2009 Overview Asian Greens

Brassica bed in the spring

I've never been disappointed with Asian greens. There are so many varieties to try. Most of them are in the brassica family and those are the ones I tend to grow. Every year I grow something new for fun. I have the hardest time picking what to grow from my old favorites because they all taste so good.

I also have a real problem with what to call them. Bok choy, pak choi, tsai tai, pai tsai... aaarrgghh! I can't keep them straight. I should just stick with Brassica rapa, since all the ones I've tried are of that species. Take for instance my hands down favorite for taste - Fun Jen. It is listed as a Pai Tsai, or Brassica rapa subsp pekinensis which would put it really close to Chinese cabbage (also called Napa cabbage). But I don't think of Fun Jen as a Chinese cabbage (which it is listed under in the Fedco catalog). I've always called it my frilly bok choy (bok choy and not pac choi because the stems are white - don't even get me started on why the spellings of choi are different). It looks more like a bok choy, really it does. Sigh. Someday I wish we could just all agree on names so I could find the dang thing in a catalog.

Anyway onto the real post. I planted my Asian greens indoors on 3/16 and they were planted out on 4/7 under a row cover. Since they are brassicas and I don't spray Bt all over my garden (I like my swallowtails) I kept them under the row cover all year long. Most of them started to be harvested on 5/2, picking the larger leaves. The timing was fine. Many had successions or fall plantings. I harvested a total of about 19 lbs of them. Except for the mizuna they were all bothered by slugs. Handpicking worked if I did it regularly, but with all the wet weather that meant about every other day and I didn't keep up so harvests were lower than they could have been. They were not bothered by any diseases.

Fun Jen was my hands down favorite in taste. I don't like it cooked. I don't think it has enough structure to hold up to it. The leaves are more like thin lettuce in texture. The white stems are crunchy and sweet. It makes the best Asian salads of anything I've grown. However the slugs also find it the tastiest in the garden. I only grew two plants and didn't do any successions because they were just shredded. A 9" space seems optimal. I harvested a measly 0.8 lbs.

Tatsoi

Tatsoi is such a pretty rosette. I plant them 6"-9" apart and did successions throughout the year. They were given about a square foot of space total and I harvested 1.38 lbs. So not bad. Tatsoi wasn't as bothered by slugs as most of the Asian greens, but they weren't left alone. I use tatsoi for soups. It is my favorite soup green. I cut off the stems and put the leaves in the bowl and pour the very hot soup over them. It cooks them perfectly.

I only use purple mizuna for salads. I hear that you can cook them, but I've never tried. So I don't use a lot since it just spices up my lettuce. I had two plants but should have only had one as that would be enough for my needs. It doesn't bolt very easily but the spring planted mizuna will bolt in the summer (late June). When this happened I put in another transplant which held through the fall. Mizuna doesn't seem as bothered by slugs as the other greens. I very rarely found any on it.

Tyfon is huge

Tyfon Holland greens (which technically isn't Asian, but is more similar to them than the western brassicas) were a new one for me this year. They were touted as being the most productive green you can find. They held up to that. I planted two a foot apart in spring and got 3.2lbs of them. That wasn't even from the whole year. The last harvest was 7/14 as they were starting to bolt and I pulled them out. I didn't replace them because they were just OK in taste. If I raised chickens this would be my goto leafy green for them as it is even more productive than chard.

Komatsuna leaves look very similar to Tyfon. They are over a foot long with a good rib. The taste however is delightful. I wish I could describe all the different tastes as each green has a different one. They all have an undertone of the mustard flavor, but that is where the similarity ends. I cook komatsuna by boiling the stems (chopped to 1 1/2") in a small bit of water. After a few minutes and the water is almost boiled off I add the chopped leaves. When it is cooked, I sprinkle with soy sauce and toasted sesame oil. Tasty. In addition I'll throw it into stirfries or soup. Komatsuna is also great because it will grow in the summertime and is very prolific. It can't quite keep up with Tyfon in production but it tries. I also grew it near the fence which means afternoon shade. I'm sure this made it grow slower, but it still produced well. I put a lot in and I harvested 5.25 lbs. I spaced them 1' apart. I did about four successions over the year.

Chinese cabbage has always been one of my favorite greens. I love its mild sweet flavor. It is an all around winner in salads, soups, and stirfries. I plant it twice. Once in the spring for a June harvest and once in July for a fall harvest. I started the fall seedlings indoors on June 10th. I potted them up (for the life of me I can't figure out when I did it) and planted them out on July 21st. I harvested the first one on October 2nd and the last of them in December. The fall crop did quite well. The spring crop did poorly. The weird spring weather (we had higher highs in April than in June) really through the plants for a loop and they bolted on me. Chinese cabbage is always riskier in the spring than the fall, but I usually do better than this. I harvested a total of 4.81lbs.

Next year the greens will have my largest bed so I expect I'll have room to grow a lot more Asian greens if I want. I'm not sure this is a good thing. I have trouble keeping up with eating them as it is. They are tasty, but also very prolific. I think I might add Senposai into the mix and I've had offers of bok choy seeds so I'll probably grow those again too.

Harvest Monday - 14 December 2009

2009 Overview Yearly Tally

Memory of garden past

It is sad to have the first Harvest Monday without a harvest. But since I picked five pounds last week, I still have plenty to eat in the fridge. And since I have no harvest it seems like a good time to do the tally overview for the year. But if you have a harvest, join in. I would still love to believe that somewhere in the world it is still green and unfrozen. Right now it is really hard since we had two days in a row with the highs not getting above freezing.

I started to do this tally in January because there was such hype about growing thousands of dollars of food for just a pittance. I had guessed that I spent about $300+ per year on my vegetable garden, not the small sums everyone else claimed. On the other side of the coin there was the book $64 Tomato in which William Alexander spent a fortune on his garden. I wanted to know where my garden stood.

Spending

I had a couple of issues. My first was spending money. You know when you are trying to lose weight and the diet books all tell you to keep track of everything you put in your mouth because if you do that you won't eat as much? Well that happened in my garden spending. Since I had to account for every penny, I found myself not buying things I would normally would have. For instance in the fall I would buy some kind of salt marsh hay or straw mulch for my garden paths. That way I could put the mulch down early in the spring (salt marsh hay is not harvested in spring and hard to find, but easy in the fall). Three bales at $12-$14 per bale adds up. This year I shredded enough leaves and decided I would use them as a mulch. I also would have bought new gloves at the beginning of the season, but I used last year's gloves with holes in them. I made do. The resistance to putting something on that sheet was pretty high.

Gifts were another issue. My MIL gave me a $100 gift to spend as I liked. I chose Fedco and bought two things that I really wanted to try, but might not have bought otherwise. I bought Azomite and a soil block maker and appropriate soil to try it out. My husband bought me a garden fork for my birthday. I desperately needed to replace mine as the handle was broken and I would have spent money on it. This was not just any garden fork. My husband got the one from Johnny's which is a whopping $75. None of these gifts were counted in the tally. But at least the last one was necessary for my continued gardening.

• Seeds and Plants $46.28
• Soil and amendments $53.24
• Light setup $67.84
• Tools $13.95
• Supports $42.49
• Shipping $16.13
• Amortized Fence $60
  

For a total of $299.96 spent this year without gifts (290.22 in the vegetable garden,2.99 in the herb garden, and 6.75 in the flower garden). If I add in my gifts I get $475.

I'm splitting up my tally overview into four parts. Three small ones are my herb garden, my flower garden, and my fruit garden which I'll do first.

Herb Garden

Herb garden in the foreground in spring

My herb garden consists of a lot of perennial herbs or self sowing annuals. I grow many of my favorite herbs for cooking and in addition I have chamomile and three kinds of peppermint that I dry for winter tea. The herb garden is irregular in shape and has a couple of small beds. In addition it has ornamentals scattered through it. I have no idea how big it is, but an herb garden will never be very productive in poundage so I just don't worry. I harvested 4.5lbs of herbs and spent a total of $3 on a rosemary plant. The herb garden produced $55.93 worth of herbs which is really nice for a garden that mostly takes care of itself. I don't do a lot of digging, fertilizing, or planting in the garden.

Fruit Garden

Fruit garden this past week

My fruit garden is 24' long and about 5 feet wide (though I've not measured it so not sure). The year before I ripped out some raspberries that didn't produce and two grapes that I wasn't eating. I replaced them with six blueberry plants. They didn't produce this year, but next year will be the first harvest. The one spot that is producing are my Heritage raspberries that I planted 18 years ago. The occupy 6' of the fruit garden and produced 13.64lbs of berries over the summer and fall which comes out to $158. or about $5/sqft which is the best best monetary value for the square foot in all the gardens. How I love these raspberries. They required no inputs so no money was spent.

Flowers

A tithonia in my cutting garden

I have the flowers in with my tally on the sidebar and hated how much money they were adding to my tally. Frankly if I didn't grow flowers I would never buy them at the store. So putting bouquets in the tally bothered me. Especially since they added so much so quickly. Flowers are expensive. So after mid June I quit picking. It was probably the wrong response, but it is what I did. I probably just should have kept track but kept them out of the tally. I pick flowers from three areas. I have a small flower section at the end of one of my vegetable rows. I have my perennial border. And I have my weeds (oxeyed daisys). I picked 252 flowers and they were worth $112.35. I spent $6.75 on seed.

Vegetable Garden

I've read many times that you can get about a pound per square foot of growing space in your garden if you try really hard. Did I? I didn't want to use the herb or fruit garden. I just wanted to try for the vegetable garden which is the reason I wanted to separate the different gardens.

I recently went out and measured my garden. You would think I would have that in hand but I didn't. Even with a fence defining the perimeter the garden does change from year to year. And I haven't had measurements for ages. You might wonder how I plan my garden. Well I've done it in my head for years. Now I have a measurement. This year I had 233 sqft of growing space and six five gallon pails. I'm going to overview each bed.

Top Bed The top bed is the smallest of the 4' wide beds at 42 sqft and I always combine it with the 2' wide bed (all the way at the bottom of the garden along the fence) in my rotation. Together they have 65 sqft of growing space. (BTW the lower bed was expanded this fall by 23 sqft and next year the rotation will have 86 sqft)

The following was harvested from these beds:

• Alliums 15.14 lbs
• Broccoli 2.58 lbs
• Greens 37.66
• Peas 10.80 lbs
• Radish 0.80 lbs
  

For a total of 66.98 lbs. So the greens bed really pulls its weight and does get to the 1lb/sqft goal. Go greens! Money wise they produced $219.13 or $3.37/sqft. Not bad. But then again it was cold and wet which is really good weather for greens, so I'm not too surprised.

Middle Bed The middle bed will be the smallest next year but this year it was number two in size at 74sqft. This was my failed Three Sisters Garden.

• Corn 0 lbs
• Cucurbits 18.22 lbs
• Beans 8.3 lbs

For a total of 21.52 lbs. Yup the corn failed. The winter squash mostly failed. Even the zucchini and cucumbers had issues this year. Most of my beans are dried beans that don't produce much weight per unit space. I'm hoping next year the beans and cucurbits do better (corn is getting tossed next year), but this year the bed just didn't produce. I got just under a third of a pound per square foot. Or $1.38/sqft.

West side of bottom bed in June

Bottom Bed Ah my favorite bed - the solanaceae bed. This was the largest of all the beds. It is 94sqft and gets the most sun. If any bed can produce it is this one.

• Carrot 11.12 lbs
  
• Eggplant 1.26 lbs
  
• Pepper 5.52 lbs
  
• Potato 16.5 lbs
  
• Tomatillo 2.63 lbs
  
• Sungold F2 Tomatoes 38.28 lbs

For a total of 75.31 lbs in 94sqft. Or $2.54/sqft. Things that went wrong: the Eggplant had 12sqft of growing space and were a bust because of the cold wet weather; we had late blight in the potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant; and the chipmunks ate half the tomatillos. So considering I think this bed did pretty well.

Pails I had six five gallon pails that I got off of freecycle. They contained a variety of tomatoes. I harvested 32.18lbs from them or $21.39 per pot. I was worried going in that I would be spending more on potting material than I would get back, but I spent very little, probably $25. They produced $128 which much more than that, but if you don't reuse your soil (and you can't if you grow tomatoes every year) it can add up over time.

Was growing vegetables worth it?

• Harvested: 205 lbs in 233 sqft and 6 pails
• Spent $290.22 (plus $175 in gifts)
  
• Produce worth for local organic $780.32
• Produce worth guesstimate for conventional $520
  

So best case scenario is that I always buy local organic and I don't count my gifts. Then I'm up $490 for the year and it was so worth it. That is a big savings in produce and I don't even have a huge garden.

The worse case scenario is that I never buy local organic and I always buy conventionally produced vegetables. In addition I count all my gifts. Then my total is only $55 or an order of magnitude different. Sigh. So you pick the number you like better. You can make numbers say anything if you count them right.

The other gardens are so worth it in time and money. They don't produce as much per square foot, but since they require little input and only planting once, you really don't need much gardening equipment. For a fruit garden you could borrow a shovel from a friend for the year you plant. For an herb garden a trowel is probably sufficient. Just thrown on mulch every year and you're good.

Vegetable gardens require more time and monetary input as they are replanted every year. You need seedlings which require even more money than seed or a light set up to grow your own. To get the most out of your space it requires good timing with successions. So it takes a lot more effort and knowledge.

I think a lot of the people that say you can grow your own on very little because they don't add in things like fences, tools, soil amendments and garden supports. They only look at seeds. You can do it with very little if you want to, but most gardeners don't. I could get by in the garden with pruners, a trowel, and a shovel, but I have a lot of tools. I could plant my transplants in old plastic clam shells from the recycle bin, but I have a snazzy soil blocker (and want more sizes) before that I used six packs. I could let my tomatoes sprawl, but I cage them. I could let the bunnies eat my carrot tops, but I have a fence. I have poles and buy twine every year to string up peas instead of using pea brush. I think most gardeners are like me and choose to spend on certain things to make our life easier and to get more of a harvest out of a small spot. So to the $25 garden that produces $1000 worth of food in a year, I say bullshit. (Though I'm going to give kudos to Joe Lamp'l who grew 78 lbs in a new garden on $15.05 this year. Though to be realistic he was given all his seed and used tools he already had.) And to the $64 tomato all I can say is, "You've got to be kidding!" (Not to mention that big things like my fence should be amortized over its life.)

The one thing this didn't show was how healthy it is to grow you own food which is of course priceless. I'm not just talking about getting outside and getting some exercise. And I'm not just talking about the mental benefits of finding peace in the garden. I find when I'm growing my own food I want to use it more. I hate throwing it away since it was such an investment in my time - a fun investment, but still an investment. So I eat better over the summer and fall when my harvests are coming in than I do in the winter and spring. Some days it is a struggle to eat well. It is so much easier to throw together lunch of bread and cheese than to make a salad or cook up a stir fry. The reality is they don't take long, but when I'm feeling rushed or really hungry I can cut corners. I do it less with produce from my garden.

If you would like to help me believe that harvest still exist, 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! Really I'm dying here under the snow and ice. I need visions of tomatoes and spinach to dance in my head for the holidays.

2009 Overview Chard and Spinach

I grow two plants in the Chenopodiaceae family - Swiss chard and spinach. Spinach is such a prima donna. She hates to germinate, hates being transplanted, and bolts at the slightest hint of heat or long days. I had to treat her with such care. I chitted the seed inside for two days, until I could see the first bit of little roots starting to come out of a couple of seeds. Then I planted Melody on 3/17, 3" apart in rows 6" apart.

Luckily for me she will perform if coddled. I put a row cover over most of the spinach. I left a little out in the open to see what happened. Well what happened is that the row covered spinach produced about a week ahead of the other. Row covers are such a godsend in the spring. I'm always dying for the first taste of spring grown crops and a week quicker was fabulous. In addition covers have the added bonus of keeping off the leaf miners I also planted some spinach 1" apart. That spinach also took a week longer to grow. My first harvest was on April 24th of all the thinnings. I harvested 2.5 pounds of spinach in about 20 sqft. The last spinach came out on May 27th to make room for the squash. Some were taken out earlier to make room for the corn.

I did seed some more spinach in the fall. What came ups was chomped on by slugs, but I still got some plants. The leaves are tattered however so I'm waiting to see if they can over winter under a row cover. Hopefully in early spring the slugs won't bee so vicious.

Next year I will plant a lot more spinach. I have a lot of wasted space that doesn't get planted in early spring. The whole squash and bean bed can be planted with spinach. It has to get ripped out prematurely, but it can still produce a decent crop in that time. And next year I'll do the whole bed correctly. Chit my seed, space them at least 3" apart, thin to 6", and use a row cover.

As a producer, chard is my favorite vegetable in the garden. She just never stops. I plant her early and harvest all summer long and into the fall until the ground freezes solid. A row cover in early spring helps her get off to a good start too, but once it starts getting warm I usually take it off. She was started indoors on 3/16, but I only planted five seeds. I decided I needed more chard so planted again on 3/22 with five more seeds. Since chard seed is not really a single seed, but a cluster of seeds, I thinned out to get a good showing of colors in my Bright Lights. The seedlings were transplanted on 4/7 and 4/14. Three weeks seemed like a pretty good size. They were still small, but took off fast.

I transplanted nine plants at 8" apart. They had a 16"x3' section of the garden or 4sqft. They stayed in the ground all year long and I harvested 8.9 lbs. Even in the fall they grew and this patch doesn't get sun in the fall. It is in shade.

Next year I wouldn't mind one more row. I could freeze a lot for the winter that way. Right now I have more spinach in the freezer than I have chard. I won't however grow Bright Lights. I like the taste of the Ruby Chard better. I will so miss those pretty stems.

Neither the spinach or chard were bothered at all by diseases. The only insects that bother them are slugs and leaf miners. The slugs aren't bad in the spring, but in the fall I'll have to do something about that next year. The leaf miners are easy to control. If they have a row cover they are free of them. For the summer chard I handpicked the eggs every few days. In addition I kept the leaves well picked so there would be few leaves to check and the handpicking would go faster.

2009 Overview Peas

I grew three kinds of peas this year. One snow pea, Mammoth Melting and two snap peas, Cascadia and Super Sugar Snap. I'm not a fan of shelling peas because I just don't get enough of a harvest for the effort. I like the others just as well so I stick with them.

Time line:

• March 26th: planted 2" apart in rows 6" apart
• April 10th: germination
  
• April 24th: gaps reseeded
• June 14th: snowpeas harvested
• June 17th: the rest of the pea varieties harvested
• July 24th: both snap peas pulled
• August 4th: last snow pea harvest
  

Cascadia was a really nice and controlled pea plant. Super Sugar Snap was one of those out of control pea plants that grow 6' tall. It turned out Cascadia is a heavier producer than SSS because it produced more over time. SSS was prolific at the start, but petered out faster. I don't have harvest totals for the two separately since many times they got mixed up when picking so they were just recorded under mixed peas and not their variety, but I did get enough separate weighings to tell that Cascadia did better overall. In addition Cascadia was a better tasting pea.

Snap pea harvest total: 6.7 lbs for both varieties. They took up about 6 sqft of growing space and were only in through the end of July, so their production was great. They were out in time to plant fall crops.

Mammoth Melting has nothing to compare it to since it was the only variety of that type I grew. It is a hugely prolific pea. It produced more than either of my other peas - 4lbs in 3 sqft. Often snowpeas are considered less prolific than snap peas, but these are not. They are more prolific. Their growth habit is annoying though. They are tall plants. I think given a better trellis they would get to 8'. Instead they tried taking over their neighbors' spaces and it was a losing battle to keep them in place. Next year I should put them on the edge so I only have to fight the battle on one side. They are probably not the tastiest pea. They aren't as sweet as some. In addition a couple of the vines produced pods with fibrous peas. I tried to remove those vines, but it is hard once they are big and tangled. Luckily I could tell the pods when picking them so they wouldn't get into the pot.

I didn't have any real problems with insect pests this year. I did have some good patches of aphids and some earwigs that were eating them (I'm assuming since they didn't seem to damage the plant). Nothing was out of control. The plants did get powdery mildew as time wore on. This is totally normal and came at the expected time. So there were no problems out of the ordinary.

I tried a new preservation technique - pickling peas. It turned out pretty well. I was missing having pickles and they do make great pickles. I like cucumber pickles a bit better, but these are a great substitute. I didn't freeze any peas this year and I think I would like to try next year.

Next year I will grow Cascadia and might use the rest of the SSS seed, but I really like the taste of Cascadia and its controlled growth habit better. I'm on the fence with Mammoth Melting. I love its production, but its taste isn't top notch. I also wonder if I should try a yellow podded pea since my biggest issue is trying to find the pods before they get too big. Pea pods have a nasty habit of hiding. I don't know how the MM pods can hide so well since they are huge, but they do. If I could find a three foot yellow podded snowpea that tasted good and was prolific, I'd be in heaven. Then I could just make a 3' trellis instead of a 6' trellis.

Also next year I'd like to grow my fall peas again. Not a huge amount, but maybe one three foot section would be enough for peas for stirfries.

2009 Overview Alliums

This year I grew bunching onions, leeks, garlic, yellow storage onions, and red torpedo onions. I'm going to take them one at a time.

Nabechan bunching onions

I'll do the best first. The Nabechan bunching onions seemed to love this year. They were multiseeded early on 2/21 with about four seeds to a cell. They all came up on 2/25; were hardened off starting on 3/13; and planted on 3/25 and 3/28. So they had about a month of indoor growing, but only under the LED lights that were so dim. They were pretty small when they went out, but did well over the season. I picked them all summer long and they are still a few left out there. Right now they are about an inch wide at the base. The current harvest is at 2.4 lbs and with I think three or four huge ones left I have 12-16oz more. I loved the planting and will do it again. Multiplanting worked well for them if they were given space. Single plantings work better if I put them between the lettuce as I often do. Bunching onions for me don't get their own spot in the garden, they just get scattered around here and there. Some multiplants got too big as time went on. I dug them up and separated them before planting again (not easy late in the game as their roots tangle). They sulked for a couple of weeks then took off again.

Lincoln Leeks

The leeks were not happy this year. They were very stressed out. Seeded: 1/23. Germinated: 1/31-2/4. Transplanted: 3/27 six inches apart in a trench. I picked the first half in during the beginning of October and the second half is still in the ground. A 1'x3' section gave me only 1.1 lbs of leeks. This is a pretty crappy yield. Part of the problem is that a lot of the leeks had gone to seed. I had to throw a lot away. A leek's seed stalk is too though to eat. Though thinking back I should have saved them for stock since they would be good for that. They may have been planted too early. I was trying to get all the alliums out from under the lights that I needed for other things. Next year I need more lights so I won't have space issues. However the issue might have been weather related. A lot of plants got stressed from the weather.

Tropea Onion

The Tropea onions (red torpedo onions) were not much loved. They didn't grow well, but they at least didn't try to bloom on me. Seeded: 1/15. Germinated: 1/22-1/29. Transplanted: 3/25. I didn't like their taste that much. So they won't be grown again. If I want a red onion, I'll just grow a regular one. This one was too hot. They produced 2.1 lbs from about 3 sqft. I multiplanted some and they don't seem to like it much. Most of the good onions I got were from singly planted onions. These and the Copras were planted 4" apart if singly planted and 6" apart if multiplanted.

Copra Onion

Copra onions are yellow storage onions high in sulfur but still with a high sugar content. So they are tasty little things. Sadly little is what they were this year. I've been told that this was a very bad onion year. Also they tried to bloom so those won't keep well. I'll eat them up first. My harvest was 3.9 lbs from about 6 sqft. I will grow them again. I loved their taste. Next year I'll start them a bit later. And like Tropea I won't multiplant. They were all seeded and transplanted on the same schedule as Tropea.

Garlic

Last year I planted the garlic six inches apart at the end of October: German Extra Hardy, Georgian Crystal, Bogatyr, and an Unknown from the grocery store. Only one showed its head before the ground froze - my unknown grocery store variety. I mulched with 3-4 inches of hay. Over the winter it matted down and some of the garlic had trouble coming up. When the others were up I dug down looking for them. They were all scrunched up under the mulch. This year I planted with a compost mulch which should be easier on them. All the garlic survived the winter except the unknown. Two of the eight cloves of that variety didn't make it. I harvested early on July 3rd because I was afraid of rot with all the rain.

Harvest:

• German Extra Hardy 1.2 lbs total - 1.5 oz per head
  
• Georgian Crystal 0.5 lbs total - 1 oz per head
  
• Bogatyr 1.1 lbs total - 1 oz per head
  
• Unknown 0.6 lbs total - 1 oz if you count the dead cloves, 1.5 oz if you don't.

This year I didn't plant the Georgian Crystal again. It didn't get any bigger and others preformed better. Bogatyr is on notice. If it doesn't shape up, it will be replaced. Its seed cloves were really small when they were shipped to me. This year they were bigger. I hope they get even bigger this year.

So was it a good year for garlic? I haven't a clue. I got what I thought of as a good harvest. The supermarket variety was a softneck garlic. This year it turned into a hard necked garlic (it bloomed). It also didn't have its cloves in layers like the initial bulbs did. It had fewer but bigger bulbs. I'd say aliens came down and swapped them, but I have read that softnecks can turn into hardnecks when they are stressed. It could have been a bad year. They might hate the constant rain. Or they might be a southern variety that just doesn't do well here. Time will tell.

2009 Overview Squash and Cucumbers

Costata Romanesco zucchini and Diamant cucumbers

The cucurbits had trouble this year, every one of them. They hated the cool, wet June and didn't grow much that month. They waited until the weather warmed up a bit in July. This was a particular problem with my zucchini. Usually I like to get it big and producing before the squash vine borers rip the vines to shreds in August. This year it had barely started producing by the time of the attack. My winter squash don't have this issue since this year I elected to grow only C. moschata which are resistant to the vine borer. And indeed I saw no damage from them.

Timeline:

• May 23rd seeds direct seeded
• No record of when they germinated, cucumbers had to be reseeded constantly due to death by slugs
  
• July 26th, first zucchini picked (Dark Green)
• August 1st, first cucumber picked
• Sept 15th, my first Magdelena Big Cheese squash
  

My neck pumpkin never produced. It set a squash very late and I knew it didn't have time to ripen. My Magdelena vines only produced one fully ripe squash (and another maybe ripe, I'm going to cook it soon and see if it has flavor, if so I'll update this post with the new numbers). My Armenian cucumber set just one cucumber this year. Yup just one. The bright star in the cucurbits were my Diamant cucumbers. Though they started producing late and were much less prolific than usual, they still pulled out a good harvest overall and continued into October.

Squash blossoms

Production:

• Neck Pumpkins, 2 plants to a hill (3'x3' area), one hill, zero harvest
• Magdelena Big Cheese, 2 plants to a hill, two hills, one squash 3.3 lbs (possibly another at 2.6 lbs)
• Dark Green Zucchini, 2 plants to a hill, one hill, 2.6 lbs
• Costata Romanesco, 2 plants to a hill, one hill, 2.8 lbs
• Squash Blossoms, 0.9 lbs (from all squash)
  
• Diamant Cucumber, 6 plants, in 3 sqft, 8.45lbs (trellised)
  
• Armenian Cucumber 2 plants in 1 sqft, 0.2 lbs (trellised)
  

Diseases didn't seem any more common than in previous years. The weather just slowed them down a lot. The plants had very few pests. The summer squash that was riddled with squash vine borer larvea. There was none on the winter squash. My experiment to try just C. moschata for winter squash was a rousing success in that regard. Maybe next year the weather will cooperate and I'll get a better yield. Slugs were an issue early on, but once the vines started growing they were no longer bothered.

Next year I'll continue to grow only C. moschata winter squash. Given that next year's location is more cramped (only two feet wide). I'm not going to plant in hills. I will plant in rows, probably with a two foot spacing. I loved the taste of Costata Romanesco zucchini much more than the other variety, so that will be the only one I grow. Diamant will continue to be my main cucumber. It can handle just about anything. Also last year I bought a big packet of them (very costly seeds, and cheaper in quantity), so I'm sure I'll be growing them for a few more years at least. This is a great thing since it seems to be able to produce no matter what. Their yeild might have been down from last year, but in three square feet they still produced over eight pounds, so pound for pound ended up being one of the top producers in the garden. Next year I ought to start the cucumbers in newspaper pots. In bad years the slugs really now down the direct sown seedlings, but they are fine if the plants have a few good leaves to start with. Also the Armenian cucumbers need more space. The Diamant do fine 8" apart, but the Armenians could probably use 12".

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.

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.

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?

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.

Raspberries 2009 Overview

I got a couple of questions about my raspberries today on the harvest post. So this post is to answer some of them and be the first post to go over how the year went with this crop. I planted the raspberry patch 18 years ago. I had two sections (each about about 6' long by 4' wide) started in raspberries. I planted three canes of each type. They were bought from Pinetree.

I planted two different kinds one in each section. Lanthum is a summer bearer. It didn't last long in the garden. It never grew well and got diseased and was unhappy. I eventually ripped it up.

September berries

The other variety I planted was Heritage. It too got the same disease as Lanthum (something that makes each of the segments of the berries not ripen all at the same time and also makes them crumbly). It just didn't seem to care. I would lose a few berries to it , but not many. It would produce well anyway.

The first year that the raspberries grew they didn't produce much. The second year was OK. After about three years they had filled their space up and were producing like mad. Raspberries send runners underground. Once they get settled they act like weeds. A few times a year I have to go out and rip out roots that are trying to take over other sections of the garden.

Raspberry canes right before pruning back

My berries are planted in partial shade right at the edge of the woods. They do not get full sun. In the summer they probably get about four hours of full sun. At this time of the year they would be lucky to get about an hour of sun, but I haven't timed it. Since they grow well I don't worry about it. One side of their bed is raised with a small little poorly made rock wall. Which means it was put up by me. I'm the opposite of EG, I try to engineer everything so it just barely works. The least amount of effort to make it work right is my motto. MIT, my alma mater, is probably ashamed of me by now. The other side is bound by the driveway which is just slightly higher than the bed.

I have fertilized this bed exactly once in five years. I like to keep the leaves that blow into the bed there to mulch it. In the past decade we had a landscaping service that would blow them out even if I asked them not to. Now I'm doing it myself so they will once again be left in. There isn't a lot of work involved with the raspberries bed. Once a year I cut out the spent canes in July and at the same time thin out the new canes. In addition in March I usually clean up the bed of any canes broken over the winter by snow and prune off the old flower heads if I didn't do it in the fall. If it didn't try to invade its neighbors so much it would be the easiest bed in my whole yard.

The Heritage plant produces berries in July on year old canes. It does this in a very short time over about two to three weeks (this year July 14th- Aug 2nd). This year it produced 6.5 lbs of summer berries. Then starting in late August (Aug 25th this year) it produces fall berries on new canes. It will keep producing for quite a while. Frost won't stop them. It will kill the flowers, but the fruit that has set will still ripen. A true freeze will shut them down though. Last year I was still harvesting in early November. When it gets cold they do slow down a bit. So far this fall I have harvested 6.4lbs of berries. I have plenty of berries on my cereal every morning and still some left over to freeze.

As to problems with the crop, I had more than usual. The fall berries were more moldy and rotting than usual. I had to toss a lot of the berries in September as they would mold and ripen at the same time. The October berries seemed better. Also in September I had wasps (some kind of paper wasp) start eating the raspberries. At their height they ate about half the crop. They had disappeared by October.

Raspberries love rain, so our weird wet weather didn't bother them in the least. In fact they probably grew better than an average year.