25 Planting Hints continue…

Lima beans need warm soil. Pre-sprout seeds before planting to reduce chances of their rotting in the garden. Start them in deep flats in vermiculite or perlite. Limas are “iffy” in the North. One year we had a super crop of sweet, tender beans. The next two years August was wet and cold and the pods never filled, so we reluctantly decided not to give them garden space.

For the direct seeding of brassicas without laborious thinning, put sticks in the ground eighteen inches apart. Plant a few seeds by each stick. Gradually thin to one plant by snipping off seedlings at ground level. Plant the empty spots between the sticks with lettuce or spinach, which will be harvested by the time the brassicas need more space.

Plant collards. You don’t have to fight the cabbage worm.

Learn to recognize “volunteers.” Once you plant dill, you’ll never have to plant it again. Let seeds from a few flower heads scatter each year. Be alert for the feathery green tufts that emerge the following spring and save a few when you cultivate or mulch.

Have potatoes without digging. Place seed potatoes one foot apart on top of last year’s mulch, or on a fall deposit of a few inches of leaves, preferably shredded. Cover with a foot of loose hay. When the tops die down, just rake off the hay.

You can even steal a few new potatoes during the season without hurting the plant. Carefully lift the hay when potato blossoms begin to drop, break off tiny potatoes from the mother plant and replace the hay.

Make sure onion necks are exposed to sun and not covered with dirt. By harvest time, they will already be partly dried.

“Corn takes a lot out of the soil. It can take a lot out of the gardener, too, if you don’t do it right,” says a knowledgeable one. To satisfy corn’s voracious appetite, dig manure into the soil in spring and give booster feedings when it is eight to ten inches high and again when silk forms.

Corn is wind-pollinated. The male flower is the tassel, the female flower the silk. Every kernel has a silk attached to it. Undeveloped kernels on a cob mean they weren’t fertilized. To ensure complete pollination, don’t plant corn in one long row. Planting in blocks is best. Here’s how one gardener plants corn in raised beds:

For cucumber flavor without cucumber vines, plant the annual herb borage or the perennial salad burnet. Mince and add to salads.

Stick seeds of winter squash in a partly finished compost pile. The squash plants camouflage the pile, which gives the squashes nourishment and the room they need to sprawl. I have vowed never again to let squash grow freely in my garden after the vines from one hill took over a fifteen-by-fifteen^-foot space, smothering everything in their path!

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