plan to plant some peppers in a quart ziplock bag, I will dig a hole for the bag and put a can over the pepper as usual. Then in the fall, I can move them into the green house, for a longer season.
7. Saving radish seed
8. Saving carrot seed
9. Saving beet seed
10. Saving onion seed
11. Greenhouse early winter crop
12. Greenhouse early spring crop
13. saving tomato seed
14. Planting beans with corn
15. Planting sweet Indian corn to eat
16. Planting beans and peas with corn
17.Upside down tomatoes and peppers (both comercial method and homemade in a 5 gallon bucket)
18. Planting delicata plants from the nursery, my starts and soaked seeds. To test which will do better.
19. Growing a giant pumpkin, by trimming all extra vines and pumpkins. I have planted about twenty plants and will choose about 5 plants to experiment with.
20. Planting annual flowers to transplant into planter pots.