Sprouts, Cucumbers, and Lettuce

I finally got around to spraying the Brussels sprouts with soap again. The broccoli needed spraying too. The aphids are taking over slowly. I find soap works OK if you cover every tiny part of the plant and spray regularly. I probably ought to look up how long it takes for eggs to hatch and aphids to reproduce to make sure I'm not getting multiple generations not being sprayed, but I've never done that. I try to spray once a week, but in reality it tends to be more like every two which isn't enough to keep them down.

But as long as my little Brussels sprouts stay aphid free I'll be happy. It sure does seem like a lot of work though. Especially this week. We are getting a heat wave that is lasting over a week. I'm a true heat wimp. I've been known to faint in the heat. Needless to say, I do all my work in the early morning during weeks like this.

Other bad news is that I saw my first wilted leaf. I never got wilt in the cucumbers at my last house. We had cucumber beetles, but they didn't seem to spread it. Here we get it ever year like clockwork. I've learned to use a row cover early and only let them out after they have started to run. It delays the inevitable. It is too bad the wilt has started as I'm trying to learn how to make fermented dills and I could use more cukes for experimenting. But it will take it a while for the wilt to take them down. Probably weeks. The bacteria starts with one leaf and it travels very slowly up and down the stem and the leaves die one by one. Hopefully it will be a while still before it gets transferred to all the other cukes. I'm trying Lemon cucumbers for the first time and they haven't even set any cukes yet.

But there isn't all bad news in the garden. I sowed some lettuce last weekend. It is up even with the heat. I'm using this as a little nursery row. I'll transplant them to better spacing when they get bigger - and all the other lettuce has bolted.

Broccoli, Cabbage, and Kale

The broccoli I seeded two weeks ago was doing well. I figured it was time for it to see the light of day. I didn't bother to harden them off. They were better off just going in the ground. Soil blocks don't need much hardening off and with even one sunny warm day the blocks can dry out if I forget about them. And I tend to. They were safer in the ground.

In the spring I plant 10 broccoli plants, 5 on each side of the bed. After I harvest the heads, one row gets pulled out.

Side shoots starting to form

The other side I leave for side shoots. That way I get the best of both worlds. I get some really nice heads, but I get a constant supply of broccoli over the summer too.

The huge leaves on the other side of the bed will die over time, or start to get mildewed. I tend to pull them off at the first sign of yellowing. The side shoots will put out more new leaves to feed the plant.

I also got under the kale cover to pick. I'll miss my kale harvests when it comes time to plant this bed up in carrots.

Golden Acre

Also under the same cover as the kale are my cabbages. This one had a leaf starting to crack. I was worried that it might bolt on me. I've never really gotten the hang of when you should pick cabbage. Someone mentioned when the head hardens up. But this head was tight pretty small. It would have been a tiny thing. It still isn't huge, but a couple of pounds is pretty good for cabbages in my garden. Some year I might learn how to grow them well.

Early Jersey

Despite my lack of cabbage expertise, this is turning out to be my best ever year for cabbage. Though I suppose that really isn't saying much. I might not get huge heads, but I love cabbage a lot and will enjoy eating them. Big or small.

This and That

View from the kitchen window. Lavender!

I was a bit disappointed when I found my broccoli all needed to be picked yesterday. I really need to have two different varieties to keep me in broccoli longer. It does make it easy to freeze though.

My currant bushes are so easy to overlook. They ripen, but hide behind all that foliage.

Up close you can see them. So I picked the berries on this bush today.

I stripped them off the stems and froze them. I don't have time today to make jam, but I will sometime this summer I'm sure.

And my pink variety is almost ready to pick. It really likes to set a LOT of berries on just a few stems. It will make it much easier to pick.

Also today I sheared off half the chives. They were getting a bit ratty. I picked through them and kept about a quarter of what I cut.

I'm dehydrating them. I've never done that before. I couldn't cut them up into small bits or they would fall through even my herb screens. So I left them large and will cut them later. I hope it works.

There were a lot of weeds growing up through the ends of my beds so I've been slowly putting on some mulch. I collect leaves in the fall from the neighbors who put them in paper bags. I keep the bags and cut them up to mulch in these strange spots. It helps keep the weeds from my neighbor's side from getting out of control on my side. I can tie it to the fence and block them. He probably saw me doing this and now his side is dying. I'm sure he sprayed it. So now I'm half done and no more weeds to contend with. Should I finish anyway?

My melons last week got chomped down by slugs. Sigh. I resowed and they have come up again and seem to be doing fine. But I pulled the lettuce in the bed that I was letting go to seed. They don't need the competition when their season has been shortened so much.

My krautchi did bubble over. So it wasn't just the sugar that was an issue, it was the ginger probably. Plain kraut doesn't do that for me. So I took it down by half an inch. That seemed to be enough. I had the not very well fermented krautchi that I took out for lunch. Yum. Though it could have used some vinegar as it wasn't at all sour yet.

Lots of other little things have been done, most of which I don't remember except weeding. But I have noticed my peach tree is dropping fruit. Sad. But not unexpected. I went out the other day and collected and composted them. I'll probably go out and do it every couple of days until it stops.

Broccoli

I picked my first broccoli today. The heads are huge. My hand width from thumb to pinky is 8" (20cm) wide.

Sadly though the heads aren't perfect. Some have brown spots in the middle and some are fairly lumpy, not smooth like most of the heads. I'm guessing this year's weather is responsible. The broccoli grew very fast this year. Like many things this year I'm picking earlier than normal. I know it seems weird that it is early since this year was the latest by far that the garden got planted. But the weather has been seriously warm this spring. It isn't unusual to get warm spells, but they are usually followed by really cold weather. We didn't have much of the cold.

Most years I also get a lot of hollow centers in the stems of the broccoli. I like eating the stems so it is a problem. It doesn't happen for my fall broccoli. This year it is almost non existent. Again I think it is the warm weather. So it has at least helped on that front. Even if I have brown centers on my broccoli heads.

This year I decided to save the leave of the broccoli. They are supposed to be very high in calcium. And good for you like all other brassica leaves. I'd never tried them before. And as you can see I cut my broccoli fairly low. So I can harvest all the leaves on the stems. I harvest them so low, not just so I can peel and eat the stem. But because I like to leave not too much on the plant. If I'm going for side shoots, I'll get bigger ones if there aren't a lot of them.

I blanched and froze some of the leaves, but kept some to eat tonight and I tasted them. They are much like kale. All in all a decent replacement for it. I'm contemplating freezing them in blocks with my kale as I'd use them the same way. I don't need to know which is which.

Each head was about 1 1/5 pounds. And each head had about 1/3 of a pound of leaves. Not too bad. I did remove the rib of the leaf though as it is tougher than the kale ribs.

And as a quick side note, I was out in the garden showing it off to a friend. I was not pleased to see the first squash vine borer flying about. Is it that time already? I usually think of July 4th as being the season, but here we are earlier here than my last garden. I checked the GDD50 and today we hit 950 here. So yup, it is that time. Currently my zucchinis are under cover, but they won't stay small long. I wonder if I'll have to remove it (or they remove it themselves) before the borers are gone.

Consequences of Planting Corn

Rose arbor entrance to the garden

The other day when I was planting the corn I noticed some of the rose petals were dropping on the bed. Rose petals have been used for flavoring food for centuries. I've thought about harvesting some in the past, but never had. They are just too beautiful and smell divine in the garden. Cutting off the flowers seemed too hard. But I've been reading books on Middle Eastern cuisine. Rose not an uncommon ingredient and it seems a good cuisine for my food problems. Yes it uses beans, eggplant, and peppers, but unlike something like Mexican cuisine or Indian, I can eat most of the food with just mild changes. And I love the flavors. I never knew that mint and cilantro tasted good together. What would a rose taste like?

I only picked a handful to see how I like them. They certainly made one of my prettiest harvests. I pulled the petals off and laid them on my dehydrator sheets. I didn't use the dehydrator though. I'm just letting them dry naturally. When they are almost done I'll finished them off for an hour to get the last water out. Our climate is pretty humid and herbs (or rose petals I'm assuming) can mold if I don't use my dehydrator. The house smelled so good that first day. Heavenly.

While I was planting the corn I also noticed some white roots under the nearby row cover. I don't go down that path all that much and hadn't checked on them in a while. The row cover is over the broccoli, but I often under plant with turnips. These are Japanese turnips - Oasis - and most will tell you they are best picked at about 1" in diameter. I tend to like them just as much at 2" which is good as some were pretty large.

I'm glad I noticed them before they got way too large and woody. Strangely most of the turnips were ready to pick. Usually I'll find with turnips, especially under planted turnips, that they grow large sporadically. I rarely have a row of them ready at once. Much less a whole bed of them. Most were trimmed of their leaves, but I left a bunch on. Those I sent over to my townhouse mates. I figured they might appreciate the turnip greens and if not they will end up in my compost pile anyway.

These turnips were just lovely too. I often get some root maggot damage despite the row cover. In fact I lost one broccoli plant to them near where they were growing. But I think the flies like the broccoli more than the turnips. For the cabbages it seems to be the other way around.

While I was under there I got all the weeds out, though it wasn't all that bad. And I took off any yellowing leaves from the broccoli. And of course checked out how the heads were forming. They are looking good. It won't be long now. This one seems to be the farthest along. One though - damaged but not killed by the root maggots - hasn't even started to form. It is still trying to gather enough strength for it. It is about half the size of the other plants.

This and That

It has been so hot this week. Mostly I have stayed indoors where it is cooler. Tomorrow the heat starts to break which will mean I can get in the garden more often. Because frankly, though I love gardening, I'd rather let the weeds grow then go outside and weed them right now. I still get out for a good long walk every day. Today I even went to the park for tai chi. And I do get out early in the morning to do what ever work really needs doing in the garden. Which isn't all that much right now.

I've gotten my broccoli staked. I don't always need to stake, but once they have started to head up they get pretty top heavy. A big windstorm at the wrong time could take them down. So I'd rather stake. And still no sign of the seeds that I sowed four days ago to replace the dead plant. Hopefully they will germinate once it gets a bit cooler.

I soaked some cucumber and zucchini seed overnight and planted them this morning. I should have done this at the beginning of our heat, not toward the end. But I still think they will come up fine. And I check on my indoor lettuce seedlings every day. They are all growing well. I'll plant one batch out as soon as the cooler weather hits.

On one of my walks I picked some cattails. I've heard you can make baskets from them. Yup not too hard. Then of course it dried. It didn't actually fall apart, but the spaces between them are too large for some of my strawberries. I think I need to let some dry and then make a basket.

Planting Sweet Potatoes

Today I was out early this morning planting my sweet potatoes. Today is the first of seven days that are predicted to be in the 80s, maybe even higher later in the week. The slips were ready, so I put them in. On the northern side I used the mycorrhizal fungi and didn't closer to the compost. I'll see if one does better than the other. I'm probably not going to weigh one side versus the other as the middle ones have fungi so it would be uneven. In addition it is sometimes hard to tell where the roots came from at least with the Purples. But I think I'll get a feeling if one side is doing better or not.

I did this experiment with the early planted lettuce and with the peas. I found no difference in growth at all. I'm not too surprised as the fungi sometimes doesn't work as well in cold soils. But the soil will be quite warm with the sweet potatoes.

Garden in the early morning

In addition I did a few other chores. I watered the garden and new front perennial bed. I planted the beans which will be fed to my townhouse mates. The soil had been prepped earlier so it wasn't much work. Ditto for some coriander and some butternut squash. And in the broccoli bed the root maggots took down one of the plants. One is still fighting, but smaller. I left the one that might pull through, but the other I took out and put in some seed. I've never direct seeded broccoli before, but I figure it can't hurt. If it doesn't take then it will wait until I start a new batch later in the year.

Compost

I have two small black bins. One for composting the kitchen scraps and one for holding finished compost. The later was almost empty. In addition I have four pallet bins. Two hold leaves that I collect in the fall and two are for my working compost. I don't keep any of these bins very active. Worms probably do as much of the breakdown as anything else. It is hard sifting compost with the number of worms that proliferate over the summer. Even now when things are cold there are a lot of worms working.

Most of the garden got compost last fall, all except the overwintered kale and spinach beds. I'll need that compost in June when I turn the spinach bed into melons. In addition the kitchen scrap bin gets pretty smelly as it melts out from the winter. Even though it is covered it gets very wet and goes a bit anaerobic. Which means as soon as possible after it thaws I need to turn it. When I turn it in the fall I tend to get nice compost out of the bottom, but things don't break down as much over the winter when it is frozen.

The third pallet bin (left to right) was empty. I started by turning over the second pallet bin into it. When I had a good foot at the bottom, I put a couple of buckets of the kitchen compost on it. Then more of the garden waste from bin two. I repeated that until the kitchen bin was done. I spread the chore over two days. Now it is finished.

Well almost finished. The kitchen bin is finished, but I had to quit turning bin two as I hit ice. The rest of that is frozen. Now that the covering insulation of all the compost is gone I'm sure it will thaw quickly. I'll do bits of it as it thaws out each day. At this point I'm sifting what is there for finished compost. I want to get any bits that are finished sorted out from the sticks and half decomposed material. And I was desperately trying not to kill any worms while I was doing it. I was shocked how many works resided just above the frozen block of compost.

Compost is not the only thing I've been working on in the garden. I've been busy planting a few things. Above is the marjoram. I also planted winter savory. Seeded radishes. And received and planted my Lee #8 saskatoon (also called a juneberry or serviceberry). This morning the only plants that I had outdoors were extras from other plantings.

Which is good since it was time to bring down another flat of plants. These are the last set of baby Asian greens, the Brussels sprouts, and the zinnias. I covered them because it is getting warm enough that the root maggot fly might be out and about. The basil was in that flat too, but I took those plants out and left them upstairs with the six lettuce plants. There are just twelve plants left upstairs. It almost seems like it isn't worth keeping the lights on. I will though until it warms up enough to put the plants outdoors. I don't have any south facing windows. Just southeast and southwest. The lights will be better for them.

Broccoli

Today was a dank day. I went out to put in the broccoli plants. And got chased in by the rain. It started a few drops here and there as I was aerating the soil. I put more than broccoli in my broccoli patch. I plant two rows of broccoli that are two feet apart. I've found that three rows are just too close for them to produce well. But that is a lot of extra space especially when they are small. So I put a row of turnips along the outside. One row on each side. Luckily I did this first. The rain held off just long enough. I wouldn't want to get my seed packet wet.

View from my window

As I put in the first broccoli plants the rain started. I stayed out getting wet until they were all in. But I wasn't going to get wet for the row cover. Nor was I going to get my camera wet, so I took a photo of it from indoors. Not a great photo as you can only see some of the 10 plants that went in.

Tall white row covers blocking my view

When the rain let up I put the cover on quickly. Sadly the row covers will block my fence for quite some time and the broccoli row cover stays up all year. The fence will be planted in zinnias which are quite pretty, but only the bees will see them most of the time. Which is too bad as I really enjoy their colorful display.

The garden is really shaping up. The first seeds are up and growing. Above are either the radishes or the turnips. I forgot which ones I put in which rows. Not that it matters. I'll find out when their roots start to pop up. The first of the spinach is up too. The patch by the path. The other patches have colder soil as they get less sun, so they will take a bit longer. No sign of the carrots yet, but then they always take a while. The only transplants ready to be planted are those bunching onions I talked about earlier. I'll do them tomorrow when the weather clears up. It should be a really pretty day tomorrow. But the bulk of the spring garden is in. Which means it is time to turn to other kinds of spring work. Like cleaning up the rest of the yard. I ordered mulch which will be delivered in a week. That will need to be spread. The compost needs to be turned. I think next week I'll be building upper body strength.

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.

A Condo Work Day

I tried to find a before photo, but I haven't taken a lot of photos of the area recently. This was the best I could do. It is really a photo of the peach tree that died. About half the blueberries died too last winter. Even with them, the area was never very pretty. It is right in front of my door and what you see as you enter our yard. So when the blueberries died I decided I wanted a perennial garden in that spot. The blueberries that lived can stay. But the whole corner near our walk is empty. I ran the idea by my condo mates and they agreed, so the project was started.

I'll be planting in the spring, but I wanted to get the hardscaping done this fall. This consisted of a lot of cobblestones. To get it done we scheduled a work day. Which ended up being 10-12. We had trouble scheduling but got all six members of the condo to come. For those that don't know, our lot has a pair of townhouses on the land, two people are on our side and four on the other.

Above is the finished product from my front door. As you can see I put rings around the trees. I don't want any plants within four feet of my precious peach trees. I LOVE those peaches. It also denotes where my townhouse mates can weed. Anything green inside the circle can be taken out. Easy. I'll probably end up weeding the perennial bed in the spring. I know what is plant and what is weed and no one else in the condo can do that.

Here you get a good idea of the spots I have to work with in planning the perennials. These won't be edible - though you never know if one will slip in our not. The area down by the road still has living low bush blueberries - not that you can really see them - so I'll leave those alone. I also have one living blueberry by the end of the path in front of my door.

And we added a little extension from the drivable grass to our path. I've always wanted a path like this with a green river inside. So I'm going to see if I can grow mazus as a ground cover in between the cobblestones. I might pull it off. Maybe. Either that or it will escape its designated spot and take over the world. BTW the bush that you see there is one of my gooseberries. I have two next to it on either side, but I'm trying to grow them as standards and they really don't like me for it. They are growing very slowly and are still small.

All in all the work went pretty quickly. Though I did lay a few cobblestones, mostly I fixed errors in laying. When I told them 4' from the middle of the trunk, I really did mean 4' and not 4' 3" or 3' 10". I don't even need a tape measure to see those errors. When the curves are off it just looks bad.

We did hit one snag along the road. When we moved in the landscapers cut the curve to our driveway and out in the road. Well that section wasn't cut all the way through. Mostly it was fine, as it was far enough down and the cobblestones don't go far into the soil. But in sections it was too high up and we couldn't break it off. So there is a slight change in the curve. It will probably bother me for the rest of my life. I'm not terribly obsessive compulsive, but the artist in me objects to the curves not being correct. `

Kale in the afternoon shade - My garden is shady in the fall

In vegetable garden news it has been pretty slow. I finally got out this week and sprayed the kale and broccoli with a soap spray. I'll have to do it again this week. If I don't, I'll lose my fall harvest of these plants. The kale would still live over the winter and provide food in the spring, but I could use more kale in the freezer. Other than that nothing is happening. It has been a very slow week in the vegetable garden.

Cooler Weather

Last night the heat and humidity broke with an intense storm. Since most of the tall things were out of the garden there wasn't a lot of damage. This sunflower bit the dust. It isn't just tipped over. The two inch thick stem is broken off.

The broccoli above and the kale are a bit tipped. I fixed the broccoli this morning. I saw one head forming down in the tip. I really hope we get a good broccoli harvest this fall.

While I was under I decided the other side needed cleaning out too. I cut out a lot of side shoots to eat and left only a few to keep going. The aphids have started to invade and I wanted to get the worst of them out. One broccoli plant was removed a while ago and I removed another one today. So now I just have the three old broccoli that have been giving me food all summer long. And of course the five new ones that I hope give big heads in a month. I think I left it clean of aphids, but I'll have to spray with soap (along with the kale) sometime soon or I'll lose the forming broccoli heads. This is a big problem here with broccoli in the fall. The kale is almost as bad. Last fall I quit eating it because it was just too hard to get the mass of aphids off. Blech!

Next up was my melon patch. I picked the last two melons yesterday before the rain hit as I didn't want them to split. There were actually two little melons that would take a couple of weeks to ripen, but I wasn't sure it was worth it to leave them there. Fall ripened melons just aren't the same as summer ripened melons. I tried to untangle the mass enough to save at least one while still cleaning up the rest of the bed. I had succeeded and had just the one line of vine left. Then as I moved it back I put too much pressure on the branch and it broke off. Oh well. I did try.

But I needed the space to get my spinach in finally. I hope to get some harvest this year, but the odds are slim as the sun gets lower in the sky. I sow spinach seeds in rows 6" apart and put the seeds about 2" apart. Last year I put in Winter Giant, but it didn't perform well. So instead I sowed my trusty Space spinach until I ran out of seed. Then I filled the last spot with Winter Giant in the northern corner. If it doesn't do well this winter, I won't grow it again. Space is such a nice spinach for me that I don't mind just the one variety.

I had a bit of a problem with the row cover. The leaf miners will still be active for at least a month or a month and a half. But I couldn't find a used row cover that was large enough to cover the whole thing. So I cobbled two of them together. I hope it will hold for a while. The white one really needs some patching as it was from last year. The netting is so nice as it lets in the rain, but it is fragile. It isn't quite as bad as the really thin agribon, but still it gets holes fairly easily.

And this is my compost before all the additions. You can barely tell it is a compost pile at this point with all the morning glories climbing all over it. But they will have to be pulled soon so I can get to the compost to put on the soil for next year. I probably should have put some on the spinach bed before sowing, but didn't even think about it. I guess it will get its layer next spring when the spinach is pulled.