Harvest Monday 18 July 2016

It has been pretty hot and dry, enough to cause this brown bat to move out of its apartment and hang out on the cool concrete wall of the garage in the shade under the deck. It is hanging upside down, you can see its ears at the bottom. I wonder what it is eating? It is so dry I don't remember seeing a mosquito this year, nor a single black fly or deer fly. But I have already had two deer tick bites, ouch, and this is prime Lyme disease territory.

How dry is it? We are in one of the worst droughts we have had in awhile. I can not find the rainfall amounts for Bolton, seems they are a secret. I did find one article that said Worcester (city or county not specified) had 6.5 inches (17 cm) of rain since January 1st. Consider that includes snow fall and that number is astounding. We get an average of 4+ inches (10 cm) of rain per month (48-53 inches/1.2-1.35 m per year). For the first half of the year we have received 1/4 our normal rainfall, and a lot of that was snow during the winter.

 I really need to water the garden every day but can not always get there. It takes me two hours to water the two plots, but that does not do as thorough a job as a day long soaking rain. Most plants are getting stressed. The peas look poorly and all of the greens and brassicas are hating this weather. The harvest this week reflects the need to get things out of the garden before they are ruined. So lots of root vegetables and greens.

Harvest Monday 4 July 2016

A couple of the turkeys that make a pass through my yard every day. This time they were particularly focused upward towards the foliage, rather than the ground. They know berries are in season. So much for my chances of getting any blueberries this year. Sorry for the poor photo. It was shot through a window into the sun.



I am sure they have designs on these beauties, my secret stash of wild black raspberries, not quite ripe yet.

Speaking of turkeys, we had a sort of tragedy last week. A local foods institution, Tom's Turkey Farm in Lancaster, Massachusetts, had a barn fire that destroyed 7,000 turkeys. Since they were uninsured, they think they are probably going to close the business, which supplied fresh turkeys and turkey pot pies to the community and employed a lot of people.          



The Winter Density romaines have sized up and are threatening to bolt, so I have started harvesting them. It is nice to now have harvests coming from the garden that can make a meal. The romaine went into a Caesar salad with grilled chicken and made a nice dinner.



Kohlrabi is going to be a feature here for another week or so as they size up quickly. Some of these went into a fermented kraut a la Dave @ Our Happy Acres. The smell of that was pretty pungent when it first started fermenting but after a day it toned down and smells quite pleasant. The radish is a Korean daikon type radish called Alpine. I pulled one to see how they are doing, since I don't want them to bolt on me. This type of radish is stockier and grows partly above the ground, which is great since I do not have the bed depth to grow standard Japanese daikon.




Another Webb's Wonderful crisphead. Per Mark's suggestion, the outer leaves were used for lettuce pockets with a Thai ground chicken saute, another meal from the garden (along with garlic, scallions, and cilantro from the garden).



When I prepped the first romaine from the garden and cut off the root end, I noticed a lot of milky white latex around the cut, a sign the lettuce is bolting and becoming bitter.  So I cut another romaine lettuce but found it so damaged by slugs only the center was salvageable. The third lettuce was much better and we have the makings of another salad. I also cut the first few sprouts from the Atlantis brokali and picked a few snow peas.



The last Webb's Wonderful started to bolt so it was harvested. The refrigerator is getting stuffed.



I pulled some of the beets to give the smaller plants some sun. The large red beet at the top is Shiraz, a great beet that I had germination trouble with this year (old seed). The two darker red beets at the bottom are Paonazza D'Egitto, an Italian heirloom beet from Pinetree. They germinated very well and are growing enthusiastically, and their foliage is beautiful



Finally, the garlic harvest is about to start. These are German Extra Hardy, the first to produce scapes and the first to be ready to harvest. I will probably dig the rest of the garlic in the next week. The weather is good for garlic harvesting right now, hot and dry, while the rest of the garden would like a nice drenching rain. I am going to start these off drying under the deck where it is less humid than the garage with good air circulation. Last year humidity was sky high and the garlic and onions cured very poorly.

That is what happened in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners from around the world are harvesting, visit Dave at Our Happy Acres, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday 27 June 2016

The Green Beauty snow peas are blooming so I should have peas soon.



And sometimes the view of your neighbor's weedy plot is actually pleasant. This bee definitely likes it. And speaking of weeds, just ignore any that slip into my pictures. By the time you read this the "gardener" will have removed them.



There are still a lot of greens coming from the garden, although the spinach is about done. The onions are some of the excess Copra seedlings that I planted closely together along the edge of the onion squares.



These two small heads are the first of the Natacha escarole to be harvested.  I could not remove one without the other, so two. They were pretty nice with no slug damage.





I harvested my first Webb's Wonderful crisphead and it was very nice, just a little tip burn and a few baby slugs. It is a little tougher than an Iceberg lettuce but still nice and much fresher. I saved some of the outer leaves that weren't slug damaged and found they go well with a sandwich. I just need some tomatoes now for my BLT.



The kohlrabies are sizing up fast now. I am saving these to try making kraut. I may add a few of the radishes to the kraut for color.



A second crisphead was harvested later in the week. It is getting hot here and remains dry so I do not want them to bolt on me.



Finally, the rest of the garlic scapes were ready to harvest. The German Extra Hardy, a large garlic, was first a week ago and had nice sized scapes. This week harvesting the other varieties, I found it interesting that the size of the scape has nothing to do with the eventual size of the bulb. The German Red, my largest garlic by far, had smaller scapes (both length and diameter) than the other varieties. But the stems on the German Red are huge, indicating a large bulb is going to await me at harvest. I guess it is putting its energy where it does (me) the most good, into the bulbs.

That was the harvest for the week, but I did take a few kale leaves from each variety just to compare them. They will eventually wind up in a beans, sausage and kale dish this week.



Nero di Toscano or Dinosaur kale. The leaves are a dark green/gray color. This is a good kale for use in salads and is supposed to be very cold hardy (although that is not my personal experience).



This is Nash's Green, a selection of Nash Huber from his farm in Washington state. It is described as a tall kale but it is the shortest one of three in my garden. The color variation is interesting. Some leaves are lime green with a yellowish stem, while others show some of the blue shades found on the rear of all leaves.



The Red Ursa kale is a knockout, a beautiful, vigorous plant. Leaves vary from green to blue, all with purple stems and veins. I think this one is going to be a favorite of mine.



OK, this is not actually a kale, or is it? This is Spigariello liscia, a plant that doesn't know what it is. Technically, I think it is a broccoli, but a broccoli where you eat the leaves. Brilliant, because in this climate I am expert at growing broccoli leaves but not so good at getting broccoli heads I can eat. So to heck with the heads, lets eat leaves. And it is looking like I will get a lot from my four plants.

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

Harvest Monday 20 June 2016

A little more diversity in the harvest. I pulled a couple of the kohlrabies and after chilling them, I peeled and sliced them for a lunch with hummus. I added some sliced radishes to pad out the meal. My wife actually liked everything. Both the kohlrabi and radishes were sweet and juicy and the hummus tamed any spice in the radishes.



A  bunch of radishes picked last week, but not all. I found half as many still in the harvest bag. The lone whitish radish is Zlata, one of the two I will harvest this year. I didn't purchase new seeds and found just a few seeds left in the packet, of which two germinated. Oh well, more room for Champion red radishes.




















I got a large cutting of spinach. Several of the plants look like they are ready to bolt but the rest are still putting out new leaves. I am happy with anything I get. We had a spinach salad with strawberries and balsamic vinaigrette Friday, and I finally had enough left to just have steamed spinach with the steak tips I grilled on Saturday. Strawberry shortcake for dessert.



The garlic is finally starting to produce scapes. This cutting is mostly from the German Extra Hardy. Next will be the Chesnok Red and German Red. The tiny scapes are from some of the volunteer clusters of garlic around the garden produced when gardeners failed to harvest scapes and dead head the flowers. I consider it my civic duty to prevent further profligate behavior by their garlic.



Around the garden, the Flash collards are starting to put on some growth and I may have a harvest soon.



The Golden Acre cabbage is still looking good and has not yet been assaulted by flea beetles, cabbage caterpillars or slugs. Still looks like it is not quite ready to form heads but is thinking about it. Saturday I did see a white butterfly floating around the garden so I need to keep an eye out for caterpillars. We had a few butterflies in the spring but none since until the new one showed up. Maybe they won't be so bad this year.



The Minuet Napa cabbage is definitely starting to form heads all by itself. With the Soloist cabbages, I had to use twine to tie up the heads so they would blanch, but Minuet is doing it on its own. It has interesting ruffled leaves.



This is Webb's  Wonderful crisphead, looking like it is getting ready to be harvested. I have never grown a crisphead so I have no experience with when they are ready and when they are bolting. I probably will cut a head next week to see what I have.



The Winter Density Romaine lettuces are are also forming nice sized heads. The escarole behind them are also getting quite large and should be ready to harvest soon.

That is what happened in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners from around the world are harvesting, visit Dave at Our Happy Acres, our host for Harvest Monday.

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.

Harvest Monday 22 June 2015

 

 

Harvested some more spinach and the first cutting of tatsoi. I thought the tatsoi was ruined by the flea beetles, but some judicious spraying and a break in the weather caused it to outgrow the flea beetles. There is more in the garden and the cool, rainy weather we have this weekend will hopefully suppress the beetles and allow me to harvest the rest next week.

 

 

The bulk of the garlic scapes were harvested this week, after a few early scapes became available last week. Another first picking was the Golden Sweet snow peas. These are growing quite rampantly. I had to use twine to raise the mass of the vines off the  radishes in the middle of the bed and pull them toward the trellis. The prevailing (high) winds have been blowing the vines away from the trellis, keeping the tendrils from grabbing the trellis.

 

 

I opened the brassica tenting to see how they are doing and took the opportunity to cut the first harvest of the Beedy’s Camden kale. Now I have kale for smoothies, my baked eggs, and some massaged kale salads. All of the brassicas are still looking good. There are some holes in the bottom leaves of the kale so maybe I should try spraying some Spinosad in there next week. I examined the broccoli and no sign of heads forming, which is good.

 

 

More firsts in the root vegetables category. I actually succeeded in growing a kohlrabi, only my second in years of attempts. I started these indoors in soil cubes and transplanted them. This one is Winner. Also harvested were the Red Candy onion and the first Rossa Lunga di Tropea onion, to use as fresh onions in cooking.

 

 

Besides the root vegetables I picked a large quantity of the Golden Sweet snow peas and the first Sugar Snap peas.

 

 

 

I pulled most of the radishes from the bed so I can plant something else. The purple Boro King radishes were huge but had a lot of maggot damage.  The white radish is an off-color Boro King. And more strange shapes from the Dragon radishes. I wondered if  this could be cause by some problem, like nematodes or a soil-borne disease. It is not rocks, there are none in the raised beds. Apparently not, daikon radishes often exhibit the same strange shapes and I will bet there is some daikon in these.

 

 

After photographing the radishes I found this one in the corner of the bag. It is strange enough to deserve its own photo.

 

That is what I harvested from my garden last week. Check out what other gardeners are growing by visiting Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

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

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–8 July 2013

 

I was travelling last week so my family took care of the garden. They did a pretty good job. They didn’t have to water because there were frequent thundershowers, but unfortunately that meant they didn’t spray. The weekly spraying with copper was missed and when I got to the garden, I found my eggplants covered with flea beetles. Fortunately the damage is minor. I have just about given up trying to grow eggplant. This year I am trying Ping Tung, an oriental eggplant, in the hopes it is more resistant to the beetles.

 

Below are a head of radicchio, starting to bolt in this hot weather, my first fava beans, and my one and only kohlrabi. I am a little concerned by the black specks on the favas. They are not black aphids but spots that start as little blisters on the bean and then turn black. They have not penetrated the shell and the beans inside were not affected. Looking up fava bean diseases, the only thing I found was chocolate spot disease, but no leaves are affected on my beans, just the pods, and it does not look like the photos I have seen.

 

 

These are the first tomatoes of the year, a few Sungolds picked on the Fourth of July, so I met the NE standard for first tomato by the Fourth. I would prefer it to be a big beefsteak tomato, but the Sungolds were tasty. I also grabbed a few stragglers in the garlic bed for some green garlic.

 

 

The chard is coming to its own after being shaded by the now spent lettuces. I am cutting Orange Fantasia, Flamingo, and Bright Lights. I also pulled a Rosso Lunga di Tropea onion for a salad.

 

 

The New Red Fire and Green Ice continue to be bolt resistant despite the hot weather, but not for much longer. The radicchio is also bolting so I have been removing it as it looks close to bolting.

 

 

The garlic is close to being ready and will probably be harvested next week, along with the rest of the fava beans, which are suffering in the heat. I am reseeding all of the items that didn’t germinate, like my Jade beans. The Provider beans germinated nicely and are now almost a foot tall but Jade was a failure, 3 seeds out of 54 emerged (and two have been eaten). Only half the Summer Dance cucumber seeds germinated, so those were also reseeded. After two sowings of mustard greens failed to germinate, I finally started them indoors and now have Green Wave and Red Giant growing nicely and being feasted on by he flea beetles. And all of my squash, which I usually sow directly, have spotty germination and the leaves of those which did germinate are being shredded by something. The only good thing about this is I may miss the SVB hatch that is going on now.

 

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