Scapes All Cut

Multiple little things happened tonight.  I stopped by the barnyard garden to pick the few peas that I had ready as well as plant the corn that I was supposed to plant last week.

I ended up with a full bushel from all of the scapes I cut off earlier tonight.  Not entirely sure what I am going to do with most of them but I couldn’t just toss them in the compost.  I will most likely give some away and then the rest are going to go into the freezer in either a fine dice or a rough chop to be used in various dishes.

These are the mammoth melting snow peas from the bottom corner bed.  There is a big size difference between the rows and I now see the reason for staggered planting dates.  Based on this outcome it is something would do again in the future.

A Little Late

Came home from the weekend and wow did the peas take off.  There are a bunch of snow peas ready to pick right now.  It is pouring rain outside so I ate a couple and then am going to pick the rest tomorrow.

The asparagus that was planted in pots has germinated and growing strong.  It must have come up on the weekend because I defiantly did not see it there last week.

Also took a look at the garlic scapes.  They defiantly needed to be cut last week.  They are about 6 inches taller than they were and uncurling rapidly.  I cut about 3 lb in the rain tonight and am going to cut the rest of them off tomorrow,  based on what I have left I am expecting to totally harvest 10lb of scapes.  It is definalty better to harvest them early, then holding off and end up harvesting late.

Starting to Harvest

Garden is doing well but apparently I have been neglecting it a little.  I was down by the snow peas today and noticed flowers and even a few tiny pods.  Clearly I need to make sure I do a walk every night to see any new developments. 

I have started to cut the garlic scapes from the field and from home.  They are all in a double curl and look like they are ready to go.  Because I'm away tomorrow night I'm going leave most of them until next week when I will have time to do stuff with them.

Field Co-op

Today I stopped by the barnyard garden to plant some more potatoes.   With about 40% of them rotting in the ground using some we already had we are going to replant some of the bare areas.  I ended up planting 2 rows of blue potatoes and then 10lb of whatever variety someone else had.  I also slipped in another 100 Spanish onions.

While I was there I checked on my own plot.  The peppers are doing better than they were lots of new growth on them and they needed to be weeded badly.   No peppers yet but I do expect to see some in the next week.

The peas are doing great.  There are beautiful purple flowers on them and even a few tiny blue pods.  I'm planning on picking them as snow peas to add that great color to salads or raw to a stir fry.  The plants aren’t attaching themselves to the towers like I thought they might.  I did add some string for them to cling to but even then I didn’t have enough of it apparently.  In the future all climbing peas need a very small diameter surface to wrap their tendrils around.

Garlic Scapes

My garlic has been doing very well lately and the scapes are now all curled.  All of the Porcelains (Music, Northern Quebec and Georgian Fire) are doing well with all of the scapes in a single to double curl.  The plants themselves are large, around 6”-8” taller than the others.  I am planning on cutting the scapes off in the next couple days, when it isn’t raining.  The scape below is a Music scape.

The Racombole (Brown Saxon), is a significantly smaller plant and the scapes are just starting to curl. The Red Russian looks very similar to the Brown Saxon with scapes just starting to curl.  Below is a Brown Saxon.

The McEwen’s Red is the smallest of all my garlic plants.  Now it was planted from rounds so that could have some bearing on its size.  It appears to be a more delicate plant a little smaller than the Saxon, with scapes just starting to emerge to scapes curling. 

The Polish White has kind of gone nuts.  For the most part it has a number of stalks like a bunching onion, although a few have only one stalk.  It makes me wonder if I shouldn’t have dug up the entire bed in the fall.  I might have left some small cloves in there when I thought they would only be rounds.  The scapes are all into a second curl with smaller scapes than the others. That is one of my larger Polish Whites.

Beans Sprouted

After checking out the field yesterday, I thought I should check out my own garden to see if there was anything new happening.  The beans have all sprouted and the leaves are just starting to uncurl, so I would say they poked through on the weekend some time.  So far they all look good and I am hoping that they are not eaten by any of the little critters running around.

Vine Crops

Today I went over to the field to see if anything had sprouted yet and it turns out everything has started to sprout.  The watermelon, cucumber, pumpkins and cantaloupe have all sprouted.  There are potatoes that are starting to come up as well as a few things of corn and a couple bean plants.  I expected most of the beans to be up by now but am wondering if the heavy clay soil is hindering that.

All of the extra plants that went into the compost heap are also doing well.  I cleaned up the remaining leaves from the cottage and dumped them in a huge pile  that will be used later on in the summer to mulch the potatoes, and I used some of them now  to help retain moisture around the plants in the compost heap.

Everything In

It has been a while since I did a full status report on the garden and this morning I had time while it was raining to put one together. 

The corner bed that has the peas in it is doing very well.  They are all up and clinging to the trellis’s.  I have been winding the vines back into the trellis because they are reaching to the south east for the sun.  So far the weeds haven’t been too bad and I'm hoping the leaves that I laid down as mulch between the rows keep them that way.  I have had an issue with creeping grass the last few years and because it is almost impossible to get out, I'm hoping I can smother it.

The bottom bed with the tomatoes, peppers and beans has been finished.  The tomatoes are doing pretty good.  They have started to send out new roots and new shoots.  A couple plants were damaged during the storm we had last week but nothing that should effect their long term growth.  I also noticed that some leaves have bite marks in them but again nothing that should hurt the plants too much.  The leaves that were spread out are keeping the weeds down so far and you can still really smell them.  The peppers just like the tomatoes are sending out new roots and are setting new leaves.  The plants that I was worried about are looking better and the new leaves that are showing on them are darker.  The beans aren’t up yet, but should be through any day now.

The top bed with the garlic, asparagus, rhubarb and greens is the only bed to produce anything yet.  The garlic started to send out scapes around a week ago.  There are a couple scapes on the polish white that have started to curl and others on the northern Quebec that have not appeared yet.  The Viking asparagus that was transplanted last year has been doing very well.  I have been harvesting for about 5 weeks and think that it is time to let the remainder go to seed.  I have had a ton of asparagus beetles that are attacking them and want to make sure I have strong plants for the future.  The Mary Washington is doing better than they were, but I do have some plants that I thought should be stronger than they are.  There are also approximately 10 seeds that have taken seed by themselves.  All of the info I have read says to pick them out so they don’t compete with your other plants.  Because I appear to have something eating the crowns in the wintertime I might let some of them stay.

The rhubarb is doing very well; it has doubled in size since last year and is being picked regularly.  There is something that is nibbling on the leaves but we don’t eat the leaves anyways so it’s not a problem.  The kale, bok choy and broccoli are all going strong.  The transplants survived and all of the new seeds are coming up.  The bok choy has already started to go to seed, so they will be eaten as baby’s and then reseeded throughout the summer.  Of the 5 varieties of lettuce, 2 are fully up and the other 3 it’s hard to tell.  It looks like some of them are coming up but there are a lot of little sprouts there right now.

The carrots boxes are looking great.  I have carrots up in every box and every row I planted except for 2 rows of the scarlet Nantes.  I think it was because of the sandy soil and the fact they just needed a little more water than they were given.  Because I have tons of seeds I have replanted those rows.  In a few of the other varieties I tried to space the carrots exactly so that I didn’t waste seeds or have to thin them, but in a few cases if a couple seeds didn’t germinate I have a 4” gap. I will finish reseeding the very few bare spots next week.  The parsnips are doing just as well as the carrots.  I always read that it’s hard to get parsnip seeds to germinate, but in 2 years I have had great success.

There are also the herbs.  I noticed sprouts this morning in every box but will have to wait a few days to see if its weeds or herbs.  They are literally day old sprouts and could be anything, although I think they are my herbs coming up.

Last but not least is the flower garden. Although I don’t usually talk about it I recently found a plant that I have been looking for since last year. It’s a sedum called red dragon’s blood.  It is a low growing sedum and to be honest I liked it because of its name as well as the red colour that will give the flower bed a little more colour.

Although it’s not really part of my garden I put the fish out yesterday and here is a picture of them, they were moving pretty fast so just look at the blur in the bottom left.

All Peppers Planted

All of the peppers have been planted.  Tonight I brought up the box I made and after covering the inside with landscaping fabric I filled it with a 50/50 mix of topsoil and decomposed horse manure.  I have read everywhere that in pots and boxes you are supposed to use potting soil but because all of my boxes are quite large I just use regular garden soil with a little extra manure.  In it I planted 4 medusa peppers.  They should receive sun from noon to dusk. 

With the remaining 6 King of the North and 3 medusa plants I took a quick trip to the filed to plant them. It was time to get everything in the ground and just let nature take its course. Next year I will be starting my seeds much later. While at the field more bok choy, kale and lettuce was planted.

Progress

On the way home from work I stopped at the barnyard garden to get a little work done. Using a bunch of the cardboard that I brought from work I mulched the paths with it and then covered them in the dead grass that was pulled out in the spring. I also laid out and started to make the hills for the 3 sisters plantings.  Not sure how I feel about the 3 sisters but we will see.  I am going to plant some of my pole beans there in hopes of being able to save the seeds and find out if I like the varieties. 

After coming home, the red veined dock that was purchased on the weekend was potted up and placed in the pond.  I also planted some watercress in a pot that was placed in the pond.  The bottoms of both pots are only and inch in the water, but the soil is absolutely saturated.  I did just use regular topsoil and probably should have used a sandier mix for drainage. I guess we will see how it works out and in future years change it.

In my own garden I noticed that the garlic is starting to put out scapes!  This is exciting news because based on what the scapes due on the one variety I should be able to tell what varietal family it belongs too.  I will also be letting some scapes mature to see what the bulbils look like.  

The lettuce, kale and bok choy that were planted a couple weeks ago have been coming up for about a week now.  Lots of sprouts and pleased with its performance so far.  A couple of the lettuce varieties aren’t up yet so we will have to see if I need to reseed or if the seeds weren’t viable anymore.

Mulching

The 2 barrels of leaves that have been sitting in the shed since last fall have been spread on the paths and around all of the tomatoes.  An interesting thing I found as I was emptying the first barrel was that the leaves smelled like corn silage.  Now the leaves were wet when they were put in the barrel and packed pretty tight. I find it interesting that they fermented the way they did.  I also finished mulching the peas.  The idea is that the leaves will smother the weeds and retain moisture and then at the end of the year they can be turned into the soil  or if they haven’t fully broken down, added to the compost heap.

Pole Beans

Beans are finally in the ground.  They were waiting until the trellis was up and then I just needed it to stop raining.  I ended up planting 2 varieties, Northeastern pole beans and then a variety I picked up from a friend.  They grow them every year and quite possibly brought them over from Italy when they came.  They call them Italian flat beans.  They grow to approximately 8” long and about a 1” wide. The seeds are completely black with a small white dot on the bottom.  The first half is planted with Northeastern and the back half with the Italian.  There are roughly 30 seeds of each.  I planted 3 seeds per pole and the poles are about 8” apart.

Presoaking

Yesterday I started to soak the asparagus peas, morning glory and moon flower seeds.  I let them soak for about 22 hours before they were planted.  A few of the pea seeds had broken their shell and but neither of the flowers had broken through yet.  They were very soft but not sprouting yet.   The peas were planted in the box covering the hole and the flowers throughout the garden.  I planted flowers and the front of the pea poles, around the old clothes line pole and at the front of the tomato trellis.  I'm hoping the flowers will just give it a little extra color and bring a little something more to the garden.