Peanut Puzzle

Another unpleasant surprise in the vegetable garden -- my peanut plants failed to produce. Whot hoppen?

Well, let's go back to the beginning. In my blog post for October 10, 2010, I described my first peanut crop. I planted Valencia peanuts in early June (early in the rainy season) in my still-unfinished vegetable garden. At that time the soil was a heavy clay loam and had no raised beds (peanuts like a sandy loam). About halfway through their growing season I created some raised beds with much improved soil, and transplanted the peanut plants, which, by then, were getting waterlogged. I didn't hold out much hope for them, but around the first of October I dug the plants up and, voila, I had a peanut crop. I saved the harvested peanuts and replanted them in much improved raised beds in early November. My second plants looked much better than the first and produced lots of blooms. At 130 days I dug them up. No peanuts!!!

I got out my vegetable growing guidebook -- Home Vegetable Gardening, published by the Clemson University Extension Department -- and consulted the section on peanuts, just like I had done before I planted. Under the section on watering, I found the following passage, "Water is the most common limiting factor in peanut production." So, I checked my rainfall records. The first crop got an incredible 70 inches of rain during their growing cycle. The second crop received 33 inches, so, about half as much as the first crop. However, 33 inches of rain should be more than enough rain, and as the dry season set in, I watered the peanuts sometimes as much as three times a week. So, what other factor might have entered into the equation? The wind. November through March are very windy months here. Sometimes we experienced periods of a week or more with winds ranging from 10 - 34 miles per hour. It's my guess that the high winds dessicated the soil. The only thing that still puzzles me is that the other vegetable crops did relatively well during this windy period.

So, I may never know for sure what happened. But I have come up with a strategy -- PLAN A: plant peanuts in March or April so they will benefit from low winds, and the rains that usually begin in May; and PLAN B: if planting during the dry (i.e., windy) season, cover the soil with a heavy layer of organic mulch.

Happy gardening!

Fennel & Black Swallowtail Butterflies

For many years I thought the plants and animals in Costa Rica, and back home in the States, were completely different. Then I learned that oak trees grow in the Costa Rican highlands. Gradually I learned that there are many of the same or similar species. I began to see azaleas in Costa Rica, eastern meadowlarks, monarch butterflies, pokeweed, and the list is getting longer and longer.

Photo taken in Costa Rica

Here's a case in point. In Clemson, South Carolina, we grew fennel. One thing we liked about them were the brilliantly colored caterpillars that lived on them and ate the plants. These were the larval stage of the black swallowtail butterflies, of which we had many flying around our yard. Black swallowtails like to lay their eggs on plants in the carrot family, such as carrots and parsnips. But they prefer fennel. We brought fennel seeds with us to Costa Rica, gathered from our garden, and planted them soon after arriving here.

Photo taken in South Carolina

Our fennel plants here are lower and clumpier than in South Carolina. They look almost as if something has been eating the new shoots and keeping them shorter. On close inspection we discovered that, yes, something was eating them -- brightly colored caterpillars, which appear to be almost identical to the ones back in South Carolina. Well, if the caterpillars are here, we figured, then black swallowtail butterflies must also be here. We began paying closer attention to our butterflies, and within a few days, sure enough, we sited one, kind of an old and beat-up specimen, but still, it was a black swallowtail.

Happy gardening!

The Vegetable Garden, Part 6: Back to the Drawing Board

Stupid me -- I put the vegetable garden too close to the hedge. And I had all that space, and I could have put it anywhere I wanted. AAAARGH!!!

The garden runs roughly parallel to the hedge, ranging anywhere from 10 feet, to 18 feet distance from it, at opposite ends. I planned the garden in April, when the sun was directly overhead, and the hedge didn't cast a shadow. By October, when the sun had migrated south, I realized that the raised bed closest to the hedge wasn't getting direct sun until 9 in the morning. A major boo-boo.

But then I decided I could plant vegetables that needed less sun, such as lettuce, in this last bed. Problem solved. Recently, however, I've noticed that the onions in the bed closest to the hedge were kind of puny looking, when compared to the onions in the other beds. Probably lack of sun, I thought. But, could it be something in the soil? Yesterday afternoon I got some cow manure ready to put in as a side-dressing for the punier-looking onions. The first shovelful of soil showed me the sad truth -- the soil is chock full of roots from the hedge, depriving my onions of nutrition.

What to do? Plan A is to abandon the first raised bed and shift the garden away from the hedge. Plan B is to dig a trench on the hedge-side of the raised bed and bury some zinc sheeting, probably some three feet deep. My helper is here today and we began digging the trench. Voila, the hedge roots only go down two feet, so a three-foot, metal underground fence should do it. We're going with Plan B.

I ate a Dove chocolate today. The message on the inside of the wrapper said, "Keep moving ahead and don't look back." Sounds like good advice.

Cabbage

 SUCCESSES
There have been some positive things too. I've harvested some really big, juicy beets -- bigger and better than anything I ever grew in South Carolina. Also, the lettuce here, due to the cooler temperatures, doesn't tend to bolt, like it did back home. As reported in another blog entry, carrots do really well here too. And I have harvested some excellent heads of cabbage. Cabbage worms are a problem, but I plan to combat them with Bt the next time around. Also, after three attempts, we're finally getting some tomatoes. Not a bumper crop, mind you, but some pretty good ones. We hope to begin growing them in a greenhouse in the near future.

We've also begun to harvest some Costa Rican squash (ayote). The asparagus is getting stronger. Insects have chomped off a few of the sprouts, but the plants are thriving and replacing those missing sprouts.

And my helper is out there digging the trench as I type. Makes me feel good.

SET BACKS
I tried broccoli, but it produced only so-so plants and the heads bolted too soon. I'm going to give the next batch more manure. The jalapeño pepper plants have died, after giving us several peppers. Can't wait to get that greenhouse.

Happy gardening!