End of season update

Wow! It's been a long time since I added something here. Let me write stuff down before I forget because I also forgot to write notes in my garden journal.

July was an amazing month because we had rain and lots of it. Over 4 inches. The plants took off like crazy, esp with being irrigated on the non-rainy days.

Three sisters did not work out well. The beans did not have time to grow before being shaded out by the squash and the corn, well we had almost 100% germination rate so the 4 kernels per hole and 5 holes per mound did not work out well. 20 stalks were trying to occupy 4 sq ft of space and even though I tried thinning them, those things are tenacious little buggers and kept growing back.

The squash grew so much so fast with all the rain that they shaded themselves and did not produce much fruit until I drastically cut them back.

But we also got hit with powdery mildew which took out the zucchinis, cantaloupe especially, straight 8 cucumbers and damaged all the cucurbits. The most resilient: yellow moon and stars watermelon and the Georgia rattlesnake watermelon. The lemon cucumbers were massive producers even with the powdery mildew hitting them later in August; I had to cut them down just to stem the tide of little, prickly yellow balls of cucumbers. The zuccs, yellow squash, patty pan and pumpkins have done OK after the attack esp if I remember to prune away affected leaves every day.

Corn was not a real winner. The festivity blue did not taste that great as a sweet corn, but I did not have time to dry it because... A stinking corn-eating wasp took over the garden. They could mow through 2-4 cobs in a day. The golden bantam didn't do that great either.

Mice took over the tomato section and ate the best and sweetest tomatoes. The black Krim, a russian variety, are not that attractive being a nasty green/black/red/brown shade, but they taste great and are quite large for our arid clime. The roma tomatoes do not taste all that great and I am afraid to try another one, but they have produced a bumper crop. The cherry tomatoes are troopers and usually sweet, we get a handful or more a day from about three plants and they've produced this way for over a month. The yellow tomatoes are still turning color as are the best boy/big boy variety we got from a neighbor; haven't tried them yet. I have wrapped a bunch of green tomatoes in paper and stored them in the pantry to keep them safe from fruit flies until they ripen.

One lone green pepper is still out there trying to grow. It is the only fruit on the only pepper plant that survived the summer. And we only got 3 peaches. They were not that tasty.

Cold weather is already damaging some hot weather plants.

Two eggplant fruit from 6 plants. Maybe the cucumbers shaded them out too much during August.

Potatoes are fun! Digging for them is like unwrapping Christmas presents. Not sure how to convince the green ones to turn brown, but maybe those will be our seed potatoes for next year.

Pests that have damaged plants this year:

-DOGS

-MICE

-grasshoppers, but not too bad, esp for the number of them we had

-WASPS

-Mexican bean beetle

-tomato hornworm, only seen two but they do a lot of damage

-aphids--nasty little things

-some sort of microbial thing bothered the hops, or it was water stress, I can't tell

-POWDERY MILDEW on the cucurbits--hit all the gardens I can see in our area

-cabbage moths and their larvae

-black swallowtail caterpillar, one ate my entire dill plant--it smelled like dill too!

-asparagus beetles

-can't remember what else, but it felt like everything in the book hit us

Strawberries, supposed to be ever bearing, stopped flowering after mid July.

Wheat never sent up stalks, but maybe I didn't water it long enough or planted it at the wrong time of year.

Onion sets went in too early and were fooled into thinking they lived through a winter. Those produced flower stalks which limited their size and keep-ability. Pretty though.

Broccoli was very tall and not such a good producer. Cabbage never headed. Turnip greens taste much better very young, as do the turnips. Beet greens are delicious wilted as are swiss chard leaves; a bit bitter raw. Chioggia beets sometimes turn out white. Having a hard time figuring out parsnips.

Carrots are iffy. Most of ours did not grow very big. The little ones ate all the early season carrots they could dig up, but they are not liking these late summer ones as much. Arugula not to my liking and it goes to seed quickly and spreads even faster. Green onions got shaded by the tomatoes too early in the season.

Asparagus slowly coming up. Black-eyed peas in the same bed were nice producers. Two plants gave enough beans for 1 or 2 people for one meal. Had wasps sucking on the ends of the bean pods all August and September--weird.

Putting in winter compost crops and winter harvest crops the last few weeks--hoping they'll make it to a big enough size to weather the cold.

Lessons learned:

-trellis! The cucurbits would have been much happier climbing high and it may have slowed down the powdery mildew if more fresh air circulated around the leaves.

-stake the tomatoes strongly--they bent over every cage and made passing through some of the walkways impossible.

-get a wasp attractor/killer out early

-chickens might help with the insect problem

-got to keep the dogs out and the mice too

-more beans, less summer squash, less corn, more winter squash, more tomatoes, more succession planting of carrots and lettuce, more potatoes

-tie up the potatoes so they don't flop all over

-more basil, dill, cilantro

Mid-June

Three sisters mounds. Corn is up, beans aren't but I transplanted a couple, squash is just starting to germinate at the bottom of the mounds.

Potatoes are growing well.

Golden bantam corn 8 or 9 inches on center. Plus I planted beans to help fertilize the soil.

Covered bed. Cucumber transplants not doing well, I didn't harden them off. Eggplants just emerging, then parsnips.

Parsnips with cucumbers in the back of row, carrots, lettuce, peas.

Peas are producing everyday now. One problem, we want to eat them so much that we haven't allowed the peas to swell in the pods and we just eat them pods and all.

Broccoli is starting to pop its flowers up.

Peas, radishes all got harvested/red romaine (hiding behind peas), chard/collards, kale/broccoli

Kale/broccoli, seeds I planted last month are starting to get bigger so I am harvesting the older spinach and lettuce to give them some sunlight, spinach/lettuce, turnips, spinach

Blackeyed pea in the asparagus bed and if you look closely in the right corner an asparagus frond popping out. Only one side of the bed has produced shoots. I planted two different varieties, one on each side of the bed, so only one variety has come out of the soil. I wonder if the other roots were not viable or they are just slower.

Hops bine is growing tall but the lower leaves are browning and that is slowly working its way up the plant. I'm not sure why. I think I took care of the aphids with diatomaceous earth and I saw a ladybug on there yesterday, but a lot of tiny fly-ish bugs are sheltering underneath the leaves. Not sure what they are or what they do.

The neighbor's tree was making such a loud hum this week. I don't know what kind of tree it is, I will try to get a picture. Whatever it is, it produced some sort of bloom (that didn't even look like flowers to me) that drove the bees wild. There were thousands of bees on that tree. The buzzing was so loud that you could hear them inside the house with doors and windows shut. Glad to see that honeybees are alive and kicking by my house. I found out that my leafy greens are getting buzzed by leaf-cutter bees--who knew there were such things? But why are wasps so interested in the leafy veggies?

In the 90's

The asparagus patch is now all full with dirt. A few fronds are poking up through the soil. But it looked empty, so I planted some blackeyed peas to see what they would do with all that space.

End of the 8' asparagus bed, the soil goes downhill from 15" high to 7" high. Wonder if I'll have run-off problems? Chioggia beets next, more seeds have sprouted now that the weather has really warmed up. 80's and 90's the last 5 days with night time temps above 55.

I put in some cucumber seedlings, lemon variety, yesterday. I am not diligent about hardening off my plants. We will see if they survive. Next to that is the eggplant area. A few have pushed themselves up through the soil and also some cucumber seeds I put in the ground in March finally popped up. Nifty how that works.

Then the parsnips. The one in the bottom left has been growing since March, then I pushed in more seeds in April or May and 2 more sprouted. I thought I was just a bad parsnip planter, but maybe they like warmer weather than I thought because all of a sudden there are about 20 new sprouts. In the center is a pepper plant I put in yesterday, carrots, then lettuce and peas.

The pea plants are flowering and setting pods. I am excited. I hope they are able to produce peas before the hot weather wilts them. Then red romaine which is hiding behind the peas/radishes which we've pulled most of them-tasty!, Collard greens are growing fast/swiss chard which is not, Broccoli is about to push up their flowers/Kale.

Here you see the broccoli/kale then lettuce/mystery cole plant I can't remember what I seeded & spinach, turnips, more spinach.

Hops are growing tall, but we are encountering issues. Aphids and brown spots on the lower leaves which I think are downy mildew. Need to limit watering from the top and get some ladybugs.

Potatoes growing well.

One giant peach and a few little ones in this photo.

Growth this week, before the wind

Forecast 50 mph winds today, so who knows what will be left by tomorrow. I will be taking the bird net off the beds tomorrow because the plants are growing bigger and the birds can't eat the seeds anymore. Will have to figure out something else when the plants fruit out. Also aphids showed up yesterday on the hops bine.

Lettuce that finally germinated after I killed off the first sowing with plastic sheeting. Found some seeds that rolled downhill and are now growing in what is supposed to be the cantaloupe section. Should have some explosive growth this week with temps in the 80's and lots of sunshine.

Green onions finally showing their heads above ground.

Onions, white and red and green in the near right section, carrots in the middle and beans on the left that haven't sprouted yet.

Potatoes--I love how they come up so big through the earth that it looks like the dirt is giving birth. Or an alien is exploding out of its belly.

Should really plant more stuff in this one. But the elephant garlic has now come up through the ground.

What is this peeking out of the ground? Asparagus! Unfortunately I have to add more dirt and the shoot will have to keep seeking the light.

Parsnips, carrots, lettuce, peas.

Peas-which started to flower yesterday, romaine/radish, collards/chard, broccoli/kale

broccoli/kale, lettuce/spinach, turnips, spinach

Three Sisters

Pictures posted in reverse order, but too tired to switch everything around. Try reading from bottom to top.

But three didn't look like enough so I put 5 mounds in.

See all the colors: red, blue, yellow and black.

I planted festivity corn heirloom seed from Bountiful Gardens. Should be very pretty.

The sites I read listed anywhere from 1 to 4 corn plants in the center of each mound. I must be an overachiever because I made 5 holes for planting and put 4 kernels down each hole. "One for the rook and one for the crow. One to die and one to grow." My germination rate has not been that great this year and I can always thin them later.

Started with 5 gallon buckets of dirt to create mound. The bed I wanted to plant this way is only 4'x6' so I started with 3 mounds.

Ever since I heard the children's song "Three Sister's in a Mound" I've been a little fascinated with this concept. The idea is that farmers in the western US in days long ago planted three species in close proximity for the symbiotic and healthy relationship they give each other. Corn, beans and squash are the 3 sisters. They each occupy a different layer of sunshine and root zones.

"Squash grows on the bottom. Beans grow all around. Corn grows up high. Three sisters in a mound."

Not sure why the mound shape is needed for the dirt but I thought I'd go with it. The corn gets planted first, in the center, so it has time to grow high. Two weeks later the beans go in, planted in a ring 6" or so outside the corn. The beans (pole beans) will use the growing corn as a trellis. The beans also fertilize the soil for the corn with their bacteria-laden nitrifying nodules. The squash, which goes in a ring further outside the bean ring, gets planted at the same time or one to two weeks later depending on which website you read. I suppose fast growing squash, like zucchini, should go in later so the other two plants have a chance to grow higher. The squash shades the soil, acts as a living mulch, and expands around the other two plants. Not sure how it helps the soil.

Growth this week

Peaches are growing. I thinned them because you're not supposed to let the tree produce its first transplanted year. There were 77 little peaches on the tree but now about 20. I know it's better for the tree's root system to spend its energy on growing roots not fruit, but the kids would cry if we didn't get something off the tree this year.

The wheat sprouted in the planter box.

Two kids are sharing this box. One wanted pumpkins and the other chose green beans. We put them out this week but the temps have been a little cool for them. We'll see if they make it.

Broccoli/Kale, Cabbage, Lettuce/Spinach, Turnips, more Spinach

Lettuce, Peas, Romaine/Radishes, Collards/Swiss Chard, back to Broccoli/ Kale

Parsnips (can't seem to get those to germinate well), Carrots (survived transplanting to thin-spread out the row), back to lettuce and peas again.

And the last green things in the covered bed, Chioggia Beets. They grow like a bullseye with fuchsia and white rings. The eggplant has not germinated yet and the asparagus is still not coming up yet.

I am trying to increase our planting area with 5 gallon buckets. Two years ago I tried to make my own topsy turvy tomato planter, where you have a bag of soil and put the plant in the bottom and hang the bag up. I used a regular bag of soil and reinforced the holes with tape and hung it up with wire. It worked pretty well until the kids plucked off the green tomatoes and the hail storm broke the plant. Last year I tried the same idea with a rigid planter that looked like a two tiered planter with columns holding up the top one. That worked really well and I found out that peppers will grow well upside down too. Until children come along to pick the little green ones. Or you forget to water it. So this year I thought I'd try plastic buckets. But I'll have to be careful where I hang them because they are kind of heavy.

Mary, Mary quite contrary

How does my garden grow?

Not so great. Apparently when they say that pumpkins/melons, tomatoes and peppers like hot weather--they mean it. I tried transplanting these pumpkin and patty pan squash seedlings but they are looking all slumpish. Temps down in the low forties are not warm enough. And, although we only get 15 inches of rain a year (on average), this month is pushing us above average or we won't get a drop for the rest of the year. So cold and soggy are not doing my hot-weather seedlings any favors.

The cool weather crops are liking it though. Here are the leafy veggies last week. This week, despite harvesting a couple of salads, they are even bigger and bushier.

Here is the same bed (90 degree turned-sorry) three weeks prior.

The hops bine is slowly winding its way upward. The metal arch is a little too slippery for it. I will need to figure something out.

This was how it looked three weeks ago when I planted it.