Irrigation, seeds and plants... OH MY!

The irrigation for the garden has been laid out and tested and the seeds have been planted.  This year I planted seven rows of illini extra sweet corn, one row of yard beans (aka asparagus beans) and one row of french fillet (string less) green beans.  All of these items were planted by seed.  My father purchased the corn and green bean seeds from Burpee's.  I bought the yard bean seeds from our local nursery.  In past seasons our victory garden included no more than four rows of corn.  In addition our green beans grew and grew until we ran out of space in our freezer.  With the cooler summer weather and the desire for corn I decided to increase the number of rows of corn and decrease the number of green bean rows this year.  Additionally, this is the second year I have grown yard beans.  I found that the beans are extremely delicate and need lots of sun and space to grow and crawl.  I decided to plant the yard beans in the front row of corn to allow for more space to grow and eliminate the need for netting or a lattice.  My hope is that the yard beans will grow and crawl up the front row of corn.  In the picture above you can see vertical bamboo stick indicating where the yard beans were planted.  The corn stalks will not be strong enough to immediately support any crawling yard bean sprouts.  This is why I placed a bamboo stick next to each planted seed which will allow the yard bean sprouts an object to crawl upon.

I also planted a variety of vegetables plants I bought from a local nursery.  I planted five bell pepper plants (two black, two yellow and one red), two Japanese eggplant, one Romano tomato, one Juliet tomato (aka grape tomato), three bitter melon, three yellow squash, three Japanese cucumber and three crane melon.  I transplanted all of the plants in to the main garden except for one.  I transplanted the Juliet tomato plant on the north side of the grass next to all of my herbs.  Although the Juliet tomato plant will grow in size I felt the small delicate fruit will be more accessible next to all of the herbs and peppers.

2010 - bitter melon grown from saved seeds

Moreover, my mother and I have searched for bitter melon seeds and found one nursery that sold seeds and plants.  We bought three bitter melon plants and a packet of seeds this year.  We have included bitter melon in our victory garden for the past two years and grew them with saved seeds from the previous year.  This year we wanted to see if there is any differences in the quality and taste of the fruit from previous years and decided to not use our saved seeds.

For more information about seed saving visit http://www.seedsave.org/.