End of Summer Review

Whew! What a year!! I can’t believe it is getting cold already. The leaves are just starting to turn down here, I’m hoping it will be a colorful autumn. I’m hoping someone else finds it helpful and informative, too. Please note that I’m also going through my seed stash and I will be doing a Destash list shortly. Look for it, I’ll be happy to send anything anywhere.

Peppers: Terrible year for peppers. I really only got Hungarian wax peppers to ripen, everything else was a bust.

Cucumbers: Still loving my Boothby’s Blonde. I’m out of cuke seeds now, though, so I may try another variety next year.

Melons: I successfully grew two different types of melons this year but, you know, we just didn’t eat them. Note to Self: dedicate the space next year to something else.

Winter Squash: Pumpkins did well, the Australian Butter did, too, but everything else got got by the vine borers.

Summer Squash: Yanoo, it has gotten to be a joke about how zuchinni takes over the garden and you get swamped by them. I got a grand total of 2 zuch this year. Two. Dos. I did get a nice selection of Reve Scaloppini, though, and some croocknecks.

Beans: Provider is still my go-to bush bean. Really happy with the Triofono Violetto purple pole bean, nice and tasty. The Molly Frazier’s White Cutshort was very prolific and I’m happy with it, too. Not sure what I’m going to do next year, I might try something entirely different. I also want to plant more drying beans and some ‘cowpeas.’

Sweet Potatoes: Oh, dear. I planted about 12 slips, the deer ate them. 2 came back and did very well, vine-wise. Then, the guy we hired to do bobcat work buried them in 8” of dirt. I thought it was a total loss, but the vines started growing again. I’m letting them go for another week or so to mark the spots I need to dig.

Tomatoes: This is the long part, so I’m adding it at the end.

Hanging Tomatoes: total bust. They started out so well, I don’t know what happened? I think we will try again next year, maybe with peppers or something else. I would rather put flower baskets in their place, but I think we should try again with veggies, just one more go.

Keeper varieties: these are varieties I have grown before and know I like, and will grow again: Brandywine, Sungold (cherry), Mortgage Lifter, Cherokee Purple, Aunt Ruby’s German Green.

New varieties and my feelings about them:

Ceylon (cherry): Very prolific. Nice fruit, nice size, but I don’t think I’ll grow it again. Tasty, though. I’d recommend it, but it isn’t what I’m looking for.

Tlacolula: Interesting shape, would be a good stuffer, but probably won’t grow it again.

Kellogg’s Breakfast: Terrific, huge yellow/orange fruit, great taste. I will grow this again.

Fancy Hill: I only got one ripe fruit off this plant so I really can’t comment.

Japanese Triefel: Mine didn’t produce much, but the taste was terrific.

Amish Paste: Nice, basic past tomato. Large fruit, nice taste. I will grow this again.

Purple Russian (paste): I truly think that the only way I would grow this tomato again is if it were the last tomato on earth. It was too sweet for my tastes, the bottom was overripe by the time the top ripened, and it cracked a lot. If you like sweet tomatoes, this one is for you.

I have some fall crops in now. Some are a total failure: peas, beets, the cold weather greens didn’t come up, neither did the turnips. Broccoli, I might not get before the cold really hits. Same with cabbage. The Chinese cabbage I planted is doing OK.

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.

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 6/9/08

This was a productive week! Finally!

Pulled more Pink Celebration radishes, took some to David who asked if I had more to sell. Uh, sure!!!! They really do look nice. Some of them split due to the additional 1 inch of rain we got on Tuesday, so I kept those for me (my radish needs are not great). I think this is the most rain I’ve ever seen in a spring. Matt ‘n’ I took 5 bunches of radishes to David ‘n’ Junko’s on Saturday morning. It was very odd, it was bright, clear and sunny at our house. 2 miles away we hit a fog bank that continued the whole way into Gettysburg.

The sand I put around the peppers and beans seems to be working, but if one little piece of hay is touching the plant those slugs will find it and use it as a bridge. It’s amazing. I’ll need to plant more beans to make up for some that were devoured. I went up to put out some beer slug traps and found slugs on the onions, for crying out loud. I wound up picking slugs I saw on any plant and throwing them into the beer, cheering as I watched them DIE DIE DIE.

The bok choy got big! I don't know when to pick it. Peas are starting to form….just in time for 98 degree weather which will probably kill them before any kind of harvest can really happen. I pulled all the spinach, stay tuned for another post on that this week. I planted more bush beans where the spinach had been. The broccoli plants each have little broccoli florets on them (they’ve broccled!!), but I can’t tell yet if they are normal or if they have buttoned. Again, not great timing with the heat.

Melons have sprouted, too, I’m keeping them covered with milk jug cloches until I absolutely have to take them off. The pumpkins have sprouted, as have the pole beans. Cucumbers are starting to come up again, we’ll see if something pulls them out. Again. I may have to put cloches over these, too.
In other news, I picked one of the heads of romaine I had growing….and found a 2-inch across mama wolf spider with egg sack in one of the leaves. EEEWWWW. I’m not a big spider fan. I’ve gotten better, there was a time where I would have not eaten the lettuce, I may have thrown the lettuce across the lawn when I saw her. But this time I just gingerly picked the leaf off and laid it on the ground, then did the heebie-jeebie dance. And we did eat it, and it was good.

We also got in another 100+ of potatoes, so we only have another bag and a half to go, thank god. Only a few potato beetles found, one toad, and some of the blues are blooming!

We’re talking about getting a greenhouse, 10x12. If so, I could use that next year for seed starting. Better yet, I could use it for spinach and lettuce and carrots, etc, which would free up extra space for other things in the fenced garden patch. Sweet.

Weekly Veggie Patch Update 5/26/08

Clear weather the past few days, finally. It’s heating up, too, which should make the tomatoes and peppers happy. I have had a lot to do and no time to do it due to the weather, so OF COURSE it clears and warms up….the weekend I have to work. And not feel well, so I got one whole hour of work done all of Saturday.

I pulled my first radish this week, still a little small but I had to do something to make me feel like this was all worth it. And the little radish was perfect and round and dark pink and had a real bite to it. I’ve pulled more since, maybe about a quarter of what’s there. I’m seeing few carrots, though. A bit bummed about that. And I have no idea if and parsnips are coming up or not because I don't know what they look like.

I did my annual herb-shopping trip to Ashcombe’s on Wednesday morning. I had to drop Matt off at Gettysburg so he could pick up his new work van (at 7:15 A-freaking-M), and figured, well I’m halfway to Ashcombe’s I might as well just go. So I did, got there just before they opened at 8 and wandered with my cappuccino and looked at roses outside until they actually opened the doors.

I grabbed up 3 basils, 3 thymes, a culinary sage, a white (smudging) sage, 2 bok choys, 2 flat-leaf parsley, 2 oreganos, 2 borage (for the veggie patch, to bring in bees), a patchouli, a marjoram, and 1 other thing that I can’t remember now for the life of me. I also picked up two huge bunches of asparagus crowns 50% off, 2 African violet pots, a pack of turnip green seeds for a coworker, some strawberries, and 3 coleus. I had wanted to get some lemon grass, dill, and other basils but they didn’t have them out.

I planted the bok choys and the borages in the veggie patch. I also planted more bush and pole beans. The spinach bed needs weeded badly. Something (birds, I think) ate 2 out of 3 of the melon seedlings, so I replanted them and put some floating row cover over them. Kale and heading lettuce is doing well. I think one, maybe both, of the peppers I started from seed may bite it. If so, I can use that space for more bush beans.

But, I did get most of the mounds in place for the squash and got them planted after I got home from work on Sunday. Pumpkins, too. Matt is going to dig two trenches for me so I can plant the asparagus. I can also plant some things down the middle of the rows for a few years, like beets or onions, so that’s good.

Weekly Veggie Patch Update 5/19/08

Not much new this week in terms of growth, but I did get all 6 pepper planted and the remaining tomatoes planted, see picture of tomatoes above. I planted a plastic bottle next to each plant. Each bottle has holes in it, so I can put water or fertilized water into the bottle and it will water the roots and not the ground above the roots. This is the first year I’ve done this, so we’ll see how it works.

The radishes look wonderful (far left of picture, near my finger), the largest few are about a half inch in diameter, so maybe in a week or two I can start pulling them. The carrots and lettuce are also coming along (the yellow things at the right).
I put up some small supports and planted some Boothby’s Blonde cucumbers around them. I’m planning to do some more tonight or tomorrow, weather permitting. I also want to get some nice bee-loving plants for the cukes, I have never had good luck with them. Maybe a morning glory to climb beside them. Hmmm….

I also planted the three Prescott Fond Blanc melon seedlings in the bed that was supposed to have the arugula. I planted some nasturtiums there, too, to try to attract bees.




I have two heads of Forrellenschuss lettuce coming up, but none of the other seeds I planted sprouted so I think I’m going to use that area for my Roc d’Or yellow bush beans (I hope to plant them tonight, along with the Kentucky Wonder pole beans along the fence supports).


I’m planting nasturtiums with the squash for the same reason. I don’t have the room to plant the squash in the fenced veggie patch, so I’m planting them on the terrace beside it. I need to haul some dirt in to make the mounds, hopefully tonight, and get them in the ground. I’m a little concerned, I noticed what looks like some fungus on some of the Blue Guatemalan seedlings, and the ones affected look like they’re withering, one has died. I separated them all out to keep it from spreading to the seemingly unaffected plants. I do have seeds left, so if it really spreads I can still seed them directly and hopefully have winter squash this fall. The summer squash isn’t coming up yet at all. We’ve had sooo much rain and gloom and cold nights. It was 44 when I woke up this morning.