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.

Harvest Monday 22 September 2014

 

Last Monday I checked on the garden after being away for a week and found this guy watching over the garden. He looks well fed, doesn’t he? Of course, he is in the tomato patch when I could really use some help over in the brassicas, where some late and hungry cabbage caterpillars are shredding my collards and kale.

 

 

It is dangerous to leave the summer squash and cucumbers to themselves for a week, but fortunately they have slowed down with the cool nights and the PM. I did find a fire hydrant sized zucchini which went right into the compost bin.

 

 

The Bay Meadows broccoli is finally producing some side shoots.

 

 

The long red peppers are Carmen and are 8 inches long. That gives you an idea how big the Revolution bell pepper is. It is pretty rare for me to get a pepper that size. The small yellow Habanero-shaped peppers are the Trinidad Spice peppers.

 

 

The fall planting of root vegetables are starting to yield a few bulbs, including a golden beet overlooked by the rabbit.

 

 

I am a bit weary of beans but the beans have not given up yet. A lot of these went into a pot of stewed beans and tomatoes and the nicer ones went into the dehydrator. I rehydrated a few of the dried beans and I am not sure I like them. The idea was I could use them in a dried soup mix along with squash, turnips, carrots and other vegetables. Does anyone do this?

 

 

I finally had time to try drying garlic. The pile of cloves above were just from the Rossa di Sulmona garlic. I acquired the Zyliss garlic slicer that Dave has recommended and it worked very well. The tubular silicone rubber garlic peeler (mine is an Oxo) sort of worked but the garlic cloves are still moist and the skins are still pliable, so over half the cloves had to be peeled by hand. The result was great. The dried garlic is still very pungent and I can now make garlic powder in my spice blender (a dedicated Krups coffee grinder I got on sale) whenever I need it.

 

That’s what happened in my 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 4 August 2014

The mild but humid weather has continued with a lot of cloudy days and some rain. The garden is in full production and keeping me busy. The local food pantries have benefited from the excess food produced by me and fellow gardeners, including two Girl Scout troops who have plots in the community garden dedicated to growing food for the pantries and the senior housing facility. The beans and squash in particular have been heavy producers, while the tomatoes' biggest production lies ahead.

 

 

Above are the Gold Marie and Musica pole beans. Many of these were frozen and I have been cooking large amounts for dinner. A lot of the Musica were donated to the food pantry.

 

 

Jade and Provider bush beans above.

 

 

Tomatoes above include the first Blue Beech paste tomato.

 

 

I am picking lots of summer squash now, some not quite in time. Since I said I kind of like the big ones, well I got one. It was stuffed with ground veal and baked in a tomato sauce.

 

 

The Y-Star in the photo above looks a little weird. Since some of the squash start growing squished between leaves, it looks like a branch with flowers was squeezed against the growing squash and fused to it.

 

 

First Crystal Apple cucumber above. I have also been pulling the Rossa Lunga onions and using them fresh in cooking.

 

 

More squash and some Jackson Classic picklers. I am hoping they start producing some decent shaped fruit so I can make some refrigerator half sours.

 

 

More Blue Beech paste tomatoes, plus Juliet, Esterina, Jaune Flamme, and a Big Beef. Below the Big Beef you can see my first and only Chocolate Pear tomato

 

 

Jaune Boule d’Or turnips and more Rossa Lunga di Tropea onions.

 

In addition to the above, on Sunday I picked another five pounds of  beans and pulled the Patterson and Red Wing onions. I will photograph the onions when I clean them up after they cure. Only one or two of the tops had fallen over but the foliage is being affected by what looks like Botrytis leaf blight so I decided to pull them. You can see the white spots on the foliage of the Rossa Lunga in the photo above. The storage onions were worse.

 

That’s what happened in my 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 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.

Harvest Monday 2 Sep 2013

 

The weather has been moderate, with warm days and cool nights. The humidity has crept up to the point where it was really uncomfortable by the end of the week. It has also been dry, with some overcast days during which it looked like rain but never did. The beds have to be watered at least every other day, and really every day if I can get to the garden. The holiday weekend has been overcast and gloomy, with real rain supposed to come today. Loving it anyway is my Tromboncino squash. What you see above is a female flower just starting to open. Yes, it’s over a foot long before it is even pollinated!

 

 

The harvests from the garden this time of year are boring, mostly beans, squash and cucumbers. The Jade beans above have a heavy set of beans ready now. There are over a dozen beans ready to pick on just the two plants shown above. I now have lettuces, endive, escarole, choi, and broccoli transplants set out and pea, radish, turnip and spinach seeds have germinated. The beet seeds have not sprouted. I didn’t presoak them and I think the beds are just too dry down deep. We really need a long, soaking rain (not another monsoon, please) to saturate all the soil again, which hopefully will happen today.

 

 

Among the tomatoes above are a Gilbertie paste tomato and my first Green Zebra that was not cracked and rotted. This is my first year growing Gilbertie, an heirloom, and I picked the fruit above a little early so it wouldn’t crack when we get rain. Yes, it definitely is going to rain sometime soon.

 

 

More beans. Lots of the darker green Jade bean on the right.

 

 

Beans, a few beets, my second zucchini, peppers and cucumbers. The apple-shaped cucumber is Crystal Apple, a New Zealand heirloom that can be eaten without peeling if you don’t pick them too large.

 

 

And yet more beans, and another couple Gilbertie tomatoes.

 

That’s all from my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting from their gardens, head over to Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday–19 August 2013

 

The garden is in a weird place, somewhere between spring crops and summer crops. The lettuces and greens are gone, except for kale and chard, but a lot of the summer crops are not ready yet even though it is mid-August. Above is a Sunburst squash which is finally producing but the zucchinis are just starting to flower. The cucumbers have lots of flowers and bee activity but only the Summer Dance has set even a single fruit. The tomatoes and peppers produced an early flush of fruit but the weeks of hot weather caused them to drop flowers. Only now after a couple of weeks of moderate temperatures have they started to show signs of growth and new flower buds. The garden is starting to look promising again but I think I will run out of time unless we have a very warm fall.

 

The Red Bull onions fell over, several weeks after the Copra onions, and I pulled them last week. They were a nice size and I’m pleased with the harvest. The onions are now drying in a tub on the back porch where they will be out of any rain.

 

 

Other harvests included beans, kale and the Sunburst squash. I finally got to taste the Trionfo Violetto beans. The texture is firm with a nutty flavor. I liked them a lot and will probably plant them again next year. They are way ahead of the Fortex beans planted at the same time.

 

 

 

So while I am waiting for the squash and cucumbers to start producing, I’m planting fall crops as I clean out the beds. I have peas, radish, turnip and spinach seed planted and I have started broccoli, lettuce, choi, and kohlrabi in cell packs. The days are getting shorter and the nights cooler. Just hope these new plants get established soon.

 

That’s what is going on in my garden. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting from their garden, take a trip to Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday–12 August 2013

 

 

The Trionfo Violetto pole bean finally has set some beans. This is the first of significant size but I should be able to start picking this week. The beans are a dusty purple color when mature but they start out green. You can see two immature beans above, the smaller one is green except for the tip and the seam. As it matures, it starts turning purple in patches. The shape is flattened, not round, and I sure hope I like them because it looks like I am going to get a lot.

 

 

The picture above has my first Sunburst patty pan at the bottom. At the top, the large tomato is my one and only Pineapple heirloom, with some splits due to the recent rain. The first fruit had a bad patch of BER and rotted so I removed it. The weeks of high 90s heat caused most of the larger tomatoes to drop their flowers. Ditto for the peppers. They are starting to flower again, so all I need is two or three more months of summer weather and some sunshine.

 

 

Some chard/silverbeet and another batch of Boro beets.

 

 

The mustards started bolting so I am harvesting what I can from them. I need to start some more and replant for the fall. The nice thing about kale and collard is that they are essentially biennials and need a winter before they bolt, so I can continue to harvest through the warm weather right into late fall.

 

I am cleaning up some of the beds and getting them ready for fall planting. I have lettuce, broccoli and kohlrabi seeds started and need to get more beets, carrots and turnips seeded into the garden. The Red Bull onions have dropped and need to be pulled before it rains again. They went at least two weeks longer than the Copra onions and it looks like there are some good sized ones.

 

Thanks for stopping by. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting from their gardens, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

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.

Harvest Monday–24 September 2012

This week was a little different than usual. I did harvest the usual cukes, beans, and zucchini (photos at the end), but the garden is getting close to done. I have to clean up some of the beds to get ready for planting garlic next month. The big event for us happened Sunday when I signed up to pick wine grapes at our local winery, Nashoba Valley Winery, and suckered my wife and daughter into keeping me company.

I had to pay $18 per person for the privilege of working and we had to show up at 9:30 Sunday morning with gloves and shears. Perfectly reasonable. Over coffee and apple cider donuts Rick Pelletier, the owner, explained our task: pick 4-5 tons of grapes in 3 hours. Piece of cake. Our family was assigned to pick Vignoles, a white grape. Rick had hoped to pick it in two weeks when the Brix readings would have been closer to the desired 23 degrees, but the appearance of sour bunch rot required its addition to the day’s assignments. What’s another 2-3 ton of grapes? Besides, it was a gorgeous New England Fall day.

Here we are at the top of the Vignoles vineyard. Rick is explaining what to do and how to pick off or cut out the rotten grapes. Note the Segway with all-terrain tires Rick used to fly around supervising us while we lugged around 30-pound boxes of grapes by hand.

Harvest Monday–10 September 2012

Another sign of Fall: the wild turkeys are getting nice and fat. You can see one of my abandoned raised beds in the picture, slowly being engulfed by the forest in the back. I gave up the fight and got a plot in the community gardens. The picture is fuzzy because the camera was on full optical zoom.
The last of my red onions are now drying in the garage. I don’t know what variety these are, I just bought a pot of seedlings at the farm stand. I think I will plant a lot more onions next year and I already have my garlic on order.

This year I had too much perishable produce (lettuce, chard, beans, etc.) all at once, so I wound up giving away a lot or actually losing it. I might as well plant things I can easily store and reduce the amount of perishable produce to what we can easily consume. Forget freezing. We seem to have a week-long power outage about every year now. All the frantic tree trimming done by the power company and the town doesn't help when the whole tree goes over in a freak October snow storm.



More beets, Red Ace and Bull’s Blood (with the red leaves).



Bush beans on the left and Fortex pole beans on the right. The pile on the left was made into stewed beans for the community garden pot luck dinner Sunday night. I didn’t have a Jalapeno so I used three tiny Thai chiles. That lit it up pretty good. Those things are hot! The pole beans are going in to a bowl of South African Green Beans for dinner tonight.



The two tomatoes lower right are my first Striped Roman tomatoes. In the close up you can sort of see the orange stripes down the tomato. When they are green, the stripes are a darker green than the rest of the tomato, which makes them very attractive even when green.





To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting from their gardens, head over to Daphne’s Dandelions, out host for Harvest Monday.