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.

Planting Leeks

After planting my storage onions from Dixondale Farms, the next goal was to get the leeks, shallots and Purplette onions I started from seed into the garden beds. The fact I am planting my own leeks is a bit amazing. I decided to try starting my own this year instead of buying no-name plants purchased from a garden center. I chose Takrima, an F1 hybrid from Johnnys. I reported earlier that Takrima was a total failure, with just one seed emerging and then damping off. I continued to water my expensive failure and fully a month after planting the seeds, they started to emerge. In fact, they came up rapidly and caught up with the other onions. Happily I wound up with the nice pot of seedlings below.



The raised bed was prepared for the leeks by using a dibble and preparing large, deep holes in the bed, 5/square.



The pot of leeks was dumped out and individual plants were separated, carefully teasing apart the entwined roots.



A leek plant was then inserted into each hole. The trick was to get the plant and its roots into the bottom of the hole. Trying to use fingers or a stick to accomplish this tended to break the roots. I finally took the plant by its stem and pushed it down into the hole. The plant stems were stiff enough to accomplish this. The result was a plant with its roots at the bottom of a large hole. The soil will eventually fill in after several waterings and the result will be a leek with a long blanched white stem without trenching or hilling. I also planted a closely space row of these between the squares to pull as baby leeks.



Shallots were next but I did not bother to photograph them. This year I tried Conservor since Ambition is showing very poor storage life. Germination was fine but their longevity in pot was disappointing. It looked like they were going dormant. I do not have high hopes of these. I really miss the Saffron shallots which were ideal for my conditions and stored forever.

Next was the Purplette onions from Johnnys, a small-bulbed onion with a lavender blush used for fresh onions. These were robust germinators and growers and I had a beautiful pot of them to transplant.



I allocated two squares to these, planted 16/square. I plan to pull every other one first, allowing the remaining onions to get a bit larger. That space allotment only used half the onions. The rest will be tucked into corners here and there in the garden and pulled as fresh onions.



All of the alliums are now planted, a bit late but it is done. Next goal is to get the brassicas into the ground, cabbages/kohlrabi first, then the kale and broccoli.

Harvest Monday 2 November 2015

Leeks and Pac Choi

I have been avoiding  the garden for a few weeks since there is little left except the chore of cleaning it up for the season. I am hoping to get that done this week and my garlic planted.  I visited last week and harvested a few things that survived the hard freeze we had October 19th. I pulled the last of the leeks. These were from leek plants I purchased as actual leek plants, not from misidentified plants from Dixondale. As such, they benefited from being planted deeply in holes so there is more blanched white bulb then the shallowly planted ones from Dixondale.

I also have a bed of kohlrabi, choi and Napa cabbage that was covered with row cover. Those did nicely except for the kohlrabi. Apparently kohlrabi is only moderately cold resistant and you can see the one pitiful survivor in the picture. The choi and cabbage did fine under cover and I harvested one of the Joi Choi heads for a stir fry. The Soloist cabbages are getting a nice size so I tied them up to blanch the centers. I am hoping for another week or two of decent weather for them to get a little bigger. I have a batch of kimchee planned for them. The ones I harvested this summer were so infested with slugs and earwigs I tossed them in the compost.

The carrots I planted in August in another bed are surviving as well but I am not sure they will get to harvest-able size in the few weeks we have left before solid freeze. I picked a few of the larger ones to try but the wind was blowing so hard I somehow lost them from the bag. We get some wild winds in the winter so I have to get the plastic mulch and row cover removed and stowed away soon.

My brassica bed with the kale and sprouts did not fare very well. The caterpillars have had a field day and pretty much destroyed everything. I may be able to get a few leaves of kale from the whole bed this week. The Brussels sprouts are a failure again. They have just tiny, pea-sized sprouts which will not size up in time. Like Susie I think I am done wasting space and effort on sprouts and will just buy them from the local farm stands. My wife hates them anyway.

That’s what happened (or not) in my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting, visit Dave’s Our Happy Acres, our host for Harvest Monday.

Note: posted late because LiveWriter has decided to be cranky, so this was manually done with the Blogger editor.

Harvest Monday 3 August 2015

 

We will start this post off with not a beet photograph. Lots of squash this week, with the Romanesco now producing eight fruit per week to Dunja’s three.

 

 

 

Here is the requisite beet photograph. Just a few more left. I need to replant these and hope I get some for the fall.

 

 

The escarole is starting to bolt, so I harvested two heads. And I am still getting some lettuce. When I removed the bolting lettuce heads, I found smaller plants crowded underneath from inadequate thinning, which I left. They are now harvestable size, proving that laziness has some usefulness in gardening.

 

 

The endives are also ready to harvest. The inside of this head is nicely blanched, which makes it more tender and less bitter. The frilly leaves are really hard to clean , however. Lots of hiding spaces for slugs, earwigs, pill bugs, and just plain debris.

 

 

More squash and tomatoes.

 

 

Despite my problems with bean diseases, I am still harvesting plenty. This is several pounds and I picked a like quantity on Sunday which I did not photograph.

 

 

I am finally starting to get some peppers. On the left are three Hungarian Paprika, then an orange Yummy Belle, and three Jimmy Nardello. I also picked some (too) large Padron peppers, which did turn hot.

 

 

More tomatoes are starting to ripen.. On the left are two Opalka, one with some BER. The green shoulders on it are typical. The large orange tomato in the center is my first Sunkist, one of the smaller ones. It has a touch of anthracnose rot on the stem end so it is going to get cut up and used today. The two rose colored cherry tomatoes are the first Sweet Treats. I like their color.

 

 

After clearing out the bed of Super Star onions of all that had formed bulbs, I was left with these “onions” with very straight and thick stems. I showed these in a photo a few weeks ago and wondered how big the bulbs were going to be, given the diameter of the stems. Well, they are not forming bulbs. Last week it suddenly became obvious. These are not onions but leeks. Apparently Dixondale Farms mixed some leeks in with the bundle of Super Star onion plants. I am not upset, I can always use some more leeks.

 

 

Finally, this is a satellite view of my house and its so-called yard. This should explain why I can not garden at home and have to drive to the town’s community garden/allotment. The house is located in a stand of climax Eastern white pine on top of a pile of rocks forming a knob off the side of the Vaughan Hills. East is the lower right corner. The land slopes to the left down to the town road. Elevation is enough that I have driven home in the rain to find it turning to snow as I go up the driveway. The “soil” is several inches of forest duff on top of a clay-like mixture of rock powder and pebbles left by the glacier. My first “gardening” tools were a chain saw, pick ax, and my favorite, a heavy five-foot pry bar. Thank goodness for the community garden.

 

That’s 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.