Strawberries

Its strawberry season!!!

I should have posted this a while ago but have been busy.  Last Saturday on the 25th I went strawberry picking with my sister.  It rained the entire time we were there, which is not good for the berries but with all the rain we have been having they are just rotting in the field.  We managed to pick 48 liters in about an hour and a half.  The picking was great, just very rainy and you had to be careful not to pick any that had bad spots from the wetness.

Garden Progress

The garden has been progressing along quite nicely!  I have taken a number of cutting of lettuce, kale and the musclun mix.  The last few days have been filled with rain, so not too much has happened in the garden but I did go out during one of the lulls and take some pictures.

This is a picture of my contanier garden.  It has just kept growing and may grow a little bit more but I doubt it. 

This is the most recent planting of carrots in pots.  They just came up a couple days ago.

These are the carrots that were planted about a month ago.  They need to be weeded, I have just been waiting till they are a litle bigger so I don't accidentally put out a late sprouter.

These are the very first ones I planted,

Father’s Day

So today was fathers day.  Dad was not around so I just did some more around the garden.  I have built a couple more garden boxes.  One is 2’x 2 x 2’ and the other is 2’x 2’ x 3’.  They were planted with more back Macintosh potatoes and peppers. I also have gathered together every pot I have and planted them with the extra tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, parsley, zucchini, and the watermelon and cantaloupe seeds that I had planned for the field.  They have been sitting in the basement and was time to get them out.  Some of these plants might do ok in their pots, but others will be dumped in a couple weeks if I am still unable to plant them in the field.

This is the picture of the black macintosh potatoes, cut in half.

 

This is a picture of my container garden.  Almost everything I have planted in the actual garden is planted in a container as well.    

Nice Weather

For a change we are getting a week of sun!  The carrots I planted in the large box just came up as well as the row in the top bed.  They germainated much quicker than the first planting of carrots, but they also are in a much sunnier location. 

I have just been so busy, the pictures are on the computer they just don't see to want to load up.

In other news I checked out the small community garden they started in town.  They have a really big one on the other side of town, but this was just the small one in a park.  It looks good so far, they are continually making it bigger and planting more every week.  Its not in the best location but when you getting the land for use, you take what you can get.

Straw Potatoes

Following planting some potatoes in boxes with some straw, I have decided to try just dropping them on dirt and then covering only in straw.  I put this link in my last post, but can't hurt to have it up again Straw Potatoes as a reference.  The potatoes going down will be river john blue potatoes that I have cut into little pieces.

 

This is a picture of the furrow that they are going to be planted in.

 

This is the potatoes after I have planted them; they are approx. 1 foot apart.

 

This is them covered up in straw.  I only used 2 recycling bins of straw, but will continue to add more as they grow.

This is my barrel of straw.  I scavenged some of it in the fall from down the road after the wheat field had been cut and baled and then more this spring after the giant bales were loaded up and taken away.  Now although I guess this is technically stealing, I was picking up straw that was lying on the ground and the remainder has subsequently been plowed under, so it wasn’t really of any use to anybody, except me.

 

Originally I picked up all the straw to mulch my asparagus in the fall to help keep the crowns safe from the winter thaws and freezes and to keep the weeds down.  Unfortunately while it might have protected it, it also made a nice little nest for the Voles…  They had runs all underneath it as well as the top inch of soil.  This also meant that a couple asparagus crowns that were close to the surface became snacks for the little buggers. Needless to say I will not be repeating it.  The current straw it going to be pulled up in about a month after all the asparagus has gone to seed and a couple inches of manure added as mulch instead.

I was also planning on using some of the stuff I got this spring to mulch garlic in the winter.  But if the voles liked asparagus I am willing to bet they like garlic too.  So now I am using some on potatoes and if I can find more places to plant I will keep using it.

This is a picture of the asparagus seesd I planted a few weeks ago.  They are destined to either be sold/planted in my grandmother’s garden or I might save some to go to the seed exchange put on by the community garden next spring.

New seeds

This weekend while at the farmers market I was able to get some more seeds at the community garden booth.  They had a bunch of extras and were giving them away for free which was awesome, especially since I am not allowed to buy any more seeds for this year’s garden. I picked up a new variety of lettuce, a packet of strawberry spinach and then some flower seeds.   I also entered the giant pumpkin contest, they had a number of Atlantic giant plants there, basically get a plant grow it and then on October 15^th bring it with you for judging.  Hoping to go over to the field tomorrow and plant it in the manure pile.  I also plant on planting my other gourd and pumpkin seeds.  Hoping the rich soil helps them take off and grow some enormous pumpkins.

This weekend I haven't done too much in the garden.  Today I did prep another long box to plant the new seeds I got at the market; I planted red oak lettuce and the strawberry spinach.  I also filled up 8 pots with dirt that I am going to try and grow some Danvers half long carrots in.  They are not huge pots so an interpreter carrot would be too long and not grow properly.

Potatoes have been cut and are ready to be planted, on the outside row of the bottom garden.  These are the river john blue potatoes that I am going to be planting with straw.  This time I am just going to plant them in a furrow and just covered with straw.  I would have planted them already but would like a camera so I can document it.

Weeding

It has been a while since I was out in the garden but last night went out to do a little weeding and see how everything was looking.  The top bed wasn’t bad for weeds because it was just recently planted but the bottom and middle bed were just full of them.

I was able to hoe around the garlic and shallots but needed to hand weed most of the carrots and parsnips.  They are only planted a foot apart so they are pretty close.  Depending on how they perform through out the season will have to rethink my spacing.  The carrots look like they had about a 70% germination rate and the parsnips about the same maybe a little better.  It is a shady area with just average soil, no manure was worked in, and so I am satisfied with it.  I did have trouble with weeding the parsnips because I don’t actually know what they look like.  I still weeded them though (there was a consistent straight line of plants that looked similar in appearance to carrots) I deduced that these where the parsnips and if I’m wrong I guess I will find out when I go to harvest them.

The middle bed is looking great.  I cut some kale this morning for a co-worker and then more tonight.  Going to try and make smoky kale chips, basically kale little smoked paprika, olive oil, pinch on salt and them bake in the oven. Leeks are getting bigger and the onions are enormous.  All of those onions where planted in the fall and in the spring they weren’t looking that good, but the snow had just left the ground.  Now they look terrific and all happen to be going to seed.  Depending on how they do I might start to plant them in the fall along with the garlic. 

The bok choy, spinach and lettuce are also looking good.  The spinach and lettuce in the containers are easily doing 2-3 times better than the stuff planted in the actual garden.  Greens are now destined for the contaniers.

The bok choy actually looks like I thought it should now.  It is larger than the baby stuff in the grocery stores but not as big as the mature stuff.  It is starting to bolt and go to seed though, I think the 4-5 days last week of +25C weather caused it.  It is almost around the size I was planning to eat it at so should ready anytime.

Of all the weeds I pulled the most prevalent was grass and the second was tomato plants. Where I had the tomato plants last year there was oodles of them, and even in places where I didn’t have them previously planted and just added some compost there was still tons of them.

Also forgot to mention that the potatoes I planted 5 days ago have sprouted.

I did take a bunch of pictures yesterday, but the camera left with the family and will not be back for a couple days

More Garden Containers

Everything from this post took place on Sat June 4, 2011, I just didn’t get a chance to put I up.

So I initially only had one small garden container for some of my lettuce and some pots.  I now have the large herb box (decided I like potatoes and carrots better so it will be renamed the root box), another large box from work (3’x 4’x 2”) a medium one (2’x 2’ x 1’) and plans to add more. 

This morning I planted the largest box with 8 banana fingerling's on the left half and carrots on the right half. I planted 4 short rows of carrots 6 inches apart purple dragon, 2 rows purple haze and Danvers’ half long. 

In the other large box I planted 6 tomato plants, 2 yellow pear and the other 4 I think are beefsteak, I got them from my aunt who got them from a neighbor so who knows what they might end up being. In the small box I planted four black Macintosh potatoes.

All of the boxes were filled last night with a mix of composted manure and some ok grade topsoil.  It’s about a 70/30 mix so it is a very rich soil.  I am hoping that by having a rich soil everything will still grow the same even with my tight spacing.  For the potatoes to save from filling the boxes all the way to the top with dirt, I am going to try the straw method for growing them.  Usually this involves placing the potato on bare worked up earth and covering them with straw, instead of dirt.  I did plant my potatoes about an inch down but no hilling will take place all straw after that. I want to try it but also make sure I get potatoes so doing a little of both.  There is good chance I will try just dropping them on the ground and covering straw on the edge of my garden later this week.

In harvest news took off my first cuttings of spinach, lettuce mescalin mix and kale.

Pictures will be added, I managed to plant everything before the rain started, but barely.

Straw Potato Resources

Col State Straw Potatoes

Straw Potatoes in Alberta