Sprouts

Well that didn’t take very long.  The broccoli, bok choy and kale have all sprouted and started to grow.  I also moved some dirt away from the peas and you can see that they are starting to crack open and should be up tomorrow.  I am impressed with how well they are doing and excited to try out the sprouts.  The peppers should be up in a few more days, they usually take a week to come up.

Seeding

Last year I seeded about 3 weeks earlier than I am this year.  My peppers were big and had to have flowers picked off them every couple days and the tomatoes went a little crazy and outgrew the space I had for them.  That is why I am just starting to seed now.  On the top shelf I planted a half tray of peppers, chocolate, and king of the north, jimmy Nardello and sweet banana.  Space is going to be a little more limited this year so I don’t have as much room for everything. A half tray of medusa (because I have tons of seeds that I collected) and the other half of the tray is bok choy and kale. The middle shelf has a tray of tomatoes (Isis, black, yellow cherry tomatoes, alpine, black Ethiopian and polish linguisa tomatoes), and the other tray is half black prince tomatoes and half green onions.  Finally on the bottom shelf I have a full tray of leeks, and in the other tray I have a row of peas, kale and broccoli. My plan is to use that last tray mentioned as sprouts. They are all extra seeds I have leftover that do not have a place in my garden, so figured I might as well try it out.

Fall Lettuce

The garden has been winding down but all of the vegetables I planted for the fall are in their prime right now.  The lettuce looks great, peas are blooming and I even managed to find a pod on the plant and the bok choy is doing well.

 

The Red Russian kale in the bottom of the middle bed is doing really well.  But the red Russian and scotch kale in the top bed by the asparagus are doing well but significantly worse than the other.  I'm not sure if it’s because it gets less sunlight or if the soil is inferior to the lower end of the bed.  It is lighter but should have just as many nutrients in it.  When I put the asparagus in there at the end of October, I will add a little more manure to make sure it’s up to par.

 

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.

Feels Like Fall

I know it’s not fall yet, but this last week it sure has felt like it.  Nothing has changed in the garden too much, I am still picking cheery tomatoes every few days and there are lots of beans that need to be picked as well.  The same goes for the zucchini and cucumbers; they have hit their second wind and still producing well.  The plants are dying off a bit but I expect them to last a couple more weeks and then they are being pulled out anyways.  This past week a few red peppers have been picked and a number of them are starting to turn from yellow to orange to red. 

The root vegetables have been doing well, the carrots at the bottom are being picked regularly although some of them have been eaten by small little worms.  I think its carrot fly but at least they only infected some and not all.  I hope they have not gotten into the parsnips but I will have to wait and see.

 The potatoes at both my place and the field have done very well; the ones at the field due to the clay soil are all a nice mini size.  The ones at my place are starting to break through the soil in places and the plants are starting to die off.  The potatoes in the bottom garden did get hit pretty hard my potatoes bugs but by the time they showed up the plants had already flowered and had midsized formed tubers so I didn’t bother to powder them or anything.  I will be looking to harvest some of the potatoes on a regular basis for the next month for eating and then the remainder in mid-October when the plants die down.

The leeks look good and im just trying to think of what I can use them in.  The kale and bok choy that were planted a few weeks ago are looking ok.  They do have some bug damage but nothing too major. 

The garlic that is still in the garden is coming out of the ground this weekend.  About ¾ of the plants have at least 1 dead leaf and while they are all still very green I don’t want to leave them in the ground any longer especially since I want to replant them in October. 

The cover crop experiment has been a success!  The buckwheat is around a foot high and starting to flower.  I might give it another week and cut it down before it all goes to seed.  I am debating on planting some more in the top bed where the peas were.  That area is also getting more soil and a dressing of manure so I am not sure if it will even be worth planting any.

Garden Update

Everything in the garden has been going pretty well except for one row of carrots and the beans that are beside them.  Earlier in the year I was finding beans that had the bottoms broken off of them but I didn’t think much about it.  The other day when I was in the garden I noticed that the row of carrots beside them were looking wilted, they were wilted because some pilled buggers ate the top on the carrots that were above ground!    They only touched the carrots themselves and not the carrot greens. 

After looking at them it appears to have been some little rodent, I'm guessing either mice or voles.  I have seen some around, but there are a number of cats that roam from the nearby farms that will homefully keep what ever population there is of them low.  The good thing is they only touched that one row of carrots, and it was the row that was sort of underneath the beans.  That is something that will be a big focus next year, proper spacing.  The carrots are on the left.

Other than that little mishap I have been harvesting carrots, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and zucchini on a daily basis.  The carrots that were grown in the root box beside the she have done terrifically.  They are all perfectly straight and well formed.  The picture below is contanier carrots.

The carrots in the actually garden that were planted earlier are also looking good.  They are significantly larger, but have been in the ground longer.  They are not as straight and the germination rate was lower that the box. The picture below is garden carrots.

My peppers are still looking great! I have let a few ripen to red before eating them and they are definitely sweeter than the yellow ones.  The plants are still blooming and are definitely very prolific producers.

The cherry tomatoes and yellow pear are doing ok.  I am having a problem with some of them splitting as they ripen, but think that that might just be because of the heavy rain we had in the last week.  I have finally been able to pick a few Cherokee purple.  They all have heavy splitting at the stems but are big tomatoes.  I cut into one today and was not disappointed.  It was incredibly juicy, and went very well on the large sandwich I was having.  They plant itself isn’t huge like prior tomato plants and has significantly less foliage, the tomatoes are easy to see but after what's on the vine is picked it doesn’t look like it will continue producing.  I will have to eat some more before I decide if it is a variety I would want to plant again.

Today I also planted some bok choy and kale for the fall. The kale should do well, but I'm not sure how the bok choy will do.  The spring planting was hit pretty hard by the bugs but hopefully these will do better.

I also planted my first cover crop!  The buckwheat I bought in the spring was planted in the bottom bed where the garlic was before.  I barely used any of the seed I had so I will be looking to plant more of it this fall.

Field Sprouted!

Yesterday I went to the field to see how everything was progressing.  Everything has started to sprout!  The watermelon is looking much better, all of the gourds are up now and the cucumbers have started to expand.  The carrots and potatoes are just poking through about 15% of the total but in the next week I expect them to all come up.

We have had some rain but because it has been spotty, the field hasn’t had any since I planted it almost 2 weeks ago…  We have been watering it (me and my aunt/cousins) and it has been doing wonders for it. 

My own garden is doing very well, I picked a ton of snow peas on Monday and will have to go pick more today, they are not a forgiving vegetable if you let them go that extra day.

I also plan on trying to take all of the kale off tomorrow but that will depend on a few factors.  We are supposed to get more extreme hot weather and don’t want it to degrade anymore in quality.

 

The bok choy is done, the last few plant went to seed and the earwigs infested them and pretty much ate them.  At least they ate all the good parts that hadn’t gone to seed.

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

Long Weekend

It has been a while since I managed to get a post up but it has just been very busy.  So weekend plans changed slightly so I decided that even though my plants hadn’t been fully hardened off to plant them anyways.  On Friday night I set up 2 of the 4 trellis and the following morning set up another.  There is still one more to go up for the pole beans. 

On Saturday morning I planted another tomato plant (Yellow Pear), the Bok Choy, Cucumbers (Lemon, Straight Eight), some of my pepper plants (Sweet Banana), and some bush and climbing beans (Yellow and Green Wonder Wax, and Improved Tendergreen).   I also planted some asparagus in pots outside to start crowns this year for fall planting in a permanent site.

Well I have been out in the garden and almost everything is looking good, the peppers tomato plants and bok choy transplanted very well.  The cucumbers on the other hand not so much, they are still alive but are probably not going to do very much, not that I expected them too but hoped they might live.  All of the lettuce, musclun mix and spinach that I planted all sprouted, as well as the green onions and the second planting of peas.  I am still waiting for some of the garlic to sprout in the bottom bed but it is now getting much more shade than it was a couple weeks ago so might take a little longer.  The garlic in the top bed the bulbils, have all sprouted.  Also my potatoes are up!  I only have 7 plants in my garden here but am glad they have sprouted.  

These pictures are from May 15th, i just havn't had a chance to get them up.  The one below is of the peas first coming up.

This one above is of the garlic bulbils sprouting up.

About half of the planting is done so far, I have planted my entire garden except for 1 row that was going to be peppers, but I might turn it into carrots or potatoes, gong to hold off a little bit while I decide. There is still the field garden to plant but I am waiting until it has been finished being worked up.  It has been plowed but still needs to be disked and harrowed.  It has been very wet and it is a heavier clay based soil so it might still be a couple more weeks.  Pumpkins, Squash, Carrots, Potatoes, Onions, Watermelon and probably extra Cucumbers and Tomatoes will be planted there.  I am an impatient person so because I can’t do anything to speed it up (damn weather),   I am thinking more about container gardening to increase my garden output. I do currently have 4 large pots and a long wooden box with lettuce, spinach, musclun mix and green onions in them but will probably add more.

Sprouts

Just a quick post to document what has sprouted up.  Today the landscaping fabric came off the carrots, as it looks like some of them have started to sprout.  The shallots have all come up and a couple of the garlic cloves.  The asparagus is stil looking good and there is much more of it coming up now, which is excellent.

I have started to harden off the Bok Choy, it has been in the basement for a while and is really too big to still be in the house but im not 100% of when exactly it should be planted outdoors so going to put it out sometime next week.  Half of the cucumber seeds and the Gold Rush summer squash has also sprouted in the basement,  just to give it about a week headstart.