Root Crops and Hardy Greens

Today I finished harvesting the rest of my carrots.  All that was left were the purple carrots from my box and they turned out to be the best carrots I have harvested this fall.  They were all a nice large size; there wasn’t any insect damage or cracks.  Next year I am planning on growing most if not all of my carrots at home in boxes.

I have harvested a few parsnips so far and they have been huge.  I am digging them as we eat them and probably will continue to do it that way.  There aren’t tons and that’s where they will be the safest.  There are some mice in the basement that have nibbles on a potato or 2 and I see no reason to give them anything else to eat.  The cats do make sure they only appear every so often but still.

Something I also learned after the 5 inches of snow we got yesterday is that bok choy and kale are both winter hardy.  The kale looks perfect and is going to be coming out of the garden next week.   The bok choy went to seed a couple weeks ago and I have been using some of the leaves, but pulled the remaining plants today.  There are a couple that I brought inside to use this week but the rest are compost.

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.

Rain!

After about 2 weeks of no rain and intense heat we finally had a storm, a nice long one.  Everything has been watered thoroughly.

Last night I was also able to harvest more vegetables.  Beans bush and pole, zucchini, a few peas and the first cucumbers of the year.  Both bean varieties are doing very well, but the pole beans have an almost faded color that doesn’t make them look very appealing.  I haven't had a chance to eat any of them yet though.

The zucchini plants have been doing terrific but were planted too close together.  That is something I always seem to do is plant things too close together.  I also have beans peas and carrots that are all touching and will have to definitely plan out my spacing much better next year.

Peas!

On Thursday I picked the first peas of the season!  I also picked the first zucchini. The snow peas look great and taste even better.  Plenty more still on the vine as well as more flowering.  The Mammoth Melting plants have reached 6’ and are still going strong.  I will defiantly be planting these again but next time I am defiantly going to give the peas more room between rows.  There are only 3’ between them and that was defiantly not enough.  The peas and beans are both trying to grow toward each other.

 

The field is looking good.  It was planted 8 days ago and it hasn’t rained on it yet.  It has been watered every couple days though and the soil is a heavier clay so it moisture retentive.  So far the pumpkins have sprouted, some of the lettuce is up and a couple watermelon seeds have sprouted.  I expect the gourds to be up when I check on it Monday night and hopefully by the end of next week the carrots and the potatoes.

First Spring Harvest!

So today I finally made it home at a decent time, and was able to do a little on the garden.  I planted 4 kinds of Potatoes (Banana Fingerlings, Black Macintosh, River John Blue and Blue Russian.  I only planted a couple hill of each, because next week after the portion of my uncles field has been tilled up I’m going to be planting the rest of them there, as well as about 20lb of Red potatoes (think they are red chieftains).  I am already a little unhappy about the Russian Blue because they were much more expensive then all the others but were the first blue potatoes I found, damn my impatience.

In my basement growing room I also planted some Zucchini (Dark Green, Gold Rush), Cucumbers (Straight Eight, Lemon), I also planted some Watermelon (Sugar Baby) and Cantaloupe (Delicious 51).  The melon seeds are from 2 years ago and my little cousin wanted me to try and grow some.  Last time I tried we had that cold wet summer and they didn’t do very well at all, I think the biggest one was the size of a baseball.

Today was also the first time I have been able to harvest my own asparagus from my garden!  I only had 3 spears that were tall enough to cut today but hope to get more in the next couple days.  There is also some growing wild in the ditches by my house, I also plan on cutting it too.

Also in the garden I noticed my garlic starting to sprout.  This garlic I planted approximately 2 weeks ago from bulbils.  This is a terrific website that explains all about garlic and garlic bulbils Garlic Farm.  They look like little pine needles poking through.  I will try to put up a picture tomorrow if it isn’t raining too hard to get one.  I will put up a more in depth post on garlic and the varieties I am growing when I have more time.

This all actually happened yesterday but due to the blogger being down I was unable to post.