Fall Veggie Update

I was about to post about pouring concrete when I remembered that a) this started out as a garden blog, and b) I haven't posted about gardening in a loooong time, so I'm doing that today.

Onions: I harvested our 2009 onions already and they are in the basement, but on the suggestion of a friend I seeded onion directly into a bed this past August to overwinter. This was a French variety I'd really wanted to try more of, and I'm really excited to see how it works out. So far, so good, as they are coming up and look healthy and sturdy:
Garlic/Shallots: I planted these this past weekend. 35 French gray shallots, 3 red shallots, and I'm not sure how much garlic yet (I haven't tallied them up). Planted Transylvanian, Chinese Pink, Music, Applegate, and Shantung Purple.

Broccoli: I have two varieties of broccoli in, too: this fall crop and a purple sprouting broccoli for next spring. This year's batch is almost ready to pick.

Cabbages: I may have put these in too late, I'm not sure. I've never grown cabbage before.

Turnips: I planted a lot of turnips, ONE grew. It is currently in the refrigerator waiting to be cooked.

Carrots: These did beautifully in my second batch. I've picked a lot, but there is a lot still in there. I'm going to wait until after the first real freeze to pull them.

Parsnips: Still in the ground, I have no idea what's going on down there.

Peanuts: I got about 8 dozen peanuts!! Off four plants!! I'm pretty happy with that, and they are good size, so I think I will grow them again.

End of July Review and Notes To Self

I had meant to post this at the beginning of August, but I forgot and then I didn’t have time and then…well, you know. So here is my Spring/mid Summer roundup:

Peas: I pulled these SPRING pea vines on 8/2. Really happy with the Little Marvel pea. I have no idea if it is because of weather or the variety, but it was still producing when I pulled the vines! Shocking. Note to self: plant this variety next year, too.

Garlic: I already posted about the garlic harvest. However, as some of you know I’m keeping tabs on $$ when it comes to this garden with the hopes of seeing how much $$ I put in vs. how much I will get out. Here is a tidbit: if I had purchased the 156 heads of garlic at the grocery store through the year, it would have cost me $117.

Leeks: I am happy….but. I overestimated my leek needs and while they were staggering in for a while, they started staggering in really quickly and then I couldn’t keep up. I pulled all the rest today and only 7 were salvageable (they got hit by the onion maggot, and if I had pulled them at the beginning of August they probably would have been fine). Note to self: try to find two varieties next year, an early and a late, and try to find 2-3 people to share them with so I don’t have soooo many leeks all at the same time.

Potatoes: Note to self: if you think you have enough straw/hay on top of the potatoes to keep the sun off them, you don’t. Put another few inches on. About 1/4 of my fingerling potatoes had green spots on them. The red potatoes did well, even though the plants looked like hell. I got 3:1 out for both of these.

Golds did VERY well, I think I got 6:1 out of these. Note to self: plant more golds next year.

Carrots/Lettuce/Radishes: I really think I’m going to grow the Baby Ball/Thumbelina varieties almost exclusively from now on. They’re small, quick, easy to pull, easy to know when to pull, and cute….and I’m guessing easy to can. This year I don’t have too many carrots coming up in the first batch but I was overrun with lettuce and radishes. I usually mix the seeds together, then sew them. Note to self: keep the seeds separate and sew them separately in the same row to make sure I get enough carrot seed sewn.

I did pull and dig some yellow carrots, they looked nice, very carrot-like for our dense soil.

Pole Beans: really happy with both that I put in this year, but the Molly Frazier is going like gangbusters. I emailed the company (Baker Creek) to ask if ‘short vines’ meant 12 feet, and they said no. I emailed them pictures of the beans (not sure if they qualify as ‘cutshort’). It may be the wrong bean, it may be the wrong description.

Bush Beans: I like the Burpee Provider variety again, but something is nibbling on them a lot. Same with the Roma that Barbara gave me. Not slugs, though, these are small fuzzy green worms. The critters don’t get the pole beans as much.

Tomatoes: Happy with: Sun Gold (of course), Ceylon (very nice), and the other varieties I’ve grown before (Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Mortgage Lifter, Aunt Ruby’s). DO NOT LIKE the Purple Russian paste (sweet, splits easily, the bottom starts to turn to mush before the top is ripe!). Still waiting on most others.

Squash: Really like the Reve Scaloppini, but I have yet to see a zucchini. The yellow crookneck and the Zephyr are doing so-so. Not a good year for summer squash?

Winter squash is doing really well and the vines are rooting along the way, hallelujah. Several vines are 20’ long already, and I have at least 8-10 winter squash on them that I’ve noticed. I have lost a couple to vine borers, and we do have a couple small infestations of squash bugs.

Okra: Nice. Note to self: need more than 4 plants.

Peppers: Really bad year for peppers, and everyone is saying this. Of the 13 plants I have more than half have yet to even show a bloom, much less an actual pepper. Many are dropping leaves every time you look at them funny. But a few plants are doing really well. Go figure.

Cukes: So far, so so. I really like the Boothby’s Blonde.

Melons: I have 3 of the Prescott melons and 5 of the Haogen melons. I watch them and drool a little. I can’t wait.

Onions: did surprisingly well. I think I planted 90 something and I got out 76. Some of them were tiny, but still. And I got some that I had originally started from seed in January, which really shocked me. They weren’t hit by the onion maggot, either, I got them out early enough.

Ninja Gardeners and Onions

I started onions from seed this year, first time I've ever tried it. Well, they were tiny. So tiny, in fact, that I am not sure how they will do and I broke down and ordered some onion seedlings from a catalog, just to make sure I had some onions this year.

The variety I grew was called Jaune Paille Des Vertus, which I am told means "Righteous Yellow Straw (hay) Onion" and is a fantastic keeper. I chose it based on the storage time (last year I grew a really nice onion but it wasn't a good keeper, so I wound up throwing some out while quickly making French Onion Marmalade with the rest).



The seedlings are, as you can see, wee little things. That is a yogurt cup they are growing in. I think at most these seedlings were 4" long.


I planted 35 of these, some are already gone. Some seem to be doing well.


I ordered a bunch of Backup Auxiliary onions from Territorial Seeds, another good keeper called Big Daddy. They arrived in Saturday's mail and in the ground they went. I planted 60 of those. They were beautiful, and they already smelled divine.

In other news, we had a sighting of the Ninja Gardener last week. He appeared out of nowhere and spread pine mulch around the walkways of the new veggie patch, and then was gone faster than you can say Bloody Butcher tomato.

Tomato seedlings up!

My tomato seedlings are up. These are paste tomatoes, specifically Amish Paste and Purple Russian. We haven't done paste tomatoes before, and decided it would be cheaper to start our own.

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Peppers are doing well, but they are soooo sloooooow. >>

Onions...not sure how the onions are doing. I have no experience to judge by. If they don't do well, I'll just order onion sets next month. Aren't they adorable?
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Weekly Veggie Patch Update 6/23/08

I have off all week, so I'm hoping to catch up with some of the things that are going on. We had a LOT of work done around the property on Saturday and I'll be posting pictures, you won't want to miss it.

Active week, we put up the tomato cage structures. They were heavy wire and a little big so we trimmed them. I do have little cherry tomatoes and another on the Mortgage Lifter plant. No peppers yet, but they’re getting ready to flower.

Matt started working on the fencing around the blueberry bush (what will eventually be the blueberry patch). All we needed to do is put a net over the bush to keep the birds out. He makes a split-rail fence. *sigh* Over-engineer much? Ya think?

I also got the layering cups on the blueberry bush, so hopefully in 2-3 months we’ll have 3 little blueberries to plant in our newly fenced plot.

I picked a lot of snap peas this week, maybe 5lb. They will have to be picked about every other day, but they’re not. A lot of what I picked was past prime and we’ll need to shell them, but no big deal as we’ll then have shelled petit pois to freeze as well as pods. Some of the vines must be approaching 7 feet tall! I’m not sure if I should attribute that to all the rain or the very rich lasagna garden I created.

I also harvested the kale and broccoli. The broccoli plants did something strange. I have 4 plants: two produced nice broccoli and the other two buttoned. I don’t know why that happened. I pulled the two that buttoned and put in another cucumber trellis.

The onions are all starting to bulb, some of them are getting pretty big. I’m guesstimating that I’ll be harvesting them the middle to end of July. I’m planning on leaving that bed empty for the rest of the summer, amending it with some compost and/or well-rotted manure stuff and then planting spinach in it for the fall. I’ll probably let the spinach winter over so I don’t have to plant any for the spring.

We also finished the 2nd asparagus bed and planted it. Everything came up in the first bed, so in a few years we’ll have some nice asparagus to harvest. Woo-hoo!