Harvest Monday 10 August 2015

 

The story this week is mostly squash and tomatoes, and that is likely to be repeated for the next few weeks. There are three new things in this photo, however. The first cucumber, first eggplant (Ping Tung) and the tomato on the right is a small Pruden’s Purple.  A neighbor in the garden is also growing Pruden’s Purple and has already harvested one that weighed a pound and 3 ounces (about half a kilo). I have two on the vine that should come close to that.

 

 

Some more cucumbers and squash. The cukes are Monika, a Polish pickler. The vines are not looking really good (not from wilt, thankfully) so I am not sure if I will get a lot from them.

 

 

A lot more tomatoes. The yellow tomato in the middle is a small Sunkist that was showing signs of anthracnose infection at the stem end, so I picked it. The green tomato is an Opalka that dropped for some reason.

 

 

I finally cleared out the last of the lettuce so I can try planting carrots in its place. I have more lettuce transplants ready to go in for fall salads.

 

 

Some of the Red Zeppelin onions were falling over and the foliage on the rest looked bad so I declared it time to harvest them. I let them dry in the sun for a few days before taking them home to finish their drying in the garage.

 

 

Here is a follow-up picture of the crystalline ice plant I described here. The foliage has indeed changed, becoming smaller and more gray in color, with red tips. And it is now flowering. The attractive flowers only last a day and the bees do seem to like them.

 

That is what happened in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are doing, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

 

Harvest Monday–22 July 2013

 

No, this is not the tropics, that’s a passion fruit flower at Tower Hill. But it felt like it, another week from hell in un-air conditioned New England, with daytime temperatures sometimes over 100 °F/38 °C, stifling humidity and no rain. I have found with the raised beds and these temperatures, I have to water the tomatoes and peppers every day or they get stressed. We were busy Saturday so I got to the garden late afternoon. It was threatening to storm, with black clouds and ominous rumbles, but I figured it wouldn’t really rain unless I wasted the time watering. I met a fellow gardener there with the same thought. We are both rational people, not the least superstitious, but we went through our rain dance with watering cans. Good thing, because it did not rain! At least the front provided some relief on Sunday. It is still brutally humid but temps are a little lower.

 

 

The garden is still making its transition from spring to summer crops. Yields from the garden are smaller but more interesting.  The Copra yellow onions are starting to fall over so I may be harvesting them this week.

 

 

Planting List 2013

My seed orders are placed and most are in hand except Fedco, which was a group order and I must wait for that order to arrive and be distributed. Now to figure out where to put everything in the garden and plan the seed starting schedule. My planning tends to be impulse driven. More ooh that’s cool, where can I put it and less here’s an empty spot, what should I plant. I admit I’m a sucker for the seed catalogs with color photos.

 

The garden will be similar to last year, with a lot of the old reliable varieties and a few new ones. New vegetables I am trying include kohlrabi, carrots and broad beans. I am also planting an expanded variety of Asian greens, going beyond Choi to include Tatsoi, Fun Jen, and Hon Tsai Tai. Hopefully I can do some fall plantings of these so I get some greens into cold weather. I have not bothered growing carrots because they are so cheap, even “organic” ones. The trick was to find short carrots that will row in 5-6 inch deep raised bed without resorting to height extenders.

 

I had a miserable season last year with eggplant and peppers. This year I will try a couple of Ping Tung eggplants under cover in hopes I get a few. My unscientific observation the last couple of years is that the oriental types of eggplants seem to be less susceptible to flea beetle damage. For peppers, I have given up any hope of growing bell peppers and will stick to small peppers this year. I’m trying Padron, which Michelle grows with success, and a few other small fruited peppers like Jimmy Nardello. Hope I get some. I think I harvested three Jalapenos from two plants last year.

 

This year I will be growing four types of onions and starting my own onion plants from seed for the first time. Last year I purchased a 4” pot of red onion plants from a local nursery and tucked them in here and there. I was pleased that I got nice, large onions from these plants and still have a few in the basement. So now I am going to try growing my own from seed. The little I know so far is that right now is the time to start them, since they grow very slowly. I plan to start them in some kind of flat and will use the Johnny’s 512 mix I got for seed blocking since it has compost and fertilizer added.

 

Here is the 2013 planting list, hopefully complete and accurate (but always subject to change):

 

•    Basil Genovese, Siam Queen, Spicy Globe (purchased plants)
•    Bean Bush Provider (PT)
•    Bean Bush Jade (PT)
•    Bean Pole Fortex
•    Bean Pole Trionfo Violetto (PT)
•    Bean Broad/Fava, Windsor (PT)
•    Beet Touchstone (F)
•    Beet Red Ace (PT)
•    Beet Boro (HM)
•    Broccoli Di Cicco
•    Broccoli Purple Peacock (F)
•    Brussels Sprouts (purchased plants)
•    Carrot Shin Kuroda (F)
•    Carrot Mokum (F)
•    Carrot Caracas (J)
•    Cilantro Large Leaf (PT)
•    Collards Champion (HM)
•    Cucumber Summer Dance (PT)
•    Cucumber Pickling Jackson Classic
•    Cucumber Green Finger (HM)
•    Cucumber Crystal Apple (PT)
•    Dill Fernleaf
•    Eggplant Ping Tung (PT)
•    Endive Dubuisson (J)
•    Escarole Natacha (J)
•    Garlic German Extra Hardy (GM) –planted 10/2012
•    Garlic Chesnok Red (GM) –planted 10/2012
•    Greens Pac Choi Win-Win (J)
•    Greens Fun Jen (F)
•    Greens Hon Tsai Tai (HM)
•    Greens Tatsoi (F)
•    Kale Beedy’s Camden (F)
•    Kohlrabi Kolibri (PT)
•    Lettuce Green Ice (PT)
•    Lettuce New Red Fire (PT)
•    Lettuce Buttercrunch (PT)
•    Lettuce Forellenschluss (F)
•    Mustard Green Wave (PT)
•    Mustard Red Giant (F)
•    Onion Copra (PT)
•    Onion Red Wing (PT)
•    Onion Rossa Lunga di Tropea (F)
•    Onion Evergreen Hardy White (F)
•    Onion French Red Shallots (SESE) –planted 10/2012
•    Parsley Italian Flat Leaf (purchased plants)
•    Pea Snap Sugar Ann
•    Pea Snow Oregon Sugar Pod II
•    Pepper Padron (BC)
•    Pepper Jimmy Nardello (F)
•    Pepper Tiburon Ancho (F)
•    Pepper Red Cherry (PT)
•    Pepper Lipstick BC)
•    Pepper Jalapeno (purchased plants)
•    Pepper Thai (purchased plant)
•    Radish White Icicle Short Top (J)
•    Radish Watermelon (PT)
•    Radish, French Breakfast
•    Rosemary (purchased plant)
•    Spinach Tyee (PT)
•    Squash Zucchini Dunja
•    Squash Zucchini Costata Romanesco
•    Squash Pattypan Sunburst
•    Squash Summer Tromboncino (F)
•    Swiss Chard Orange Fantasia (PT)
•    Swiss Chard Flamingo (BC)
•    Turnip White Tokyo Cross (PT)
•    Turnip Yellow Golden Ball (F)
•    Tomato cherry Sun Gold I (purchase plants)
•    Tomato cherry Black Cherry I (PT)
•    Tomato Roma Gilbertie Paste I (HM)
•    Tomato Juliet (purchased grafted and un-grafted plants)
•    Tomato Roma Striped Roman I (BC)
•    Tomato, Cherokee Purple I (purchased grafted plant)
•    Tomato, Big Beef (purchased plants)

 

BC=Baker Creek, F=Fedco, GM=Green Mountain Garlic, HM=High Mowing Seeds, J=Johnny’s, PT=Pinetree, SESE=Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Garden Post-mortem 2012

The year 2012 was a challenging year for gardening in New England and most of the country. It was hot and humid for months and we were plagued with disease and insects. Diseases that normally overwinter in the South and move north in the summer showed up earlier than ever. We had a number of new insect pests invade the gardens, such as the tortoise beetle pictured below and the green stink bug. Add to that hurricane Sandy and I have no doubt that we are dealing with significant climate change. If we are going to garden and try to grow our own vegetables, we will just have to work with what we are given. This post starts a review of what worked and did not work in my square foot garden in 2012, in roughly alphabetical order.

 

Basil

Besides my usual planting of generic basil, this year I also planted Siam Queen Thai basil and Spicy Globe (or Greek) basil. All the basils did well once the weather warmed up and  the varietal basils were exotically fragrant and welcome in cooking.

Beans

I planted both bush and pole beans this year and all did well. In place of Jade I tried E-Z Pick, supposedly an improved Jade that is easier to pick. Jade does have stems that are hard to sever with a thumbnail, almost requiring scissors to harvest. But I much prefer the appearance and quality of Jade and that’s what I will plant next year. Provider was good as usual and gets planted again. And I really liked the Fortex pole beans, which produce abundant, very-long round beans. I also want to try the Trionfo Violetto pole bean next year.

BEETS

I planted two types of beets this year. Bulls Blood seems to be popular, mostly for it greens. For me, it did poorly, with spotty germination and very slow growth. Greens never got large enough to pick and beets were about thumb size. Red Ace did better for me and I got two meals out of two squares. Some of the problems with the beets may have been that they were crowded and shaded by the peas in the same box. Next year I will put them in a sunnier spot, but I don’t see myself trying Bulls Blood again.

Broccoli

I didn’t have a lot of luck with broccoli this year, but a lot of that was my own doing. I purchased seeds for De Cicco, an heirloom variety, and started them indoors in early spring but had problems. So I purchased a pack of Blue Wind plants, a fast growing variety. I had them under row cover to ward off the cabbage moths. When I removed the row cover I found that all the plants had bolted. My poorly grown De Cicco plants eventually yielded a few small heads by late summer, but neither variety produced an abundance of side shoots. I definitely need to choose my varieties carefully and attend to the plants better.

Brussels Sprouts

Brussels sprouts are an iffy thing for me. For years I planted them and never got sprouts. Then two years ago I got a great crop of them, I have no idea why. Last year all of the sprouts opened (is this how they bolt?) and I got nothing. This year they matured early and I got a generous cutting off the bottom. Then the cabbage caterpillars and yes, even European corn borer larvae, decimated them. If I had been more watchful and ready with the bT I might have got a larger harvest. Of course, my wife was happy with that outcome.

Cilantro/DILL

I direct seeded both cilantro and dill this year and had modest success, despite the fact they were shaded by the neighboring lettuces and eventually the basil. Next year I need to get them a spot with more sun and seed them more thickly. I also need to learn what you do with green coriander seeds.

Collards

This year I planted collards Georgia, which were fairly slow growing. I don’t like this variety’s tendency to spread out and flop. I think next year I will go back to a Vates type of collard, which has a more compact growth so you get more leaf for a given area. This is an important consideration for gardening in raised beds.

Cucumbers

It was a good year for cucumbers for me, despite all the mildew and bugs. I planted varieties, Diva and Summer Dance, that were said to be mildew resistant and that was generally the case. I also had little problem with cucumber beetles and bacterial wilt, although wilt did eventually knock off the pickler and Diva vines, but later than usual. The Jackson Classic pickler got off to an earlier start and produced an abundance of 5-6 inch fruit. I really liked this one and will plant again. Diva was late in germinating and producing and I got very few fruit from it, but they were of good eating quality. I may give it another chance next year.

The outstanding variety was undoubtedly Summer Dance, a Japanese-style cucumber that was a heavy producer (picking 2-5 a day) of long, slender, dark green fruits that were sweet and crisp with a tender skin and small seed cavity. The cucumbers hold well on the vine and simply grow longer if overlooked, sometimes well over 12 inches long. They continually produce side branches so most production takes place on the bottom 3 feet of the trellis. When cleaning the dead vines off the trellis in early fall, I found a couple of cucumbers I had missed and they were still in good condition, a nice treat. I highly recommend Summer Dance cucumber.

Eggplant

Well, eggplant was a complete failure again this year, partly due to flea beetles. I did battle by picking beetles, then spraying the plants with a pyrethrin spray and a pepper-garlic spray. I can’t camp out in the garden, however, so despite my efforts eventually the plants started to decline. I did use row cover on the plants I started from seed but left the purchased plants uncovered.  I don’t know if I will grow eggplant again, too much valuable space wasted in the raised beds for no yield. Maybe I will try a few oriental types like Ping Tung since I observed they seem to be less bothered by the beetles. And I will definitely have to cover them with row cover.

Endive and Escarole

I planted both of these bitter greens this year from plants I started and they did very well. They form large dense heads that contact the ground so you do have to do slug control or they will chew up the heads. I planted varieties from Johnny’s (Dubuisson and Natacha) and both were excellent. I am definitely planting these again next year.

Garden Update 1 Jul 2012

The garden is at the point now where the warm weather crops are starting to take off and in a few weeks I should start getting beans, summer squash, and yes, even the first cherry tomatoes. Full size tomatoes and eggplant are probably not going to be ready until late July or August.

The beans are starting to grow vigorously and the first bush beans planted should start flowering in a week or so. The bean bed below shows they have greened up considerably after their jaundiced start. I suspect maybe the nitrogen-fixing bacteria take some time and some warm weather to start working ( I did use innoculant). The beans on the right were planted two weeks later than the beans on the left. Fresh Pick are at the bottom and Provider at the top.

What, AAS Winners in My Garden?!

Most of the planting is now done and I am getting excited about some of the heirloom vegetables I have put in this year, particularly the heirloom tomatoes and some of the heirloom Italian vegetables like Costata Romanesco. And next year I hope to try more heirlooms, particularly Italian varieties. I have come far from the days when I would peruse the Burpee and Parks catalogs and be seduced by the glossy color photos of the latest All-American Selections (AAS) winners, I smugly thought. But in taking an inventory of the garden I find I have a lot of AAS winners in my garden. None were consciously selected because of the AAS label but because I wanted them for their characteristics and appeal. Some won their AAS designation more than two decades ago! That’s a real testament to the value of the AAS selection process. Here are the AAS winners I am growing this year but didn't know I was.

Eggplant 'Fairy Tale' (2005)

There are so many varieties of eggplant (Asian, Middle Eastern, Italian heirloom) but garden centers around here mostly offer transplants labeled “Eggplant”or “Classic”. I wanted to try something new, so that meant starting plants from seed. Fairy Tale was one of my choices, a miniature violet eggplant striped with white. It looks like an Italian heirloom type but it is actually an F1 hybrid and the first eggplant to win the AAS since 1939. The plants are petite as well and should work out well in my SFG at one per square. Unfortunately, this is a Seminis variety that I may not buy again, although Johnny’s is not listed as a vendor of the Seminis seeds. Check here for a list of Seminis varieties to avoid.

Memorial Day Weekend Planting

The new raised beds are complete and filled with Mel’s Mix and the Memorial Day weekend is here. It’s time to finish planting and we have perfect weather, mostly sunny, warm, with the prospect of a few showers or thunderstorms. I spent Saturday and Sunday planting seeds and transplants, and erecting the tomato trellises for the new beds.All the beds were mulched with chopped straw to preserve moisture and prevent soil from splashing on the plants.

This will be my first year in a long time growing tomatoes in a raised bed. I built 8 inch beds to give me an extra inch or so, even though everyone says 6 inches is enough. This will also be my first year in a long time training tomatoes up a string trellis. I do have experience with this and used the technique in my original raised beds back in the late 80s, where I did indeed plant one tomato per square foot.

So here we go. I have a pair of Juliet tomatoes I am trying this year, variously referred to as a mini-Roma or a really big grape tomato. My neighbor planted them last year because her husband likes them. Her vines were so loaded with fruit she lost a lot to drops and birds. So I am giving them a trial this year. If they get ahead of me they will become sauce.

Harvest Monday–26 September 2011

Not much from the garden last week. I cut the two small eggplants the flea beetles left me. A third one turned brown before I got to it. A few peppers and tomatoes, plus lots of green tomatoes off of the now dead tomato plants. I cut the eggplants and then pulled the plants so I could clean up the bed that was infected with halo blight. It took me two hours to unwind the dead pole beans from the trellis and stuff them in a trash bag. Then I had to police the garden, picking up any dead vegetation on the ground or in other beds. Found out Sunday at the garden pot luck that three other plots in the garden also had the blight.



I got a lot of green tomatoes last week. Here are two pounds of them being weighed to make green tomato chutney. I used this recipe by Shaheen posted on her blog a few weeks ago (lots of vegetarian recipes there). It was easy to make and is very tasty.  I substituted Splenda for the sugar to keep it low-carb and that worked fine. The recipe made about a pint and it keeps in the fridge. First use for it was on hamburgers. It would be good on any grilled meat or with a good sharp cheddar.

Now head on over to Daphne’s Dandelions and see what others are harvesting.

Garden Update week of 5-11 Jul 2011

Because of the time taken to build and fill the beds and our trip to St. Louis,the garden was planted fairly late this year. Then add in many days of cold, rainy weather with no sun and the garden was looking poorly. Lately, after some stretches of warmer, sunnier weather, plants are starting to green up and grow. Of course, the lettuces have loved the weather and we have been having salads almost every night. Overall, the garden is looking good and is starting to catch up with the neighbors.

As you can see, the tomatoes (the only plants not in raised beds) are looking great. The Brandywine is growing well and already has a fairly large fruit. The Cherokee Purple and Sun Gold are also growing strongly and setting fruit. Several of the Jet Stars are also flowering and have small fruit. The Romas in the cages look healthy but are taking their time while hopefully developing a good root structure.

2011 Planting List

This is a list of what I planted in the eight raised beds and in the strip of garden allotted to tomatoes.

Box 1 (3x6)

• 1 zucchini Raven (9 sq)
• 1 pattypan squash Sunburst (9 sq)
• 4 lettuce red leaf (1 in each corner)

Box 2 (3x6)

• 5 broccoli Green Comet
• 2 Brussels sprouts Jade Cross
• nasturtium Alaska

Broccoli and Brussels sprouts