Harvest Monday 11 July 2016

The weather last week remained dry. While hot on Monday it cooled off for the rest of the week and some mornings were quite chilly. This was caused by some cold front that was supposed to bring rain, but while we got lots of clouds and even some lightning, the result was a few tenths of an inch. All this is going to do is wet the foliage and raise humidity, raising the potential for disease higher, while doing little for the roots.





















I'm still getting a few Atlantis shoots. I am wondering how much of this stuff do I have to plant to get a reasonable harvest. I keep it in the refrigerator until I get enough for two servings. The rest of this harvest went into a batch of salsa made with canned tomatoes, since it will be awhile until those first tomatoes arrive (and they will not be going into salsa).



















Above are two of the heads of Blue Wind broccoli. They were starting to open up so I harvested them. I also clipped off the growing tip off a Spigariello liscia that was headed straight up rather than branching. It has a mild flavor but the leaves are a bit tough, like a kale, or like a broccoli leaf.



The big harvest last week was the garlic. I grow hardneck garlic and follow the rule of digging them when 40-50% of the leaves turn brown or yellow. The remaining green leaves dry and form the wrapper that protects the cloves, so you can't wait until all leaves are brown. Another consideration was the weather. We were looking at potentially several days of rain, so I chose to dig them last week while everything was dry. First out was the German Red, second to produce scapes and second to be harvested.



The next day I dug the rest: Chesnok Red, Philips, and Duganski. It is looking like a good year for garlic. Even the Chesnok Red produced large heads this year. The next step is to cure the garlic without mold forming. Last year teh ground was wet and it was very humid, so drying in the garage did not work well. This year the garlic is in the shed and when the volatiles subside a little (right now it is almost eye watering in the shed), I may move them into the basement where we run a dehumidifier.



Finally, given how dry it has been, I decided to try sprouting some Jade bush beans in a paper towel rather than reseeding. It took 3-4 days for sprouts to start emerging. On a couple of these, the root is actually too long and I had to handle them carefully to avoid breaking off the brittle root. Out of 50+ seeds in the paper towel, I found about a dozen that were sprouted or near to sprouting. These were packed for 2013, so I guess I will be buying new seed next year. It is a little disappointing finding that bean seeds aren't viable for longer than a few years, although Jade has always had slow and poor germination compared to Provider.

That's what happened in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around are doing, visit Dave @ Our Happy Acres, our host for Harvest Monday.

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.

Harvest Monday 13 Jun 2016

I finally got around to weeding the raised beds. As a nice surprise, in the radish bed I found some radishes that were ready to be pulled. These are D'Avignon (French breakfast type) and Celesta cherry. A lot of the radish seeds did not germinate during our dry spring so I re-seeded the blank spots. If you look at the leaves, you can see extensive flea beetle damage, but it did not affect the roots.



The spinach and chard are now growing rapidly. I made another cutting and disposed of the leaves with leaf miner damage, which is not too bad at this point.



The mustards are now growing quickly, outgrowing the flea beetles. Left is Green Wave and right is Komatsuna. These went into a typical Southern braise with bacon fat, served with stuffed pork chops.

Seedling Progress

The weather has been variable and it is chilly and breezy, more like March than late April weather. It has also been quite dry but still cloudy, and starting the garden is going to be difficult until the pump man re-installs the foot valves removed for the winter. I have not done anything in the garden yet except visit a few times, but I need to get going really, really soon.



As an example, the kales above are just about ready to be set out in the garden. I will have a single brassica row for the kale, broccoli, collards, and cabbages. Putting them in one row will allow me to cover them with row cover on hoops to keep the flea beetles and cabbage caterpillars at bay. From left: Red Ursa, Nash's Green, and Nero di Toscana.



Most of the broccolis are also ready to go. From left: Spigariello liscia, Blue Wind, and Atlantis. I am particularly impressed by the size and vigor of Atlantis and have high hopes for it.



The cabbages are ready as well. Clockwise from upper left: Golden Acre cabbage, Flash collards, Green Wave mustard, and Minuet Napa cabbage. The Green Wave mustard is getting impatient and starting to bolt. I may just re-seed it in place. The Minuet cabbage seedlings, new this year,  look a little strange for a Napa. The leaves are serrated on the edge and a bit fuzzy. I may start some Soloist as a backup.



The kohlrabis are doing well and are ready to go. These will get planted in the raised beds. Again, I have to plan the bed assignments so I can group plants that need covering together. Flea beetles are a big menace but the caterpillars seem less likely to attack these smaller plants. Top row is Azur Star and the bottom row is Winner.



Lettuces are also ready. Clockwise from upper left: Green Ice, Red Sails, and Buttercrunch, The fourth flat has escarole in the top row and endive in the bottom. I decided I was planting too may of them and didn't use them all before they bolted. So this year, three of each to start. The three lettuces above will go into my City Picker self-watering container on the deck, for easy harvesting without driving to the garden. I have also started seeds for Midnight Ruffles, Winter Density Romaine, and Webb's Wonderful crisphead which will go into my raised beds at the community garden.



I have shown the good and the bad, so now for the ugly. Above are pictured my successes with the solanums this year. The peppers clockwise from upper left: Revolution, Jimmy Nardello, Hungarian Paprika, and Lemon Drop. The sole tomato flat is Juliet. The rest of my tomatoes and peppers either failed to emerge (even after pre-sprouting) or I killed them by failing to notice a flat or two under the humidity dome had dried out. Just takes one oversight to wipe out weeks of effort.

I am happy with what I do have. Revolution and Jimmy Nardello are must have peppers for me. And how can I not be happy that I managed to sprout and grow those beautiful Lemon Drop plants after swearing off baccatam peppers. The best of those will go in containers to be brought inside for the winter to see if I can get some to ripen. And I have three (maybe four) Hungarian Paprika plants to play with again. Carmen completely failed to germinate from fresh seed, so that is puzzling and disappointing, but I may be able to buy them locally. The Super Shepherd peppers germinated but I managed to let their flat dry out and kill them. If I can find Carmen I will just substitute them for the Super Shepherd, which were just an experiment.

The tomato situation is a somewhat bigger disaster, since none of the tomatoes I was planning to grow are available locally. I did push some new seeds into the cells in the flats and some of them are starting to emerge now, so I may recover partially. After all, it is still 5 weeks or more to setting out.The Chinese gentleman in our community garden direct seeds his tomato plants and they eventually catch up with everyone's transplants. So not all is lost.



Finally, just to add additional pressure to get the garden ready, my onion plants arrived from Dixondale Farms last week and are being kept cool in the basement. These are Copra yellow storage onions and Red Wing red storage onion. They are huge and beautiful, better than anything I can grow. The one disadvantage is they are dormant, which makes it possible to store and ship them. I have found it takes up to a month before they break dormancy and resume growth. I suspect a well grown onion start might compete, being actively growing when it is set out in the garden. Anyway, the race is on to get these in the garden since day length is what it is all about, and how much foliage they can add before the summer solstice starts to shorten days up here in the northern latitudes.

Brassica Update

 

This year I have a fifteen foot row of brassicas planted in the in-ground garden. I used black plastic mulch and they are covered with Agribon-19 spun bond row cover to ward off pests. Biggest problem is preventing the cover from blowing off in the frequent winds we are getting this Spring. The brassicas seem to like their environment and are looking very healthy. Most remarkable is the absence of pest damage from flea beetles and cabbage caterpillars. Last Sunday I opened up the tent to do some watering and harvest some kale, so I took a few photos to give you a tour of the tent.

 

 

This the the broccoli end of the row, with two varieties. Plants are large and healthy with no signs yet of heads forming. At least they are not bolting. Both varieties are new, based on recommendations of other gardeners.

 

 

This is Arcadia, first time I have grown this variety. It is a bit later but is supposed to have large heads and abundant side shoots.

 

 

And this is Fiesta, another first for me. Daphne has grown this one with success, so I decided to give it a try. Catalog descriptions do not mention side shoot production at all, but reviews by gardeners all mention prolific side shoot production.

 

 

In the middle are four Brussels spouts, the standard Jade Cross variety I picked up at a garden center. They are looking good but who knows if I will get anything. I have had one good year, which was fantastic. Sometimes the sprouts stay small, pea size, and never size up, despite pruning and curses . Other years the sprouts tend to loosen up and become leafy, a condition supposedly caused by excessive heat. Nothing I can do about that because I can’t control the weather, but sprouts have a long development period, so here they have to be grown through the summer months. Time will tell. Gardening is all about optimism, and I am optimistic I will get some this year.

 

 

To the left are the kales. That is Tronchuda Beira or Portuguese kale with the large leaves in the foreground, which is new to me this year. Further back is Beedy’s Camden kale, a reliable and hardy Siberian kale I have grown for years. I did not photograph the dinosaur kale because it was recently clipped, so nothing to see.

Seed Starting Begins

The Ambition shallots were sown two weeks ago. I used McEnroe organic potting mix, which has some compost in it, in a plastic tub. I figured the plants would be in the tub for awhile so some extra nutrients would be beneficial. I have about 20 plants germinated from 45 seeds planted, so germination was not terrific. I would have more except for the plants’ tendency to commit suicide. The McEnroe mix formed a crust on top of the pot. Not sure that was the cause but the taproot of some plants elongated and pushed the seedlings out of the soil, where they flopped over and died. Weird, never had that happen before. I have started to pre-germinate some more seed in a wet paper towel in a baggie in hopes of catching up and getting a few more transplants. The top of the plant lights makes a good area to pre-germinate seed since it is slightly warm but not hot enough to kill the seeds.

 

 

Last week I sowed the first of the Brassicas, the kale and broccoli. For them I decided to use a standard soilless planting mix, Lambert’s All-Purpose Planting Mix. They spent a few days on the heat mat until germination started and are now off the heat and under the grow lights. Planted on March 22 were:

• Kale Beedy’s Camden
• Kale Nero di Toscana
• Kale Tronchuda Beira
• Broccoli Fiesta
• Broccoli Arcadia
• Broccoli Raab Sorrento

 

 

Today I am planting lettuce and peppers. The peppers and Ping Tung eggplant are going into plastic 6-cell flats. I can fit 12 of these flats into a 1040 tray, or 72 plants. I thought about but decided not to try pre-germinating the seeds. I have a heat mat that will accommodate a 1020 tray, and I planted 2 seeds per cell, so with 12 varieties to germinate, this is just much simpler. The one shock was the Stocky Red Roaster pepper, which had just 10 seeds in the packet. Guess I might be collecting seeds from this one if I decide it is a keeper (which is likely given its rave reviews). Planted today were these varieties:

• Eggplant Ping Tung
• Pepper Jimmy Nardello
• Pepper Lemon Drop
• Pepper Padron
• Pepper Stocky Red Roaster
• Pepper Arroz Con Pollo
• Pepper Hungarian Paprika
• Pepper Yummy Belles
• Pepper Aji Dulce
• Pepper Trinidad Spice/Perfume
• Pepper Tiburon Ancho Poblano

 

 

The pepper flat was placed on my one and only heat mat. An hour after planting, here they are, warm and steamy on the heat mat.

 

 

Next I planted a tray of lettuce and greens/herbs. Lettuce seed needs light to germinate so I made a small depression in each cell and sprinkled a pinch of seeds into it. Then  I covered the seed with a little fine vermiculite and watered it in. The lettuce flat has a clear plastic dome to cover it but the heat mat is currently occupied by the peppers. They should be alright at room temperature.

 

 

Planted in this tray were the following:

• Lettuce Green Ice
• Lettuce Red Sails
• Lettuce Buttercrumch
• Lettuce Midnight Ruffles
• Lettuce Winter Density
• Lettuce Marshall
• Ice Lettuce
• Mustard Green Wave
• Chinese Cabbage Soloist
• Cilantro Caribe
• Endive Dubuisson
• Escarole Natacha

This was a pretty good start to the season. Next are some Asian greens and then the tomatoes. Hopefully the peppers are prompt because the toms are going to want some space on that heat mat.

2015 Planting List

 

What a winter! Historic snow amounts and low temperatures. We have had 7 feet of snow in about three weeks (a foot of that this weekend) and are expecting another 1.5 feet Tuesday. Tonight it is supposed to be –6 °F (-21 °C) with high winds and –30 °F  (-34 °C) wind chill factor. Brrr.

 

All of  the seed orders are in and mostly delivered and safe inside. For those of you unfamiliar with suburban snow storms, mailboxes on the street are subject to being blown up by the town plows going by at high speed, throwing a plume of heavy snow that rips mailboxes off their supports and deposits them who knows where. The mere fact that my seeds have been safely retrieved and secured inside is a major accomplishment. The hell with the bills, my seeds are safe.

 

I am now working on the seed starting schedule, which is keeping me positive with all the nasty weather. Meanwhile, here is the planting list for Spring 2015, whenever (if ever ) it arrives. Seed vendor legend: BC=Baker Creek, DF=Dixondale Farms, F=Fedco, HM=High Mowing Seeds, J=Johnny’s, PT=Pinetree, R=Renee’s, SESE=Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, T=Territorial

Harvest Monday 1 September 2014

 

Still lots of squash and tomatoes from the garden, but at least the beans have slowed down. The food pantry was closed Saturday for the holiday so the kitchen counters are crowded and my refrigerator is temporarily stuffed with the excess.

 

 

I finally got a couple of the Crystal Apple cucumbers to reach size. They are shown above next to the slightly larger Richmond Green Apple cucumber. They are a little fuzzy and have white spines compared to the black spines on the Richmond. Taste and texture is similar for both. They are both juicy and crunchy and if not picked too big, don’t need the skin peeled. You can eat them like an apple or slice them for salads.

 

 

An assortment of vegetables, including more of the Bay Meadows broccoli and a nice Summer Dance cucumber. I only showed a sample of the four types of beans I picked.

 

 

More squash, cucumbers and a Revolution bell pepper. That pepper has lived up to is reputation of being a good producer of bell peppers in the north. For the last few years I have avoided bell peppers because of their poor yield and grown only smaller peppers like Lipstick and now Carmen that are productive and ripen quickly.

 

 

Some of the tomato glut. The large, good looking tomato on the right is a Cherokee Purple, so not all of them are completely ugly.

 

 

Another sampling of tomatoes, most of these are Brandywine and Pineapple heirlooms. The weird one at the bottom is actually two tomatoes that set on the stem opposite each other and were pressed together as they grew.

 

That’s all from the garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting, head over to 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.

 

 

Field Trip

 

Last Sunday my wife and I visited Tower Hill Botanical Gardens in West Boylston. It was a hot day (air temperatures about 97°F/36°C). When we got out of the air-conditioned car, the heat radiating off the black asphalt made it an emergency situation. I was being broiled alive. We fled to the shade and lawn of the gardens where the heat was at least tolerable. Of course, my interest was in the demo Vegetable Garden behind the original farmhouse on the property. On several earlier visits this year, the garden was unplanted due to the lousy weather. Nice to see the professionals were just as flummoxed by the lousy spring conditions as us amateurs. The first thing to catch our attention was an interesting and attractive multi-celled vertical planter on the wall of the reception center, filled with lettuces, herbs and ornamental peppers, pictured above.

 

Then on to the gardens. The vegetable garden was pretty heat stressed, as I expected. Some things were doing fine, like the hot peppers. The lettuces were all bolting. What really surprised me was the poor condition of most, but not all, of the tomatoes. I think they suffered from the huge amount of rain we have received and needed a nitrogen kick.  It was interesting to see the garden and I always enjoy looking for new varieties of vegetables to try. Below I show some of the ones I found particularly attractive.

 

Harvest Monday–24 Jun 2013

Today I am on the road, driving to Missouri to visit family (so I will be a bit out of touch for over a week). I will be travelling from Monsoon Alley to Tornado Alley, and I’m not sure that is an improvement. We continue to have a lot of rain, but at least we are getting some sun and warmth now. Last week, as of Wednesday, Bolton received another 5.6 inches of rain in the previous 7 days. Add that to the previous week and we have received 16.3 inches (41.4 cm) of rain in just two weeks. At least we now have some sun and heat with an occasional thunderstorm, so plants that didn't rot are now perking up a bit.

 

I still don’t have an ID for the fungal disease contracted by my peppers, but in one day it spread down 15 feet of row to affect all 22 of my pepper plants. I was worried I would lose all my peppers (most of which are special choices I started from seeds back in March and have babied all this time). I had some leftover copper spray I used on Saturday and went back on Monday with a fresh gallon of spray. I found the peppers much improved after the initial spray. So I decide to give the plants a chance. I removed the disease leaves and then sprayed heavily with copper. Looks like I may save my plants and even get a few peppers.

 

 

You can see the lesions on the lower leaf but all of the grey-brown blotches are gone.

 

 

The Aconcagua peppers, which were badly affected, stripped of their infected lower leaves. There are lots of tiny leaves emerging from the leaf axils which will replace the lost foliage.

 

 

Meanwhile, I was still harvesting produce from the rest of the garden. Broccoli and a few scapes and snow peas, above.

 

 

The last of the Choi and the first of the Flamingo chard.

 

 

New Red Fire lettuce and the first big batch of snow peas, with a few of the first snap peas.

 

 

Broccoli, more snow peas, and a few small fava beans We tried these tossed in olive oil and grilled, but the jury is out on whether we liked the favas that way. Oh well, I’m gone for over a week just as the favas start maturing. Hopefully the backup crew is up to monitoring them and picking them as they mature.

 

 

Four large heads of escarole. Three are given away and one is for me.

 

 

More lettuce and a large pile of scapes from the Red Chesnok garlic.

 

That’s all from here. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting from their gardens,please visit Daphne's Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday–17 June2013

 

Despite all of the rain (12-14 inches) the past 10 days, the garden has been hanging in there. I do think the plants would really, really enjoy seeing the sun again. At least the raised beds have kept them from being submerged in the puddles, see here. The community gardens are officially in a wetland, about 30 feet from Great Brook and the water table is maybe 2 feet down. With all the rain the soil is super-saturated and the least amount of rain will just puddle if it can’t run downhill toward the brook. So the Girl Scouts and I are high and dry in our raised bed gardens, we just have to garden in our galoshes. And you do have to be careful when stooping not to dip your posterior in the water (don’t ask how I know that). Our neighbors in the garden are not so lucky.

 

 

I did harvest quite a bit last week, enough to overfill the refrigerator. I didn’t cut any lettuce because I still have bags in the refrigerator, but I am going to cut some this week so my wife can take it to work. Other things did have to be harvested. The tatsoi below came from squares where my eggplant is going to go this week. The flea beetle damage on the older leaves is obvious.

 

 

A pair of Win-Win pac choi were looking like they might bolt so I cut them. They are destined for soup and stir fries.

 

 

I got a nice pile of garlic scapes, my first ever, and a pile of herbs, The broccoli is a tiny head of Purple Peacock which was starting to open, so I harvested it.

 

 

As I cut the purplish head from the very green Purple Peacock below, I was surprised to see it had already started to send out a bunch of side shoots. You can see at least three side shoots in the photo. This is my first year growing this variety so I have no idea what to expect from it. The leaves are also supposed to be edible just like kale.

 

 

There were some other surprises in the garden. Below you can see the only kohlrabi in 4 squares that actually germinated, and it is actively growing now and starting to form a bulb. So it looks like I may actually get a kohlrabi this year, although I do plan to plant more for the fall. Since the kohlrabies didn’t germinate, I put some radicchio transplants in their squares. The one below is now starting to form a head. So far they have been completely resistant to flea beetles and slugs, maybe too bitter?

 

 

Another radicchio making good use of the square forfeited by the kohlrabies, below. The spinach in the adjacent squares are not happy, not bolting but not the deep green they were. Maybe lack of sun or a foot of rain washing nutrients out of the soil? Time for some fish emulsion fertilizer, and some sunlight, please.

 

 

That is what is happening here in Soggy Bottoms. To see what other gardeners are harvesting from their gardens around the world, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.