Garden Notes

It’s been a trying year for the garden, to say the least.  The best thing about gardening is that there is always a next year.  There will always be another year to try new things and be successful in growing vegetables.

My garden though, is not ready to give up.

My surviving pole bean plants were putting out a few beans here and there- enough for the kids to get a snack, but then something began eating the actual beans- six feet in the air. I now suspect it was voles, as we have ‘em.  But as a result, I stopped checking the bean plants.  Well, as it turned out, a handful of beans did grow- and they are huge!  Too huge for eating, but today I harvested and I will let them dry a bit and then have seed for next year.  The beans themselves are delicious and worth growing.  The real reason I harvested though is because some of my other bean plants have put out another round of blossoms.  Since the hot sticky weather passed, they want to grow again, so I wanted to encourage my plants to put out more beans.

By butternut squash is finally producing squash as well.  Crazy, but I have about six or seven baby squash out there.  I saw today that one has been nibbled on, and I really am doubtful as to whether there is enough growing time for them.  But I can dream, and I can spray the plants with soap spray to keep the bugs off.

My tomatillo actually has three lanterns on it.  After waiting all this time, it’s amusing to see it doing something.

I seem to have a serious shortage of bees in our yard.  Something I am going to have to remedy next spring by making sure I have some good attractors for them growing.   I suspect that many of our issues are from the lack of bees.

We also found a miracle in Zander’s garden patch.  A tiny, three-inch cucumber.  A small Poona Kheera managed to survive the baby bunnies.  It was deeply russeted, and ready for harvest, despite its diminutive size.  Everyone waited eagerly for me to wash off the prickles and carefully slice that tiny cucumber so everyone could get a taste.  Oh my, as delicious and crispy as we remembered.  Next year, we will grow more and they will be successful.

The tomato patch looks better and better everyday- provided you can ignore the damage from whiteflies.  I suspect this will be a good week for them, as it’s going to be toasty again.  The other day I picked a Black From Tula to let it sit on my counter- we haven’t tasted it yet.  Today I picked a Valiant, and decided to let the Brave General ripen on the vine for just a few more days- as seen in the picture above.  Dangling just above the general in a lovely cluster is my Gypsy tomato plant.

Earlier this week a neighbor shared some ripe tomatoes, so I went out to my garden and harvested some chard for a simple salad.  Tossed with some black olives and almond slices, it was wonderful to be eating something grown in the backyard.

I’ll leave this post with a picture of my tiny harvest today.  My pole beans that will be saved for seed.  My Black From Tula, my Valiant, and Zander’s teeny tiny Poona Kheera.  This is why we garden- the rewards are always unexpected.

I know it hasn’t been that long since I planted my tomato plants, but it really seems like it has been taking them forever to ripen. In a quick glance I found 6 that were starting to ripen. I am also suspecting that my malakite and green zebra are probably close too, I just didn’t have time to examine them that closely.

The first two pictures are from my two sungold plants. The first one is in a pot while the other is in the ground. I can’t believe the size difference between the tomatoes. The ones on the second plant have to have at least three times the mass of the first.

Sungold #1

Sungold #2

And here we have the royalty of the garden, the Golden King of Siberia. The biggest one is ripening, as well as one other just behind it to the right. We’ll see how it looks tomorrow, but judging from the amount of color already it should be ready to eat in a couple of days.

Golden King of Siberia

Next up is another Russian, the Cosmonaut Volkov. This one was hiding on me, I was very surprised to find a flash of pink. Seems like a pretty good sized tomato, and should be ready to eat by the weekend.

Cosmonaut Volkov

The last of my ripeners (I think I just made up a new word) is a yellow pear. Next year this will be replaced with Yellow Submarine, which is supposed to have a slightly better flavor. The yellow pear plant I keep having to prune back as it tries to take over the garden.

My peppers are doing great. I am debating picking some of the jalapenos so I get some more by the end of the season, but I really want them red. I had taken a picture of my tobasco plant which is finally poking some peppers up into the air but the camera battery died while snapping the last shot. The hot hungarian wax is going crazy, peppers everywhere. If hot pepper rings weren’t so cheap I would pickle some of them. As it is I will be saving them for salsa.

The sweet chocolate finally threw a few peppers too. Hopefully I can get one or two by the end of the growing season.

The last picture is one of me standing in my tomato plants. For reference I am 6’2″ tall, and most of them are as tall as me or better. I wish my cages were 7 feet tall!

Tomato Haven

A week in the woods was the death stroke to much of the garden.  Without me here everyday to spray liquid fence or cayenne pepper or soap spray, a good deal of the garden was descimated by critters.  And I mean descimated.  My new green bean patch- gone.  40-some little sticks are poking out to the sky with nary a leaf in sight.  My lettuce was completely shorn off, and most of the beet greens are gone too.  I may get a beet or two yet though.  The newly planted kale was digested by something from the insect world- and that is not a cabbage looper- I know what those are.  The scarlet runner beans had their stems snapped by rough winds, and the pole beans had their stems eaten through about 8 inches up.  I have about 4 pole bean plants still chugging along.

The butternut squash is looking okay, as is the delicata, but there are no fruit yet- as there are no fruit on the pumpkin.  The melons are all growing very slowly, and I don’t expect they will bear fruit, really.  The tomatillos are growing and pushing blossoms, but they’re not getting pollinated and are not setting fruit at all.  The peppers are mostly intact yet, although the fruit they bear is small.

The pots that I recently planted with chard, kale, lettuces and cucumbers have been obliterated by squirrels.  I put fresh dirt in the pots, and the squirrels proceeded to dig, dig, dig.  With a nut tree in the yard, they are constantly looking for places to bury their plunder.  I wish we could get rid of that nut tree.

But then there are these.

Those are on one of my Black From Tula plants.

And these are on one of my Woodle Orange plants.

And this is my Brave General.

Then, as I was tying up a few more branches on one of my plants, I spied this little fella below.

My trusty Sungold that I took from a sucker from those plants in my house.  My Sungold plant gave me my very first ripe tomato.  As I popped this gem into my mouth and savored the delicious pop of the skin and the sweetness of the juice, I experienced promise.  This one little tomato speaks of promises to come.  The rest of my garden may have succumbed to the never-ending parade of squirrels and rabbits, but I will have a tomato harvest.  It may be modest, at best, but I will enjoy tomatoes of all shapes, sizes and colors, and I will enjoy every single one.

In the meantime, plans are being made.  Next years garden will have to have fencing.  In multiple places.  The beds are going up.  We need to get away from tree roots galore, so we’re going up a good foot or so.  Where the existing bed heights are, we will attach fencing in-ground to prevent burrowing critters from digging up.  And then every garden bed will have a fence- and depending on the bed, a system in place for floating row cover as well.  We are trying to decide the best lay-out, but I have to confess, other than the tomatoes, I’m looking forward to starting over.  It’s rather saddening to walk out to the garden and take a peek.  Even my sage plant has met an untimely demise.  How did that happen?  I have no idea, but just like that, the plant is void of life.

Next year, the garden will be wonderful, but for the remainder of this year, I will be concentrating my efforts completely on tending and enjoying the tomato patch.

I am at the point where I am going to stop counting the fruit that are on the plants and just count the fruit that come off. I have well over 200 tomatoes on my plants now with more on the way.

This first picture is from my Carbon Tomato that was a megabloom. It is very ugly, but I can’t wait to see how big it will get, and once it starts to darken I think it will be a very pretty piece of fruit.

This next one is from my Purple Russian plant, which is a roma shaped tomato. If you notice the one in the upper left was also a megabloom, so the shape on the tomato is quite a bit different.

This next one is my biggest tomato so far, as well as the most productive plant. It is the Golden King of Siberia, and this one seems pretty close to a pound already. My hands are a pretty decent size, and I threw a quarter in there for reference. Reading reviews on this plant it is said that it may not be the tastiest tomato out there but they are very productive.

This is my Green Malakite plant. It is the king of the garden right now and over 5 feet tall. Over 20 fruit on this plant and looking forward to slicing it up for some grilled cheese or BLT’s.

This is from my Sungold Select II plant, and I mistakenly thought earlier in the week that it was my Black Cherry plant.

The next 3 are Brave General, Cosmonaut Volkov, and then Monomahk’s Hat (I am not sure which is which on the first two).

The last tomato here is from my Cour Di Bue plant, an italian oxheart. A very pretty tomato, I cannot wait to bite into one of these.

My peppers are doing really well too. I am a little disappointed that I have less Jalapeno plants than I thought. I still have 8 plants, but the two that I thought were regular Jalapenos turned out to be Bishop’s Crown peppers.

This is one of my Early Jalapenos.

Here is my favorite, my Purple Jalapeno. I might have to eat one of these this week, they just look tasty.

The last pepper here is from my Big Jim plant. This pepper is a monster!

The rest of the garden is growing great. The Basil is in need of some pruning, I would love to try making pesto. We had our first two zucchini last night for supper, and the carrots are starting to get to edible size.

Next week will be a very late post, probably not until Saturday night. Going on a bit of a holiday as the brits say it. Hopefully it rains a bit here at home while I am gone

All the pictures I am going to share with you today are actually from Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.  I spent a bit of time in the yard these days. Andy had sprayed for mosquitoes over the weekend, so I was able to enjoy the yard without being under attack.   I had read a really lame gardening book Monday night while I sat at dance class, and while I found the entire book condescending and totally not for this area, I did take one thing away from it.  When you’re trying to make the most of your space, first, you should see what you can do with things you have on hand.  Gardening- especially vegetable gardening- should not be an expensive hobby.  By gum, he was right, so Tuesday morning I eyed up my yard, eyed up the various things I had around the yard, and I went to work- taking pictures along the way.

First up, I have a picture of my pea tower.

Using two tomato cages, zip-tied together worked beautifully.  My lesson learned this year is that I need to add some tendrils to the cages- using string or fishing line to give more options for the vines to climb up.  The other lesson learned is that if we want enough peas to enjoy, I probably need to have four of these towers going.   Since tomato cages and zip ties are incredibly inexpensive, this is how I will grow peas from now on.  Not only is it effective, but visually, it’s very pleasing to look at.

Next I have a photo of my small greens patch- these are from my very first plantings in the yard.

They’ve taken forever to do anything, but they finally perked up.  There are two heads of romaine, a dozen beets, some bright lights chard and then some scallions.   They’re all chewed on, but looking perky these days.   I’m thinking the scallions are simply going to remain unpicked.  I will let them winter over, and then next spring I will have some great spring onions to enjoy.

Here are the pole beans and the butternut squash.  They’re growing well, and I added a second level of taller bamboo poles for the beans to grow up, and the squash to grow down.

And what’s this?

Ah, this is a butternut squash blossom.  Anyone who’s followed my blog for a while knows that I plant butternut squash pretty much every year, and I have yet to be rewarded with a squash.  This year, I bought established plants, and they’re doing great so far.  The one problem so far?  This blossom is a male blossom- and none of the females are open for business yet.  I am planning to self pollinate, but first I need both genders of blossom to do so.

Next there’s my second sowing of chard, with a line of kale behind it.

Again, these are getting chewed up, so I don’t know what results I’ll have.  I would really like to get some greens to grow so I can freeze some.  I really like what they add to soups and stews in the winter.

Next I have my strawberry plants.

They’re growing like gangbusters, but I’m not getting any berries- they are being eaten before I can get to them.  But for this year, I’m okay with that.  I’m really just trying to establish the plants this year, so if we only get a berry or two, that’s fine by me as long as the plants keep growing so well.

My tomato plants seem very grateful for the additional sunshine Andy has given them.  In the last week they’ve really shot up and put out more blossoms.

Today when I went out I found that my Sungold and my Brave General have the first tomatoes on them.  YAY!  In the next week I expect to have to move a little faster in getting the plants trellised and tied up. I’ll definitely take pictures of how I do that.

My pepper plants are full of blossoms too- and some are beginning to push peppers as well.

I lost a sweet pepper in our mid-week storm this week, but the hot ones are all still doing well.  They seem to like the additional sun as well.

Here’s a picture of a geranium a friend gave me.  They really add a nice punch of pretty to an ugly part of the yard.

I have interesting fungus in the yard too.  I realize they may be indicative of not so good things, but it’s been kind of fun seeing all the different kinds grow.  Since my children hate mushrooms, I don’t have to worry in the least about one of them thinking a mushroom in the yard could be edible.

By the way, if anyone is thinking ahead for Christmas gifts, I would love one of those at-home mushroom farms.  It would be really fun to grow my own shiitakes or creminis.

And finally, I have a picture of one of the things that lame book inspired me to do.  I realized that I had plenty of containers yet, a very large bag of potting mix, and an endless supply of seeds.  So I went to work.  In one pot,  I put some lettuce seeds- I think I put them in so that they will grow to be attractive- artfully displayed as they grow.  In the second pot, I decided to put some cucumber seeds, surrounded by some chard seeds.  Again, thinking that this will be visually appealing, whether or not I get any produce out of it. (But I am hopeful for some late cukes here.)  This is what I ended up with:

To the right of this, I also took an unopened package of Earliserve green beans and planted the entire thing right in the ground- using square foot spacing.  Once they start to sprout I will have to determine how best to repel critters, but it just came to me that I still have plenty of dirt to work in, I might as well try planting stuff in it.

I also took three more pots just sitting around and planted a medley of kale and chard in them.  I used up the last of my potting mix in those, or I would have just kept going, filling pots and planting something in them.  What I’m really thinking is that if I do things correctly- especially with things like kale, chard and lettuce- that once the cold weather strikes, I can move these pots into our screen porch and try and extend their season by quite a bit.  I’m hopeful anyway.

Of course, all these pictures were taken before our big storm Wednesday night.  Thursday I had to spend time in my tomato patch, misting the plants and washing all the mud and dirt off them- as well as standing up quite a few that blew over.  I lost my black cherry tomato, which I’m bummed about, but I’m glad the other 33 plants are still intact and thriving.  The kids gardens aren’t looking so hot- they are just incredibly wind-blown, but I’m hoping for their sake, they’ll bounce back.  Slowly, everything else seems to be bouncing back from the stormy weather.  Although here it is three days later, and the ground is still soggy from the storm.  It can not rain for a while.

There will be more pictures to come.  Every day I find something new, and even though this will not be my most prolific year of produce, I’m still enjoying the process.  We’re learning what we need to do to maximize the space in our yard, and I’m really enjoying trying to garden potager style- and making it visually appealing as well as productive.

I am going to keep this short, as I need to finish getting ready for vacation tonight.

Lots of growth this week, the peppers and tomatoes have really been taking off. I am up to 91 tomatoes and 113 peppers on my plants. I had to spend a bit of time this evening pruning a few tomato plants as they were showing sings of blight on some of the lower leaves.

The first picture here is on my carbon plant, and it was from my largest megabloom. You can actually see 4 distinct tomatoes fused into one. It is kind of ugly, but should prove to be quite a mater.

The next two are of my Golden King of Siberia tomatoes. They are the biggest and most prolific right now with 17 tomatoes on the plant.

This is just a current snapshot of my tomatoes.

The squash have really taken off, they are in danger of shading my lone Vorlon behind them.

A current picture of my Purple Jalapeno. I love the way this plant looks!

Next is my Big Jim plant. This was my favorite pepper last year, I couldn’t believe the flavor on this once they turned ripe. I already have more on this plant than I got all last year, I can’t wait!

That is it for this week. I will post at more length next week, and have some updated pictures.

The last 6 days showed a lot of growth. I am mainly going to show pictures, I am just amazed at how far things have gone in the last week. I have 4 tomatoes on 3 different plants, with a ton of blossoms. Out of my 28 tomato plants 16 or 17 have blossoms right now.

These two here are from my Golden King of Siberia plant. The biggest one is maybe an inch and a half right now.

This one here is a Cosmonaut Volkov. Another completely new one to me (though all but a few plants are new to me, so I guess that isn’t saying much).

This last one is Monomahk’s Hat (sp). This isn’t the tallest plant yet, so I was a little surprised to find a mater on it.

I also noticed 3 “megablooms” on 3 different plants. If you aren’t familiar with a megabloom, it is essentially 2 or more fused blossoms that result in a much larger tomato than the plant would normally have. These are what win contests at fairs and competitions. One was on a Pantano Romanesco (looked like 3 blossoms fused together), one was on a Carbon (looked like 2 blossoms) and I think the third one was on the Malakite, but I am not 100% sure. It was very fun to see those on the plants.

The peppers are doing quite well too. I have peppers on 7 of them now, with blossoms on most of the others.

Here is the purple jalapeno again, it probably has another inch until it reaches full size.

Here we have some Early Jalapenos. True to their name they are putting out a decent amount of peppers pretty early.

These are Tam Jalapenos (supposed to be a mild version of jalapeno, perfect for just snacking on).

This last one here is my Big Jim plant. I really wanted multiples of this plant, it tasted so good last year. Starting peppers this year was an experiment, next year I should know what I am doing and should have some actually live.

One last photo showing most of my garden and some of my cages. I hope to finish up rest of them this week. If you look at my previous post there is a lot of from last week Wednesday to today.

After going away for the weekend, I was totally delighted to come home and find some great changes to the gardens.  Namely, I actually find some marked growth on much of my plants.

The pea plant has quite a few peas- unfortunately, it’s also gotten hot and muggy which is the kiss of death for peas.  We’ll enjoy what we can get, I guess.

My butternut squash seems to have exploded!

And right below that, the pole beans are taking off.  Sprinkling them with a soap spray and then cayenne pepper did the trick.  Now I have to figure out what to do with them- they’ve reached the top of the 3-foot canes, where the pot is, and now I’m unsure what to do with them.

I was especially excited to find a blossom on my Scarlet Runner Beans.  I don’t expect much from these this year because the critters have had a field day.  But in the last few weeks, they’ve started to take off- and boy, if they would do what I want to do, we’d have beautiful blossoms followed by delicious beans

The tomatillo that I bought from the garden center has several blossoms.  This concerns me, because the one I started does not have blossoms yet- and I think they both need to be blossoming in order to achieve pollination.  But I can hope.  Next year I already know to start these plants much earlier than I did.

The strawberries are doing fantastic! I have several runners already as well as blossoms and baby fruit.

Abigail’s pie pumpkins are thriving!  We’re going to need to figure out where to send the vines in the next little while here.  All the melons the kids planted are doing well too.

Here’s Zander’s bean patch- four varieties of beans, and they are all doing really well.  Again, that soap spray and cayenne pepper has really made a difference in keeping the plants whole.

I found two of my sweet pepper plants look like they had been sat on or something while we were gone.  A little strange- but I propped them back up and we’ll see how they do.  Most of the sweet and hot pepper plants have the beginning of blossoms on them.  The one hot pepper I bought at the garden center is fruiting already.

And then there’s the tomatoes.  Before we left for the weekend, one tomato plant had generous blossoms- I was very excited about this because I have one variety of tomato I wish to save seed from- my German Red Strawberry, and that was the first to push out blossoms.  With no other blossoms nearby, if they can set fruit shortly, I won’t have to bag any blossoms or worry about cross-pollination.  Make saving the seed very easy if I just remember to save one of the very first tomatoes.

Two other tomatoes are showing blossoms now too.  The Cosmonaut Volkov and Brave General are bearing open blossoms- and it looks like more plants are on the way.  I was a little disappointed that my tomato harvest may be late this year, but I’ve decided it’s actually a great thing, because I won’t have to worry about everything ripening while we’re on our annual camping vacation.

I went out this afternoon and sprinkled the tomato and pepper patch with a general 30-30-30 granular fertilizer.  I just sprinkled it around the plants, and later when it rains the rain will carry the fertilizer to the roots.

I will say that I am impressed with the tomato plants themselves.  They were so scrawny and spindly when I planted them, but now they all have nice and sturdy strong stems.  The winds and breezes we’ve had have really toughened up the plants.  I’m grateful for this- it gives me time to think on my plan for trellising the plants.

Had a bit of a scare this past weekend with the nasty storms that blew through. It knocked 3 of my mater plants down, and I rushed out during the rain and put cages around those 3 plants.

I had a hard time fitting them into their cages, so today I went and picked up a 150 foot roll of concrete reinforcing wire which I will make cages out of this week (it really was the plan from the beginning, I just had to improvise when the storm turned nasty). I think I will only be able to get 24 or so cages of the size I want, so I will figure out something else for the one or two extra.

All my plants were covered in mud and dirt, so I went out and brushed off all of the leaves on the tomatoes and peppers. It is kind of like a back rub for a person. They like to be rubbed and the dirt gotten off of them; they were much happier after that.

My first pepper pods of the year! The first one is a Purple Jalapeno (very pretty purple flowers that turn into purple pods) and the second is a Tam Jalapeno (a mild version of jalapeno, though most jalapenos are mild for me to begin with).

So the Golden King, Malakite, Cosmonaut, Monomak, and Brave General all have buds now, and so do 11 of my pepper plants. Yay for the garden!

I am also going to try foliar feeding this year, spraying the foliage with a watered down fertilizer. Plants apparently absorb about 90% of the nutrients this way, rather than the 10% or so that they get through the roots when you straight up water them with fertilizer.

The onions are doing well. I need to find time to mound up dirt around them before I leave for the 4th of July weekend. You can see the carrots behind the onions, and they seem to be doing very well too.

Our lettuce did well, and produced/is producing more than we need. The green oakleaf wasn’t our favorite, so I kind of just let it go to seed. I love the red and green grand rapids, great flavor, and they are supposed to produce all summer long without bolting. You can see some red oakleaf at the end, and they seem to be a little more heat tolerant than the green.

I think that is about it for now. We are supposed to have sun for the next week, so I wanted to make sure I got pictures out before everything grows like crazy

I tried being nice.

I tried being patient, thinking that I would lose a few beans here and there ,but that would be okay.  I even put out a little dish with some lettuce and veggie scraps in it.   But the bunnies and I have not seen eye-to eye.

A week or so ago, we finally did some serious planting on top of my tomatoes and peppers.  I gave the kids each their own space and they chose what they wanted to plant.  In addition to the seeds, Abigail added a tomato plant to her patch, and Zander added a peanut plant.   He was really excited about the peanut plant.

I worried about that plant, so the next day I went out and bought a product called “Repels-All”.  It stinks like you wouldn’t believe, but you spray it around the perimeter of your yard, and it should act like a barrier for the bunnies.  It worked for two days, so I was hopeful, but then I woke to discover the peanut plant missing.  A closer look confirmed that the bunnies had eaten all but a little nub of the plant.  War was declared.

Using items I had on hand, I fashioned a fence around the kids gardens.  I used iron fence posts, the green plastic fencing we used last year, staples, electrical tape and zip ties to construct a fence that I hoped would protect my kids gardens.  The fence went up just in time- their gardens started sprouting, but I swear, it looked like something was nibbling those new bean leaves!  So I used another Repels-All product, this time a granular form and sprinkled it thickly around the perimeter of their gardens.  I sure hope it works.

I also had to spray my plants today with a soap solution.  Bugs! Some kind of bugs- white flies maybe?  They look kind of like mosquitoes- but they have been going to town on my plants, and I’m not letting them have anymore.  When I sprayed the soap on the plants today there were a lot of refugees.  I ordered them to stay away.

The tomato plants are looking good.  After lots of rain, we finally got some sun, and the plants seem a lot happier- all 34 of them.

This is something new I added a few weeks ago.  I really didn’t want the bunnies to get my butternut squash, so I decided to put them in a pot.  Then I got the idea to use a bar stool that Andy had made for our last house, but we don’t need at this house- to place the pot on.  At the base of the stool I’ve planted pole beans, and my goal is to have a really cool looking pole bean and squash display.  I really like the pop of color the red stool adds.

On the far left there you can see my baby rhubarb plant, and behind that is the trellis where my runner beans are planted.  I don’t know if I’m going to get runner beans this year.  I keep planting, and they keep being eaten.  I thought I got rid of the bunnies with the spray and granules, but now it looks like something else is eating them.  Maybe the soap spray will take care of them.

There are plenty of sprouts in the kids gardens.  We have broccoli:

Pumpkin and melons:

And lots of beans and peas, as well as a few sprouts of corn and cucumbers.

I also have a new patch of kale and chard going, so I’m hopeful those will do well too.

Up next, I’ve been thinking about all the space I have but am not using yet.  My current plan is to continue amending the soil with compost, tilling it up a few more times, and then I want to try my hand at a fall garden.  Andy’s been just itching to design and build me some cold frames, so I’m going to choose a few spaces, and let him have at them. It would be so awesome to be picking lettuce, broccoli and beets into November this year.