{"id":10690,"date":"2014-06-05T19:14:35","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T02:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=10690"},"modified":"2014-06-12T05:46:04","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T12:46:04","slug":"size-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=10690","title":{"rendered":"Size Matters."},"content":{"rendered":"

I realize there are instructions on seed packets and information on the plastic plant stakes in veggie transplant trays.\u00a0 But, really, who pays attention to that stuff?\u00a0 The seeds are getting sown in whatever manner that they fall from my hand.\u00a0 I’m not mixing them with sand (from where??) or putting them in a salt shaker or drilling individual holes with a stick.\u00a0 I will cover shallow seeds with a toss of dirt from the shovel or push large seeds in with a\u00a0 fingertip.\u00a0 That’s about all the personal attention any seedlings get from this farmer.<\/p>\n

After all, why do I need to sow the seeds in perfectly spaced rows?\u00a0 I consider thinning seed beds that were oversown as a feed supplement to the animals in the barnyard.\u00a0 The fat pony would never touch a large, dried up carrot or mealy over-sized radish when she was raised on tiny, sweet mini-carrots and spicy bits of radish roots.\u00a0 Even we are accustomed to the delicate and fresh shoots of new seedlings.\u00a0 Who wants a well-formed but boring head of lettuce when you can nosh on delicious snippets of loose leaf bibb and buttercrunch?<\/p>\n

It’s the same thing with vegetable transplants.\u00a0 The squash plants are going into the squash bed in the manner in which they will all fit.\u00a0 Ditto the tomatoes, the peppers, the eggplant, etc.\u00a0 Because is the writer of the plant stake going to come and add 3 feet to my raised bed to get the correct spacing?\u00a0 No, he’s not. And until he arrives to haul down 2 wheelbarrows full of compost to add 3 feet to the row, the plants are just going to make due with the room available.<\/p>\n

Besides, some of the seeds don’t germinate and some of the transplants die.\u00a0 That’s Nature’s way of making appropriate spacing in the garden.\u00a0 Who am I to argue with Mother Nature?\u00a0 Not to mention that I’m bound to step in a soft, newly sprouted seed bed at least once while backing in the wheelbarrow or carrying a bale of straw or driving in a garden stake.\u00a0 And even though I garden in flip flops, they are size 10<\/em><\/strong> flip flops.\u00a0 Size 10 takes out a lot of little seeds.\u00a0 And if the transplants are a little too close for the plants to grow comfortably, try dragging the garden hose over them when you’re watering.\u00a0 Severely crushed plants will wither and die and some will get torn out by the roots.\u00a0 At the very least, limbs will get cracked off, ensuring no single plant branches out and takes up too much room.\u00a0 This is called “pruning”\u00a0 and all the professionals do it.\u00a0 Probably.\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 Eh.<\/p>\n

I also don’t buy the “plants need proper air circulation” argument for space requirements.\u00a0 They’re outside<\/em><\/strong>!\u00a0 How much more air do they need?\u00a0 Some people will say that putting plants too close together provides lots of cover for harmful insects.\u00a0 But the insects in my garden have no problem crossing open ground to nibble on the next plant in the row.\u00a0 Besides the bugs are almost always found hiding on the underside of the leaves which means I don’t need adequate spacing as much as I need plants that can spin their leaves around like a Droll Yankees birdfeeder<\/a>. \u00a0 Of course, it’s true that the vegetables on the plants need enough access to sunshine to ripen, which is a good reason to keep them far enough apart.\u00a0 Although experienced gardeners will advise you to keep their roots cool, which is a good reason to have the plants overlapping a bit.<\/p>\n

So I tend to disregard guidelines about proper spacing and expected size of the vegetables that I grow in the garden.\u00a0 I think that the people who created those guidelines are the same people who suggest getting a soil analysis to see what kind of nutrients are lacking in your garden and then trying to fix it.\u00a0 Um, no.\u00a0 There are enough things around here staring me in the face that need fixing.\u00a0 Trees still leaning since the ice storm, nail pops in the ceiling, overflowing gutters, leaks in brooder room roof.\u00a0 I’m not about to solicit complaints from the garden soil.\u00a0 Oh, you want more phosphorus?\u00a0 Out of\u00a0 magnesium?\u00a0 Well, I want a pedicure and I’m out of Chardonnay.\u00a0 A little help?<\/p>\n

I think those people also created the concept of “hardening off.”\u00a0 This is the idea that you should escort young plants into the sun and warmth of spring gradually.\u00a0 Take them out for a few hours each day and then tuck them back safely into your home or greenhouse to prevent shock or overexposure.\u00a0 Do that for a couple weeks until the plants are properly adjusted to natural outdoor conditions.\u00a0 Hah!\u00a0 I will lock my own children<\/strong><\/em> outside for the entire day <\/em><\/strong>just so I don’t have to listen to them begging to play Wii.\u00a0 I’m certainly not worried about shocking or overexposing a bunch of transplants.\u00a0 Who wants a bunch of fragile plants anyway?\u00a0 When the weak ones dies, it just makes more room for the strong ones (see the Mother Nature theory above).<\/p>\n

For many years this gardening method has served me very well.\u00a0 So I’m not sure exactly what went wrong this year.\u00a0 Or, I guess, what went right.\u00a0 Because nothing died.\u00a0 Nothing withered.\u00a0 Everything survived being trampled by size 10 flip flops or being garroted with the garden hose.\u00a0 The seedlings didn’t mind that I failed to apply the fish emulsion because every time I opened the bottle I remembered how awful that stuff smells and saved that job for another day.\u00a0 Another day which never came.\u00a0 The transplants survived being buried in compost that was still so hot it was steaming as I dumped it onto the raised beds and so wet I moved it by pitchfork because a shovelful was too heavy to lift.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the spacing seemed completely reasonable when I planted.\u00a0 Oh, look at the adorable little squash and zucchini.<\/p>\n

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WTH?<\/p>\n

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That’s 2 rows of squash and zucchini separated by what used to be a path.\u00a0 I forcibly mow the path each week, snapping off leaves and grinding up runners.\u00a0 The.\u00a0 Plants. Don’t.\u00a0 Care.\u00a0 Their growth cannot be stopped.<\/p>\n

The potatoes should be slowed down by the last few weeks of heat.\u00a0 Every afternoon I expect them to be withered and ready to harvest. Instead, they have gobbled up 3 bales of straw and are still growing.\u00a0 The potato patch is now so high that it’s trying to shade the cucumbers.<\/p>\n

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But the cucumbers refused to be deprived and are climbing for the sun at an astounding rate.<\/p>\n

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And although the cucumber trellis should hold, there’s a problem with the winter squash.\u00a0 Big helped me carry a 16′ X 4′ cattle panel to the garden for the vining varieties.\u00a0 It’s working perfectly, but the Burgess buttercup and Cocozelle are already reaching the top of the 4′ panel.<\/p>\n

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Which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the row.\u00a0 Since I got lazy after Big left and hauled down a couple 3′ cattle panels for the acorn and butternut squash.\u00a0 They’re about to swallow that trellis whole.<\/p>\n

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Of course, they’re better off than the tomatillo plants.\u00a0 Oh, the cute little tomatillo plants that I grew from seed.<\/p>\n

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When I realized that the tomatillo plants were going to grow tall, I tried staking them to some of those skinny, flimsy, green 15″ plant supports.\u00a0 When I realized they were going to keep growing tall and then branch out and try to fall over, I settled for tying the stems together around the supports.\u00a0 It should hold.\u00a0 Probably.\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 Eh.<\/p>\n

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The fact that the veggies are outgrowing what I considered to be a reasonable amount of space makes me worried about the fall tomatoes.\u00a0 I knew 8″ apart wasn’t enough for the beefsteak varieties….<\/p>\n

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….and certainly not enough for the bushy cherry tomatoes.<\/p>\n

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But how could I know that every plant of every variety would live?\u00a0 That everything would grow to its maximum size?\u00a0 Who would expect a Sugar Baby Bush watermelon plant to spread out 4-5′ wide, wrapping itself in the other “bush” watermelons planted a couple feet away?\u00a0 Is that really “bushy” behavior??\u00a0 I think not.<\/p>\n

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Even the ornamentals are out of control.\u00a0 Nasturtium is supposed to be an excellent companion plant in the garden.\u00a0 So why is it trying to choke out the peppers?\u00a0 That’s not very companionable.<\/p>\n

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It’s not even afraid to take on the giant zucchinis!<\/p>\n

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The comfrey has to be cut back almost daily to keep it from blocking any and all sunshine to the lamb’s ear.<\/p>\n

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And the zinnias, well, the zinnias might be a bit overwhelming by bloom time.\u00a0 But at least they’re so close together that they should support each other.\u00a0 No staking needed.<\/p>\n

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Sometimes I stand in the garden, searching for my pitchfork that I set down and then lost in the canopy of leaves, restaking trellises threatening to topple, forcing my way down paths choked with vines or branches and wonder about all those gardening guidelines.\u00a0 The size approximations and spacing suggestions.\u00a0 Huh.\u00a0 Size really does matter.\u00a0 Who knew?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I realize there are instructions on seed packets and information on the plastic plant stakes in veggie transplant trays.\u00a0 But, really, who pays attention to that stuff?\u00a0 The seeds are getting sown in whatever manner that they fall from my hand.\u00a0 I’m not mixing them with sand (from where??) or putting them in a salt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10690"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10758,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10690\/revisions\/10758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}