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.

 

Planting Cucumbers with Surround WP

 

 

Growing cucumbers is an almost impossible task lately because of the cucumber beetle problem here. The beetle harbors a bacterial wilt disease in its gut and infects the cucumber vines when it feeds on them. The actual damage done by the beetles is minimal, but their bite is the kiss of death to the vines if they are carrying bacterial wilt (Erwinia tracheiphila). Within a few days the vine starts drooping and eventually dies as the bacterial infection clogs up its vascular system. There is no cure except prevention, and that is difficult. The beetles are tiny and elusive, and they like to hang out inside of the cucumber flowers which makes them difficult to locate. I have not had success controlling them.

 

This year I am going to try something new and use a kaolin clay product, Surround WP. Surround is a finely ground white clay that is used to coat the leaves and stem of the plants you want to protect. It is not a pesticide but a deterrent to insect activity. It comes in a 25-pound bag and is mixed with water to form a slurry, which is either sprayed or used as a dip. Since I started my cucumbers inside in peat strips, I chose to dip the plants in a bucket of Surround for first application. Later on I will have to spray the plants to reapply it after a rain.

 

 

 

I used a small one gallon bucket to mix the slurry, adding water to the powder and stirring to get it wetted. I tried a stick at first but found my fingers were more effective. You want the slurry thin enough that it drips but does not run off the leaves.

 

 

When ready to plant, I took a peat strip, broke off the top edges so they will not stick out of the soil, and swirled the plant in the clay slurry.

 

 

Once the plant is reasonably coated, it is ready to put in the ground, looking like a white ghost. I wondered if the clay has a negative effect on the plant, but it apparently does not and has some advantages. The clay breathes and sunlight can get through so photosynthesis is not affected. At the same time, the clay prevents sunburn of new plants and reduces transplant shock.

 

 

Here is a row of newly planted Homemade Pickles, a pickling cucumber, looking quite ghostly.

 

 

The most difficult to plant were the Monika cukes above, a pickler from Poland. The plants were very compact so it was difficult to plant them without soil getting on and sticking to the wet clay.

 

Time will tell if this type of treatment works. UMass seems to think it does. It is important to start it at plant out because cucumbers are most susceptible when they are young (less than 5 sets of true leaves). Surround is widely used by commercial growers and both Johnnys and High Mowing Seeds use it in their fields. It is widely used in orchards and vineyards. And it is also useful for other plants and pests, such as flea beetles on eggplant, thrips on onions and squash vine borers and squash bugs, so I may apply it elsewhere in the garden, once I get a sprayer than can handle a wettable powder.

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.

Beans and Squash and Tomatoes, Oh no …

It’s August in the garden, so the harvest includes the usual suspects, beans, squash, and finally, tomatoes in large quantities. The beans I did not bother to photograph, and I only show a sampling of the tomatoes.

 

 

Some more beets and a couple of turnips. A rabbit in the garden has discovered that beetroot tastes a lot better than just beet leaves and has been nibbling the beets. The ones above were the only survivors. I need to set a rat trap in that bed since I have more beets and spinach seeded there.

 

 

I finally got my first broccoli. This is Bay Meadows, which Fedco raves about. It was very slow to start and only now has decided to put on a growth spurt.

 

 

The ugly tomatoes on the left are Cherokee Purple from the vine that fell over. The big fruit there was 12 ounces.

 

 

Finally getting a few cucumbers. Others have had a banner year, but not me. Bacterial wilt has wiped out a large number of the vines. The large cuke in the center is a Poona Kheera, an Indian heirloom variety that is new for me. I picked the first one while still white and small, thinking it was the Crystal Apple. This one I let get bigger. When mature they are supposed to turn yellow and then brown, but all this thing did is get bigger. I have no idea how big they get, so I picked this one (it already weighs a pound) since they are still edible at any stage. I haven’t tried it yet since it takes a little planning to figure out what do do with a one pound cucumber.

 

 

The Richmond Green Apple cucumber above is an Australian heirloom that produces small roundish cucumbers, similar to Crystal Apple and Lemon. They can be eaten without peeling, just like an apple, and are sweet and crunchy. The Crystal Apple cukes were to small to pick one for comparison. For some reason both varieties were very late to produce fruit this year but the remaining vines not killed by wilt are now growing rapidly up the trellis and setting lots of fruit. So it’s a race with the cold weather to see if I get any more of these.

 

 

An assortment of peppers. The red pepper in the middle is my first Lipstick, next to a couple of Carmen. I thought these two varieties were roughly equivalent, but they are not. Carmen is much larger, much more productive and ripens faster than Lipstick. At the bottom, my first Poblanos. The one on the left has turned yellow as it starts to ripen but I picked it anyway because I want these for Chiles Rellenos.

 

 

An assortment of squash, including my first Tromboncino and just the second Costata Romanesco.

 

 

The Brandywine tomatoes are starting to color and these were picked to lessen the load on the vines.

 

 

Pineapple tomatoes above. The biggest one unfortunately cracked badly.

 

 

Finally, more Cherokee Purple on the left, to get them off the ground where things have been eating holes in them And the remaining Sunkist on the right.

 

That’s all from my garden this week. To see what is happening in other gardens around the world, 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–9 Sep 2013

 

Oops! It’s Tuesday and I completely forgot about Harvest Monday. It was that kind of a weekend. I would just skip it but I have a few things I want to show. Saturday was work day at the community garden. We did fence repairs and removed weeds and a two-foot strip of sod around the outside of the fence. We then laid down cardboard and covered it with wood chips. This will deter the weeds for awhile and make mowing easier and safer. We already had the mower come too close and rip off a six-foot section of fencing. With that big of a hole, more than bunnies can get through. After four hours of manual labor we all went home stiff and sore.

 

Sunday was the Patriots-Bills season opener (Patriots squeaked by with a win) followed by the garden pot luck dinner. Sunday morning I cut a huge bag of kale and turned it into a kale, white beans and sausage dish which was well received (and it got rid of a lot of excess kale). I also managed to clean up my Red Bull onions (above) and put them in storage. Five square feet yielded 8.5 pounds. A few big ones and a lot of small ones.

 

On to the harvest. Below, the zucchini at the top is my first (and maybe only) slightly-overgrown Romanesco squash. Unlike Michelle who has harvested something like 600 pounds of zucchini from her plants, I get one and the PM gets the rest. The Jimmy Nardello peppers are getting added to the string for drying.

 

 

More beans and another Green Fingers cucumber. A lot of beans were donated to the Hudson food pantry on Saturday, along with a large bag of kale. Lots of Portuguese in Hudson so hopefully people there know what to do with kale, which is a very healthy and nutritious vegetable.

 

 

Here is what I particularly wanted to show. The two Tromboncino squash below are my first and there is another ready for picking soon and lots of flowers. It’s nice to feel somewhat successful and these Tromboncino are making me feel good about my garden. I can grow something besides weeds. There also are a couple of my Tiburon Ancho poblano peppers, Spicy Globe basil for drying, and some decent-sized Purple Peacock shoots (now that I am following Michelle’s advice for cutting sprouts).

 

 

The Tromboncino are getting prepared tonight in one one of my favorite dishes. There is no recipe for this. The story is, long ago my wife and I took the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard with only our bikes and cycled to Edgartown. We stayed at a B&B and since we were hoofing it around town, we ate at a nearby Italian restaurant. It was a la carte and absolutely nothing came with the (already pricy) entrée. The waiter suggested a side of zucchini and it was fabulous. I don’t remember what the entrée was but I remember this dish. The zucchini was steamed but still bright green and crisp. It was covered with a  fresh tomato sauce with basil and oregano, thickened with bread crumbs and topped with shredded Parmesan.

 

That’s all from my garden, time to go prepare dinner. To see what other gardener’s around the world are harvesting  from their gardens, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday–26 August 2013

 

The Sunburst squash is continuing to produce a good supply of sunny yellow patty pans, but you wonder if it was named after the color of the fruit or the exuberance of its flowers. The other story in this picture is the persistence of the powdery mildew this year. I have sprayed with various organic-approved concoctions including Green Cure and Serenade, but the strain of mildew this year seems resistant to everything and does not go away and it is affecting even the “resistant” varieties like Dunja and Summer Dance.

 

 

Despite the powdery mildew plaguing most of the squash and cucurbits, I recorded four firsts this week: from the left, first Dunja zucchini, first Summer Dance cuke, first Green Fingers, and first Jackson Classic pickler, with more on the way if I can keep the vines healthy. The Crystal Apple cucumber has also set several fruit so I should be able to try those soon.

 

 

Every couple of days now I am picking a large pile of beans, so I won’t show all of them. Above are the four types of bean I am growing this year. Top from left: Provider bush, Trionfo Violetto pole, and Fortex pole. On the bottom are the Jade beans which are just now coming into production after almost all of the first planting failed to germinate. In this photo you can see the difference in color from Provider and Fortex. Jade is a much darker green and one of my favorites. Below is a close up of Jade (top) and Provider.

 

 

With all these beans coming in, there is pressure to do something to preserve them, even though a lot still go to the local food pantry. I don’t like freezing them. It’s a lot of work blanching them and I don’t like the mushy texture or even the taste, even when I vacuum sealed them. Forget canning them. Dilly beans are on my wish list but will probably not happen. I do make batches of stewed beans and tomatoes and freeze them, which works well. But then I ran across this article on freezing beans without blanching. It is simple enough, just trim the beans and throw in a zippered freezer bag.  I am trying this method this year as an experiment. I am also labeling the variety of bean so I can compare which type freezes better. Now I just hope we don’t have another week-long power failure this winter.

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Finally, the Beedy’s Camden kale is prolific this year and is being used in many creative ways. My garden neighbor mentioned using it in a “massaged kale salad” and said her kids, who are otherwise allergic to the color green, like this salad. She described sprinkling chopped kale with salt and lemon juice and “massaging” it for 5 minutes, then adding olive oil. I’ll leave it to your imagination how you massage kale leaves, but I did try this classic method and it was very good. If you search the Internet for “massaged kale salad” you will find dozens of variations that can even turn it into a more substantial main dish. So there’s hope in getting through piles of kale like the one below.

 

 

This is a sampling of what came from my garden last week. Check out what other gardeners around the world are doing in their gardens by heading over to Daphne’s Dandelions, out 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.

My First Meyer Lemon

The Meyer lemon tree I bought on impulse this spring spent its summer on the deck. It flowered profusely in the spring and set a lot of fruit. All but five dropped and the biggest of those is now ripe and the rest are starting to ripen. I will have to come up with a good recipe to use my first lemon. Any suggestions? I found the LA Times has an article on “100 things to do with a Meyer Lemon” which is giving me some ideas.

The garden is mostly done except for kale, chard, parsley and some remaining beets which can take the frost we had last week. My wife and son visited the garden the weekend before the frost and harvested what they could. I photographed it but didn’t post it last week. One remarkable find they made was three more of the Summer Dance cucumbers. I have never had cucumbers up to frost before.

I haven’t done a lot of work in the garden the last couple of weeks because I have been recovering from surgery I had the end of September. One advantage of being an “invalid” was I didn’t cook or clean. My daughter was bothered by the stack of zucchini and patty pan squash piling up on the counter, so she decided to work her way through the Victory Garden Cookbook section on summer squash. One of the best was a squash pie made by layering slices of zucchini, tomatoes and cheese in a pastry crust and baking it.

As soon as I can bend comfortably in the middle, I have to clean up the beds and get ready to plant my garlic and shallots. Unfortunately I didn’t plant my spinach and sprouting broccoli seeds, but I may try a few just to see if they germinate and take. You never know what the weather will be. I also hope to pot up a rosemary plant for the winter. Last winter was so mild my rosemary survived into January or February when the really cold weather finally killed it.

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.