Greens in Grass

Greens in the Grass

For the last couple of years, I have grown various greens, usually collard or mustard, in the same general area of my yard. Greens don't make seeds until the spring or summer time. When they make seeds, they make a lot.

Not sure at this point whether I'm going to let them continue to grow in the grass or cut the grass and greens once the summer growing season starts. For now, they will remain. It is possible that they may outgrow the surrounding grass and weeds. If they do, the shade produced by the greens will reduce the chance of grass growing near them.

Red Romaine

For about week in early December, we had temperatures in the upper 60s and low 70s for several days in a row. I believe that it was at this time that the red romaine decided to go from leafy mode to seed mode. When I first noticed this, I pulled the blooms off of the plant in hopes that it would switch back to leaf mode with the colder temperatures that followed. However, it did not and as a result the leaves are still narrow on the plant.

Raised Beds

The items that are in the raised beds that I set up in the spring of 2019 are not doing as well as the items that are in other containers or directly in the ground. I think this, in part, has to do with the fact that I put pine mulch in the raised beds in the beginning of the spring season.

What I found out after I put the mulch down, was that pine mulch usually makes the soil acidic. I'm not sure how acidic it made the soil, but based on the articles that I read about it, it can lower the pH to 5 or 4 range. The tomatoes that grew in the same bed in the spring, did extremely well. However, the lettuce, cabbage, and greens that are currently in the bed are not doing as well. In some of the raised beds, I have added ashes from the firepit to the bed. The articles that I read suggested that by doing this, the soil will become more basic as the ashes break down.

Weather

The weather for the last couple of weeks has ranged from being close to freezing to the lower 70s on Christmas. It has rained at least one day each week.