Old seeds and Central WI garden successes and failures

**Solar Geek** · 08-14-2014, 05:41 PM

FIRST year in this garden. Total learning experience. I am at least 1-1.5 zones further north than ever before.

It is a 'lasagna' garden; rocky dirt, 5" fresh topsoil layer, 24"-36" deep straw layer last fall, and 6" compost on top of the 39 8'-10' X 4' "beds". This year started with fairly decent weather early May, then CRASH!, cold snap that lasted with lots of rain (good!) and winds until mid-June. I figured no big deal - other than I had to cut off my tomatoes to the ground and then uncovered the buried leaves I had buried 10 days earlier. They never got any taller but very prolific!

Successes:
Tomatoes but not all. Heirloom (brandywine?) not doing well. San Marzano, romas great.
Also Started 104 seeds from 2010 - all but 2 took. They are all beefsteak (haha never thought they would all grow) and are on the vine green but not ready yet.
BASIL FROM OLD OLD SEED!!! yay do I have pesto and dried Basil!
Oregano - greek and regular (plants)
Chives - old seed
BEANS- very old seeds; bush beans were early and now finally have the crawler beans.
LETTUCE - 2009, 2010 AND 2011 seed all did great and just NOW in August petering out. Never have I had lettuce stay this long.
PEAPODS and peas - again 2010 and 2011 direct sow seeds and am just pulling them now. 2 beds, 8'x4' each; bags and bags of sauteed ready to heat up frozen peapods!!!
Zucchini from 2010-2012 seeds. Dropped the seedling trays so not sure which are going to be acorn squash, butternut squash but sure have great zucchini! Making chips, zucchini turkey lasagna YUM and of course my fav, zuke circles dipped in olive oil, italian bread crumbs and parmesan cheese and baked long and hard.
All herbs! Cilantro (old seed), thyme, mints (all mine DIED LAST YEAR!), sage -- all small plants that I bought.

FAILURES so far:
No acorn squash or butternut on the vine yet so -- lots of flowers, lots of honey bees, and I personally hand pollinated but no squash.
Fruit trees in new orchard - lost 7 of 12. Luckily they have a warranty. Cold spell just killed them.
SWISS CHARD - such a shocker! I always have it and never had a problem. Old seeds but that is how I always do it. Whole garden is compost so maybe it hates that.
PEPPERS from both seed and plants! They hate my compost! Doing ok but not great in the one bed with 'soil'. Total failure compared to both container gardening and other past gardens.

NOT SURE YET:
bought 3 bags organic potatoes for eating and let them sprout. Russets are ok, not real prolific; haven't checked the reds yet but yukons are just ok also. I live in the POTATO WORLD of the Midwest and all around me the farmers spray 5x/yr to kill Colorado potato bugs, and other insects. Since I am organic gardening it has been a challenge as every last potato bug found my 3.5 beds of potatoes. There won't be many to store but what we have gotten are excellent and organic.

Those beefsteak tomatoes. We'll see.

Strawberry beds. New this year so only got a few and left them to rot and enrich soil.

**hunter63** · 08-14-2014, 06:00 PM

Sounds like you have been working at this......but seems the weather is not helping you out.....Don't feel bad.
Have been hearing the same thing here.

Didn't grow a garden this year....for a lot of reasons.....but do talk with friend that do.

Cool summer is hard on peppers and tomatoes as they need hot weather to ripen.
Tip off is the lettuce still lasting this long.

Compost shouldn't have that much to do with growing unless it hasn't really "finished"....as it will use nitrogen to continue decompose, making it unavailable.....found that out when tilling in a bunch of leaves in the spring.....didn't grow as well as straight soil.

Is your soil sandy or clay?

**Solar Geek** · 08-14-2014, 06:35 PM

Well it is sandstone just like the Dells. We have a "Dell" in our backyard that rises 90 feet. When we were building a house we hit bedrock about a foot down. The place we chose for garden space was filled with rocks and boulders. I had them grade it and then as I discussed we did lasagna gardening. So while there might be some sand it is mostly rocky.

But since we have a total of 3 1/2 feet between the rocks and the top compost layer, most everything else is doing beautifully like the carrots.
You may be right about our cold wet spring. But usually with enough sun and heat tomatoes and peppers comeback.

**hunter63** · 08-14-2014, 06:51 PM

Living in Adams County for the first 18 years of my life.....I am kinda familiar with sandy and rocky soil.

MF amended a "rented garden"....done in shares...with a tractor to add manure, leaves and most anything that would "darken up the sand"....His words.

I think you are the right track.....I have been amending my "Clay" for over 30 years......

Heard the northern part of the state had 32 degrees last night.....frost on August 14th?