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!

Sandy

Mud puddles are irresistible for A.  Five minutes after our arrival we had to leave quickly.

The 6-8 inches of clearance under this board are full of water

 The day after the hurricane I packed up the boys and we went out to survey the damage at the garden.  Mostly it was just very wet out there.  The puddle at the top covered the front half of my neighbor's huge (3x bigger than mine) plot.  Luckily he doesn't really put in a fall garden, so it didn't look like he lost anything.  I have been working recently to fill in the ditch at the front of my garden (the "clumpwater" as R used to call it) with mulch, so the only flooded spot in my garden was where I left a small space under the former bridge for toads to hide out.  It seems so ridiculous compared to the pictures coming out of New York and the Jersey shore.

Tipped-over lettuce stalks

I did have a few plants knocked over, mostly the lettuces that had gone to seed, plus a few broccoli plants and some fading asparagus.  Hopefully the asparagus crowns will figure out that it's too late in the year and not bother to replace those fading fronds, which would have had to be cut anyway in a month or so.

Wind-blown broccoli plants near the edge of my plot

Broken asparagus stalks

All in all, Sandy really spared us.

Slowing Down in the Fall Garden

It's been a long time since I posted!  That garden bed I talked about in the last post is now finished, mulched, and has a bunch of little plants (sacrificial lambs) poking out of it!  More on that later, though.

(Mostly) Fall garden

Here's what the community garden plot looks like right now.  There are still three tomato plants, though they are definitely on their way out.  The watermelon vine, freed from the shade of the gazillion basil plants and the exuberant buttercup squash vine, is trying to produce three more fruits in the waning daylight.  Peppers are ripening left and right, and the bean plants are beginning to dry out.  I still have summer squash plants in the front bed, mostly just because I prefer that to bare soil - production has pretty much stopped.  I mulched the older carrots with shredded tree leaves, and am looking forward to picking them well into the winter.  The first round of lettuce (that light green strip at the very back) is already trying to go to seed, so I've been picking quite a bit of that, plus there are three more planting rounds that I expect will keep maturing throughout the winter.  There are a few heads of cabbage that I think will finish before winter, and several more (plus a lot of broccoli) that will probably not be ready until spring.  Anyone want some basil?  We still have a few plants that I just don't know what to do with.  I planted some parsley where the buttercup squash was, though I'm not really sure if it will make it through the winter, being planted so late.  I just miss having parsley in the garden so much.  (N practically clucks at me every time we have to do anything as ridiculous as buy parsley.  I really have to pay more attention to herbs next spring.)

I have mostly been cleaning up lately.  Now that there are fewer daylight hours and the days are getting cooler, I am starting to catch up with the weeds.  I decided to renew the great cardboard project - I've covered about 90% of the paths with cardboard and wood chips, which I hope will last well into next summer.  In the process I've weeded most of the beds at least a little, and removed many of the plant stems and branches that were leaning into the paths.  All in all, the garden is looking much tidier. 

I think I will probably add a path along the right side of the plot, where the park service turned over a whole plot to "community space", with a picnic table and regularly cut weeds.  Technically the path will be in the community plot, but I think it will be a relief to the gentlemen who trim the grass to have a little buffer zone between them and my garden.  They always leave the weeds right at the edge uncut (truly, I do appreciate their consideration), which means I have to either trim them or let them shed seeds on my garden beds - mulching a strip seems easier.  If I have enough time before the weather turns I'll try to build a small bed over there, too, where gardeners can plant/pick at their leisure.  Well...we'll see if that happens or not.  ;)

R and I planted a round of garlic on the first - Inchelium Red.  I had three large bulbs, which provided only enough cloves to fill about 1/3 of the space I have designated for garlic next year.  I want to fill the rest of the space with cloves I harvested this year, but I am a little concerned about them.  When the papers are removed they have what look like tiny little pimples on the surface, which the internet tells me means nematodes.  Nematodes are tiny little worms that live in the soil and feed on the roots and/or bulbs of many, many different plants.  Most likely my entire community garden plot is infested with them, but I think I will still try heat-treating the cloves before I plant them.  Supposedly soaking the cloves in warm water destroys the nematodes so that they don't infest the soil of the new garlic bed.  Assuming it isn't already infested.

Well, this post is getting long, so I think I'll sign off and write more another time.  Hope all is well with all of you and your garden clean-up (or gear-up) is going well.

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.

Putting Away the Spring Garden

Broccoli plants forming secondary flower stalks

This year I am aiming for a true 3-season (spring-summer-fall) garden.  My goal is to keep every bed in continuous use, or at least to not let them grow any crops of weeds.  So far my only complaint is that I really dislike pulling out crops that are still producing food, no matter how slow that production might be. 

The broccoli plants above had to go, despite the fact that they were producing some nice side-shoots, because it really is time to get the winter squash going if I want to have any before the squash bugs overrun me.  The same thing applies to the lettuce heads I pulled early so I could get the peppers and eggplants in the ground.  I have noticed the bottoms of the peas in the front bed are starting to yellow, so even though they're still producing well, I'm confident I'll be able to re-purpose that space soon as well.

R was a little confused when he came back to the garden earlier this week and the broccoli was gone.  It's been one of his favorite crops this spring.  I don't like to see him disappointed, but this is one of the things I like about gardening with him.  I like showing him the changing of the seasons.  I don't want it to be like switching a backdrop; it's a real, visceral part of his life.  The days of broccoli and strawberries are finite and precious - maybe shorter than we expect.

Harvest Notes

The good news is that the harvest this year is really great so far.  The bad news is that it's really been all I can do to pick it, clean it, and fit it into the fridge.  Weighing and even counting have been out of the question!  Here is my best guesstimate about what I've picked since the last harvest note:

• 12 broccoli heads (20 total for the spring), plus several small side-heads
• 14 spinach plants (I planted 27 total for the spring, but 1 died after transplanting)
• 5 heads romaine (12 total for the spring, minus 1 still in the garden)
• 14 heads loose-leaf lettuce (I planted 27, lost 5, and still have 8 in the garden)
• 4 gallon-size bags (cleaned) of pac choi
• 3 bowls of sugar snap peas

I remember when N and R helped me plant the loose-leaf lettuce.  It took up such a small space in the garden, I was tempted to plant more!

Harvest Notes



Celeriac, romaine lettuce, loose-leaf lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and strawberries

The harvests the last few weeks have been great!  I'm starting to clear out the spring crops to make way for summer ones, so suddenly we are eating fresh produce every day and not keeping up with it.

8 broccoli heads

1 celeriac root (small)

12 spinach plants

6 heads romaine lettuce

3 heads + lots of trimmings loose-leaf lettuce

handful of strawberries

1 sugar snap pea (of course this didn't make it home)

There is another round of spinach in the garden still, plus more lettuce and broccoli, and the peas are just starting to produce.  The strawberries are not doing well this year.  I've done a lousy job keeping the irises under control in the bed, so they aren't getting much sun or breeze and the botrytis and slugs are running amok.

Spring Progress

 Some (more) not-so-quick bullet points:

Potato seedling peeking out at the world

Happy broccoli

Pea seedlings at the community garden

• The broccoli is looking utterly fabulous.  Even the poor little sacrificial lamb that didn't fit under the cover looks beautiful, no sign of cabbage worms since I picked off some eggs a few weeks ago.  I put coffee grounds all around the plants, hoping to mask the scent - maybe it's working?
• The potatoes are up.  I have some rogue viking purple potatoes at home in a recycling tote, plus German Butterball and Yukon Gold (N's choice) at the community garden.  The ones in the tote are already a little nibbled in one spot, but I can't see anything that might be causing the damage, and it seems to have stopped.
• Peas are up at home and at the community garden.  I actually replanted some of the empty spots at the community garden last week, so hopefully those will be coming up soon, too.
• Last week I went ahead and planted seven of my poor little tomato seedlings at the community garden, filling one of the two beds I'd planned to use for tomatoes this year.  They are not looking any better out there than they did in pots, so Tuesday I went ahead and planted the second bed with seeds.  The trouble is that now I don't want to re-plant the first bed with tomatoes this year, in case it's contaminated.  Sigh.  I'm working on a plot to rearrange the garden, but it's going to take some significant machinations, since I planned everything so well in the first place.  Drat my cleverness and my black tomato thumb.
• I planted some  ginger in my home garden.  I don't know if it will come to anything, but I had the space and thought I would try.
• I have given up weighing the lettuce.  There is so much of it!  Yesterday when N saw the salad bowl on the table he gave a deep sigh, then sat down manfully and began dishing it out.  I grew a lot this year, thinking that I just wanted to use all of the garden space during the spring, even if that meant giving away a lot of it.
• The romaine leaves seem very thick to me, compared to those I've grown at home in the past, and even compared to the ones I buy at the store, although it's hard to tell because mine are all open, with shorter leaves.  (Am I supposed to be doing something to make them grow in a tight head like the store-bought ones?  I don't know!)
• I'm trying to diversify the herb garden, which has been somewhat neglected since I installed it.  (Herbs are just never a priority, but really they should be, since they are so easy once started!)  I transplanted some lemon grass that I grew last year, and some potted chives that have been on my back step for at least three years.  (They promptly tried to bloom.)  I also added some lemon balm and a new cilantro seedling.  (More on cilantro in a later post, I hope.)  In the home garden I also planted cumin, basil, and dill - just a little of each.  I think this year I'll try to plant a new round of basil every few weeks, rather than try to prevent the plants from flowering all summer.
• Over the last two months I've been stealing 30 minutes here and there to work on a major undertaking by the back fence.  There is an area there where we have been letting volunteer trees and at least three different kinds of ivy just take over.  I've been working to clear it, which has taken a lot more effort than I expected.  There is still a stretch behind the shed that needs to be done, plus a lot of little volunteer trees on the other side of the fence that I need to go around the block to cut.  But I can finally set all my little potted plants and seedlings over there and imagine how it will look when they're in the ground.

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!

State of the Garden

Community Garden Plot

 I haven't been spending enough time at the community garden the last few weeks.  There's been plenty of work to do at home, and, er....I've been sewing.  Fortunately the weather has slowed down the weeds and the bugs and the harvest enough that I'm sort of getting away with it.

Anyway, R and A and I went out there the other day and did some pea picking and work and poking around.  I keep meaning to go ahead and set up my tomato bed for next year (more on that later...) but I am waffling now about where to put it and wether I should stick to the same bed layout as last year or narrow the paths and/or widen the beds.  I'm being seduced by the idea of planting just a little more of...everything.  Meanwhile I've been clearing away weeds and squishing bugs - cabbage worms, to be precise.  You can see the kind of damage they do in the photo on the right.  I keep hoping the damn moths will die already, but no such luck.



Two cauliflowers growing side-by-side



Cabbage patch

The broccoli and cauliflower are fighting the good fight, but the cabbage is clearly winning, just as it did in my home garden in the spring.  Is it the purple leaves?  I don't know.  The garlic is coming up, both here and at home, and the peas are producing quite a lot.  R has always been reluctant to eat sugar snap peas, but this time he spent a good hour bringing me pea pods to break open so he could eat the tiny peas inside.  After he painstakingly picked the peas out I would eat the pods (frost damaged and oh-so-great!), until finally curiosity got the best of him and he (after licking, scrunching up his face, holding it cautiously between his lips, etc) crunched through the pod whole.  And I didn't get a single speck of pea after that!

R sorting through pea pods to find the "nice, fat ones".

Pea Sprouts

Pretty little pea sprouts

The sugar snap peas I planted for fall are coming up in my garden. This is the first time I've planted these in the fall, and I was surprised how fast they came up. I'm not sure if the difference is due to the warmer weather, the excessive hurricane rains, or both. I planted them every 4-5 inches in two rows the entire length of the former corn bed, so I am hoping for a lot of peas. I need to get some fence posts out there, though, as the package says they need a 2-ft high trellis.
The broccoli and cauliflower sprouts are up, too, but they're just not as photogenic.

Growing Things at Home

Me, putting out the basil seedlings.

Keeping up with both my home garden and community garden plot has been harder than I thought.  Somehow I forgot about things that really need to be done, like mowing the lawn and weeding the flowerbeds.  So here are some sort of selective shots of my home garden, and I'll ask you not to peer too closely around the edges.  As you can see, I'm getting a little large to be squatting and bending these days.  Luckily N's interest in gardening is growing with every new thing he eats from the garden, so he's been a big help.

My cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli are all doing quite well under the sheer curtain that used to cover our living room window.  (N tells me I sound pretentious when I say "brassicas", but it is a lot faster to type!)  I took the cover off last week to make sure they weren't getting too little sun, too little water, or too much heat, but I've noticed that some largish-gnat-sized bugs have been fluttering around them a lot, so I may put the cover back on.  I should point out that all of these are foods that I didn't really eat until this pregnancy, but am slobbering all over right now.  I hope I don't lose interest before they produce!

My garlic patch looks very healthy, surprisingly better than the garlic in the containers, which is a little dry around the edges.  We'll see who has the last laugh when they start developing bulbs in their respective soils, though.  There are two varieties here; the hardneck variety in the foreground was noticeably smaller when they stopped growing for the winter (Garlic Progress), but it has definitely caught up.

Overall, the garden is finally starting to look green and not too bare.  I transplanted some peppers in over the weekend, three sweet bell peppers, a chili pepper, and a "kung pao" pepper.  I decided to buy pepper seedlings this year because they take so long to get started and some creature (World's Worst...) ate my first batch.  The great thing about buying them is that you can choose a variety of plants; the bad is that it costs almost as much as if you bought seeds for all those plants and only planted one or two of each.  Almost.

I have completely abandoned the original plan for the home garden in favor of just getting things in the garden.  For example, the basil you see me transplanting above was supposed to go in after the lettuce and spinach, but frankly it was ready to be planted and I am in a hurry now that I'm so close to my due date.  So, I guess I'll put the beans in the cold frame bed once the lettuce is finished.

Brassicas in the Ground - Finally

Many seedlings awaiting transplant

The lucky ones.

Last Thursday I decided enough was enough and transplanted a bunch of cauliflower, cabbage, and broccoli seedlings into my home garden.  They had just grown into the SOHO cups I transplanted them into, roots just starting to circle around the bottom.  They look very healthy, I hope it's not too late to get a spring crop out of them.  I want to put some tulle over them this year to keep the cabbage moths off, as I've had problems with them in the past; hopefully I'll get around to that sometime this week.

Low Tunnel Plants

Low tunnel, left side.

 A while ago I promised some pictures of the plants inside the low tunnel, so here is me finally following through.  On the far left is the broccoli, with a kind of funny-looking (frost-bitten?) celery plant in front of it.  The other two plants in that photograph are the self-seeded lettuce from last year.  (Last weekend I asked N if he thought it really was lettuce and he reached down and grabbed a handful and gobbled it up.  As I stared in horror he said, "Mmmmmm!  It's really good lettuce!"  So I guess it's lettuce.)

Low tunnel, right side.

On the right is more lettuce and some spinach that was planted last fall.  It is doing really well and has a nice sweet aftertaste.  The jug of water is just in there to help stabilize the internal temperature overnight.  Last Friday we had a good solid frost.

I spread some more lettuce and spinach seeds in there, too, so hopefully soon there will be more to see.  Check out the close-up below of my broccoli head forming!  I planted some more broccoli seeds indoors - I'll keep you posted on whether they have enough time to grow into anything before the summer heat comes on.  This one has a lot of little baby heads sprouting on the sides; from what I've read they will start growing more once the main head is cut off.  Some slugs seem to have done a bit of damage to the lower leaves, but they are too lazy or inept to get to the upper ones.  Yucky creatures.

Broccoli head, about 1.5 inches across.

Munched Broccoli

Something has been eating my poor little broccoli transplants! I suspect slugs, especially with our sudden plethora of rain. Out of four transplants only one survivor has a leaf left.

I think if the plants have enough energy to put on another set of leaves they will be fine - slugs are too lazy to climb very high and like to pick on lower leaves. I'm going to put some pet-safe slug pellets around these plants and see if they can be salvaged.