Over the last week, the organic garden has experienced incredible growth. This could be due to a combination of warm May weather and the copious amounts of organic compost that has been applied into the garden beds. Though I happen to believe that this confluence of positive growth conditions cannot last for long, either bad weather or a pest outbreak will surely slow down the crop growth. In anycase, Meso-American cultures 500 years ago probably would have been worshipping their corn god for such good fortune at this point.
Indeed the effect seems most evident in last year's garden bed. After the application of some 20 lbs of compost along with the turning over of turnip and bean roots, the soil is possessed of a loamy texture and rich dark colour. The beans that I planted grew quickly into broad shoots in just over a week. Last year, the same level of growth did not happen until late May. The corn saplings also sprouted after just 7 days when a normal span of 12 days had been expected. The eggplants in the same garden bed had been suffering an attack from flea beetles. However, just yesterday I spotted a dragon fly perched on top of one eggplant hunting the flea beatles. This play upon the original "Three Sisters" crop combination may even end up working!
Garden Bed 2 has seen a great deal of growth. The tomato plants have firmly established themselves in the soil and have begun to flower in earnest. The surrounding pole beans are all sprouting, though not as profusely as in Garden Bed 1.
The lettuce plants have recovered entirely from their ordeal last week. Now small, leafy heads of lettuce are beginning to take shape. I had been expecting some sort of slug infestation, but nothing of the sort has been happening. It seems that just about everything in Garden Bed 2 is thriving, including the weeds. Weeds of all sorts seem to be coming out of the every clump of soil. After pulling handfuls of it out of the soil, I woke up the next day to find fresh new weeds spring up all over the place. So far the weeds do not seem to be inhibiting crop growth, but one must be vigilent.
Garden Bed 3 and the Potato containers are both doing very well. The potato plants this year has been fast growing and surprisingly devoid of pest damage. This could be due to close planting of the seed potatos with pole beans. I read from One Straw Revolution that closely planted beans and potatos confuse the pests that attack each respective plant. The mistake made last year was that the beans were planted next to a homogenous block of potato plants rather than interspersed amongst the potato plants. This allowed the viscious Japanese beetles to home in to those potatos farthest away from the beans. To ensure a working bean/potato combination with the container grown spuds this year, I had sown pole bean seeds immediately along the sides of the 2 containers. If the potatos plants do well, I'm expecting to at least triple the amount of potatos harvested over last year.
Garden Bed 4 has probably shown the least amount of growth of all the garden beds. Coincidentally, the newest garden bed also had the least amount of organic compost(10 lbs) applied to it. Effectively, the soil of this bed most resembles the unmodified soil of a lawn: hard, yellow, and clay-like. All 6 potato seeds planted there have broken the surface, but one can clearly see that each of these potato plants are much smaller than there brethern in bed 3 and the containers. Nevertheless, after a few more years of building up the soil, this bed will be as fertile as the rest!
