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.

Munich Bier Radishes

Today I want to talk about growing vegetables that you may not like. One of the most obvious things when planting an edible garden is growing varieties you like because, hey, you are supposed to be eating them, right? And why waste the space?

I grow one vegetable that I don't particularly like, and my hooband will not eat. Radishes. Don't like them, but I find them very useful in the garden. I plant radishes in the same row as carrots and leaf lettuce. Radishes are quick to germinate and grow, so they mark the rows and break up the soil for the slow-growing carrots. By the time the carrots need more room the radishes are ready to pull. Win-win. Also, my FIL loves radishes, so I just give them all to him.

This year, though, I discovered a variety of radish that I cannot grow with carrots (or parsnips, which can use the help too). It is called the Munich Bier radish (Muenchen Bier-radi) , and you cannot grow them with carrots. Why?

They get too big:

WAY too big. Here is a link to a post about someone else who grew one and it was 8 POUNDS.

That's a LOT of radish.

Now, here's the kicker. Cook's Garden recommends slicing them, slathering them with some butter, salting them and eating them with a nice, dark German beer. Apparently you can also dip them in sugar. They are quite the snack in Germany.

I LOVE these with the butter. Haven't tried the beer or the sugar (yet). I'm so tickled to find a radish I like. I just can't get over these things, and so far (knock on wood) they haven't shown any sign of getting woody. And I easily have enough that I can pull one a week through the end of August. And I can plant another whole patch the middle of July for Fall harvest!

So, it really pays to keep trying new varieties of things because you never know when you'll find something you like!

First Real Harvest!

Radishes: Pink Celebration, Hailstone and Helios

Lettuce: Tennisball (left) and Bath Cos (right)

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 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.