Garden Update - July

Because of the weather and other things, the garden got in late this year, so it is time for a quick update. I have two plots in the community garden, one with raised beds and one planted in-ground. The raised bed garden is a cinch to maintain with its beautiful soil that is easy to weed and great for most plants. The in-ground garden requires more work prepping and weeding, which I try to minimize with plastic mulches. I always wish I had space for more varieties, but I do have 32 tomato plants and 31 pepper plants between the two plots.

In the raised bed garden, I have two 4x6 foot (1.2x1.8 m) beds with an 8 inch (20 cm) depth. The tomatoes are planted around the outside east edge of the beds so they don't shade out other plants. The tomatoes are trained up a trellis cord, pinched to a single leader, and planted 1 per square foot. This spacing actually does work quite well.

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So, going counter-clockwise around the beds, the tomatoes planted on the end this year are Jaune Flamme. This will be my third year growing these and they are doing quite well and will probably be my first tomatoes.

July Tomato Tour

It is the end of July and the tomatoes are busy setting and ripening fruit.  I have already harvested a few of the smaller tomatoes, but the rest will have to wait until August. Since the plants are a lot more interesting with fruit hanging on them, here is a quick tour.

 

 

 

I have four Opalka plants, a Polish paste tomato I first saw at Tower Hill Botanical Gardens. Fruits range from big blocky fruits to long and skinny. Unfortunately, The skinnier fruits are highly susceptible to blossom end rot and I have removed a lot of them to conserve the plants’ resources.

 

 

The bottom tomato shows why it is useless to try to ripen the fruit, thinking you can just cut the end off. By the time the tomato is ripe, the rot usually affects the entire tomato.

Harvest Monday 13 July 2015

 

 

It seemed like I tried to avoid the garden last week, but a lot happened despite that. Maybe I am just really efficient when I do visit the garden. So this post might be a little long, sorry. Let’s start with onions. The onion thrips essentially killed the White Candy onions so I pulled all of them to get them out of the garden (the white onions at the top). Everything else is doing OK. I pulled a couple of Tropea and Red Candy onions and a Super Star to use in cooking.

 

 

I finally uncovered the cucumbers and chard and will take my chances with pests. The chard has again shaded the cukes so I trimmed just the offending leaves on the edges of the chard bed.

 

 

The mustard greens also got a haircut and will probably be removed soon because they are starting to bolt. I may get one more cutting before that happens. I also pulled out all the Soloist cabbages which were riddled with holes and starting to bolt. Planting them without protection turned into a complete waste  of time and space.

Tomato Inventory 2015

This year I have 28 tomato plants, 14 each in the raised-bed and in-ground gardens. All but 5 of these were started by me from seeds this winter. There were ups and downs but I generally did a decent job this year starting my tomatoes from seed. In addition to the plants in my garden, I was able to give another 9-10 tomato plants to other gardeners in the community garden. What you wind up with in the spring is not always what you plan for in the winter. Each year you have to be satisfied with what you achieved and supplement it with purchases if necessary. What follows is an inventory of what is actually in soil and growing now. Just forget those garden planting schedules I made in February, they no longer matter.

 

The Raised Beds

Working counterclockwise around the raised beds.

 

 

Above  is Esterina, an F1 hybrid cherry tomato that I am growing in lieu of Sungold. I love Sungold but it has a terrible tendency to crack whenever it rains. Esterina is just as sweet and prolific and more crack resistant. I grew it last year and liked it, so this is the second year. I have 3 of these planted in the raised beds and gave away 2 of them. My seeds came from High Mowing but it is also carried by Territorial and William Dam in Canada.

Harvest Monday 28 July 2014

 

My gardening style is all about laziness. Not surprisingly, my landscaping style runs similar but it has its advantages. For example, if I had cleared out the brambles under the Kousa dogwood last year, would I have this bowl of black raspberries today? Probably not. But I have resolved, as soon as the raspberries are all picked, I will deal with the brambles.

 

The garden is coming up to full production. I’m still cutting chard and pulled a few beets. Usually my chard is bolt resistant (after all, it is a biennial) but I had one plant start to bolt. It was the Magenta Sunset and I read somewhere that pink or red stalked varieties were more likely to prematurely bolt.

 

 

Plenty of kale and collard greens.

 

 

The bell peppers are from Revolution, a bell that is supposed to produce thick walled peppers in the North. I gave up on bells and plant smaller varieties like Lipstick because I get better yield and quality. But since I killed a lot of my pepper starts, I grabbed a pack of these to try. These peppers are from the in-ground plants, the raised bed equivalents have marble size peppers on them. And that is my first Pingtung eggplant.

 

 

More beans and squash. Beans are being picked almost daily. I read in Johnny’s catalog that the size and even the existence of a green spot on the end of the Y-Star patty pan is variable depending on heat and plant stress. The plant looks pretty happy to me, I don’t think it is being stressed. And it is an F-1 hybrid so cross-pollination shouldn’t be an issue.

 

 

Four kinds of beans are being harvested. Clockwise from upper right, Gold Marie, first picking of Jade, Provider and Musica. The Provider beans went into a batch of refrigerator dilly beans, using this recipe.

 

 

Tomatoes and my first cucumber, a Jackson Classic pickler. I’m harvesting the tomatoes as soon as they start to show color to keep the birds from destroying them. I have lost almost a dozen of the Juliet tomatoes to the birds so far. They have not bothered the other tomato varieties but I don’t want to take a chance. The large tomato is a Big Beef, with a couple of Jaune Flamme below it. The cherries are Esterina, which are supposed to be more crack resistant than Sungold, but notice the blossom end rot on two of them! I have never had BER on a cherry tomato before.

 

 

That's all from my garden and weed patch in Bolton. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting, head over to Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Back to Gardening

 

Last week I took a break from gardening and joined my siblings on an Erie canal trip on a chartered canal boat. The picture above shows our boat moored at Canal Park in the tiny village of Holley, New York, with the Holley Lift Bridge in the background. The trip celebrated my 70th birthday and the voyage our ancestor, Michael Velten, took in 1848 when he emigrated from Germany to Ohio via the Erie canal.

 

While we were gone, my son watered the garden and harvested my garlic scapes. When I got back, the garden was not only still alive but getting out of control. I spent several days taming the tomatoes, weeding and grooming. The only thing bolting was the Dragon Tongue mustard. The other lettuces and greens look good for awhile, but I harvested and froze a lot of greens.

 

Below is tomato Jaune Flamme which I started from seed, so I would like you to notice the extremely vigorous, healthy plants. The tomato truss in the photo has at least 10 tomatoes and others have as many as 12. They get 1.5-2” in diameter and have an orange color and supposedly terrific taste. Michelle has grown these for years and I am finally trying them and I have high expectations.

 

 

I again planted a couple of Juliet tomatoes, below, plants grown by my neighbor, Jem Mix. While Juliet is always the standard for gonzo, out of control tomatoes, this year they are being challenged by many of their neighbors in the garden. This shows a nice truss of 10+ tomatoes.

 

 

For example, below is Sunkist, another tomato I started from seed. Sunkist is an orange slicer with 8-10 ounce fruits developed by the University of New Hampshire and exclusive to High Mowing Seeds. The plants are stout and vigorous and already setting a lot of fruit but they don’t sucker as bad as Juliet.

 

 

Speaking of gonzo tomatoes, below are a couple of Blue Beech paste tomatoes from my neighbor, Jem Mix. I bought these from Jem because I killed my Opalka starts. That is why I am so proud of my Jaune Flamme, Esterina, and Sunkist plants, which are obviously hardy plants tolerant of a little spring time neglect. Blue Beech is a paste tomato collected from Blue Beech Farm in Danby, Vermont and sold by Fedco. Seeds originally came from Italy over 50 years ago. It should be well adapted to our crazy New England summers by now and will hopefully do better than my past trials with Roman Striped and Gilberties. While I was away, these guys suckered like crazy and it took a lot of time to clean out the mass of foliage to allow better air circulation.

 

 

Below is a truss of Blue Beech tomatoes already set. This is a 90-day tomato so hopefully we have a late Fall to let these guys fully ripen.

 

 

Another experiment this year is growing shallots from seed rather than bulbs. Last year I planted $20 worth of bulbs in the fall only to find every single one rotted over a tough winter. Below are my Saffron seed shallots looking pretty good. The shallot stems are thickening and looking like they are going to be putting energy into bulbs. This is just like growing onions from seed, each plant produces a single shallot bulb.

 

 

Some people didn’t return to the community garden this year, so some extra plots were available. I am splitting an additional plot with another gardener. Below is my half, planted to tomatoes and peppers, with a couple hills of summer squash. This allowed me to plant some heirloom tomatoes I wouldn’t have room for in the raised beds. Below are 4 Pineapple, 4 Brandywine, a Cherokee Purple, and another Sunkist.

 

 

So I am back and the garden is looking great. Today is July 4 and a traditional barbeque day. I have St. Louis-style ribs rubbed up and waiting for a chance to start a fire between the rain showers. A head of bok choy is going into an Asian-style slaw, which will get another large volume out of the refrigerator and make my wife happy. Probably no fireworks today because of the rain. Hope you have a great Fourth if you’re American, and otherwise have a great weekend.