Emptying the Beds

These last few days were busy in the garden. We are expected to get a good freeze on Friday and Saturday nights. The ground may or may not thaw out again this year, so I needed to get all those root crops out of the ground.

Tuesday was beautiful so I wanted to get a good chunk of the carrots done. I got half of them picked and stored. I did the rest today. I'm not going to talk about that much as I'll do a carrot post soon.

Wednesday I cleaned up the broccoli bed and picked the last broccoli. I didn't put compost on that bed because if I can get a chance this year before it all freezes up, I want to double dig the bed. Afterwards it will get its share of compost. I also cleaned up the celery and celeriac section of one bed (the rest had already been cleaned out). Of the four celeriac plants I put in during the spring, only two survived. And one had a rotten root. So I harvested just one rather small bulb. I hope it was worth it. I'm fairly sure the seed was contaminated with celery mosaic virus. And then it spread to my celery plants. I'm not too happy about that as mosaic virus never goes away. If I try it again I'll get it from a different seed source.

Also on Wednesday I did a lot of cleaning up. The bamboo poles got put in their silver tarp to protect them from the wet over the winter. The freeze thaw would pretty much destroy them, and I don't want to put them in the basement, so every year they get wrapped in a tarp and put on top of the early corn bed. I like that bed because I won't need it until May, so the poles can stay there a long time if necessary. I removed the hose and reel from the front yard and did the garden area hose late today once all the roots were harvested and cleaned. In addition to the hoses all the filters, flow controllers, and sprinklers were put in the basement. All the little things like knives, scissors, and trowels (which I keep all over the garden) where put away in the shed. Except where it is still protecting the soil (from the cats) all the rebar was put in the shed too along with the short bamboo poles. The shed isn't tall enough for my big poles.

Today in addition to the second half of the carrot bed, I picked the parsnip bed.

It had parsnips, turnips, and beets. The parsnips did just OK. I had a few really good ones. Most were small. I have some rot in the ground that turns the outside orange. Usually it is just skin deep which is good, but I'm guessing they won't last long in storage.

The turnips were also small. They probably had enough time, but the parsnips were right next to them and were so big they blocked the sun. I'm a little surprised they grew as well as they did. I didn't get a lot, but I'll appreciate what I have. Next year I'll grow the parsnips in a square block and leave the other half of the bed for turnips. This year the parsnips were down the middle of the bed. This was a problem for two reasons. During the early season, the early turnips shaded a lot of the parsnips out. And during the later season the parsnips shaded the next seeding of turnips out. I think 4' x 4' blocks of each will work much better.

So I think I'm all set for the cold spell to hit. I have just three beds in production now. The spinach bed, the kale bed, and the bok choy/chard bed. And my refrigerator is full of root vegetables, mainly carrots. Hopefully later this week I'll get a post up about those carrots. But for now I'll just say they did really well. They are my favorite of the root crops. So I'm happy even if the others weren't all that stellar.

Chores

And I do mean chores. I usually find the garden fun to work in, but some things aren't all that fun. Like being outside when it is so soupy out. Ick. But I'm working on whittling down my list.

I got the succession of turnips and beets in. I decided this time to put in the purple top turnips instead of my typical salad turnips. Maybe they will store better in the fall. I'll seed more salad turnips when the old ones come out on the left side of the bed.

The storage carrot seedlings were up. So I removed the remay that kept the seeds moist while germinating.

And put on a netting row cover. This is one of the earliest times that I've gotten my storage carrots in. I'm hoping that means a big yield. The last couple of years were mild disappointments as they really didn't have time to size up enough. These storage carrots can get really big if given enough time.

I also did a bit of indoor work as it was more comfortable than being outside. I potted up the kale seedlings. I need 16 seedlings and potted up 18 of them. A few are really small. I hope they catch up. I really don't like potting things up. I should have remembered where they were going to go and not planted them with all the other fall brassicas. They don't need the same amount of time anyway as they are mainly for overwintering. I will get some kale in the fall, but the aphids tend to take over at that time of year, so I quit harvesting anyway. Maybe I'll do a soap spray this year. But I haven't kept up with spraying the fruit trees, so probably not.

I've have been keeping up with turning my melon and sweet potato runners back into the beds. If I let them I wouldn't be able to walk.

Tomorrow it is supposed to rain and rain. So I doubt I'll get out to work. Hopefully we won't have any damaging winds like our last storm. My local town put out a weather advisory that supercells might form and we might get damaging wind, hail, and flash flooding. I might have to prop the corn up again. Now all of it is big enough that if it goes down, I'll run out of stakes. So I'm praying it misses us. Rain is really good, but the wind I can live without.

Clearing Out and Planting Up

Yesterday I showed you the bed I had my lettuce in. If you were looking, you would have noticed that I also had a lot of dill in the bed. I never plant dill anymore. It volunteers everywhere and is quite a weed. I didn't weed it out of the bed as I wanted to pick and dehydrate it. As I was picking I noticed one black swallowtail caterpillar munching on the dill. They are really common here and I often have to move them to another plant when I need to clear a bed. This one though was on some dill in the path, so I just let it be. It won't be long before this bed is all planted up with melons but for now it gets to wait. We have a two day cold spell and I'll wait to start melons once it is over.

I did want to plant up one bed though, the old kale bed. But first I had to harvest the last of the kale blossoms and rip the old plants out.

Between the plants I had some cilantro growing. I debated with myself over whether to pull it or try to plant around it. Since I was planting parsnips in that location I decided I'd better just pull it to eat small. I really wanted to loosen the soil up for the long rooted parsnips. I've never grown parsnips before and don't know if I've given them enough time, but I'd love to have more things for winter storage or maybe early spring picking. I didn't have any beds available for them earlier.

In the middle of the bed I planted parsnips. On one side I planted a mix of mizuna, salad turnips (will they grow in the summer?) and beets. The other side I'm leaving empty for a succession crop. I put a doubled over old row cover on top of the soil to help keep it moist and to keep the soil in place the next couple of days. We have wet weather predicted, though I don't think any really heavy rains are in the forecast. From what I hear parsnips take a long time to come up so I'll probably leave the cover on until they do. The cover helps keep the soil moist and makes watering easier.

While I was out seeding I seeded some Red Sails lettuce in the lettuce bed and some fennel next to the older fennel. I've never grown fennel before either. The earlier planted fennel are doing very well, but again I don't know how well it will do in the summer, but it never hurts to try.

And last but not least of the chores was to put up a cover for the cucumber and zucchini. It won't stay on all season. But the cucumber side will stay on until they start to run well and need their trellis. I do it to keep the number of cucumber beetles down. The zucchini side will stay on until the borers are gone. In my eternal quest to have zucchini survive the borers I've tried covering them in the past unsuccessfully. They always seem to find a way in. But maybe, just maybe this year my zucchinis won't die so quickly. Maybe. Or maybe the zucchini will outgrow the cover long before the borers are gone, and then I'll have to pull it off. I've never had a year that I've had way too much zucchini. I know I'm supposed to, but it just never happens. My townhouse mates get some every year, but no one else does. I keep crossing my fingers for that zucchini glut. Not because I love it so much, but I hear about it all the time and somehow I think I'm missing something. Probably not. My yearly chard glut just makes me work to get rid of it all.

Catch Up

I'm having trouble figuring out where to start after not really blogging about gardening for two weeks. I've done my harvest and cooking posts, but not any gardening posts. Above are my sweet potato vines that are taking over the world. Isn't it funny how a morning glory self seeding itself in my vines? I kept thinking that I needed two zinnias in the middle to make it a very pretty bed, but it turns out all that I had to do was let this one "weed" grow. I didn't even know it was in there since the leaves are close enough that I didn't notice.

As you can see there are two different flowers in this photo. The small pink one is from my Garnet sweet potato. It has a morning glory like flower as it is in the same family, but it hides under the foliage and is smaller.

The second bed of sweet potatoes has no flowers at all. That bed has my purple sweet potatoes that Norma gave me. All the sweet potatoes are intent on taking over the world. They are in the circle garden. The center circle is my herb garden. The vines were quickly encroaching on it. So I hacked them back. I thought about just turning the vines in as I'd done in the past. But it was just too much this time. So off with their heads. Many had already rooted into the ground and I had to rip them out before cutting them off. Sweet potatoes are very aggressive. Not as bad as a squash plant, but they are persistent.

It looks like a lot of bare soil doesn't it? Well only one half bed is bare. The one with the upside down trash barrel (I put the sprinkler on it to make sure it gets over the row covers) is empty, but the half part closer to the fence has newly germinated lettuce and beets. The bed to the right near the fence (next to the single row cover) should have carrot seedlings. I tied to get them to germinate but they just wouldn't. Luckily this was my second bed I was putting in carrots and my first bed is up just fine. I weeded and thinned it the other day.

The small patch of fall peas that I planted are up and doing well. The pole beans also germinated. A handful in one section died to damping off in the heat, but the rest are growing well. The bush beans germinated spottily, but are up. The fall brassica bed is growing well. I might get to harvest some bok choy soon. Oh and that empty bed that hasn't been planted, well it is going to have my quicker maturing Asian greens planted there. I might put some kohlrabi in too, but I don't usually plant that one until the end of August or the beginning of September once the weather cools off.

My cover crop came up well. Both the section I put soil over and the section where I just raked the seed into the bed.

Each of my beds are 16' long and divided into two 8' sections. This is the same bed that has my cover crop but it is the other 8' section. I can't use the 8' section near the fence for fall crops as it is in total shade in the fall. The front section at least gets some sun - for a while. This bed was seeded in kale as you can see. It all came up well and has been thinned once. It really needs to be weeded soon.

I've done a lot of weeding in the last couple of weeks. It has been hot and I've been watering so the weeds are in abundance. The crab grass is trying to go to seed so it has been a challenge to keep it down before it seeds all over the garden.

Do you remember from earlier in the year when I told you about my monster rhubarb? It insisted on going to seed even though I kept trying to cut off the flower heads. As summer progressed it became even more unruly and very ugly. I think of rhubarb as a pretty plant. But half the plant rotted out and it was right in front of my air conditioner during a hot summer. So I decided to kill it. I took it all down. I'll be pulling it out for months I'm sure as it tries to regrow. The nice rhubarb that was next to it was harvested by half, but otherwise left. Though that rhubarb won't produce as much as quickly, it is a much prettier rhubarb and won't block the air flow to my air conditioner. Let that be a warning to my plants. You get out of line and out you go.

Usually I like big plants. I had a huge sunflower with over 20 flowers on it. It was probably just under 10' tall. I loved its monstrosity. Though it did attack me when I was trying to turn on the spigot. I had to keep it propped up with five bamboo poles it was so heavy. It made me smile every day as I bumped my head on its heavy flowers. But sadly it broke under its own weight. Not even during a storm either. It just got too heavy. The lower part and a few flowers are left. So sad. But I'm not at all sad about my rhubarb. It was an ugly thing. Now I have to keep up on pulling the leaves to kill it. I haven't yet taken a shovel to it. I really ought to dig out as much as possible, but it has been too hot for that kind of work.

Pulling and Planting

This morning I pulled all the Masai beans as they were done. They are in a 2'x4' area. So they have 8 sqft. They gave me 2.6 lbs in half a year. Not a great yield for beans. The Kentucky Wonder have about 5 sqft and have already given me 3.11lbs. Regardless I cleaned up the spot and replanted more to see if I can get a fall harvest or not. It would be nice to know for future years if I can get two beans crops out of one spot.

Then I went over to the spot I cleared before and fertilized and seeded some lettuce and beets for the fall. Usually I do rows. But this time I just tossed lettuce seed into the bed. And randomly pressed some beet seed into the soil. In addition I seeded with mustard too. This bed is filled with nematodes and the mustard out to help keep them at bay. The lettuce was really stressed this spring because of it.

While I was working on the lettuce, I noticed the brown mustard seed was starting to shatter. So I got some big paper supermarket bags and started to fill them up. After I had done a few plants my hands and arms started to sting. Whoops. The pods are furry and grab on to you and those little scratches combined with the mustard oils was not a good combination. So I washed up inside and then put on gloves. I tell myself I ought to wear them all the time, but I just hate them. I'd much rather have dirty fingernails and scratches on my hands. I filled up two large bags with seed heads. I'll let them dry a bit more in their bags then I'll stomp on them or something to remove the seed from their pods and winnow them out.

I still have the yellow mustard to go. It isn't shattering yet. It was entwined with the single tomato plant that I have. The tomato plant will make me sick if it gets into the mustards (I'm sensitive to nightshades), so while I had the gloves on I chopped the tomato way back. Then staked the mustards so they can't touch the plant. Tomorrow I'll be watering the garden and I'm hoping it washes off any contamination. Then sometime next week I'll harvest those too.

Then it was inside to the onions that had finished drying. I decided to braid them. Last year I harvested when the tops were green. So I could lay them all out flat and have nice flat tops for braiding. This year the onion foliage was half dead when I harvested. I think the heat and lack of water did that to them. But it meant that the leaves didn't dry flat. I was worried they would hold in a braid. But they seemed to do OK. I have two braids each about seven pounds each.

There is so much more to do. My main tasks are to harvest the rest of the onions and water the garden. I still need to get out and weed sometime, but Monday and Tuesday are going to be hot again. So I'll probably put it off until later in the week. Once the onions are harvested I need to seed the kale in that bed. I was going to do starts indoors, but I think I'll just try to direct seed this year. I hope it works.

A Tour of the Spring Garden

I know. I know. It isn't really a spring vegetable. But really. It's my first tomato blossom and I just had to show it off. Isn't she pretty? It is on my Cherokee Purple. The one nearest to the walkway which adds to the heat. All the other CP tomatoes have buds on them too along with all the Heinz. Market Miracle is being slow as is one of the two Amish Paste tomatoes that survived.

OK back to our regularly scheduled spring tour. I've got way too many photos, but the light was really pretty last evening. I'll start with yesterday morning however and spinach in Bed 5. I tore out the spinach patch. With the 90F weather we have had (and will still have), the spinach was ready to be pulled. It was an OK year for spinach. It was late to get into the ground so late to be harvested. I lost about a third to a half of the plants to damping off. But I grew it in a full 4'x16' bed along with the radishes. So I still harvested quite a bit of spinach. And when I was done harvesting I made yet another trellis and planted it up in a three sisters garden just like Bed 8.

Above is what a spinach root looks like. This is why all the experts say not to transplant spinach. If that tap root can't get deep into the ground, the plant just won't be as strong. Though I know a lot of people do transplant it as it is the only way they can get the dang thing to germinate.

My onions are getting larger finally. Earlier in the spring I was worried that they might all die off. I was losing them one at a time. The outer leaves would get brown and slowly die off. It would work its way to the center. It seemed like something was rotting the roots and the leaves just couldn't be supported anymore. I lost some leeks too to the same thing. This soil is filled with nasty fungi. I hope over the years the balance goes more to the good ones. I gave it a couple doses of fish emulsion and that seemed to perk them up a bit. At least now the onions seem much stronger.

At the corners of the onion bed are some beets. I hate beets. Not a little, but a lot. Blech! So I never grew them before. But my townhouse mates love them. This little patch is for them. It is in a really bad section. Those corners dry out very fast. I should water them more.

You have seen a lot of Bed 6 since it houses my Asian greens and chard. But have you seen the above monstrosity? That bed is four feet wide. The chard in front of it is tall. The michihili cabbage from Mac is taking over the world. It has started to head up. What will I do with it when it is picked? I can't eat that much of anything. I think next year I'm going to find a nice miniature Chinese cabbage to grow. I do have a nice Napa cabbage next to it that is also heading up. At least that plant doesn't have world domination on its mind.

Also at the other end of Bed 6 are my 11 broccoli plants. I have three different kinds. Two of them are starting to head up. Above is the earliest, Packman. It is almost ready to be picked. With the heat, I'll have to watch them closely.

Then there is Windsor which is just starting to form nice heads. The Piracicaba broccoli hasn't started yet. I'm glad to have planted so many types as it will give me more of a spread out harvest at least for the first harvest from each.

In Bed 5 my potatoes are all coming up. Very late since I can't seem to get local seed early in the season. I have a neighbor whose plants are almost knee high. I need to get some bamboo fencing up to keep these guys in their beds. Or I won't be able to walk down the path to pick my broccoli. Potatoes like to flop over the edge too much.

Moving on to Bed 3, we have peas, both snow peas and snap peas. The tall ones in the front are Golden Sweet snow peas. I'm not a big fan of the really tall peas. They tend to get in the way. When I was harvesting the spinach I broke off some branches, because it just won't stay where it belongs. I wanted to try it though as I really want a golden podded pea.

And the snow peas, both Golden Sweet (above) and Blizzard are blooming. It won't be long until my first pea harvest. I can't wait.

In front of the peas are some other plants. I'll work my way to the fence. The first up is my favas which are blooming. I haven't a clue how long it will take before I can harvest them. But they look really pretty.

Next are my carrots. I love how they are all lined up in rows. Something inside me really likes rows better than scattering seed randomly.

Then comes a nice row of bunching onions, some parsley, my dead cumin, an empty spot that needs more cilantro to be sown, and my cilantro. Behind the cilantro are a couple of rows of leeks, one row of celery, and some dill.

The herb gardens are growing well. My chamomile is in bud. I'll be able to pick the first buds soon. The other day I as talking about volunteers. After the first year I should never have to plant these. They will come up every year by themselves. I just have to be lazy and let a few of them go to seed. I'm sure I will. By the middle to end of summer, I'll be bored to tears picking little blossoms and just let them go.