Weekly Update 5 13 2009

No pictures, just words this time.

The re-tagging project is finished.

I took a half day Wednesday so I could work on the last of the new beds: got two beds done and planted nine peppers and three tomatoes. Four beds to go. I’m down to 16 tomatoes and only four peppers that need homes.

And the squash. Melons. Okra. Oh, and the sweet potato slips that haven’t even arrived yet. Sweet potatoes are going on a terrace, nine tomatoes are going in hangers, so I THINK we’ll have enough space. I think. Fingers crossed.

Broccoli has broccled, but it looks weird so I don’t know if a cold or heat wave has gotten to it or not. Lettuce (heading) is doing beautifully, some were large enough that I had to replace the milk jug cloches with row cover.

The only things I’ve been harvesting is asparagus and spinach. I picked from the new asparagus bed for 2 weeks this year because they were so huge. I’m letting them branch out now, though. Spinach I’ve been picking at a bit, the babies are growing very quickly so I hope to have an actual meal from them this week.

The wee itty bitty fringy carrot and parsnip leaves are finally making an appearance. I see little baby leaf lettuces coming up, and the radishes are growing fast.

Peanuts are planted, and I went to look at them yesterday and it looked like someone had bitten them off. I took a closer look. No, there is new growth at the top, and the ‘branches’ have taken a nose-dive for the ground, which is what threw me. It just looked so strange as most things reach for the sun. Peanut branches dive. And YES, I DO KNOW that peanuts grow underground. I have known this since I was a child, as my father is from Atlanta. My husband felt the need to explain this to me yesterday, though, which earned him a wifely glare. Ahem.

In two weeks we are going to Virginia to visit a friend, and the three of us are going to be visiting Edible Landscapes, a nursery that specializes in, you guessed it, trees and bushes that produce food. We are going to pick up a few things, we are thinking about a couple Hazelnuts (aka Filberts; you need two to pollinate) and possibly one of the varieties of Trifoliate Orange, which is hardy in our area {insert shock and awe}.

In other news, I have dug and separated the saffron crocus. I planted 8 a couple years ago, and I must have dug 10 times that many. Several friends and coworkers have received some and I had plenty to put about 10 different places around the house.

And finally, there may be a guest post by the Garden Ninja sometime. Possibly. Not sure, but worth mentioning.

Weekly Update 5 6 2009

I'm going to start doing a weekly update again, hopefully this will keep me on track with things that are happening around the house.

We've had nothing but rain for the past week, with another week of nothing but rain coming up. I was really hurting for something to post about here until Matt mentioned that the potatoes were up! I was so happy, I went and got a picture. The red potatoes are on the right, yukon golds on the left.

A shiny orb appeared in the sky and cast shadows through the window, I circled the resulting shadows as they appeared on the yellow fan, right.

My tomatoes are looking weird, and I'm going to move them back inside, probably to the greenhouse. I really hope they aren't diseased after all the work I put into them.

So far we've picked 1.5lb of asparagus. I'm really impressed with that number considering they are all new plants. One thing I'm planing on doing this year is keeping track of our bounty and trying to put a price tag on it. I want to figure out how much we'd have paid if we bought all this in the store, including things like jarred salsa vs. the salsa we make ourselves. I have a spreadsheet started and everything. Stay tuned!

I took this cool picture looking down the milk jug cloche I have over the heading lettuce plants. They are doing really well.

Winter

I haven't updated this in a while, so I thought I'd kick one out here for the new year.

Garlic is coming up, but I'm worried that the 2nd batch I planted got in too late. None of it has come up yet, and it rained like 2" a couple days after I planted it, I hope it didn't rot. Or freeze.

Publish Post

Parsnips were wonderful for Christmas dinner, roasted. Not tough or woody at all, which had worried me because they were sooo big,

We have plans to expand the Paw Paw Patch (named after my paternal grandfather, a post on him is to come sometime in the future) to include a larger section for paste and sauce tomatoes. We're going to call that the Grandma Mary V. Annex, for Matt's maternal grandmother who died this past summer. She did literally HUNDREDS of cans of tomato sauce every year, so it seems appropriate to invoke her presence for that.

The compost bin didn't get a 2nd batch out this year, but it will work very quickly once the weather starts warming up, and I just keep adding to it. The green house is totally finished and re-inforced. My potting bench is done, too, I will get some pictures of that sometime for a future post.

And the catalogs keep coming. I got a burpee catalog, which went directly in the trash this year. I got the Seed Savers Exchange catalog a couple weeks ago quickly followed by Seeds of Change, and a new one called Pinetree Garden Seeds out of Maine. They seem to have a nice variety with more than a few heirlooms and such, so I may order from them this year, too.

All I need now is the John Scheeper catalog, and then I can toil away making lists, researching, fretting and pacing to and fro, trying to decide on the perfect varieties for this year.

Monthly Update 9/21/08

Again, not keeping up with this as much as I’d like. I somewhat got derailed when Max had his medical emergency and never got back on track (most recent Max update on my other blog). It wasn’t just this, though, I got off track with the garden, too. I’m going to be playing catch up here over the next couple weeks with a bunch of my infamous So, what do you do with….? series, and I will do a couple bits on flowering things from the summer.

Tomatoes are starting to wind down. There are still a LOT of fruits on the vines, but they are taking a long time to ripen. Same with the peppers.

Cucumbers are done, as are the beans. Not at all thrilled with the beans I grew this year. The Roc d’Or yellow beans were terrible, did not like them at all. And they were spotty and bug-chewed very badly, so I pulled the plants and I’m going to burn them (as opposed to putting them in the compost bin, since they’re diseased or something). The Kentucky Wonder pole beans were very tasty raw, but cooked they were mushy and tasteless. I may grow some next year, but only for eating raw. Otherwise, I’m in the market for a couple new varieties of beans.

I started some fall crops, I have broccoli in and just planted some spinach seedlings. I planted some fall radishes that are pink on the inside, white skins. They’re called watermelon radishes. I also put in some more beets, but I may not get any out before it turns really cold.

The parsnips are still in the ground, I did pull the 5 smallest ones to see how they’re doing. They were very nice, smelled wonderful. I hope to get a good batch out, and will probably grow them again next year.

I have 2 orange pumpkins and one winter squash of the Triamble variety.

Now is the time to be planting garlic, but we aren’t quite yet. No place at the moment. I may put them where the beans were this year and between the broccoli. We’ll see.

Playing Catch-up is for Dummies

I'm going to give up now trying to play catch-up and enter real-time again. Sorry, you didn't miss much, though.

Tomatoes are still going strong. I've been roasting them and making sauce out of them (I'll do a post on this at a later date). Beans are pretty much all done. Peppers are just starting to really produce.

I have the fall broccoli in, bugs have been getting to them but I think they'll be ok. I have spinach seedlings to plant, and of course I want to get in another round of radishes and beets.

This is the time of year when I get tired of it all and start to wind down. I hope to get some pictures up sometime soon. I will try to do it this week.

Weekly Update: 8/10/2008

This will be a mini update, I don't have the pictures of the onions, garlic, etc to show you.

I wanted to be sure, though, to tell you all that the compost is done. Well, not really. It went through its 3 months of heating, cooling, and curing. I can still make out some egg shells and lots of twigs. I'm using it as is, I've already put it in the veggie patch as one of my layers. I'm doing Lasagna Gardening, for those of you who didn't know. I'll probably write on that later this fall.

But I've already almost filled up the R2 unit again, so I hope to get another batch done before it gets too cold out.


The snap beans (left) are doing really well and I plan to grow them again next year (variety: Kentucky Wonder). Great flavor raw, haven't steamed any yet. The bush beans are nice, too, but we're having a bug issue and most of them are munched on. Max loves them, we've been using them to keep his mind off his eyedrops. He just crunches away at them. I'm glad he hasn't found the plants yet, he might devour them.

I don't think I mentioned that I purchased a bunch of strawberry plants and put them in the half whiskey barrel we had laying around. The strawberries that made their appearance were picked off by an unnamed creature (not us) before we got to try them, and so far no more fruit has grown. I hope to pile some hay/straw bales around it to try to get them to overwinter, but if not no big loss.

That's it for now, stay tuned for the blueberry, blackberry, squash, garlic and onion report.

Monthly Update: 8/3/2008

Sorry it's been so long, but as you probably know thing have been up in the air for the past month. Max is doing well, we're still keeping him 'coned' because he keeps trying to rub at his eyes. I posted a picture on my other blog.

The garden grows. BOY, does it ever. The pathways I had planned out have been overgrown in a couple spots by the cherry tomatoes and the bush beans. Sun Gold cherry tomatoes are very prolific in their vines, and I have two plants (right). I'm just starting to get ripe large tomatoes, namely the Mortgage Lifter. Very tasty. Can't wait for the first Aunt Ruby's German Green to ripen, I haven't grown that in a few years.

This viney mess is a mixture of morning glories, cucumbers, and pole beans. There is also a melon vine on the ground, you can't see it. The cucumbers are very prolific, too, I like the variety (Boothby's Blonde), but I'm not sure I'll grow it again next year. Matt's mom is growing a standard variety that is much sweeter than Boothby, I may try to grow that next year. But these are soooo cute, light yellow (blonde), maybe 4 inches at the largest. Nice to take to work to munch on, you don't need to peel them.

It's funny, the overall garden seemed so large when nothing was growing yet. Now it seems so small and short on space. We want to expand it this Fall, we'll see if that actually happens. We have sooo much to do.

The asparagus beds are doing well, everything seems to have taken and maybe we'll even get some usable asparagus next spring.

I also planted the lettuce seedlings I'd had going. These varieties (Forrellenschluss and 4 Seasons) were listed alternately as being very good and very bad in hot weather in different catalogs. So far, I've found them to be doing just fine in the hot humidity that is south central Pennsylvania, so I'll probably continue to grow them.

The leaf lettuce I'm growing has bolted, which I exptected. I would have pulled it by now and added it to my compost bin, but I haven't had time due to all the other unforseen circumstances that have hit us. At one point the frilly leafed lettuce (in the background) looked very much like tall, thin Christmas trees, very pretty. I'll have to consider growing them as ornamentals sometime, because I wasn't thrilled with the taste of that variety and they were very difficult to clean.

That's it for now! Stay tuned for the beans, beets, garlic, onions, and squash update!!!

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!

Weekly Veggie Patch Update 6/16/08

Not much went on this week, I’m back into Waiting Mode. I pulled my first sweet pea early this week, not quite ready to eat but I ate it anyway. I couldn’t help it. More ripened up later in the week. Matt’s dad loves sugar snap peas, so I gave my first real harvest of them to him for Father’s Day, maybe 2 cups worth.

Cukes and melons are getting their second set of leaves, finally. Tomatoes are starting to flower. Peppers are soooo sloooow to get going. Beets are still doing ok, though, they’re starting to get some roundness to the roots.

I pulled the rest of the radishes, they were starting to bolt. Not many carrots germinated this year, I don’t know why but I’ll guess it was the 12” of freakin’ rain we got. Maybe some of the seeds washed? I finished weeding that bed, took about an hour. Got a tiny bit of sunburn on my shoulders.

Broccoli is still doing its thing. It doesn’t appear to have buttoned. Only 2 of the 4 plants are producing actual broccoli. Some broccoli varieties will continue to put little broccolis out after you cut the main crop, but I don’t know if this variety will do it or not.

After I pull the broccoli, bok choy, and the last of the heading lettuce I’m going to replace them with more bush beans. Can’t have too many bush beans. I’ll probably put in another small trellis for cucumbers, too.

The heading lettuce seedlings I started are coming up. Once they’re big enough I’m going to try fit them in where I can in the veggie patch. These varieties are supposed to do ok in hot weather, but I can cover them if I need to.

The squash and pumpkins are doing well, I had to seed a couple more where they'd died. I put some more of the self-watering gizmos up there, too.

I trimmed the scapes off the garlic on Friday and took them to David to sell. Matt and I had been concerned because the few things we’d taken to him before he didn’t pay us for and didn’t mention that he would, so this was the last chance for him, and he did finally pay us. So, that’s a load off our minds.

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 6/2/08 (June the tooth)

Everything is planted, really, I’m just waiting now for them all to DO something. I need to weed and such, but that’s about it.

Someone (slugs, probably) ate my 3 melon plants. I’ve replanted two of them from seed, they are both already sprouting. I put some sand around the plants, I’ve read this deters slugs. It didn’t. They’re gone again. Either it’s the slugs or the birds (or something else) are getting under the floating row cover I put over them. I’m going to plant seeds again and put a milk jug cloche over them this time, possibly weighted down with a rock. It’s strange, because nothing has touched the squash plants.

The beans are sprouting, slugs are liking them. I put sharp/coarse sand around them, and the peppers. No sign of the pole beans yet. The peas finally started blooming, though, and the pumpkins have sprouted.

I did seed some 4-Seasons butterhead lettuce, arugula, and bush beans in pots (2 each) to see how they do. I also started 8 of each of the heading lettuces inside.

Potatoes are coming up beautifully (see top picture), even some of those that I thought were rotted due to the rain. We still have 200lb to plant, hopefully this week.

Garlic looks good, if small, and the scapes are starting to appear, too. The asparagus we planted in the new bed a week ago is just starting to sprout up.

Over the weekend we made a trip to Olive Garden for dinner. We hadn’t been in a few years, I had forgotten how good it was. Afterward, we went to Home Depot and I found that their herbs were .30 cheaper each than Ashcombes, and most of their varieties had at least 3 separate plants in each pot. So I got 10: 2 pots of sweet basil, 2 pots of lemon basil, 2 pots of lemon verbena, 1 cilantro, 1 variegated sage, 1 arugula, 1 dill. So yesterday I planted 6 separate sweet basil plants in the hopes I can sell some to David the Lion Potter this summer, along with who knows what else he could use. I also planted quite a bit of the herbs I bought at Ashcombe’s a couple weeks ago, and have 9 plants total yet to go in.

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.