Whizbang Gardening, Moravia, NY (2026)

10/15/2026

Mid-October Garden Pictures & Commentary—

There is much to be doing in the garden with harvesting and preparation for next year's growing season. Here is commentary to go with the photos...
Picture 1— A jar of dried comfrey. I have been growing and using comfrey as a fertilizer in my garden for years. But drying the leaves to be used as fertilizer in the early spring garden is something I've never done before. Comfrey is God's gift to gardeners who want to grow their own fantastic natural fertilizer.
Picture 2— Dried comfrey leaves before crumbling and stuffing into a jar. We have an Excalibur 10-tray dehydrator. My approach with comfrey is to leave only one tray in the bottom and stuff the cabinet full of leaves. Periodically open and shuffle them around. They dry surprisingly fast.
Picture 3— My homemade Whizbang garden cart is such a versatile tool. Here it is being employed, with a couple clamps, to hold a heavy-duty plastic bag. I am filling the bag with partially shredded leaves collected in the bagger of my lawn mower. Those leaves are going into the garden as mulch in my Minibeds. I hope to also fill several bags and tie them closed for the winter. They will then be used for mulch in the beds next year.
Picture 4— Minibeds planted to oats in mid-October. I mulched between the oat plantings with the shredded leaves. Those beds are ready for winter. The soil next spring will be ideal for planting with some light surface tillage. No plowing, rototilling, or digging with a shovel is ever needed in well-maintained Minibeds.
Picture 5— Potato clamps. I have experimented with various clamping approaches for potatoes and carrots over the years. Clamps work very well for root storage through the winter and into spring. I have a few YouTube videos showing this. I will be clamping my Minibed carrots before long.
Picture 6— Vinegar in the making. A friend gave us some homemade grape vinegar a couple years back. It was so good! So my wife has been researching the process and is giving it a go. These jars will yield grape and raspberry vinegar someday... if all goes as planned.

10/06/2026

2026 Harvest Photos & Commentary—
I'm thankful for a very good growing year here in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. These pictures show some of the harvest.
The crate of onions (Patterson from Dixondale) have been cured and will go into a cool, dry upstairs room. There is also a crate of red onions.
The fingerling potatoes are LaRatte. I bought 2 lbs. of seed from FEDCO for $11.50. The yield was surprisingly high. I still have much to dig. We love these little potatoes. Harvesting them on my hands and knees to make sure I get every one makes me feel like a peasant. I should note that I fertilized with FEDCO's Turbo Tuber fertilizer ($17.50 for 5 lbs.).
I also fertilized with wilted comfrey leaves laid along the row and covered with soil at the 2nd hilling. Comfrey is the perfect fertilizer for potatoes.
The squash are Sweet Dumpling and a small viariety Butternut. Much more than shown here.
The wood-and-wire garden tote on the right is a new one. I now have 3 of them. So handy. Plans for making them are in my "Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners."
I've harvested my sunflowers for seed before the mice get them. Sunflowers are such a fun plant to grow.
We had an abundance of peppers in the Minibeds. Perhaps the crab shell as soil amendment contributed to the good crop (see a previous post). Or the match sticks I put in the soil at planting time. I've used the matches for years, and we typically get a good crop, though this year was exceptional.
My wife waits until the peppers turn red, then slices and freezes them. They get mixed with scrambled eggs for breakfast and as topping on pizza. Some whole peppers get frozen for stuffed peppers.
There are potatoes yet to be dug. Concord grapes to be picked, and juice to be canned. garlic to plant. Carrots will be picked later in the month and clamped in their Minibeds for winter storage.
That's the latest. Did you have a good garden this year?

09/28/2026

Winter Cover Crops In Minibeds—
A lot of people look at my Minibed experimental garden (10 planting seasons and counting) and think it is just the convenience of small beds. That is a misconception. The Minibed system as I've conceived and worked it is also about building soil fertility in the beds. I call it "high culture." One way to do this is with cover crops and mulching. Both serve to improve tilth of the soil and feed the bio-herd, which is to say, the soil microbiology that feeds the crops.
Winter rye is an ideal cover crop for planting in the fall (I live in upstate NY. Zone 4B-5A). In this year's garden I planted several Minibeds to winter rye in early summer. It grew, but did not send up any seed heads. So I learned from that experiment.
BUT the early-planted rye produced its usual dense root mass (as the one photo here shows) and that is my main reason for planting the rye. Those rye Minibeds were a dense mat of beautiful roots. Once the top growth and crown of the rye plants is removed, the roots, if left in the soil, provide a lot of food for the micro-herd to feast on. I don't know of any other cover crop that puts such a density of roots in the soil.
Thus far, I have planted 30 Minibeds to winter rye. I also planted 25 Minibeds to oats. The oats will die down when frost hits, while the winter rye will not. The Rye will survive the winter and start growing in the early spring.
I plant cover crops in 13 spots in each Minibed, as you can see in the one photo here. I compress the soil in those 13 spots using a deadblow hammer. Then I plant a few seeds in each spot, cover the seeds a bit, and hammer (or compress with my fist) the soil over each planting spot. I call it "hammer planting" and I've done it for years. It's easier, faster and better than planting in rows or broadcasting. High compression is what those cover crops seeds like.
And if the soil is dry, the compressed planting spots will be connected to capillary subsoil moisture. The un-compressed areas around the planting spots will not get the moisture and they will not grow w**d seeds right away. The planted rye seeds get a nice head start.
The last photo shows a couple of oat beds that I planted in the spring. Those oat seed heads (see a previous post here) are what I used to plant my winter oat cover crop.
If I did not have time to plant these cover crops, I would pile autumn leaves in the beds, cover with a square of plastic, and use the Minibed frame to hold the plastic in place. Earthworms will feed on the leaves. In the spring, the soil in those beds will be absolutely beautiful and ready for planting with minimal (if any) surface tillage.

09/24/2026

My world is peaceful and pleasant. The early fall weather has been just about perfect here. I am, thus far, sheltered from the chaos, destruction, and killing that is going on in other parts of the world. But those things are certainly impacting the economy, and the economy directly impacts my life!
No one in the know is optimistic about the economy. The economic agents of our government being the exception. But they will say all is well even as the ship goes down. They have to put on a good face and lie. I've learned by now not to trust anything the government says.
So it is that I got to thinking that I better get the garden seeds I need for next year ordered NOW. I feel an urgency to do so. And that is what I have done.
Many of the seeds at most of the seed sellers are "out of stock." I think that is normal for this time of the year. Nevertheless, plenty of seeds are available.
I've bought my seeds from various sellers over the years. More and more, I go to Fedco: Fedcoseeds.com
I'm looking forward to next year's garden....

09/18/2026

Homegrown Oat Seed For Winter Cover Cropping—
Winter rye, oats, and buckwheat are my go-to Minibed gardening cover crops. By letting one or two Minibeds grow to maturity I can get all the seed I need for future planting.
These pictures show two Minibeds with oats. I harvested the oat seed by trimming off the tops and letting them dry down some more. Then, to get the seed for planting, I simply strip them off the stalk, like you see in the last photo.
There is no need to separate the seeds from their husks!
I hammer-plant 13 spots with several seeds in each Minibed. I have found this to be easy, fast, and entirely adequate. The mature oat beds you see were planted with 13 groupings (known as "hills" in the gardening world) and the seeds were unhusked.
I planted 25 Minibeds with oats yesterday. I hope I'm not too late in the year to get some growth before frost comes. If I do get good growth, it will die down and cover the beds for the winter. The dead roots in the soil will feed the microherd. Perhaps I will spread some shredded autumn leaves between the hills.
If I don't get the top-growth I hope for, I will fill each bed with a pile of leaves and cover with some plastic. The Minibed frames will hold the plastic in place. Thus covered, the soil in the spring will be in beautiful condition for planting. No tilling, plowing, or digging needed. Just remove the mulch and plant. 🙂
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Off Topic Post Script: For those who don't know, I have a new page. It's called Trad-Man's Daily. The FB page serves to direct interested people to my new blog by the same name. FB link here: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61572230918504

09/10/2026

Golden Bantam Sweet Corn—
I haven't grown sweet corn in many years and decided to plant Burpee's Golden Bantam. It was developed in the late 1800s and released by Burpee in 1902. It was the first yellow sweet corn and was not popular at first because people associated yellow corn with animal feed. In time, it became very popular.
Burpee data for their Golden Bantam says the plants grow to 5-feet. Well, I just measured my Golden Bantam corn and it is all 9 to 10 feet tall. That doesn't make sense.
The old fashioned heirloom sweet corn flavor is... okay. Not great, but okay. I planted 5 rows at 26' long. We got more corn that we needed. Froze a lot of packages!
Would I grow this corn again? No. Next time I'll plant the hybrid Bodacious. I grew that way back and we liked it a lot.
Bodacious description says the stalks reach "up to" 7 feet tall. We'll see about that.
So now I have to cut down the small forest of corn stalks and figure out how to put them to good use.
Do you grow a sweet corn variety that you like a lot?

09/09/2026

The End of Tomato Season—
Around the end of July or beginning of August I pretty much leave the Minibed Experimental Garden alone. The plantings are well established and there will be no w**ds to deal with in 78% of the mulched garden area. A few w**ds will sprout here and there in the beds and through a hole in the plastic, but they are no problem.
The tomato plants grow lush and the blight starts innocently enough on the bottom leaves. Eventually it kills off all the foliage, BUT we always end up getting a large crop of tomatoes. That's because the fruits establish before the blight get's too far, and they ripen in their time.
I planted 2 rows of Minibeds to tomatoes. My wife has canned many jars of stewed tomatoes and catsup. The catsup has become a favorite of ours since first making it last year. Today she is processing the last of the tomato crop. It's a chore. At nearly 68 years of age, she said to me the other day: "I wonder how many more years I'll be able to do this?" 😐
A few days ago I returned to the garden to start cleaning up some of the beds. I started with the tomatoes. I picked the last of the ripe and good fruits, then removed the plants and bad tomatoes. The pictures here show a before and after.
The soil under the red plastic was in beautiful soft workable condition. All the autumn leaves I had stuffed under the plastic when I planted the beds were gone! That was a pleasing sight to see; the earthworms fed on them all summer!
So now, if I can stay on task, I will plant all those empty Minibeds to a winter cover crop of oats or winter rye.
Do your tomato plants get blight every year?

08/30/2026

Watermelon Minibed Success—
I've never grown watermelons. I live in New York State. I didn't think watermelons of any significance grew here. But a friend at my church gave me two sad looking watermelon plants he started from seed in the spring. So I planted them both in one Minibed in the far corner of my Minibed Experimental Garden. I didn't expect much. But I was wrong. The plants eventually took off and have produced 4 nice looking melons, as this picture shows.
The Minibed system came through here... The plants had plenty of root space and no w**d competition. They were able to get all the water they needed from captured subsoil moisture under the plastic mulch. I did not water the bed at all after the initial watering when I set the plants. Fact is, I pretty much neglected the bed, with the exception of puling a few w**ds early on. The plant's foliage, now dying down was lush. No fertilizer was used.
The only problem we're having with these melons is figuring out when to harvest. My wife read that when the spot on the ground turns yellow and the vine connection dries, that's the time to harvest. Any advice from watermelon growers reading this would be appreciated. Thank you.

08/17/2026

Grocery Store Potato Seed Results—
I made a post back in the spring about these small potatoes from Trader Joe's. My wife had purchased a bag and we liked them a lot. But after awhile some started sprouting in the bag and I got the idea that they might be good to plant. They were organic and evidently had not been sprayed with a sprout inhibitor. Better yet, they were just the right size for planting without cutting. So I placed them in egg trays and put them on a windowsill in a cool room so they "greensprouted," which they did very nicely. We also purchased a couple more bags, just for planting. ... Well, the end result is pictured here. Those potatoes grew remarkably well and produced a very satisfying crop. There is no scab to speak of on them, which is not the case with another variety of certified potato seed I also planted this year. The Trader Joe potatoes were a whole lot cheaper than certified seed potatoes from any mail order source. I grew a 25-foot row of these. Next year, if Trader Joe still sells these potatoes, I'll grow 2 rows!

08/16/2026

Minibed Onion Harvest 2026—
It has been a very productive and satisfying growing season in my experimental Minibed garden. I harvested onions yesterday. See commentary with photos for insights.

Whizbang Gardening

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