The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

First the ugly. Blogger is messing up again. Blogger won't let me log in when I'm signed into Firefox and even in IE it won't let me comment on other people's blogs (or my own so I can't answer comments). I'm so unhappy. I want to comment. So for now I'm reading silently. And I can't even use Firefox to create new posts. I have to use IE and it is messing up so I have to edit html instead of doing it in plain text. Blech.

I've had so much happening in the garden recently. Monday got up over 80F and the heat is going to continue through the middle of next week. We have sun in the forecast. So we have hit summer weather. Wow. All at once. One week we have highs in the 50s (one day in the 40s), then this week is mostly in the 80s. My summer crops would grow but many of them were killed off by the cold weather.

Potatoes sprouting

I'll review what lived and died. First the good news. My potatoes are up! My potatoes are up! After planting them so deep, I was wondering how long they would take. It took about 20 days.

Tomaotes on the sides and carrots in the middle

My tomatoes are doing fabulously. Even the ones that weren't covered. I'm worried about disease with all the rain they got though so I sprayed them today with an asprin and worm tea. The eggplants that were already planted survived just fine. There is a bit of yellowing on the lower leaves, but not much. This heat ought to perk them up. I planted a fifth one in the bed on Tuesday from a later seeding. The basil all lived through it and looks fine. It is small but looks happy enough. The peppers mostly are doing OK. They didn't grow at all but none of them succumbed. The scotch bonnets are the worst off with some yellowing of the lower leaves. But a lot are doing great.

Zucchini with huges leaves, gardener with dirty fingers

The zucchini looks great and with the heat has started to grow. I see the first leaves forming. The corn is mostly up. Some has rotted and been reseed.

And the bad. All my already planted cucumbers died off. So no Diamant cucmbers for me this year. I used the last of my seed up. It really isn't much of an issue. I had some Little Leaf cucumber seedlings waiting in the wings. I've planted those and also some more Little Leaf seed as I had room for five more. The squash seed mostly rotted in the ground. I had one butternut come up and die in the cold. And I had one come up and live. Losing the squash wasn't much of an issue. It was a try at an early planting. If it dies, I replant. I replanted. You never know what the weather will be like in May. Sometimes it can get into the 80s and sometimes it throws you highs in the 40s.

Then we get to the beans. As you probably know I'm doing a big bean trial this year. I planted a lot of early beans. But they just can't handle weather like last week when we were 15 degrees below normal. I planted them in a warm week. So they started to come up and then died off. Pretty sad. Things I don't have replacements for and won't be able to reseed - all my yard long beans (no biggie, I'll try again next year), Fortex (no biggie, I tried it for three other years and liked Kentucky Wonder better), Soissons Vert (I'm more of a dried bean person than a shelling bean person anyway), Ga Ga Hut (ACK my pinto trial, I do have seed somewhere of these, but couldn't find the packet, but bad bad bad, two did live and I'll let them grow). I reseeded Turkey Craw, Tarbais, and Norridgewock. And seeded more Mexican Pinto and Kentucky Wonder to fill in the gaps left by things I don't have. I also seeded some Rattlesnake beans to replace the Ga Ga Hut. If I find my packet then I can put that into the late seeded bed.

Of all the beans the Apache Red did the best. It is almost all filled out and growing. I'm hoping it grows and produces well as it will be my kidney substitute then. A bean that can survive last week has got to be good here. I have my fingers crossed. The second best of the beans was the Mexican Pinto. There is almost a full stand of those up. I had to fill in a couple of gaps but not many.

All in all the summer crops are off to a decent start considering the spring weather we had. Soon the melons will go in. After today they will be hardened off enough and with 80s in the forecast it is a good time to get them in the ground.

As for the spring crops a lot have been harvested. I harvested a lot of Asian greens that were ready to be picked so there was a huge gap in the Asian green section. I planted some more Asian greens transplants to fill in. I put in tatsoi, choy sum, yakatta-na, kohlrabi, and some komatsuna. I'm thinking the lettuce needs to be harvested soon. Not that I haven't been, but if the hot weather keeps up they will all bolt and get bitter. I have some babies in the wings growing. They have a couple true leave right now. They will be ready to go out in two weeks I think. Then I'll need to sow some more successions. It never stops does it? Once one thing comes out, I've got to have the next ready to go in.