Had to water the yard a few times this past summer, but not much after the last post….a few good rains helped the green last through to this month at least. The deciduous tree leaves have mostly fallen, but the ground cover greens persist. Even the visitors to the yard agree:
Also, we finally harvested our year’s bounty of cranberries: just over two gallons! They’re all cleaned and frozen now. Can’t wait till they’re honey marinated and dried – yum.
Last of Green Pole beans picked over the last week, and made a sechzuan stir fry with them. Haven’t taken the vines down, but I doubt any of the recent flowers will give us beans with the temps in the lower 50’s and 40’s. We had beans for about 2 1/2 months, from beginning of August to mid October.
Pulled down the tomatoes, about 25 small Casady ones and the four larger Oregon Spring ones inside on platters, we’ll see….I’m sure the Casady ones will be OK to eat, not sure of the others.
Put the large cloches over he broccoli sprouts. The larger ones are about 8-9″ tall, the other batch are about 5-6 inches. There are a bunch of green onions and a few carrots also inside the cloche perimeter, and a few others outside. I guess we don’t really need the “deer fence” around the garden anymore!
Vegetable garden: About 12 broccoli plants growing. These were sown around the middle/end of August, after other seed sowing attempt failed, I think due to heat. Also a bunch of onions, and a handful of carrots. The carrots won’t get very far this time of year anyway, but if I encourage the brocoli to grow (and with cloches) we might get some late fall and even into winter, and onions usually have no trouble overwintering – the native ones do well. I have the kind of brocoli that can over winter or grow early in spring, a common type (walsham 29 I believe).
Green pole beans still doing great. We have enough for a large stir fry of Szechuan style beans every few days. It apparently likes fish fertilizer, and seems to flower a lot when it is fed, which is every 3 weeks or so. It also likes being picked, and makes more beans when you keep any seed-producing beans off the vine. So as soon as they look like ‘peas’ are forming they should be picked. They are supposed to be good through September, but they are still going strong and even putting out new foliage as well as flowers. Maybe climate change has alllowed this, it has been a warm summer. Sudden drop in temps from 80’s to the low 60’s recently, but now it’s back into the 70’s and sunny for a while, maybe we’ll have an “Indian” summer.
Tomatoes at their end. I didn’t like most of the Oregon Spring, won’t get that one again. The tomatoes were mostly mealy in texture, and they split very easily which caused more texture problems. Not particularly great taste, though a few were good. The Sweet Casady was good, but it eventually got attakced by what I think are winged aphids, losing many, actually most small branches. There are only a few bugs on the plant at a time but they sure do kill the leaves, and when they attack the stems of flower or fruit those die, too. There was already a lot of fruit on the vine when this happened, as well as new leaves and flowers – the plant had been doing well. The fruit itself was great, but the loss was from suddenly losing the leaves which are the source of their sugar, or the fruit dropping because it’s stem was killed. Such a violent yard I have. I may have caused the problem though, in that I overwatered the plants thinking they were still too dry (after I accidentally cut off the water for a couple of days), and ended up creating a wetland habitat for those mite-like bugs in the planter itself. I could see them jumping out of the planter when I watered, and it wasn’t till later that I saw them attacking. Lesson learned, hopefully. I still like the idea of the cherry, plum or other small tomatoes, they are less likely to fail in general.
Still have a bunch of asparagus starts that have lived under the planter all summer, getting watered and a little sun, not planted out! We have no place to put them, unless we make some compromises somewhere. Asparagus needs a minimum 20″ x 20″ planter, or in the ground.
Deer in the hood….in the front yard this time. They don’t appear to have eaten anything there, but did leave hoof prints around. They also sometimes trample stuff. I’m a little worried that they will get more tolerant of some of the native plants as the winter sets in. They have already eaten OLD trillium leaves, now they are nibbling on the False Azalea and Geum leaves, all of these normally die back over winter but we’re still quite green. In spring, they eat the flower buds of one of the heurcheras and the Brodiaea, and nibble some of the Bluebell leaves. The key is going to have to be volume – overwhelm them and the fucking voles so there’s sustainable carnage.
BTW, I spotted a vole coming out of a tunnel he’d created near the new bog, the little shit. I’ve only actually seen the bastards a few times, once as an owl pellet. He came out, stopped and turned tail back in. Later I noticed that a new type of bog lily we bought for our yard last year was dead – the bulb eaten, at the end of one of his tunnels. Luckily it had already sprouted another offspring overwinter, so there’s still one there, unlsss the little shit comes back and gets it.
Deer tracks:
The latest lettuce crapped out after getting to the several leaf stage, not sure if it is because of the intermittent hot weather. I think they were meant for spring here .
Finally pulled the second planting of “failing lettuce” and planted new carrot and onion seeds in their place, which are just coming up this last week. So now I have three different ages of onions and carrots, established pole green beans that keep trying to grow above the six foot or so trellis getup, and ripening tomatoes. We have had a few of the Oregon Spring ones already, but the Sweet Casady are just starting to get red. New seeds planted today for recently removed carrots, too – I targeted the ones on the south because they are blocking sun from seedlings. The carrots get huge, by the way…almost all of them are quite fat, some are double, and I think they can’t get more than about 10″ long because of the depth of the planter box. They are more tender and tasty than the store bought, as are the onions and green beans. The broccoli is still in seedling phase. The cucumbers were a bust, next time plant only vine cukes and only on western side.
I am fertilizing them about every three or so weeks with fish fertilizer, and we have them on automatics drip watering. I’ve given the tomatoes a little extra water at the bases because I’d accidentally turned off the drip system and they had a little dry trauma, but they since recovered. In fact the Casady is putting out hundreds of flowers!
Lessons learned ?:
1. Plant the carrots, and probably all of the vegetables, in square configurations rather than rows. That may minimize the sun blockage from carrot leaves on the other, shorter plants.
2. No radishes. Not worth it, and they have huge leaves that grow fast and early to block out the other seedlings.
3. Pay attention to the seedling packets you buy. I spent a lot of time going through the way too many varieties they had at Sky (have a gift certificate), then ended up buying the way wrong type of cucumbers- a “bush” type, not a vine, but either way they didn’t do well.
4. If I plant cukes again, it will be on the western part of the planter, since they are so heat and sun needy. The two plants on either east/west side had very different growth rates, and it’s only a 4 foot box! It had to do with the other plants blocking, I’m guessing,
5. Nasturtiums are great for color and vitamin C, and for putting flowers on your salad (I’ve read a LOT about edible flowers and they are extremely nutritious). But, I only need one or two plants, not six. And they can be continually pruned back away from the plants as they like to spill out over the sides.
Lot of warm weather this summer, so the second batch of lettuce failed to grow much. They all sprouted but then stalled out when the temps went into the 80’s. I left about five plants in a row to see if they’ll take off. The others were replaced last week by broccoli, carrot and onion seeds. A bunch of the broccoli sprouts are already coming up, so I thinned them out to one about every four inches (a little on the tight side, but I don’t think they’ll get large). They should be ready to harvest by fall, but I think they can overwinter, too. And the one plant I had from earlier planting is still growing, now about ten inches with purplish flowers on several branches. I hope this is what they’re supposed to do.
Had lots of tomatoes yesterday from the Oregon Spring plant…about five ripened at the same time. Also, I watered the front with a sprinkler and when the sun came out some of these ripening tomatoes split, so I had to pick them. We served them with salad to guests, and they were delicious! Still accumulating Sweet Casado small tomatoes, but no red ones yet.
Took all the old lettuce out last couple of weeks- since they were spaced pretty closely to begin with and the stalks continued to grow stout while I was harvesting outer leaves, they eventually ended up too crowded to grow new leaves. The stalks also grew tall, but the leaves were short and not as good. The new seedlings just got their second set of leaves. This time no spinach, it just bolted early, and the lettuce is spaced out a little.
Have been getting great nasturtium flowers for vitamin C, plus great peppery flavor. I had six sites in the planter bed, so I took most of them out before we go out of town for a while, also to let the adjacent carrots and onions get some sun, leaving two plants. They are very floriferous. I always eat a bouquet full of flowers. When I cleaned out the planters, I made a great salad of all the nasturtium flowers and buds I’d taken out, a fat carrot, two small onions and some olive oil vinaigrette. Yum.
Sowed broccoli seeds where the nasturtiums were, 4 sites, all along the west side. Broccoli is supposed to be sown in mid summer. Right now in my garden there are two different rows sowings of carrots and two of onions, each type with some ripe or ripening vegetables. The carrots are larger than last year, much fatter. The green onions are new for me, but so far I have been using the thinned out ones and they are very tasty. The 5 green beans plants now have several sets of leaves each, and are about 6″ tall, still not yet sending aerials to the trellis. Also two cucumbers about 3″ tall, a “bush” variety that I’m hopioto train on the trellis, I accidentally bought the wrong variety.
The tomatoes had an iffy start, what with leaf curl and all, but no spots or brown discoloration. It turns out to be due to overwatering one of them. The wart like spots on the Sweet Cassidy miniature tomato stem looked like some kind of fungus, but it is due to root initials or starts. They recommended mounding some dirt n them and they will form roots to make the plant stronger, which they did. It finally took off, and is now three feet tall with dozens of flower buds forming, more all the time, and growing quickly. It is an indeterminate plant, so we got three plastic rods to place inside the existing cage and extend it higher for more growth. It took a long time before it showed flowers, which the indeterminate do….they grow first. I gave them flowering fertilizer, but it still took a while. Several hot sunny days helped. The determinant plant, Oregon Spring, started flowering almost right away.
Had to wait until the end of May according to the experts, so I wouldn’t get “flower drop” and lose all the potential fruit to our labile weather like last year. But we chose two varieties which tolerate cold, anyway, so maybe plant earlier next year. These are Sweet Casady (sweet small heirloom type, indeterminate) and Oregon Spring, (a determinate early fruiting one). Now we just have to hope the deer don’t find them! I may put the dilute pepper spray on them, but it seems futile since it will get washed off with the frequent watering I do. Baseline pics of the ‘maters and early cucumber shoots. No beans yet, so I planted some more recently.
Video tour taken today, in 30-60 second segments. But, the site is having difficulties and I can’t upload them to the site. Next time, we’ll have to go with pix today.
We had salad from our veggie garden last night. To harvest baby spinach and butter lettuce, you can cut the largest leaves off as they grow, and then more leaves grow in. It also allows more light for the carrots and onions (scallions), which I need to plant differently next time. It produced enough salad for three already- we planted it March 26. The carrots, green onions and new set of radishes and lettuce still need to mature. I planted pole beans and cucumber along the back of the planters on May 1(4 days ago), to trail up the trellis. The cuke seeds turned out to be a “bush” variety, which trails over things rather than climbing (gotta read the fine print…who knew about that?). I can still use the trellis to loop the vines up before they hang back down,as long as the beans have some room to climb. What with the nasturtiums in most corners and the newest veggies along the sides, this is going to be one full, busy planter!
Today had a handful of nasturtium leaves, they taste peppery good (a sulfur compound, similar to radishes).
This is after harvesting all the first batch of radishes and the larger leaves of baby spinach and butter lettuce: more light for the rest
Below is the vegetable garden as it looks today, almost four weeks after sowing it and putting cloches on. I’m leaving them off all day today due to the beautiful 60 degree sunny weather we’re having…..tomorrow there will be the start of several days of rain. (This is the Pacific Northwest, after all, and a historical record year of rainfall – for the winter and for each month so far including April, 44 inches or so as of a few days ago. This tops last years record rains apparently). We’ve harvested about 30 radishes so far in the last few days, to eat and also to thin out clumped areas. They are really good straight- peppery with just a dash of salt and a beer. There are still a lot of radishes left. They were supposed to be just planted in between the other ‘crops’ to make use of all the garden area. But they opened and matured first with rapidly enlarging leaves, and if unchecked they would choke out the others. They taste great, but they make a good weed. **So, as a cautionary tale, I would suggest to myself as well as to you, that because of all the large leaves, next time the radishes should be planted in several adjacent rows towards the ‘back’, or north side of the planters***. Skinny leaved Onions are the best at the southern front rows, followed by carrots and spinach.
As the reddening lower root enlarges, the radish pushes up above ground, so you can see which ones are ready to pick. These were mostly picked early, though, since they were shadowing out the other veggies. I had put some more radish seeds outside the cloche along the west border, which are now germinating, to use ALL the space, and some more carrots and onions outside along the east border……probably should have switched that, given how aggressive the radishes are compared to the others….the others aren’t up yet.
I do have red/yellow/orange medley nasturtiums, those are the leaves coming up (to cascade) from most of the corners. I left the whole north border clear, for future planting of the climbing plants- pole beans and cucumbers, and maybe snow peas. That should be soon.
Spinach and carrot seeds popped up at 8 days, and the ‘bunching’ onions or green onions on the 10th day. The spinach is a “baby spinach” which is a type that has individual rounded leaves, not bunches (not “baby” at all!), and the seedlings look linear/branching, not rounded seed leaves like the lettuce. Looks like I’ll have to mark my rows better for seeds; it is true that once you’ve covered over the seeds with soil, it’s pretty hard to tell where the original line was. So the radish lines cross the spinach line and some lettuce, so what? They are loving having the cloche to keep them cozy warm like a hot house, and the radish leaves are huge already and it’s only April 3. Makes me tempted to start the cucumbers early inside the cloche, yet I don’t think they like the transplanting needed to give them access to the trellis….technical issue I’ll have to address.
Full disclosure, this is not my cornucopia below. We started our garden way too late last year for much of anything, since we didn’t have the planter bed until end of May. But we are planting all of these things this year(see prior march posts), except green onions instead of leeks:
ellensgarden.us 