Out with the Old

The last couple weeks I've been focused on preparing for spring planting.  Lots of little seedlings are decorating my kitchen and spare bedroom, and I've been out at the plot every decent day we've had.  I'm working from a schedule this year; I put it together over the winter to help make sure that when beds are empty, something is ready to put in them, and when something needs to go in the ground there is a place for it.  I'm anticipating strawberry and blackberry plants will arrive this week or next week, plus next weekend I plan to plant my peas and potatoes, so I've been working hard to clear all the space where they will go in. 

Late-winter carrot harvest

One of the unexpected tasks I had to deal with last week was picking all of these leftover carrots (a little over 5 lbs).  If you don't pick them before spring they will start to form a central flower stalk, and the root (supposedly) gets kind of woody.  So far, they've been a hit - very sweet and tender, except at the very tops where the frost made them kind of crumbly.

I don't think I over-planted carrots last fall, rather I under-harvested them, buying numerous bags of baby carrots from the grocery store over the winter.  It's harder to get into the garden during the winter because the park gate stays locked December-March, and it takes a lot of time to coax two little ones across the wind-swept soccer field.  Maybe next winter I'll grow my carrot patch at home so they'll be more convenient.

January Garden

The sleepy January garden

It has been a long time since my last post, but not because the garden is done for the year.  I've actually written dozens of posts in my mind since last November (I've even taken pictures to go in these imaginary posts!) but none of them have actually been written.  In the meantime, we've continued to harvest from the garden. 

Lettuce and carrots picked just after Christmas

I'd planned to have carrots, lettuce, broccoli, and cabbage grown to near full-size by fall's end so that I could harvest through the winter (a la Elliot Coleman) but I found the timing for this to be really tricky.  Many of my cabbage seedlings didn't survive the late-summer heat; so far we've harvested one head, with two others left in the garden that haven't really headed up yet.  My four summer plantings of carrots have paid off - I have lots of carrots still in the garden - but I've only just finished pulling the carrots I planted last May.  Four of my July-planted broccoli made it, and produced heads and sideshoots galore throughout the fall.  (I really like the Pacman hybrid variety!)  Despite some pretty major cabbage worm action, we picked enough to make four plants worthwhile.  The second round that I planted has been quite happy under my makeshift crinoline / row cover (see Salvage in the Garden) and is just starting to flower.  Only three plants from the third planting round managed to get established under the onslaught of cabbage worms in the late fall, and they will not flower before spring.  The lettuces have done marvelously, though they've suffered some frost damage and I've pulled most of what's going to be edible before spring.  Clearly this fall garden thing is more challenging than I thought.

Store-bought (left) and home-grown (right) seed garlic

I tried my first experiment with re-planting my own garlic this year, and I have to say I'm pretty glad I didn't bet the farm on it.  The half of my garlic space that I planted from store-bought bulbs looks about right for this time of year.  The other half has only a handful of shoots.  I'm not sure if the saved garlic was just past its prime, or if it was damaged when I cooked it to prevent spreading nematodes (see Slowing Down in the Fall Garden).  I was very careful to follow the directions I found online, monitoring my candy thermometer closely the entire time the garlic was soaking.  I noticed yesterday a few more leaves poking through than I've seen in past visits, but I'm wondering if maybe I should just re-plant the whole space with something else in the spring.

In November I made detailed plans and lists for a hypothetical second garden plot, but in the end I decided against getting one.  It would require me to ask one of my neighbors to go to the community center and register with the park service, then purchase the plot.  I'm sure I could compensate them with veggies, but it is unethical (no matter how many other people do it) and I have to accept that it would be really hard to take proper care of two plots without making my children miserable.  So, I suppose the new (small) bed at home (see My New Cover Crop) will have to do for this year.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Late Summer Garden

Late summer garden photo

With my planting window for the fall garden rapidly closing and the summer harvest starting to taper off, I thought I'd do a status update for the community garden. 

Squash vine borer hole at the base of my mystery squash

The summer squashes are still producing, despite evidence of both borers and squash bugs in the garden.  They seem to prefer attacking my mystery squash, which seems to be able to take the abuse.  It is also still producing, though I've cut it back a lot in the hopes of squeezing another watermelon out of the season.  The watermelon vines got a little overrun by mystery squash and basil, so they are limping along.  The basil has outperformed my wildest expectations; there is still some left in the garden after two large harvests!

My peppers are still doing well, but are under attack by some sort of stink/soldier beetle.  I've really never had problems with pests on my peppers before, but I suppose there's a first time for everything - especially bugs.

I've got five rounds of carrots in the garden right now.  Some that I planted in the spring, some from my June planting, and three rounds that I planted for the fall. The spring ones can be picked whenever I like, and the June carrots are filling out.  I planted an entire bed for the fall garden, hoping to grow some to leave in the ground for winter like last year.  It's been challenging keeping them watered, even with the weather's cooperation.

The cucumbers are just about finished, but I've been putting off pulling them out because I don't have anything else to plant in their bed and I'd rather not leave the soil bare.  The onion bed is mostly bare, and the soil there is as hard as a rock, even with all the rain we've been having.  The eggplants are just limping along as well, still under attach by the flea beetles.  It looks like I'll get at least two more rosa biancas, though.

Broccoli plant - see the half-eaten leaves?

I transplanted several broccoli back in July, and they have been under pretty serious attack by cabbage moths.  Four or five have survived, but comparing their size and vigor to the ones we had in the spring, I think any heads they produce will be disappointing.  I've transplanted a bunch more and covered them, so we'll see.  According to the almighty HG16 it is too late to plant broccoli, but I think I'd rather plant them and have them not produce anything until spring than leave the soil bare.

Tall tomato plants

I've pulled out four of the tomato plants, hoping the others would have a better chance at ripening their remaining fruit.  We've reached the part of the season when I pick a large bowl of tomatoes every time we go to the garden, and they sit on our table waiting to be turned into sauce.  There was something very odd about the way the tomatoes grew this year - when I look at them from the main path, both beds are shortest on the left, then get progressively taller and bushier as I look to the right.  Why?  I don't know.  Maybe the left gets marginally more light?  Less wind?

A wide row of beans

The green beans R and I planted in July are putting out their first beans!  Yay!  I do like planting these later much better than watching them rust and struggle through the heat and dryness and not produce anything.  It's also nice to have something just coming into crop at this time of year.

The snap peas are up - the first generation are about three inches tall, while the second are about 1 inch.  I've transplanted a whole lot of lettuces into the former potato bed, some simpson and some valerie, and one little romaine has reached survivable size, with more little ones to go in the bed this week.

I'm glad the fall planting is almost finished.  It feels like the fall weather is coming early this year, and I'm anxious to start cleaning and packing things away.  I've also decided to convert more grass to garden at the house, so it will be nice to have some more time to work on that.  (Funny how I'm even looking forward to picking less!)  But more on that project another time.

Mystery Crops

This year I grew rather a lot of mystery crops (aka root crops).  I call them mystery crops because other than a little swelling at the top, it's pretty hard to tell what the harvest is going to look like until the deed is done.  These carrots, for example, were not all that I had hoped.

Stumpy, twisted carrot

I've had trouble with carrots before - the first time I grew them outside our house they grew huge, fat tops that turned out (at harvest time) to be only about an inch long and taste pretty much just like dirt.  I decided after that to just buy my carrots at the store, but you know me...I couldn't let them get the best of me!  I managed to successfully grow them in recycling totes, and last fall I grew a small patch at the community garden that did beautifully despite late planting and hurricane rains scattering the seeds everywhere. 

I'm not sure what the problem was this year.  I don't think the soil had too much nitrogen, as I didn't add any after I took out the cabbage last spring.  These early carrots were transplanted into the garden, which is somewhat of a no-no.  Also, though I did add compost to the bed, I spread it on the top rather than digging it in, as sort of a no-till experiment.  Since the second half of that bed was planted from seeds, I guess I'll wait and see how they come out.

Meanwhile, there is an incredible pile of garlic on the guest bed to testify that mystery crops sometimes do just fine.  Based on the above-ground growth I'm also pretty confident of the onions.  As for the potatoes* and celeriac, we'll just have to see!



*Fun fact: potatoes are not modified roots, like carrots - they're actually stems!  Aren't plants cool? bv

How's the Garden?

The community garden plot

June is a precarious time in the garden.  There's a lot of empty space around plants that aren't yet fully established - prime weed-growing real estate.  There's also (in my area) not a whole lot of rain falling, so many of the newly planted summer crops need water.  Add that to the relatively little harvesting and planting to be done and the human tendency to steer clear of heat and burning-bright sunshine and you have a real recipe for disaster.  This is when we lose a lot of the new gardeners at the community garden.

Luckily, I am behind schedule this year, so I have plenty of reasons to crawl out of bed and go take care of things.  Here's a rundown of the crops currently in the community garden plot:

• Potatoes - seem to have some sort of fungus or disease causing the outside edges of the leaves to blacken, but I think it won't seriously harm the yield.  At any rate there will certainly be plenty of potatoes this year.
• Tomatoes - Both rows are setting fruit, but the ones in the back row are larger.  Both rows also seem to have the fungal problem I was worried about in the spring, which I think is gray mold.  The back row really needs to be tied and pruned - I'll have to get to that this week.
• Garlic - some if not all of the garlic is probably ready to be picked.  The plants are browning and seem to be shrinking before my eyes as the energy from the plant slowly goes into storage in the bulb.
• Carrots - there are three rounds in the ground right now, with the oldest ones ready to pick and the smallest ones barely out of the ground.  I really should have put more compost into the carrot bed before I planted it - the carrots I'm harvesting are pretty stubby and crooked and split from the hard clay soil.
• The back peas aren't really producing much anymore, thanks to the heat, I just haven't gotten around to pulling them out yet.  I'll plant some beans there soon.
• The onions are so exciting right now.  It's my first year growing bulbing onions, so I'm trying not to get too excited, but it's really hard when they are clearly making onions!  I don't know when they'll be done, but I'm thinking at least another month.
• The asparagus seem to be loving life.  They could use some light weeding, and maybe some fertilizer soon, but mostly they seem to take care of themselves.
• The back pepper plants are starting to produce lots of peppers (bell and chili), while the front ones are still getting over being trasplanted.  Also I think the front ones are a little chlorotic.  I think the wood chips I added were not sufficiently rotted and now I'm worried there's not enough nitrogen in those two beds.  I watered them with some fish emulsion, and threw some more coffee grounds over the soil, so hopefully they will start to look better soon.
• The celeriac is bushy and I think I can see the tops of the thick roots widening below the soil.  I'm continuing to weed the bed, but other than that I leave them alone.
• There are little cucumber starts tucked between some of my pepper plants that look like they're starting to take off.  It's good because I'm almost out of pickles!
• The eggplants are all growing, although they're still getting torn up pretty badly by flea beetles.  The ones I started at home, which were horribly ragged when I planted them, are starting to close the gap with the nursery-bought transplant.
• The bed that used to have the broccoli in it is full of new little things whose outcome is far from certain.  There are two watermelon starts, a butternut squash start, a spare bell pepper plant and marigold that look pretty happy, and lots of little carrot and basil sprouts.
• The front bed is newly planted with summer squash: zucchini, yellow squash, and tromboncino (seeds).  There's also an extra 6-8 feet of space in there that I think I may use for beans.   I definitely don't want to plant extra summer squash!
• I haven't seen much action where I planted the parsley seeds.  I wonder if those seeds are no good any more.  I'll give them a little more time and then try some other seeds.

Whew!   The little bit of extra planning I've done this year has made a tremendous difference in how efficiently I'm using the garden space.  Can you tell I'm really proud of the garden?  Cause I am.

Harvest Notes

Early-picked carrot from the community garden

I really didn't spend enough time in the garden in last summer this year, mostly due to the mosquitoes.  Harvests right now are pretty thin - I should have lettuce and spinach right now, but they were planted too late and didn't make it.  I did get a handful of little potatoes from some that surprised me by sprouting in my container during late summer (see Apparently I'm Incorrigible), and the carrots at the community garden are turning out really good.  A few are stubby or forked, but many are long and beautiful and N says (with surprise), "They're really good!"

8 oz potatoes
8 carrots (more to come)
a lot of parsely and cilantro



Potatoes from backyard



There's still cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli in the community garden with the rest of the carrots and next year's garlic sprouts.  Some of the cauliflower is trying to produce flowers; I think both it and the broccoli were planted later than they should have been.  The cabbage is just gorgeous, so maybe in the spring I'll have a bumper cabbage crop!

The Best Way to Store Carrots

One day while sitting at lunch with a bunch of co-workers I barely knew, a random question popped out of my mouth: Where do carrot seeds come from? (Oh yes, I know how to fill an awkward moment.) As a relatively new gardener I had planted carrot seeds for the first time that spring, so I knew that you didn't get carrots from chopping up old carrots and planting the bits, like with potatoes. No one at the table knew (or cared, I'm sure) so I did some internet research and learned that carrots are actually a biennial plant; in the first year the leaves grow and are used to feed the root, where energy is stored for the following season's flower and seed development. Of course, we never see that stage because we always eat the carrots at the end of the first season. Later Elliot Coleman (via Four Season Harvest) pointed out to me the most wonderful consequence of this fact - carrots can be left in the ground all winter!

Last spring I planted some carrot seeds in a recycling container that had already been used to grow tomato and late zucchini crops in 2009. I knew I should compost the soil, but I thought maybe instead I would experiment with some carrots. I've never had any luck with them in our hard clay soil - they come out about an inch long with tons of skinny white roots - but I thought maybe they'd do better in a container. In late summer I picked some of the overcrowded ones out and noticed they did seem a lot better than in the past, though still much smaller than the ones you buy in the store. Recently I've been picking the remainder, and while they are still shorter than the ones you buy in the store (the tiles in the photo above are about 4" square), some of them are quite fat and really interesting. Check out the one above that looks like it split, then grew back together around the split! And the best thing about these homegrown carrots? They will keep for months, unlike the rubbery ones at the bottom of my fridge.