2009 Overview Potatoes

I hadn't grown potatoes in years, but this year I decided I had enough space to try a potato bin. I bought two pounds of Kennebec seed potatoes in April. I chitted them for five days on the windowsill. Then I trench planted them on April 28th in a 4'x4' section of the solanaceae bed. There were 10 little seed potatoes. I didn't feel a great need to cut them up so didn't.

Bin on June 11th

The big experiment was the potato bin. I made a fairly rustic 4'x4'x2' bin to put over the planting. As the plants grew I filled the bin with dirt then compost. I kept doing this until the bin was filled 18" high. I then get tired of filling it up and quit.

Some varieties will set potatoes all the way up the stem as you cover them up. I had read that any main season potato will do this, but earlies won't. It turns out that Kennebecs aren't so good at that even though they are a main season potato. Two plants set potatoes up the stem, but only a couple. The rest never did. My bin was a bust and in addition it was a lot of work hauling dirt and making sure the stems were always covered.

Kennebecs were vigorous growers

I'm still glad I used Kennebecs. This was the year of the late blight epidemic. Due to our cold wet June and big box stores selling infected plants, the whole northeastern part of the country was infected. The potatoes got blight starting in June. I only saw a couple of leaves. I kept the plant well cleaned of blighted leaves until they got so big I couldn't find the leaves in the tangled mass of foliage. The Kennebecs grew very well. It turns out they are resistant to late blight.

Nothing else bothered the potatoes much. I saw the poop of the tomato horn worm on the leaves. I never saw the worm. I didn't know they ate potatoes. I had so much foliage on the plants that one horn worm coudn't do enough damage for me to find him.

The tubers were dug on September 11th, two weeks after I cut back the foliage. I cut it bad due to blight starting to take over and not because they were dying back in any other way. It is best to wait at least two weeks for two reasons. The first is that it lets the skin toughen up before digging. The second is that it helps kill off the blight spores before they could touch the potatoes you are digging. If you dig right away those spores could get on the tubers and they would rot. After two weeks, many of them will have died off. My final tally was 16.5 lbs. Which isn't bad for trench planted potatoes, but sucks pretty bad for bin planted ones. I did have a couple of tubers that were infected with blight. They were tossed.

Will I do things differently next year? If I ever do a bin again, it will be a small bin. If I plant Kennebecs I'll just trench plant them. I do love the the variety. They are quite tasty potatoes and easy to peel since they don't have deep eyes and are smooth. I don't know if I'll have the space in the solanaceae bed for potatoes next year. Next year that bed will be my smallest of the beds.

Maybe I should try the trash can method instead? I have a trash can that is falling apart and has holes in the bottom already. I've been using it the last several years to hold up my sprinkler so it can get over all the plants. If I use it for potatoes I'll have to find a replacement. I'll also have to find out what varieties can be used in bins. But I may forego the next experiment. Seed potatoes cost way too much through the mail. It is about as cheap to buy potatoes at the farmer's market as it is to grow them from mail order seed. I can get them locally which is cost effective, but I have limited choice in varieties. If I can't find an appropriate variety locally, I won't do it.

2009 Overview Carrots

SugarSnax my favorite carrot of 2009

2008 was the first year I really grew carrots well in my garden. Clay soil is not great for carrots. I had abandoned them for years, but decided the soil was good enough to try them again. I grew shorter carrots to make my life easier. But this year I wanted to try long pretty carrots - imperator style carrots. I double dug the bed so they would have free reign to grow. I chose SugarSnax as the best of the pretty carrots to try. I did have four different varieties and I'll discuss them at the end.

I did notice in all the carrots and all the plantings that anytime I didn't thin to at least 3" apart the carrots were small and slow to grow. I always want to leave the good growing seedlings, but I must be ruthless.

I did three sowings of carrots over the year and I'm going to go over each one individually.

The first sowing was on March 27th. We were getting some nice weather so I decided if I could get the carrots to germinate (using burlap), they would grow just fine. And they did - slowly as usual for carrots. They were thinned on May 30th and again in mid June (with eatable thinnings), so grew very slowly in the cool weather. They were harvested over time in mid July. So they took 3 1/2 months to grow to full size from sowing.

These early carrots were grown in the middle of the eggplant and tomatillo bed. They had 7' x 1' of growing space. I put in four rows (of four different varieties) each spaced three inches apart. This worked well in the eggplant section. The eggplants didn't grow fast enough to shade out the carrots. In the tomatillo section the tomatillos started shading the carrots in late June. Nematodes were a problem. About a third of the SugarSnax (long carrots) had issues with stunting and forking due to nematodes. The other varieties showed nematode damage too. There was a little carrot fly damage, but not much.

I harvested 3.5 lbs of carrots from the 7 sq ft area.

The second planting was on May 14th. They were planted between my peppers and tomatoes in a 12' x1' section. I had three rows each four inches apart (four varieties - one row was split by Atomic Red and Big Top) . They were thinned on July 17th. The first picking was in the middle of September, but the carrots were still a bit small. Once the peppers shading them were removed, they bulked up quickly. By mid October they were a good size.

These carrots took five months to grow to full size. Unlike the first carrot harvest there was no nematode damage to be seen and very little forking. Almost all the SugarSnax were long beautiful carrots. These carrots were grown near Ground Control marigolds. I spaced the marigolds between every other tomato, but behind the tomatoes, while the carrots were in front of the tomatoes. They weren't that close, but it was good enough. For those that want more precise measurements the marigolds were four feet apart in the long direction of the bed and about 2-3' away from the carrots in the other direction. Let us just say I will always grow my carrots with marigolds whenever I can. Sadly early spring is a bit too cold for a marigold.

I still had carrot fly this time worse than in the spring, but still not bad. It affected maybe one in every eight carrots and usually only at the tip, which was easy to just cut off.

I harvested 7.3 lbs of carrots from this 12 sq ft of space. Which was a better yield than the spring carrots even though there was one less row.

The last sowing was on July 24th, in a different bed. I did prepare the soil well for them even if I didn't double dig it. There were however no marigolds close to protect them. Unlike my other sowings, this one had bad germination and it was really too late to try another sowing. They are still not sized up enough. They are still baby carrots. I've sown carrots on July 15th (I think, haven't double checked) and that was long enough, so that one extra week makes a lot of difference. I think in the heat of summer it would be better to use a board to help with germination. My dark brown burlap heats up the soil too much. Cooling it down with a a board might be better.

I grew four varieties this year. The first and best is SugarSnax. This is a hybrid. It is reported to grow about 9", but can get up to 11". I forget how long they were in the spring, but the fall carrots were mostly 6" and up, with some getting to eight inches long. It might not grow as well for me as stated, but I love this carrot. I love the long slender roots which are easy to peel. I love the sweet taste. I love that it gave the biggest best carrots of all the ones I grew. I will grow this next year. Most of my carrots will be this variety.

Atomic Red is not all that red and sometimes has some yellower carrots

I grew Atomic Red because red carrots are fun. That being said I was less than impressed. The carrots did not germinate well. The ones that did were prone to damping off. When they did get started they were slow to grow. Their final tally was about 1/3 of SugarSnax in the spring and about 1/5 for the fall carrots (please note that I didn't keep track of the whole harvest by carrot type, but the big ending harvests I did, so I used that as a guideline). Their high point was taste. I think they were the second tastiest carrot after SugarSnax. They weren't a really sweet carrot, but they did have a lot of carrot taste. I've seen catalog descriptions that say it is better in soups than fresh because of their strong taste, but I would disagree with this. I loved them fresh. That being said, I won't grow them again. Not enough carrot for the effort.

Danvers

Danvers was bred for heavy clay soils. It has a more fibrous core to power its way through. I grew it for this reason. It was indeed easy to grow. It was the second best producer in the garden. It produced about 3/5 of what SugarSnax did. Its roots were short and very wide if left in the ground for a while. I don't like the taste. It is bitter. I'll only use it in soups. I won't grow it again.

The last carrot I grew was Big Top. It was a fine middle of the road carrot. Nothing great about it and nothing bad. It produced about 1/2 of SugarSnax. It tastes good. I probably won't grow it again just because I could try something different.

For next year I'll probably stick to the same timing I used this year. It worked. I'll forego the last sowing since the May sowing doesn't come out of the ground until fall anyway. I'll grow SugarSnax and probably pick another variety to try, but if I only grew SugarSnax, I'd be happy. I'll need several packets though if I want to sow it all with one variety.

Harvest Monday - 9 November 2009

My husband was going on a two day business trip last week, so it was the perfect time for me to make my chard quiche. He won't touch it, but I ate for lunch and dinner while he was gone. So I picked the last large leaves off the chard and a couple of green onions. The onions make the chard look tiny, but don't believe it. The onions are the size of my leeks - bigger than some. Ok maybe that is an indication that my leeks aren't all that big.

I also picked some broccoli side shoots. The plants in the sun are starting to put out a lot of small side shoots. I hope I have time to let them grow big. I also picked some mizuna. I was eating some lettuce the other day and remembered that my mizuna, which I usually mix in was not to be seen in the fridge. Sometimes I forget about it since it is under a row cover. It is too often out of sight out of mind.

The big harvest of the week was the rest of the carrots. I had about seven feet of them left in the garden. I had three rows about three to four inches apart along those seven feet. From left to right I have Atomic Red (small section), Sugar Snax (the big one on top is 8" long, most were around 6"), and Danvers (stubby little things, one was 2" in diameter). There was a little bit of carrot fly damage, which I cut off before weighing. Right now I have all four and a half pounds of them in the fridge. Later I'll probably slice, blanch, and freeze the Danvers since it tastes a tad bitter. It will be fine in soups, but the Sugar Snax and Atomic Red are better fresh.

Now onto the tally.

• Allium 0.39 lbs
  
• Berries 0.09 lbs
• Broccoli 0.10 lbs
  
• Carrots 4.62 lbs
• Greens 0.68 lbs
  

Weekly total: 5.88 lbs
Weekly spent: $0
Yearly total: 209.92 lbs
Yearly earned: $730.27

If you would like to join in showing off your harvest, put your name and URL into Mr. Linky below. It doesn't matter how big or small your harvest is. You don't have to count the pounds like I do. If you have had a harvest this last week, show us and join in!

The Honest Scrap Award

GrafixMuse bestowed the Honest Scrap Award to me the other day. Thanks!

Here are the Guidelines of The Honest Scrap Award:
1. Brag about the award.
2. Include the name of the blogger who bestowed the award on me and link back to the blogger.
3. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that I find brilliant in content or design.
4. Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog.
5. List at least ten (10) honest things about myself.

I'm going to list my ten things first. Usually I find a lot in common with other bloggers. At least half the things they say about themselves fit with me, sometimes all of them, but when GrafixMuse listed hers, I had to say, "That's not me at all." So I'm going to take her list and make it mine.

1) She is number challenged. I come from a line of number nerds and proudly follow in their tradition. My mother was a human calculator. I had one math teacher that told me I didn't even have to show up to class, I just had to take the tests. He loved giving me unsolvable math problems to see if I could do them. My son taught himself calculus while he was taking the precalc course in high school. He took the BC Calc AP test that year and got a 5. He ended up with five college level math courses under his belt before he hit college. My daughter wants to go into quantum gravity and thinks quantum mechanics is easy. Even I don't think that. When I tell her I don't get it she tells me, "It's just math mom." BTW I aced quantum in college but I still don't get it. We are a family of number nerds and are proud of it.

2) She can't buy anything over $100 dollars without researching it to death. I rarely spend much, but if I want something I can send it without batting an eyelash. I will research something to death to make sure I get the right one if I'm not sure. But I'll do that with any sized thing. I hate buying something I won't use in the future.

3) She says as she has matured she likes quiet nights at home more than nights out. I'm half there. I love quite nights at home, but I still love my parties. The reason is that I love to socialize. I also love going out to eat with my family. I have a family of introverts and they are forced to talk to me then. My husband and I have recently started going to the Boston Seminar Series (nerdy talks at MIT) and MIT's science breakfasts. I love that. I can socialize and be nerdy all at the same time.

4) She is a workaholic. I'm so not. I do get obsessed with projects at times, but I'm really happy doing nothing too. Work does not consume me.

5) She has naturally hard nails. I so don't. They break all the time. I never polish them, but leave them natural.

6) Her hair began to turn gray at 18. I'm 47 and I have one gray hair. My mom wasn't really gray until 60. I think I'm following in her footsteps.

7) She hates driving in the snow. I hate driving, but the snow doesn't bother me. I didn't get my license until I was 23. Cars are just death traps waiting to happen. I don't understand the American love for the car.

8) She says she is a trustworthy person. I am too. She says she is non judgemental. So am I. I don't understand the propensity for people to lie. I once read a study that said most people lie everyday. Really? Do people do it just for fun? I can think of four reasons to lie. 1) to make people like you better 2) to keep from getting in trouble 3) to get something you want 4) to keep from hurting someone. So I guess I just don't have a lot of reason to lie. 1) If someone doesn't like me for who I am, then I don't need them around. 2) People ought to take responsibility for themselves. 3) I hardly need to lie to get what I want. If I want something I ask for it. People are usually good about giving it. 4) On very rare occasion I'll lie for this reason, but rarely. Even here I'll tend to be honest. If I liked your hair better the other way, I'll tell you. Sorry. But I won't tell you unless you ask. I will try to be tactful about how I say it, but I won't lie about it if you are a friend. I will lie about it to people I don't know. My friends know I'm saying things with love. Strangers don't. I also don't know strangers and don't have their life story. So I can't really say if it is good or not.

9) She can have trouble pronouncing words. I can pronounce words just fine. Well unless I'm really cold then I tend to slur my words. It is spelling that I can't do. Without spell check I'd be lost. Plus I type pretty quickly and flip letters occasionally. I am however what my husband used to term a mule. A decade ago he used to be the lead engineer on Dragon Naturally Speaking (speech recognition software). Mules are people that the system can't recognize. It gets trained to your individual voice. We are inconsistent speakers so it never gets trained.

10) She always wears heels because she is short. I've worn heals once in the last year (and only for five minutes). For my wedding I wore flats so I wouldn't be taller than my husband in the photos. The last time I wore heals consistently was when a bunch of friends and I took ballroom dancing together. Since we did this for over a year, I got some nice dancing shoes with suede on the bottom. For dancing I'll wear heals if I have to, but not for many other things. I'll blame my lack of fashion for growing up in the Colorado mountains. We walked to parties in our hiking boots and skirts. I just could never get into shoe fashion. I have a total of three pairs of heels. One black pair, one off white pair and my dancing shoes. I have more working/exercise shoes in my closet than pretty shoes.

I should just copy her list of people though. I'm alike with her on that. She picked all people I would have picked. Now I have to go figure out who I've given awards to already so I don't get duplicates.

OK back. I've given awards already to the following people:

Michelle at From Seed To Table
Kate at Gardening Without Skills
kitsapFG at The Modern Victory Garden
June at Four Green Acres
Sally at My Dirt
Amanda at Cooking in someone else's kitchen
Miss M at The Informal Gardener
Annie's Granny from Annie's Kitchen Garden
Dan from Urban Veggie Garden Blog
EG from Our Engineered Garden
Frances from Fairegarden
Our Friend Ben from Poor Richard's Almanac
Cindy at Brambleberries in the Rain
Shibaguyz
Ali at Henbogle
Kate at The Manic Gardener
Green Bean Dreams
A Sonoma Garden
Veg*n Cooking and Other Random Musings
Kathy from "Skippy's Vegetable Garden"
Margo from "Garden Misadventures"
Melissa from "Garden Portraits"
S. Jones from "Compostings"
Mike from "Tiny Farm Blog"
Kate from "The Root"

Wow that's a lot of people (I'd add some link love, but really it is way too much work). I always feel like I should come up with new people and spread the love around. There are just too many fine bloggers out there. So in no particular order:

• The Mom From Heather's Homemaking and I'm so trying her eggrolls with the next Chinese cabbage I pick.
  
• Susy from Chiot's Run
• Toni from Toni's Weedless Square Foot Garden
• Nathan at 2 Acre Farm
• Lou from Lou Murray's Green World Blog
• Selina from Indiana Girl
• Emily from greens and jeans

So now I have to work on letting them all know.

The First Freeze

Lettuce

Last night got down to a chilly 28°F. This was quite enough to freeze the soil for the first time to the depth of about an inch or two. I didn't cover my lettuce. I'm hoping they will be OK once they defrost since we have some nice weather coming up. The long range forecast doesn't even call for another freeze (maybe not even a frost) anytime through the middle of November (not that the long range forecast is a real prediction of what it will be in ten days).

Parsley

Carrot

The freeze did make for some pretty crystals on my plants. I bet my carrots are even sweeter than they were before.

Thyme

You would think it was the height of summer since this is the seventh post so far this week. I don't often do two posts a day this late in the season, but who can resist their plants cloaked in diamonds?

2009 Overview Beans (and Corn)

Beans overtaking the corn

This year I tried growing a Three Sisters Garden. I won't do it again. If the weather is bad early on the plants don't have time to mature. I tried planting the corn early. I heated the ground up with clear plastic and germinated them inside (in soil blocks). As soon as they were up they were put outside, but the corn never really grew well. The variety was supposed to get over 6' tall, which I deemed tall enough to support my corn, but it never grew more than three feet. Then when the ears started to form, earwigs took up residence in all of them and cut off the silks. Arrrggghhh!. I gave up and pulled all the corn. I've tried growing corn numerous times and it is never a great crop. I should just give my money to the local farmers and buy from them. They seem to be able to grow corn well.

Trail of Tears

Since the corn wasn't tall enough, I had to scramble and buy some bamboo poles to support the beans. I had one pole for one or two bean plants. It worked quite well.

Bean timeline:

• May 24th direct sown
• May 30th germinated
• July 23rd Kentucky Wonder snap bean harvest started
  
• August 26th Dried beans harvest started (both varieties)
• Mid September, Kentucky Wonder harvest almost over
  
• October 6th Dried beans harvest finished
  

The timing was fine. I probably would have started them a week earlier if I wasn't waiting for the corn to get high enough. All but two pods dried before the first frost. The Ottawa Cranberry is a slightly later bean than Trail of Tears.

Ottawa Cranberry

Harvest stats:

• Kentucky Wonder: 3.8 lbs snap beans with four poles - maybe six plants
• Trail of Tears: 2.5 lbs dried beans
  
• Ottawa Cranberry: 2 lbs dried beans
  

I don't know how many poles or bean plants the last two had. They each had three times the area of the Kentucky Wonder beans. So the Trail of Tears is more productive. The beans are much smaller, but there were more pods. The autumn weather was very cooperative for harvesting dried beans. We had a few large rain storms, but had mostly dry sunny weather. We didn't have any of the constant drizzle of the spring that rotted out the peas I was trying to dry.

The beans weren't much bothered by insects once they got large enough. Slugs took out some seedlings. They developed rust over time, but the harvest was set on the plants by then.

The Trail of Tears was a vigerous grower. It would have grown to 10' if they had a tall enough pole. As it was they sprawled over the tops of the poles intertwining with one another. Next year maybe I should plant them in the lowest bed and let them crawl up the maple tree when they get to the top of their poles. The Ottawa Cranberry was a much more restrained plant. It did not outgrow its 6' pole. Kentucky Wonder took the middle route. It outgrew its poles, but didn't try to take over its neighbors as much.

I liked all the beans and will grow them all again next year though I've yet to taste them so might change my mind. I'm thinking I might want to add a bush dried bean to the mix. If all the beans are pole tall all the way across the 4' wide bed, none of them will get a lot of light except the front ones. It might be prudent to do a foot to a foot and a half wide section at the back of the bed and bush beans in the front. I'm not sure what variety, maybe Jacob's Cattle. It is a very historic bean in this area.

On Greed

I don't consider myself a greedy person. When my husband asked me what computer I'm going to buy, I said I'd just take his hand me down when he gets his new one. My current computer is six years old. It freezes up occasionally when I have too many images open in my photo editing software. But I don't need a new computer. A hand me down is perfect. I want for very little.

But this last week I've been getting flashes of greed. I see gold. Gold leaves that is. They carpet my neighbors' lawns. Yesterday was the piece de resistance. As I was leaving my neighborhood, I saw a pile of leaves as high as I was. It was about 25' long. My jaw just dropped. I wanted that pile. I dreamt of leaf mold. I've never had enough leaves for leaf mold before. I've only collected enough for compost for the next year. This year I didn't even have enough and resorted to shredding newspapers. Greed is not something I feel very often, but I did want that pile. Sadly I was stymied since I couldn't figure out a way to drag it to my back yard.

I have been busy collecting leaves on a more modest scale. All my leaves get mowed up and put in my bin. My neighbor was busy raking and he gave me his leaves. Then I've started collecting leaves from Lexington. My town doesn't have trash pickup, so no one bags their leaves and puts them by their curb, but just a few blocks away is a town that does. Last week I stopped and peeked into some brown compostable bags by the curb, but all I found was branches. It as a bit too early. This weekend however we had a nice wind storm. Most of my leaves are off the trees already. So I figured I was safe trying again. Score! Most people still haven't raked (or they use a service), but there was one person that had a bunch already bagged up. I picked up seven bags worth.

I took them out of their bags and mowed them up. Mowing chops them up and makes them compost faster. I put them all in my bins.

Right now my bins are full, but they will pack down some more. I'll keep collecting leaves. The bin on the left partially behind the tree is about 7' around and three feet high. The square bin on the right (behind the tree and tools) is my old potato bin and holds a cubic yard. The black bin to the back is one of my compost bins all ready to be spread.

It is a sad season for me. Greed has taken hold and I've turned into a bag lady. I'm sure my family is shaking their head sadly at me and wondering what will become of me.

Bed Rehab

It is November now and I'm doing all my plant overviews. This does not mean I'm not working hard in the garden. I'm trying to get all my work done before the first freeze hits. The weather has been very cooperative. It has been mostly sunny and cool. We have had very little rain which is good for me, but not so much for the plants.

I had two major projects to do over the last week and a half. I'll write another post about the second since this post got way too long, but the first was to finish double digging the lowest bed. This is the bed near the fence. It used to be an herb bed and hasn't been dug in over fifteen years. Last year I dug up the section that ended at the white row cover. The section past that to the corner of the fence had my tomato pails.

When Pam, another garden blogger, came over, she asked me why I didn't just plant the tomatoes straight into the ground. The answer is right above the bed. This bed is at the drip line of the maple tree in my front yard. It puts out a lot of roots into the bed. To reclaim it I had to hack out some 2" roots and as long as I use the bed, I'll have to double dig it out every couple of years.

When I dug down I found a truckload of stones, all compacted together like concrete. I took out the bigger ones by hand, but about halfway through the project I decided they all needed to go. So I sifted the bottom section of the double dig. Sadly I only did it for the far half. In this little 2'x5' section I took out buckets and buckets of rock. I probably took out 15-20 gallons of little rocks (the big rocks were set aside as they are useful).

The problem with taking out a lot of rock is that the soil level sinks. Usually when you double dig a bed it gets bigger. All the air added to the soil really fluffs it up. This time I sunk the level a bit. Whoops. I solved my problem by adding soil from the tomato pails to it. I put five of the pails' soil on top. This leveled it out quite well. I could still use a bit more, but I'll just add a lot of compost next year.

I usually say I have three beds in the garden, but this is the fourth. It is half as wide as the others. I consider it part of my upper bed in my rotation. The upper bed is only about 12' long while the lower bed is 21' long, so it adds just about the right amount of space to make them even. Sadly now the middle bed is the small bed in my rotation and it will have my tomatoes in it.

2009 Overview Pineapple Tomatillos (and Eggplants)

Pineapple tomatillo after planting

This year I grew pineapple tomatillos (really more of a ground cherry than a tomatillo) for the first time ever. I love growing strange plants that I've never tried. These are true to their name and do taste like pineapple. They made some great fresh salsa over the summer. Since tomatillos can keep for months if left in their husks I could collect the little bits they gave over time and combine them.

Timeline:

• April 3rd, seeded in soil blocks, used heat mat to germinate
• April 14th-16th germinated - only half germinated
  
• May 14th transplanted
• July 26th first harvest

I had two plants and harvested 2.6lbs of fruit for an average yeild of 1.3lbs per plant.

I've found all tomatillos attract cucumber beetles to the garden. That is the bad news. The good news is that they make a great trap crop. I hand pick them every day during the height of the cucumber beetle seasons. If you plant them on the other side of the garden from your cucumbers, the cucumbers will be ignored. My biggest pest were the chipmunks. They love tomatillos. Bird netting around the plant discouraged them, but didn't totally prevent loss of fruit. I probably lost half of what they produced. They got no diseases and grew very well.

My biggest mistake with them is to let them sprawl. They can grow several feet from the main stem if you let them. Caging would have been much better. It would have raised the fruit up so I could see it better. It would allow me to see the ripe fruit better. The fruit is ripe when it falls to the ground, but they get knocked off easily when rooting through the plant for ripe ones.

I probably won't grow this again anytime soon. I liked it, but I have limited space in the solanaceae bed. Next year I'd like to grow a couple of real tomatillos (P. ixocarpa instead of P. pruinosa).

As for eggplant, I didn't think it deserved its own post. I'm not going to grow them again I think. I didn't even eat the ones I got from my plants. I gave them away. I'm not an eggplant lover. Last year they did so much better. This cold wet year was not the year for eggplants. From four plants I got barely got over a pound. Part of the problem was that my pole beans on the other side of the path had started shading the plants so I ripped them out at the end of August in hopes of spinach. The solanaceae bed will be better used for tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos.

2009 Overview Peppers

I'll start with the peppers. This was a good year for my peppers though it shouldn't have been. The cold weather should have made it a bad year. I think the most contributing factor to this is the double dug bed.

Timeline:

• March 13th sowed in soil blocks on a heat mat
• March 16th germinated
• April 23rd potted up into newspaper pots
• April 24th first hour of sun outside (25th 3 hours, 26th five hours)
• April 30th planted in the ground with a remay row cover
• July 16th first harvest of Early Jalapenos
• August 4th first harvest of Serranos
• August 27th first harvest of Cayennes

They were seeded way too early. The peppers only needed six weeks to planting out. Everyone says eight to ten weeks and I think everyone is wrong. The research I've read says letting a pepper plant bloom before transplanting will inhibit its final production. It might produce earlier than a smaller one not in bloom, but in the long run it isn't worth it. So I want to get them transplanted before blooming. One of my pepper varieties was starting to bud at 6 1/2 weeks. I need to start them much later.

Harvest stats:

• 2 Cayennes: 0.33 lbs per plant
• 4 Serranos: 0.39 lbs per plant
• 6 Early Jalapenos: 0.55 lbs per plant

Two cayennes give more than enough to dry for my spice rack. One is probably better, but you never know if one will die on you, so I go with too many. I like the jalapenos better than the serranos, at least the later ones. The early ones were not hot at all. The later ones were great. So next year maybe only two serrano plants and more jalapenos or try something else. Peppers are not a great producer in the garden, but at least this year was good for me. Yes even though I had low numbers, I'm feeling pretty happy with the production. Like tomatoes, peppers have never done well here.

Not much seems to bother the peppers. I did have some four lined plant bugs in the garden for the first time this year. They put some funky looking holes in some leaves, but didn't seem to slow the plants down at all. The jalapenos were attacked (as they are every year) by some insect. I think a caterpillar, but have never seen it so not sure. They get holes in the fruits. It doesn't happen to a lot of them and the insect doesn't touch the hotter peppers or anything else in the garden. I've been ignoring it for year and I'm guessing I'll continue to do so. It takes a bit of my harvest but not much. The late blight didn't seem to affect the peppers at all. I heard some reports of peppers getting attacked in New England, but not mine.

I saved seeds from my jalapenos this year. I waited until after the first flush of peppers were picked then isolated the plant. This was not long enough for the plant to totally ripen the pod. They were starting to turn, but it was too cold outside for them to finish. Bringing the plant inside worked well, but if I save seed of something next year I ought to pick my plant before the first blooms open, so it they will have all summer to ripen.

I don't think I'm going to change anything but the start dates on my transplants next year. Things worked pretty well. I keep thinking about getting another variety of chili pepper, but haven't made up my mind yet. Anyone have some favorite chili peppers they might recommend?

Harvest Monday - 2 November 2009

This week was much like last week, but instead of Chinese cabbage I harvested chard. I only took half the chard. I don't think I can eat more in a week anyway. Whatever is munching on it will have one more week before I pick the rest.

I also harvested lots of carrots and some lettuce. The carrots got eaten fresh and added to some nice chicken pot pie. I'm still staring at the lettuce thinking I should eat it soon.

At the farmers market I didn't get a lot. I got three pounds of Honey Crisp apples. They will be savored fresh over the course of the next month, though I'm sure I'll sacrifice a bit for some apple cake. And this week I timed it right. I came at 1:05, just after the market opened and waited in line for my last eggs of the season. These three dozen will last a couple of weeks. Maybe this winter I'll start going to Wilson's Farm for eggs. They aren't quite as good as the eggs I've been getting, but still good.

And speaking of Wilson's Farm I went over to stock up on cabbage. I bought three huge heads, each about 6 pounds. Two of the fit in some old apple bags. The other got rapped up in a plastic shopping bag. Sadly they were a bit too big. Last year's cabbage fit along the back of my refrigerator on the bottom shelf. These ones are so big that they don't fit under one of the shelves. Whoops. Right now I have them on different shelves, but they take up way too much space that way. When my kids come home and want apple juice and milk in the fridge I won't be able to fit it all. For Thanksgiving I'll have to take them out and put them in the garage, but hopefully by Christmas they will be pared down a bit.

Now onto the tally.

• Berries 0.32 lbs
• Carrots 0.98 lbs
• Greens 0.91 lbs
  

Weekly total: 2.21 lbs
Weekly spent: $0
Yearly total: 204.04 lbs
Yearly earned: $715.36

If you would like to join in showing off your harvest, put your name and URL into Mr. Linky below. It doesn't matter how big or small your harvest is. You don't have to count the pounds like I do. If you have had a harvest this last week, show us and join in!

A Tour Around the Fall Garden

I probably have two or three weeks before a big freeze in the garden. Usually in the middle of November I get all excited thinking I can pick lettuce for Thanksgiving dinner. It never happens. We always seem to get a freeze by the third week in November which effectively ends the gardening season (though this year I have kale which will extend it a bit). I still have plenty of vegetables that are going strong.

I have two sections of brassicas. This is the biggest. Still growing strong are: purple mizuna, tatsoi, komatsuna (one is flowering - but I can eat the flowers so it is good), Chinese cabbage (the one by the fence never headed up - deep shade), broccoli and one kale. My other bed has broccoli, one Chinese cabbage (the other two were picked) and one kale. The brassicas in this bed grew much better then the bigger one. The bigger one was in mostly full shade for the last couple of months. The other got at least some sun. It really appreciates what sun it does get.

The chard is always a favorite of mine. You might notice that something is munching the leaves. I think I'll have to go out and strip the plants tomorrow to prevent more damage. I mentioned to Dan the other day that his red chard had really dark leaves and mine were more green. Well the weather sure has changed that. Now the red leaves are dark red.

I still have some alliums growing. Bunching onions like this are scattered here and there around the garden. Wherever there was a touch of space they got put in. These are in front of the few leeks I have left. It is really sad when your bunching onions are larger than your leeks. The bunching onions are huge and the leeks are smaller.

I've been picking my carrots every week now. I'll keep doing that. I still have about 7' of carrots left. They aren't as big as my spring carrots, but they are still tasty. The Danvers didn't like the conditions much. They grew about one or two inches long at most. Plus they don't taste all that good. They have a bitter edge to them. I won't grow them ever again. The Sugar Snax were great though. These were shorter than the spring carrots too, but most were between 6-8" long.

Last but not least are two crops that were sown very late. My spinach is growing OK. They did much better in the spring. I have a lot of empty spaces here. It is hard to get them to surive the slug attacks, but some did. I haven't made up my mind yet whether to eat them this fall or see if I can get them to survive the winter. The mache has started germinating in patches. I'll have to fill it in next spring. Right now they are tiny little things.

Chinese Cabbage Soup

It is a cold day in the forties today. It is rainy and windy and later today I have to go out to the last farmers market of the season. To fortify myself I decided I needed soup for lunch. Since I didn't feel like going out to the garden to pick anything I made Chinese cabbage soup with the rest of the head of cabbage.

I first looked online for a recipe, but they all seemed to be missing something or called for ingredients that I didn't have. So I just made something up that seemed right. I love it when a plan works.

Daphne's Chinese Cabbage Soup

• T oil
• 1/4 c diced onion (maybe, it was a small onion from the garden)
  
• 1 1/2t grated garlic (yes I grate my garlic with a microplane grater)
• 1 t grated ginger (and my ginger too)
• 1/2 lb ground pork or ground turkey
• 2 T soy sauce
• t toasted sesame oil
• 2T brandy (I didn't have rice wine or sherry)
• 2 T seasoned rice vinegar (because it is the kind I have)
• T sugar
  
• pepper
• 4 c chicken broth
• 2 bunching onions (because I found them in my fridge after already frying up the others and more onions are always better)
  
• 12 oz Chinese cabbage (I think. It really is a guess as to how much.)
  

Do I really have to tell you to heat the oil in a pan and saute the onions until translucent then add the garlic and ginger? My recipe cards tend not to have this step. I break the ingredients out into brackets and don't even say what to do with them. Well anyway, after cooking the above for 30 seconds I added the meat and cooked until brown. Then I threw in the brandy then the rest of the seasonings. I stirred it up then added the broth and bunching onions. While it was simmering (about four minutes - maybe - no promises). I chopped up the Chinese cabbage. First I separated the middle stalk part that is thick and chopped it 1/8" thick. OK I tried to chop it 1/8" thick but most of them ended up thicker. I tossed them into the pot. Then I chopped up the leafy part about 1/4" thick. I was better at that. After a few minutes I tossed those in. I let it come to a good boil and took it off the heat.

Lets just say it was really yummy. Sometimes my experiments don't work out. Sometimes they do. I consider this one a success.

2009 Overview Tomatoes

Market Miracle, Early Ssubakus Aliana, Black Moor, Sungold F2 (gold and red), Chocolate Cherry and Black Cherry

I will eventually do an overview of all my categories from my tally sidebar. Some I will break up. Some I will combine. The overviews will help me remember what the heck happened in 2009 without me having to go back through all the posts. So I will know when I planted and know if it worked or I should do it later or earlier. I'll know what pests were annoying or not.

This ought to have been a very bad year for tomatoes, but it wasn't for me. It was just shortened. In the past I've had trouble growing tomatoes. For big beefsteak tomatoes I might get three from a plant. For smaller slicing tomatoes maybe 7. Some of these might rot before picking due to blossom end rot. Cherries would give me more, but still wouldn't be very prolific.

This year I decided to make changes to help get a real harvest. I made the following changes:

• Double dug the beds to about 20" deep adding 3" of compost into the bottom layer.
• Changed my amendments to: 1 c bone meal, 1 c powdered egg shells (the ones that were just crushed didn't work as well), 1 c Azomite, 1 c organic 5-3-3. These were mixed into the bottom of the planting hole and dug deeply in.
• Planted Ground Control marigolds for nematode control behind every other plant
• Took one foot of growing space away from the tomatoes and planted carrots (May 14th) in that spot which grew all summer long in the shade of the peppers and tomatoes. Used to have a 2'x3' spot, now each had a 2'x2' spot.

These changes worked amazingly well. The tomatoes were a jungle and not just scraggly plants. They produced well. I only had the Sungold F2s in the ground the others were in pots. Their 5 gallon pails were amended exactly the same. They grew fairly well too, but not as vigorously as the Sungolds.

The plants were put in much earlier than I usually do due to some out of town scheduling issues. This worked well this year because our May weather wasn't any worse than our weird June record cold and damp weather.

• April 3rd sowed seed in soil blocks - put on heating mat
  
• April 23rd potted up into newspaper pots
• April 24th first hour of sun outside (25th 3 hours, 26th five hours)
• April 30th planted in the ground with a remay row cover
• July 14th Alice (Sungold F2) gave the first ripe tomato of the season
• August 10th first Market Miracle (only large one I have) tomato ripens
• September 9th last of the tomato plants removed from the garden due to late blight

My note to self says tomatoes only need four weeks inside before they start outgrowing their newspaper pots and need to get outside. I'm a firm believer that letting a plant get a little root bound (even in a newspaper pot) is bad for them. They do best if their growth is never slowed down.

I had a few problems with the tomatoes this year. The foremost one was late blight. It took over the whole NorthEast. I still got plenty of tomatoes, but when the stems were getting infected I had to pull the plants to keep the spores from spreading. The second worst was the cold wet weather. I'm sure the plants were slowed down by our cold June. I had some horn worms. I killed a few myself and the wasps took care of the rest. This year they were hard to find. When there is little foliage on the plant hornworms are easy to spot, but in a jungle it is impossible. Aphids were more prevalent this year, but they didn't get out of control. The lacewings and lady bugs eventually caught up with them. The flea beetles took their toll, but since the plants grew so well the damage wasn't too destructive. Blossom end rot wasn't too bad this year. Black Moor was the worst off. I also lost a couple of Market Miracles and Alianas.

Production for me was pretty good. Tomatoes tend not to like my garden and depending upon where they are planted lack of sun, but this year was my best.

• Market Miracle 7.5lbs average per plant, beautiful round unblemished tomatoes
• Sungold F2 6.4lbs average per plant, the best two were saved for next year
• Black Moor 5.5lbs
  
• Black Cherry 4.2lbs
• Chocolate Cherry 4.0lbs
• Early Ssubakus Aliana 3.4lbs (very sweet but tasteless)

I love Market Miracle. It was the first beefsteak that did well in my garden, probably due to all the amendments they got and it was in a pot away from my nematodes. I will grow this next year. I've saved seed. In addition I'll grow at least one of the two Sungold F3 seeds I saved this year - Gabrielle (red) and Emma (orange). I saved Chocolate Cherry since I liked it a tad better than Black Cherry, but was wondering if they were exactly the same plant or not. I couldn't tell a difference. I'll probably grow it too.

Next year I'd like to add Moskvich and Cherokee Purple if I can get them without $5 shipping. I should have just bought one Moskvich tomato this summer to save seed, but didn't even think of it.

Things I would like to change next year. I hated keeping the pots watered. My in ground plants can handle a week without me, but the pots need watering everyday. I had a friend give me an old timer, and I poked some holes in an old hose, but that system was just waiting to fail. If I do it again, I need to get some real irrigation equipment.

I should not plant basil behind the tomatoes. They get no sun and die. The basil needs to be on the edges of the bed maybe or somewhere else.

Harvest Monday - 26 October 2009

I've noticed a distinct change in my eating habits as Fall gets colder. In summer I would try to eat from the garden in every meal (though breakfasts only if I have raspberries). Often my meals would contain more vegetables than anything else. Now when lunch rolls around I'm eating less vegetables and more heavy carbs. It isn't that I don't have things to pick in the garden. I do. I haven't picked my lettuce or chard in weeks.

I do this every year. I wonder if it is a biological drive to fatten up for the winter. But my lunches have been homemade whole wheat and spelt tortillas, beans, and cheese. Yes I put some of those pickled peppers on top and some of my homemade salsa from the summer, but nothing fresh. I ought to at least add some lettuce. I swear I'll try to this week. I have also been going for grilled bread. I keep a container of bread dough in the fridge and just grab a bit to grill for lunch. I have an indoor grill on my stove so it is easy and quick. I add cheese and some of my apple butter or raspberry jam. Yes the bread is half whole wheat flour but it still isn't a very healthy lunch like my summer lunches are.

So I decided I needed to bring in something that I would eat. I picked carrots and made them into carrot sticks. The first batch was eaten for dinner when my MIL was in town (she also got garlic mashed potatoes from my stored potatoes and garlic). The rest I made later and have at least been nibbling on them. I'll endevour to pick carrots a couple of times a week and eat them up. I have plenty still in the garden.

I also picked some Chinese cabbge this week and a couple of side shoots of broccoli. So far they have ended up in a stirfry. At least that dinner was pretty healthy.

At the farmers market I'm still stocking up. Sadly the egg lady was out of eggs again. I'll have to buy from the store. Sigh. I'll try this Wednesday to remember to get there right as the market opens and get a few dozen. We obviously need more egg sellers at the market in the fall when the chickens don't produce as well. They had disappeared after only a couple of hours (maybe sooner). I still haven't bought my cabbage. Last year I got three huge heads from Wilson's Farm (which was eaten all the way into February). They had a sale for IPM cabbage at $1 a head. So far this fall they haven't had this (or I haven't noticed).

Now onto the tally.

• Berries 0.19 lbs
• Broccoli 0.05 lbs
• Carrots 1.05 lbs
• Greens 1.06 lbs
  

Weekly total: 2.35 lbs
Weekly spent: $0
Yearly total: 201.83 lbs
Yearly earned: $707.13

If you would like to join in showing off your harvest, put your name and URL into Mr. Linky below. It doesn't matter how big or small your harvest is. You don't have to count the pounds like I do. If you have had a harvest this last week, show us and join in!

Getting Some Chores Done

Well I never got a chance to go out to do more digging in the garden. I've been busy with other things. This week I've been mowing the leaves. I love sucking up the leaves with my little Neuton. It isn't perfect. It can't suck up the leaves from depressions, but anything on the grass works great. I end up with some nice chopped leaves for my leaf bin.

This year I found the leaves that I collected from others (which I haven't started yet but will soon) decayed in various quickness. If the leaves were chopped up they decayed very well. Most of the leaves were used up over the year to add to the compost pile, but what was left in the bin at the end of the year was leaf mold if the leaves were chopped. The maple leaves decayed, but not as well. The only holdouts were the oak leaves. My whole backyard is oak so getting them chopped is great. I think when I do go out to collect leaves I'll empty the bags out and chop them up before adding them to the bin.

I've also been busy with apples this week. At the farmers market they had 10lb bags of apples for $6 so I got a couple of bags for applesauce. The varieties were Cortland and Spencer. The applesauce wasn't as good as the earlier batch with Ginger Gold and McIntosh.

When I first ran them through the strainer the sauce was such a pretty pink. I then proceeded to destroy the pretty color by adding cinnamon. Cinnamon applesauce is my favorite.

Twenty pounds of apples makes a lot of sauce. I filled up a case of pint jars and still had three quarts left. I froze two and left once quart for eating this week. I kept looking for one of my stray pint jars. I thought I had a couple jars emptied already, but couldn't find them anywhere.

Oh yeah. I pickled some hot peppers earlier and totally forgot about them. I'm guessing they might be ready to eat by now. Mostly I pickled them just so I could keep them in my fridge instead of the downstairs freezer. I'll use them more often this way.

Saving Pepper and Bean Seeds

While most of my seeds have been dried and put away already, I have some beans seeds and pepper seeds that are still getting prepared. The Early Jalapeno peppers didn't ripen in the garden in time. As frost was coming I had dug up the plant that I isolated for seed saving. I didn't need to keep it long. Just long enough for those peppers to ripen all the way. When it was dug I had one pepper that was partially ripe. Now all the six peppers were showing red.

Two of the peppers were completely ripe so they were taken off the plant.

Their seeds were stripped out and laid out to dry. Over the next week I'm sure the rest of the peppers will be ripe and I'll process those. Then the poor plant will get sent to the compost pile.

Trail of Tears (right), Ottawa Cranberry (left)

The other seeds that are still not done are my bean seeds. Bean seeds can have weevil eggs in them. I have no clue if that is true here or not. I haven't saved any bean seed without killing off the eggs to find out. Killing the eggs is easy. They die if they are subjected to 3 days at 0F (-18C). Suzanne Ashworth claims that you should keep them in the freezer for five days. I've already done this with my beans that I'm going to eat and not save for seed. With those I didn't worry if the seed was dry enough first. If it isn't the seed can die.

So I tested the seed by whacking a few the a hammer. If the seed mushes instead of shattering, it's not ready. All the seed shattered except the one on the far right. That one half shattered. It was just a touch mushy so I'll dry those for a couple of more weeks and try again. The others were put in a ziplock and put in the lowest part of my chest freezer. I'll take them out on Monday.

Snow Again

Thyme

Sunday night we had snow again. I think we got about an inch before it stopped. I figured it would be melted by the morning but at 8:30am it was still there so I had to take a couple of photos. Sadly I really wanted a photo of my lettuce bed. It was so pretty in the snow, but none of them came out. They were all blurry. Really dark mornings are not the best for photography.

The Chard looks happy with the weather.

My remay row covers don't hold up well to snow. They tend to collapse. These hoops are over the spinach. I think I'll remove the hoops before the ground freezes and just lay the remay on top of the spinach.

The snow finally did melt, but not until after 2pm. It is getting really cold out there. I was going to do some digging yesterday, but it was just too cold and damp. I need better weather for some motivation to get outside. Luckily the weathermen say it is warming up for the next few days.