Since we just started planting the Demonstration Garden this week, it seemed like it was time to actually share our garden plans for the year! We continue to battle root knot nematodes in the soil of our beds, so many of our garden plans are with those management plans in mind. If you came out to the garden at all last year, you probably noticed our rebuilt entry beds. We went simple with them last year, but this year we plan to take full advantage of the trellis/pergola to grow some Cypress Vine and Blue Butterfly Pea Vine. We have also located our herbs and pollinator plants out there as we ..read more

This is the last of our detailed bed plan posts, and because it took so long to finish this series, we even have pictures to share of what the garden looks like all planted and grown! In this garden we are reprising something we did about 5 years ago – a “quilt block” lettuce garden. We have two quilt blocks and then some root vegetables in the center of the garden. Nine patch quilt block – This quilt block is just squares mimicking the traditional “nine patch” quilt block pattern. We chose a dark red romaine, ‘Thurinus,’ for the center. This is a beautiful, upright variety that has performe ..read more

We have finally made it to the bed plans that many of you have been waiting to learn more about – our tomatoes for the year! As I have mentioned before, one of our themes this year is managing our root knot nematode problem. One of the most common management techniques is to select resistant varieties of affected plants. Now, that isn’t always the entire solution, but in the case of tomatoes can be an important option. Most tomatoes have “intermediate” resistance to root knot nematodes, which means that under high population pressure, they will still have some problems. We have one plant each ..read more

We have made it all the way to our Bed 4 plans for this week’s closer look. Bed 4 is the raised bed where we are planting our Milpa Cover Crop blend of seed. We are working with the Sedgwick County Conservation District, and using the seed from Green Cover Seed. Because we are planting in a raised bed, we can’t quite let it go full on “chaos garden” like if we were planting in a larger field or garden space. The biggest changes we are making are to thin out the vine crops once they germinate to make sure that the bed isn’t overloaded with more than the space can handle. We are also using our ..read more

Many years we attempt a garden bed that reflects the vegetables and herbs of a particular cuisine or culture. It has been a couple years since we did this, and more than a couple years since we did a Latin American themed garden. While it would be easy to just plant tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro, and call it Latin American, there is actually a lot more to the varied cuisines of Latin America – and a lot more vegetable and herb diversity than most Americans appreciate. As you can see, we have a LOT going on in this bed. Starting from the left, on the trellis, we will have two different squas ..read more

Today let’s take a closer look at the plans for our second bed in the Demo Garden. This bed is fairly simple, compared to Bed 1. Half the bed is planted to tomatoes (and basil!), while the other half will be planted to potatoes in the spring and leafy greens in the fall. I know that you are probably really excited to know more about the tomatoes – but in the interest of having something to talk about when we get to Bed 5…I’m going to make you wait. Sorry! So that leaves us with the potatoes and the leafy greens. Bed 2 is our only raised bed that did NOT show nematode damage last season, so it ..read more

I am cautiously optimistic that I will be able to go through each bed we have planned and go into more details about the varieties we have chosen and what we will be doing with each raised bed. So let’s kick that off with a closer look at Bed 1! As we discussed in the general garden plan post, this bed is all about herbs (and some edible flowers)! Very generically, we could say that the green end is culinary, the red end is tea, and the blue is some of each. However, there are obviously some things that can cross over from culinary to tea and back. I’m not going to cover every last detail of ..read more

Our garden plans for this year are both a return to a greater diversity of plants and the start of a multi-year effort to combat the increasing levels of root knot nematode that we have been experiencing in our beds. With the exception of Bed 2, all of the plants we removed or harvest last fall had some amount of root knot nematode damage, so we will be doing a wide range of things to work to improve that. (For more information on what root knot nematodes are, go here: https://hnr.k-state.edu/extension/info-center/common-pest-problems/common-pest-problem-new/Nematodes.pdf) As you can see from ..read more

Our Demo Garden plantings are well underway for this year, and we already have some exciting things to showcase. But first – here’s a quick overview of what we are planning to grow this year! Overview of our garden plans for 2021 by raised bed. We chose to continue to focus our garden efforts on productivity and yield over diversity for this year. We are planning to continue donating our harvests to the Common Ground Producers & Growers Mobile Market for their Seniors First food box program, which provides free food boxes to low income seniors. With that in mind, we are keeping each garden ..read more

“The fruit derived from labor is the sweetest of pleasures.” This quote from Luc de Clapiers perfectly sums up harvest in the Demo Garden! Our wonderful team of Extension Master Gardener volunteers has figured out how to navigate the difficult circumstances due to COVID and still have a very beautiful, productive garden. The fruits of our labor are gratifying to see and it is rewarding to pass on the fresh produce to those in need – more on this later! So, what’s being harvested right now? Cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers galore and more! This past week in the garden, I picked a small s ..read more