Lane County Extension Service Master Gardener John Fischer here with KLCC's Good Gardening. Nothing teaches me more about my garden than finding out something I know for sure isn't true. Having evidence that you have to rethink things is a great way to gain a new understanding of how your garden grows.
A couple of examples will help, and one will give folks with shady conditions new hope. I talked already about how my volunteer, and store bought potatoes gave bigger crops than my planted seed potatoes. It happened again this year.
But the harvest that went against everything I have known - and taught - for decades came from a shade grown peach tree. Eight to ten hours of sun is the recommendation for fruit trees, but a peach tree growing at Sponsors, where I help with a garden, has been increasingly shaded by an ornamental neighbor. It got four hours of sun this year - in the morning only - and produced a large crop of healthy peaches. And they ripened two weeks later than the sunny location peaches, so we had an extended harvest.
Of course this is one tree, but it made me question the advice I have given to people who want fruit trees, but don't get "enough" sun. And it should make you consider the advice you get, not treat it as gospel, and always, always experiment to see what works best for you.
I had wondered for years why two or three beets would sprout right next to each other, and then there would be a gap of a foot before the next plant. I finally found out that a beet seed is a seed ball - with three to five seeds in it, so multiple plans are the norm, not the result of poor planting by me. Harvesting one early often lets the other seedling take off, thinning is another option, or you can buy single sprout table beet seeds in a couple of varieties. Most sugar beets have been bred -not genetically modified - to produce only one plant.
Live and learn how little you know.
