This and That

I haven't been posting a lot recently. Not much was going on in the garden. This last week I did get a few things done though. My zucchinis have gotten a bad case of powdery mildew and quit producing. All of their female blossoms started to get very very small. So I cut them back severely. I'm not expecting to get much from now on more due to low light levels than the mildew. Probably just tiny zucchini. But something is better than nothing.

I harvested the last of the melons. There were a few small melons left on, but they rarely taste that good when harvested in late September, so I pulled the vines and planted with bok choy. It is too late to plant in the main part of the garden, but in the circle garden it gets less shade in the fall. The light levels though have gotten much less and they may or may not size up well. It is worth the chance. Usually I'd plant overwintered spinach. But I decided this year to forego that and try something new.

I didn't take a before photo, but the landscape of the garden has changed now. I picked the last of the corn and then took down all of the stalks. So now it is much shorter. And I have seas of squash growing all alone.

I braided the last of the onions, which you will see on Monday. And tore down the drying rack. I also cleaned up around the compost piles as they were getting kind of ratty. I need to get a new broom. My old one barely has any bristles on it. It makes my brick path really hard to clean.

This year I tried to keep the morning glories from climbing up the compost pile. Obviously I wasn't totally successful. They sure are pretty, but they are hard to clean off and get in the way of the drying rack. And they make it hard to access the piles themselves. So I ripped them down again. It is sad to see them go, but now I can get to the leaf pile again.

Onions and Shallots

Two weeks ago I put my onions on their storage rack to dry. A couple days ago we had a huge storm with driving rain, hail, and wind. It drove the water right in to the side. Some of the onions got wet which isn't good. Luckily now it is pretty dry. The humidity broke. The onions seem mostly dry. I sorted through them. It is really humid here and I don't have a good dry place to cure them. Some of the onions molded. So I tossed those. I also found that the red shallots had some that had split and some that didn't. The ones that split had trouble drying between the bulbs. So I broke them open to let them dry better. I'll use them up first.

Every year I braid them to hang them in my basement to store. I like the braids as they are pretty. I'm not sure if they are the best way to store them though. We have a lot of mold and diseases here and one onion touching another is probably a bad thing. Usually even long storing onions won't store past January here.

This is the harvest from the first onions that were ready to be cured. The next set have just started falling in that last storm. My subjective thought on the harvest was that it wasn't all that good. But it is hard to say until all the onions are harvested and weighed. Last year I used a 6" spacing and this year mostly a 5" spacing. I also had a small spot where I had 4", 5", and 6" spacings of the same onion to test to see how big they would get. The 5" and 6" were about the same, but the 4" spacing had really tiny onions. So 5" looks like a good choice for me from now on. But am I wrong? Are the onions smaller because of the spacing? Will I get a better total weight even though I have small onions? Once the last set are pulled I'll know.

Then again it could be the starts I used. I tried Dixondale for the first time. I found that their starts were in general smaller than mine (some much smaller)and they took a while to break dormancy, while mine were growing right away. The smaller bulbs could be because of that. Or the weather. I really should control my experiments better. But regardless I think next year I'll grow my own starts and I'll use a 5" spacing. For me that seems to work best.

Lunch

I was out in the garden this morning checking on things. First I noticed that the storage carrots were doing very well. I had good germination in both sets of carrots. The fresh eating carrots on the other hand were pretty spotty. So I resowed the empty spots. I don't know if they will come up or not as I can't cover them or water them every day as that would be bad for the ones that are already up. But maybe they will come up.

Then I noticed that my lettuce patch was getting crowded out by the bunching onions. They were supposed to have been picked a month ago, but I picked them by thinning as I needed them. And I didn't need them all so they grew.

They grew huge. Doesn't this look more like a leek than an onion?

So I cleaned up half the lettuce patch. I'll do the other half after I've eaten these.

And how do you get rid of a buttload of bunching onions? Well I slow cooked them down until they started turning brown then put them in an onion frittata . Or maybe it is a crustless onion quiche. I did use coconut milk, so it is probably more quiche like than frittata like. The nice thing about this is that I get to eat it for three more days as all those onions made a lot.

I've been having a lot of nice lunches from the garden recently. This is a vegetable pancake. I used to call them Okonomiyaki, but mine have little in common with the Japanese version anymore except for the heavy use of cabbage. I put in herbs like parsley, cilantro, or sometimes mint. And the toppings here were strawberry chutney and a horseradish mustard sauce.

I made a chard and onion soup that was nice hot the first day and nicer cold the second day. I ate it with leftover herbed quinoa and poached eggs. And you might not know it but I had stirred some sauerkraut into the soup. The day before I'd eaten my kraut on the side, but found it tasted really good with the soup.

Most of my lunches are inspired by what needs to be eaten. I had a couple of left over tortillas so I put in some guacamole and some fried eggs. Yum. From the garden I had coleslaw, sauerkraut, and cucumber salad.

Some fried eggs over leftover rice with sides of garden broccoli and some zucchini fritters.

Probably my most common lunch looks like this. An open faced egg salad sandwich. I adore egg salad. With sides of garden veggies with a little kraut.

Have you noticed a theme with my lunches. I tend to eat eggs - lovely pastured eggs with bright orange yolks. I know they are supposed to be breakfast food here, but I eat them for lunch almost every day. I eat whatever veggies the garden gives to me, but I prefer to eat some kind of green if I have it. And I'm eating a little of my fermented food every day too. I tend to eat it in rotation. So the first made gets eaten first. But when I finally get pickles that might change (the first pickles are being made now). I don't think I'd be able to resist eating dill pickles with my egg salad sandwiches.

Green Coriander and Onions

I had a very minor procedure done by my doctor on Tuesday and he said no strenuous exercise for two days. Gardening isn't strenuous is it? Well it turns out that all those little gardening chores is basically doing squats over and over which was just a bit stressful. Since it was such a lovely day, I really wanted to be outside. So I figured I could sit outside on my stool and pick green coriander. And what a lovely afternoon. I sat on my stool doing a normally tedious task, but the wind was blowing and the little tiny wasps were flitting about with the hoverflies. I should have had my camera, but of course I didn't. I still have a lot of flowers blooming and a lot about to bloom on the plants, but some of the coriander was starting to turn brown already.

I do collect ripe coriander to use as seed, but green coriander rules in the kitchen. You can eat them fresh (and yes they are better that way), but I dry a lot to use all year round. They are more intense and have a better flavor than the ripe kind. If I get another lazy day in the garden maybe I'll pick more to pickle. I bet they would keep their flavor well like that.

Today I decided to do the onions and shallots even though it would require a bit of climbing to tie up the tarp cover to the drying rack (really doc I swear it isn't vigorous). The onions and shallots had fallen 1-2 weeks ago. I would have done them a bit earlier, but I wanted a some time after the last rain for them to dry out naturally in the soil. I deemed them ready.

Only about half of them were down. The remaining are two varieties are still standing tall. I've been using the Walla Wallas as I need onions. They don't store well and I hope they last upright for a while. The longer they do the more I'll get to eat before they start to rot.

Harvesting was easy, but getting them on the rack was more of a comedy of errors. I made my drying rack a week ago, but instead of using old bamboo, I used new ones to hold it in place at the ends. It turns out the new ones are really slick and they moved as I was trying to put the onions in and as they moved, a couple lines of onions fell right through. Luckily the leaf bin is a pretty soft place to land.

After getting the onions in the rack. I had to tie up the tarp. I hadn't remembered from last year that the fence posts I tie them to in the back don't line up with the compost bins I put the rack on top of. It turns out that I can't cover part of the rack I built and put the onions on.

So I moved them all over a bit so they wouldn't get wet when it rains. Now I just need to wait a few weeks for them to dry so I can braid them.

I won't be getting to certain parts of my compost area for the next month, but I'm OK with that. I never put the onions over the one bin that is the working compost pile.

A Very Nice Morning

Sweet potatoes vines that need to be tucked back into their beds

We have been having such hot and oppressively humid weather recently. I was sweating even when I went out early in the morning to do garden chores. But this morning it broke. The temperatures dropped as did the humidity. At 58F I even had to wear a sweater. I love mornings like this.

First corn succession starting to silk

I'm sure the corn prefers it a little hotter. I've been shaking the plants each morning to help pollinate the ears. Often I see swarms of of some kind of black bee on the tassels, but so far this year I've only see one or two.

It was also nice to see the other summer crops coming along well. These will be my first cucumbers in a day or so. Yesterday I picked my first small zucchini and three beans. Yes just three, but they will add up over time as more start to flower and produce. Remember only two plants survived the groundhog attack and the rest that were replanted have to catch up.

The lettuce hasn't been doing so well with the hot weather. The plants have been bolting before they size up. Some that have sized up are bitter. I ate my last salad last night. I don't know if I'll get to have other any time soon or not. The onions should have been picked already, but I never needed them. I'm now using the sweet onions as they bulb up.

Winter savory is in the upper left

This morning I picked and dried winter savory for the first time ever. I've tried in past years, but this is the first year it has done well. I love the scent. It is kind of like a lemony oregano.

I also picked some chard. I blanched about a pound this morning to put in the fridge for meals for the next few days.

While picking I noticed that some of the stems had spots on them. I've never seen this before. It only seems to be affecting the stems, and I don't eat the stems. I don't know if I should be worried about it or not.

Another thing I noticed was some leaf miners in the amaranth. They have attacked the green leafed ones, but not the red ones yet. I don't know if they are worth covering or not. Amaranth is a new crop for me. If the damage is small, I'll just pick off those leaves. If they damage most of the leaves, I'll have to cover them. I'm not growing these for grain, but for eating the leaves, so the leaves matter. Since my first carrot bed was starting to come up and one section of amaranth is by the carrots, I covered both of them at the same time. I'll leave the other amaranth section open and see how it does. A new crop always requires a bit of learning about how to grow it well.

It was just a lovely morning. I hope the low humidity lasts for a while.

Garlic

I think this year may be the latest year for harvesting garlic. I still only have about 1-3 dead leaves on the bottom. I don't mind waiting until three leaves on all of them are brown. But the leaves at the top seemed to be getting brown faster than the ones on the bottom. That's not good. So I picked them all.

I had a good amount of large heads this year. I think I'll end up with better numbers than last year. Which is good as my townhouse mates can eat garlic like it is going out of style. I think they eat more of my harvest then I do.

I left the garlic to dry off for the morning on the brick path. I wanted to get the soil dry so I could knock most of it off.

For the next two to three weeks it will be drying in the shed. Usually I start to hear vampire jokes at this time as the shed reeks of garlic. I might nab a head or two before they are done drying if I need them for the kitchen.

Now I have part of a bed that is empty. My schedule says that I'll be planting mustard in here. Part of me wants to change that and plant bok choy. But I'm not sure what would be more useful. I liked the idea of mustard as I put carrot in this bed next year, but the mustard did not keep down the nematodes like I was hoping. And they attracted cutworms which cut down my carrot production. Maybe I'll think about it for a day or two as I let the neighborhood birds eat any bugs in the bed.

Farther back in the bed are my onions. The garlic was pretty late to die back this year. But the onions were knocked down by the wind a bit early this year. The only onions down are the Copra, my main storage onion. Not all of them are down, but most of them are. In addition the Camelot shallots are also partly down. In another week I'll have to think about building my drying rack over the compost/leaf bins.

Planting Bunching Onions

I couldn't believe how beautiful it was this morning. So of course I was out planting again. Up this time was the bunching onions.

I tend to grow these not in blocks but just in flat takeout containers. They don't need a huge depth of soil. And they are just fine with their roots being disturbed. So they don't really need to be treated all that well. I do try to tease out their roots without breaking, but I'm not always successful. I planted them in a row with a space of about 1-2 inches. I planted them about two inches deeper than the grew in the container. This will give them a long white root part, but still they will have lots of green.

You would think that one little row is not all that slow to do, but I put the rest of the bed together too. This bed is getting a patchwork of plants. Beans will take the end foot. So I built a trellis for them. Chard will have one half of the bed so I put together the row cover for that. I made an extra wide one so it could be tall, but it turns out the normal width would have been fine - just barely. I cut off the excess and only left 4" of the part I sewed on. I'll have to remember that for next year. As you can see the onions get a strip down the other side from the chard. And the rows on either side will get lettuce. I'll be rotating this lettuce bed throughout the year. I'll start new plants every three weeks, so the plants will have nine weeks to grow before they have to get taken out for the next set. Or at least that is the plan. I have a tendency to miss my sowing dates. This year I'm putting them on my calendar to try not to miss them.

With that bed planted up there are only two beds left that haven't been touched at all. You can see the bed with the silver tarp in it, just past the white row cover on the ground. Well that had my bamboo in it over the winter. I finally got that opened up and taken off today. That bed won't be sown until mid May. It will have the earliest of the corn plantings.

And just when I had my last hardened off plants in the ground, the next set came out to get some sun. The chard is on the right and I have some perennials on the left. I probably won't keep the chard out here long. The weather is changing and getting cooler and wetter. So I'll let them harden off one more day then probably plant them right before a good patch of rain. Soil blocks don't need to be hardened off as much as other methods. Their roots aren't disturbed at all. And I use a fan in the growing room, so the wind shouldn't bother them. It is just the sun they have to get used to. And we won't get much sun on Monday and Tuesday. So I'm thinking they should be fine.

I will wait on the perennials though. We are going to be getting mulch on Thursday. I don't want the tiny seedlings buried by the mulch. I think it will be safer to plant after the fact.

Busy Busy Day

This morning I figured I'd get the onions planted. This involves two beds. The first was the storage onion bed. Really it was a bed and a third as the garlic doesn't take a whole bed, so I put the rest of that one in onions. I prepped the bed and planted out the shallots that I had. I made the rows 6" apart but I figured that I would test the in row spacing. Four of the rows got a 6" spacing and three of the rows got a 4" spacing. The rest of the onions hadn't shown up yet. I ordered them from Dixondale* and they said they were shipped earlier in the week.

I put up a row cover over the bed and a half. If you remember I made a special row cover for these so they could be higher. The short row cover that was just a foot high, wasn't even close to being high enough for the onions. I wanted a two foot high cover. I had some old irrigation pipe. It isn't strong enough to be a support for a thick row cover that breaks the wind, but I thought it would be fine for the netting row cover I had. Last winter when I cleaned out the basement I cut them into 8' lengths. Today I pushed them into the soil as far as I could and the row cover was just perfect. (Photos to come later in the post.)

I had to go in to take a phone call. When I was inside I saw the delivery man drop off a big box. It wasn't my onions. It was my perennials for the new front garden. They were from Bluestone*.

I liked their modular system for packaging plants. All the plants were in biodegradable pots which is a huge selling point for me. As you can guess I immediately unpacked them all. And even though the pots were biodegradable (it looks like coir) I ripped most of them off as I don't like such things to wick away moisture. But at least I can compost them instead of having to recycle plastic.

I got out my plan that I made last year. And my measuring tape. I put them in their appropriate spots. Though my plan wasn't perfect. My neighbors behind me (the really nice ones that let me cut down the maple sapling that was growing on their side of the fence, but near the property line that was right on the southern most part of the garden) gave me a gift certificate to Mahoneys (a really nice close gardening center). I went there earlier in the week to buy a support for my sage plant in the circle garden. It only cost 10 bucks. I was going to buy some seeds for next year. But I should never ever walk into a store that sells plants.

I bought a hen and chicks plant and a short sedum. The edge near the driveway and the brick path has the worst soil (lower right). I figure these ought to grow reasonably well there. The plan said some Gallardia would go there, but I think I'll use it as a little river of color though there instead of a large patch.

I only bought three plants for my green path with stepping stones. It might take a little while to get it to spread through the whole thing, but I really think it will be more of a problem to keep a spreading plant out of the rest of the garden than to make sure it fills in.

This perennial garden is only partly planted up. I have other plants growing under lights. Some perennial (two kinds of rudbeckia) and some annual (calendula and zinnia). I also need two more perennials that I don't have. One is a Siberian iris (Cape Cod Boys) which I never got around to ordering. And Moonbeam coreopsis which I totally forgot to get seed for, so I'm just going to walk down to our local garden center and see if they sell it. If not it will be off to Mahoneys again. Though I might end up transplanting some coreopsis from the backyard. It doesn't seen really happy there. It might be more happy in the front.

After a quick lunch which made a good rest break, another package showed up on my doorstep - the onion plants. The red onions were a really nice size. The Copras weren't too bad. But the Walla Wallas were really small. I hope they grow well enough. It looks like they don't count plants. They just give you the same sized bunch. It can have small or larger plants in them. And all of the bundles had way more than they said would be in them.

I filled up that bed that I prepped in the morning. As always Copra - my main storage onion - got the best spot which means farther away from the fence. The other two spit sides of the bed. I had quite a handful of seedling left over. So I put them in the asparagus bed. Most of the asparagus died last year. I'm going to take half of the bed and plant four Brussels sprouts. But they don't need the edge space yet. So I put two rows down the middle and a row on each side of the bed. I put them about 1-2" apart. I'll eat them as green onions in June and maybe into July.

It was a really tiring day. If you have noticed I usually split my work up if possible so I don't do a lot in one day. Especially when I have a full week of gorgeous weather like this week. I want to be out everyday so no need to kill myself on one day. But when plants show up on my doorstep I try hard to get them in right away. I'll wait on the second onion bed that I had planned to do this morning. That is the lettuce, chard, and bunching onion bed. But the bunching onions can wait. Now I just have one more thing to finish today. I have to go out and sweep the front walk as I made a mess of it when I was planting.

*And I haven't received anything from these companies. I'm just a gardener who buys stuff. All opinions are my own. Yadda yadda yadda. If I ever do get anything useful from somewhere I'd let you know. But companies tend to like to offer me things I don't want or can't use so I always turn them down.