Two Olde Dawgs
Vegepod harvest By Ian Leatt
Taking stock of the Vegepod harvest.
The nights are drawing in, The rain has finally started to drop, The warm summer nights are cooling down, It’s time to harvest my crop. –Ian Leatt
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aving first planted the vegetable seeds in the Vegepod in mid-May, it was exciting to see how the results were going to turn out. Lessons have been learnt along the way. Plans are now in place for next year. Let’s talk about the successes and failures. Like all vegetable growers, you learn that distance and spacing is important between rows. The right amount of sun and water is equally as important. Seems like we forgot some old lessons. Let me explain. The young celery plugs were planted on the edge, some 8 inches apart, leaving enough room to grow and spread—or that is what I initially thought. Boy does it need a lot of water. Alongside these, a single row of green onions. That was my first mistake: celery grows much bigger than I originally estimated, covering 30 • 2021
Scan me Click here for to see what the Two Olde Dawgs have done with the harvest from the Vegepod https://www.localgardener.net/ratatouille/
the young seeds of the green onions, which take some time to germinate. Honestly no success. The green onions are still trying to grow some 90 days from planting. Lesson learnt. Then came the radish. We all know that radish grows rapidly and within 55 days we were eating them, although in truth, all leaf and not much root. Perhaps thinning would help for a better crop? Then six rows of onions. I must admit I was pretty excited to grow Issue 1
onions because I use them a lot in cooking. They started great. But what I didn’t realize at the time was, onions do not need as much water as celery, consequently they started to rot, from too much water. Lesson learnt. The final couple of rows were dedicated to carrots. They take some time to grow but were successful. It seems they like a lot of water and soft soil, in part to help the root grow strong and true. The tops were pretty long and I had fears that it was all show, however the proof was in my patience with the resulting good-sized carrots. Lessons • Don’t plant seed green onions too close to fast-growing vegetables, they need lots of light. • Onions do not like a lot of water. • Thinning radish will help with a better crop. All in all, the Vegepod produced and I call the first year a success. The enjoyment of course is always in lessons learned, and I feel I have learnt enough to make changes to my crop for next year and hope to enjoy the fruits of continued labour as the years progress. q localgardener.net
