Rotating to a Warm Season Green

[digitS']

Bok choy is a favorite and I wish Chinese cabbage was a little easier for me to grow. @Beekissed , if your bok choy does not bolt quickly in hot weather, your summer climate is quite different than here. My mid to late-Spring sowings of seed can produce plants right down to pencil-size and nearly unusable because they are in such a hurry to flower .

@Zeedman , I only grew that Malabar spinach one time. I remember it as very dark green. Maybe it has that "mucilaginous" characteristic but I really don't remember. Unless water spinach has appeared on my plate in an Asian restaurant, I've never eaten it. Are you saying that you have it as a garden vegetable?

If I still have some chard seed, and I'll have to search for it, there might be a place to squeeze it in. We are coming right up to the time when garden space begins to become available again with the harvest of this and that .

For example, DW says she wants some new potatoes to go with the shell peas just now available. For several years, what would replace those early potatoes would be peas and bok choy but the seed would have to wait ... not long ... but a couple more weeks. Late August will usually have a cool-down and seedlings can be (should be) up and looking for a chance to grow before then. I may jump the gun by sowing some of them about now but the timing will steadily become safer until about the second week in August when - it will be too late! It would make infinitely more sense to sow a warm-season veggie in early July but I really seem to be limited to bush beans.

Gotta scratch something into bare ground ... it's horrible to just let it sit there!

Steve

 

[Beekissed]

I grew it under a low tunnel, so that may be the difference. It provides shade and keeps things from bolting early, though eventually they will bolt if left unharvested for too long, like most things.

 

[ducks4you]

I was clearing the overgrown fenceline where the tomatoes will be planted soon and found at least 1 dozen lettuces, NOT bolted, even in our 80's-90's recent heat. Perhaps the shade really makes a difference.

 

[Beekissed]

Romaine and pak choi I had planted in the early spring, had left in the tunnel and finally got around to harvesting a couple of weeks ago. Most of the romaine had started to bolt but the pak choi was still great. I finally had to clean out the whole tunnel due to most of the lettuce having~ or were beginning to~ bolting a little. No way it would have lasted that long had it not been under that tunnel.

 

[valley ranch]

now that looks good!

 

[valley ranch]

now that looks good!

 

[Nyboy]

Bee you needs some rabbits to help with harvest. I read you hang their cage from coop ceiling ,you will have even better coop compost.

 

[Beekissed]

Bee you needs some rabbits to help with harvest. I read you hang their cage from coop ceiling ,you will have even better coop compost.

I used to do that very thing, NY, and keeping rabbits is a smart thing to do for meat production and also for good manure for the garden...but, alas, I can no longer consume rabbit meat. Too many purines in it. If I can't eat it, I don't raise it...not a good market for offspring here, no one eats rabbit any longer.

I could feed them to the dogs, though, and I've thought of that often, though I would most likely tractor them instead of the traditional cage setup now.

No worries about where the lettuce goes...the dogs eat it like it's raw meat, they love it so much. They will eat lettuce from the store sometimes but lettuce from the garden seems to really get them going...they'll eat and eat on that stuff, with green foam and slime all over their faces.

 

[Nyboy]

Had to look up purines. Is squirrel also high in it ? Wondering because both rodents.

 

[bobm]

Had to look up purines. Is squirrel also high in it ? Wondering because both rodents.

Ummm ! Rabbits are in the order Lagomorpha so NOT rodents.