A Very Nice Morning

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

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

First corn succession starting to silk

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

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

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

Winter savory is in the upper left

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

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

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

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

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

Pulling the Carrots and Planting the Brassicas

I remember a post not long ago that was entitled "Pulling the Cabbage Bed and Planting the Carrots". I have two brassica beds in the spring that turn into carrot beds for the fall. And one carrot bed in the spring that turns into a brassica bed in the fall. I pick to do two carrot beds in the fall as carrots are great storage crops. And I like the two brassica beds in the spring because they produce so quickly so they get the produce flowing when I need it most.

First we will talk about the problems with the carrots. If you remember this bed was attacked pretty hard by the cutworms. They took down or hurt about a quarter of my seedlings. I planted the seedlings after last year's mustard crop to try to keep down the nematode damage. As you can see from the photo above, that wasn't particularly successful. I found though that the Nelson carrots were pretty immune to it, while the Mokums were hit harder. I'll still grow the Mokums, but I might make the bed more Nelson heavy next year.

Split carrot

In addition, Mokums are prone to splitting. There weren't a lot, maybe five or so. And the Nelsons had about three. Not too bad. I was also starting to find some carrot fly damage. If it was at the tip I just broke it off and put it in my waste bin. No need to take it in. Most of the damage was at the tip. I keep the bed covered to keep out the flies, but I have to keep the carrots weeded or they will get overwhelmed. That gives the flies a chance to get in. Not much of one, but enough for some small damage. Interestingly enough after the bed was harvested and the row cover removed, it called in every carrot fly in the vicinity. The soil was just swarming with them. Without a row cover, they would be pretty sad. Though I know if I time the harvest just right in late June, I can pick out in the open without too much damage yet. Now is way too late to pick like that though, so a row cover is essential.

Like most of my pickings, I like to clean things up outside to keep the dirt out of the house. One of my favorite garden and kitchen tools (it does duel duty) is my big enamel washtub. It really helps when you have a big harvest. The washing took a while and my back was getting sore.

So much for the negatives. Lets look at the good stuff. This was the largest carrot. It was a Nelson carrot.

And this was the harvest. This has been the best spring ever for carrots despite the issues. I harvested just under 30 pounds this spring. Wow. Last year was 19 pounds. The big question is why. Part of it is having the right variety for the season. In past springs I'd been growing SugarSnax and Mokum. SugarSnax is a terrible spring carrot. If you don't want it to taste bitter in the summer, you have to pick it early before it gets really hot. But it is a longer season carrot, so it just can't size up in that time. Nelson is a great spring/summer carrot. It tastes good even with the heat, and it sizes up well in the time allotted to it.

The other reason for the increase in yield, is not from anything I did. We might have had a late start to the spring, but it was a very sunny and warmer than normal spring. We didn't get a lot of rain (I watered a lot which is unheard of in spring), but sunshine was in abundance. Often in spring we have cool overcast drizzly days. Not this spring. So Mother Nature was kind to me this year.

Storing such a large amount of carrots (I picked 20 pounds in this batch) requires space. So I cleaned out my vegetable drawer and used that. I fit all those carrots together like a puzzle. I covered it with a damp cloth and some plastic as it will keep them crispy longer. I tried my best, but they still didn't all fit.

So I made up a basket of carrots and my largest cabbage and took it to my townhouse mates. I'm sure they will enjoy them. I would have given them the cabbage earlier, but they were out of town. Now that they are back they can help me with my abundance.

Lunch: pastured eggs over some leftover quinoa and herbs, with some cooked carrots (I like my carrot sticks partially cooked), chard, and a little sauerkraut

And what did I have for lunch? Well carrots of course. Yum. I think this harvest will have no trouble lasting for the two months it will take to grow the next batch. Well at least if I don't go crazy with them.

After lunch I decided it was cool enough to plant the brassicas. I put in six Michihili cabbage, four Golden Acre cabbage, thirteen kohlrabi, and a few rows of Oasis turnips. When I put the row cover on I trapped about a million little carrot flies. Better there than anywhere else I guess.

Pulling the Cabbage Bed and Planting Carrots

Cabbages and kale under the row cover

Yesterday morning I noticed that my schedule says to plant my storage carrots on July 10th. Last year I did it on the 6th. You would think I would have plenty of time, but carrots won't size up here if not planted early enough. The neighboring trees and houses will shade the yard a lot in the fall. So I have to get them in early enough to start sizing up before fall hits. I can wait until November to pick them but I can't wait to plant.

But first I had to free up the bed which had kale, cabbages, and a few turnips.

It is good that I've pulled the cabbages as a couple had just started to split. No real damage had been done but there would have been if I waited much longer.

Cabbages always seem so wasteful. You grow all those wonderful leaves, but then you cut them off and just leave the inside leaves.

Well my compost is well fed. Too bad I don't have neighbor with chickens. I'm sure they would have loved those leaves.

I picked two Early Jersey cabbages and three Point One. Each kind had over 5 pounds. So these cabbages aren't huge, but that is a lot of cabbage to be eating. Luckily they keep well.

It turned out that the timing for the kale couldn't have been better either. Some aphids had started to take up residence. There weren't many of them. But as I picked them I tore off the infected parts. I suppose I could wash them off, but that was way too much work. Mostly they came in big clumps on small parts of the leaves. But with the arrival of the aphids, it means I'll have to start checking my broccoli plants. The one problem with growing them year round is that you can't avoid the aphids. So I'll be getting my soap sprayer out soon.

And in the afternoon I finally got the carrot seed planted. I hate planting in the afternoon, I much prefer to do my garden work in the morning. I don't mind sweating with hard work, but when I'm just sitting there in the sun it feels worse for some reason. And it takes a while to seed the whole bed. But it is done. I have one more bed that needs to be transitioned to fall crops. That is the carrot bed that will turn into brassicas. I think that will get done next week sometime as the transplants are almost big enough.

Carrots, Turnips, and Raspberries

Yesterday I cleaned out the last of the kohlrabies and turnips in Bed 8, but I didn't have a chance to reseed it. It is destined to hold my fresh eating carrots for fall - Mokum and Nelson. I like to seed them in rows that are 4" apart. I try to get the seed about an inch apart, but typically it doesn't happen very well. Some are clumped some are farther apart.

Getting carrot seed to germinate however is always an issue. So I cover them with two layers of agribon. It is thick enough to keep the soil moist if I sprinkle it every morning. But thin enough that they don't get squished by the fabric. I'll remove it once they are mostly up. Then I'll put on the row cover to protect from the root fly.

Next up were the turnips. I've done an abysmal job with my successions. So I elected to just sow a whole half of this section of bed. I hope they survive. The last sowing all died fairly quickly.

Raspberries by the patio

And last but not least for my chores today was the raspberries. The June crop was over. So I cut out the old canes and thinned the new ones. It was a good raspberry year so far (I have everbearers, so I'll get more starting in August), but I noticed over the last couple of weeks that the tips of some of the canes were blackening and wilting. So I looked at it and there are two girdles around each cane that had the problem. I've never had cane borers before and had to look up what it was. My instinct to cut it off well below the girdle was correct. I'm not too concerned about it as cutting off the growing tip tends to make the tops more bushy and send out more flowers. I'm more concerned about the leaves. They are a bit silvery looking, not the typical healthy green. I'm just guessing, but I think maybe spider mites. My eyes aren't good enough to see them if they are. I used to have a magnifying glass, but I haven't used it in so long I can't find it now. But if I can confirm it, I ought to do a soap spray. Spider mites aren't usually big pests here. We tend to be too wet, but occasionally they can be problematic.

Carrots and Krautchi

I had a lot of problems earlier in my carrot bed. Germination was fine, but the cutworms were very bad. Obviously a lot of cutworms eggs had been laid the previous fall. I planted them where my seed mustard was. The hope was that it would keep the nematode problems down. Mustard is a natural way to fumigate the land from them. I didn't anticipate that the cutworms would like the mustard so much though. I would guess that about a quarter of my crop was destroyed. Maybe a bit more. Not that you can tell from the photo, but I thin to about 3-4" apart. The cutworms thinned much father apart. And there is one sixth of the bed with almost nothing at all.

I noticed that some of the carrots were showing above the bed. Some years they seem to hide and I have to dig down to find them. But some years they show themselves. It was time to start picking. I won't pick them all at once. I don't need this bed for another three weeks. So I'll pick some. Once they are used up, I'll pick more.

I planted my beloved Mokum carrots of course. Many carrots taste bitter at this time of the year. Mokum is always sweet and tasty to me. It isn't a large carrot at 5-6" long (well by the book, I've had it grow to 8" one year). But I'm always on the lookout for another to plant near it. This year I trialed Nelson. It was described as a good summer carrot as it tastes good when the weather is hot. This one is 6-7" long.

Of course a trial means I have to know which carrot is which. Did I write it down where I planted each one? Nope. Not on the blog, not in my journal. Not on my planting map. I think Nelson was put on the northwest side. I think. Maybe taste would tell me which one was which. I know Mokum will taste sweet and delicious. If one is bitter, then I know.

I cleaned them up. I used a trick I used to use with my garlic when I had more than one variety. When you trim them, trim one higher than the other so you can tell them apart. I left some stem on the top of one. It really helps if you KNOW which one is which to start with though. The ones I think are Mokum were a bit shorter than the Nelsons, so that jibes. I tasted the one I thought was Mokum. Yup sweet and so delicious. It will be nice not eating store bought carrots anymore. I tasted Nelson. Also a really lovely carrot. Sweet, but not quite as sweet as Mokum. I think the flavor is a bit more complex though. Very nice. It is a definite keeper. Last year I tried Yaya. It was sweet enough without bitterness, but it lacked the depth of flavor that a carrot ought to have. It was insipid. Both Mokum and Nelson are very good. I think my summertime carrot trials are at an end. Unless some other blogger proclaims a summer carrot above all others, I'll stick with these.

And the mustard crop I used to keep down the nematodes worked to an extent. I did see a touch of damage, but not much. Definitely not worth the cutworm damage.

And as a quick update, I decided to use one of my Chinese cabbages to make a couple of quarts of Sauerchi, Kimkraut or something like that. I made it like you do sauerkraut. Chop up the vegetables and use a dry salting technique. Then jam them into jars. But I seasoned it like kimchi (or as much as I can without peppers). I used garlic, ginger, and cilantro. I didn't use any sugar or fruit to keep the fermentation under control. And I'll let them ferment for weeks not days. So it is more like an Asian flavored Kraut.

They joined the fermenting station in the dining room. I might make more this week with the last cabbage. It seems like a very nice way to preserve the cabbage. Tasty and long lasting.

Rain

Before yesterday the last time it had really rained was April 21st - almost a month ago. Not that we got a lot. We could use about 2" now to really soak the soil. Don't get me wrong. I'm really happy we got that quarter of an inch, but I noticed that even the weeds along the bike path were starting to wilt. And there is no more rain in the forecast. Nature really needs a good soaking right now. We aren't in any trouble or anything. The rivers are still running high from all the snow we got earlier in the year. But May is typically wet around here. I've been wondering if I should water my apple trees. The ones in the rock wall bed get plenty of water as they are on a soaker hose because the strawberries are there. Strawberries really need regular water thus the hose. But trees are more resilient. And their roots go down deeper. But the apples just set a lot of fruit and I'm thinking if I want to eat it and not have it drop, maybe the hose should come out.

Since it was raining I did some housework and got some buns made. Mine are gluten free. I used to love to make bread, but now that I can't eat any at all from the store (because they contain gluten or potato starch) it seems a bit more of a chore. I still need to make my mock rye. Maybe today. What I really ought to do is make two loaves and freeze a lot. But my mock rye is sandwich bread and I only have one pullman loaf pan. Hmm should I invest in another?

I did get a little gardening done. I saw that the long range forecast is for a warming trend. Usually I'd start rooting my slips about a week from June 1st, my planting date. But since it is getting warmer and not colder I figured a few days early would be nice. Their spot is already empty as it had the overwintered spinach there earlier.

In addition I killed yet another cutworm. The day before I got four. I go out every morning for this chore. Half my carrots are missing already. I know there is at least one cutworm left. I couldn't find him as he didn't drag his leaf down into his lair. He just chopped the leaf off and ate it on the surface. Every time I squish a cutworm I wish I had chickens to feed them to. I'm sure they would appreciate the cutworms more than I do.

I've also noticed that only two of the asparagus crowns are still alive - sort of. I planted ten two years ago. Last year half of them didn't come up. This year half of the remaining didn't come up. The two left are very weak and they aren't long for this world. Asparagus hates it here. So mine is destined to come from the store from now on. Does anyone remember Kate and Garden Bloggers' Death Day? That was a hilarious meme. I would have had so much great death material for this month if the meme was still around. But on the good side I have a 4'x 4' area that needs to be filled - the other half bed that died last year is filled with Brussels sprouts and spring onions. The empty area has volunteer dill all over it. I'm thinking of thinning it out on one side of the bed and sowing some cilantro on the other side. Last year I didn't have nearly enough green coriander. But I have space to fix that this year.

The First Planting

On Monday the soil was finally unfrozen in some of the beds. I couldn't get the peas in as that one was still frozen, but a few of the beds were ready.

Carrot bed

Bed 2W was the first one. It is the spring carrot bed. So I did a light fertilization. My soil test said I didn't need anything except nitrogen, and carrots don't need much of that. I don't turn over my soil, but I do aerate it. The aeration process mixes in the fertilizer a bit. I don't have a fancy broadfork, I just use a traditional garden fork. A quick raking gets it smooth. Then I measure out shallow furrows 4" apart across the bed. I try to put the seed about 2" apart in the furrows, but I'm not very good at doing it perfectly. I'll have a lot of thinning to do once they are up.

Carrots have issues germinating if they dry out at all. Plus they can take up to three weeks in the early spring because it is so cold. So I cover them with a double layer of Agribon. This keeps the soil moist. It also keeps the soil in place when we get heavy rains, so the seed doesn't wash away. I'll be watering this once a day on days that we don't get rain.

Next up was the spinach, which I do in rows 6" apart. In previous years I'd sow the seed about 2" apart and thin to about 6". Germination can be a bit erratic, but I usually get a decent stand. I bought seed for two beds - the spring planted bed and the over wintered bed. But I wanted to expand that to four beds with three spring planted beds. I was a bit worried about having enough seed. So I spaced them farther apart. Then I went and bought another packet.

The carrot bed had this little guy in it and a couple friends. I was surprised the soil was warm enough for any to come to the surface. But there weren't any in the spinach bed. In fact when I first started to aerate the soil I thought the soil was very compact at the bottom. I didn't think it was frozen since ice is hard as a rock, but it turns out that it was almost unfrozen. It still had ice crystals in it. I planted it up anyway. I've found that spinach will germinate in really cold soil. And the top inch where the seed sits can get reasonably warm during sunny days.

It was so nice to get my hands dirty for the first time. And Monday was a beautiful day. It was about 50F (10C) and sunny. A perfect spring day for my first planting.

But Which Carrot Was The Best?

Half of the SugarSnax and Bolero carrots

This year I grew four kinds of carrots. Two carrots to eat fresh, Yaya and Mokum. And two carrots for winter storage, SugarSnax and Bolero. I had previously harvested all the Yaya and Mokums. This last week I got around to the storage carrots. When you store carrots there is always the argument over whether they store better washed or not. Some studies say washing leads to rot. Some say there wasn't much of a difference. If you don't wash them you can get staining on the carrots. For home use this isn't much of a problem as you can handle that a carrot isn't perfectly pretty before it is peeled. But I can see that the commercial sellers what pretty carrots. And yet still I decided to wash my carrots. I hate bringing so much dirt into the kitchen.

The yield was good. I picked 35 pounds of storage carrots. This is in a 32 sqft space. And they were only in the ground for part of the year. The favas were in the spot in the spring. So they were very productive. 58% of those were Bolero. But the SugarSnax were given six rows and the Bolero were only given 5. If you take that into account, Bolero produced 66% more than SugarSnax did. It wins the production contest hands down. The SugarSnax didn't have the time or the sunshine to really bulk up. But the Bolero did.

My Fridge, Mokums on top, SugarSnax and Bolero in vegetable drawer

As for storage, I decided to split those storage carrots. Part got blanched and frozen. I froze 20 cups of carrots. Part got put in the crisper drawer of the fridge. And part got put in the basement. The basement isn't really cold enough for storage yet. I have them in the doorwell of the basement right now. The bulkhead door will keep the really cold air out, but it will get colder than the basement indoors. It won't be long before my basement is cold. I hope the carrots hold out long enough. I just don't have the room to keep them in the fridge though. As it is they are taking up a lot of space.

SugarSnax on top, Bolero on bottom

So which ones did I like the best? Well I did a side by side taste test of three of them. The Yayas were gone a while ago so i couldn't do that, but I remember the Mokum and Yaya side by side test. So here goes.

Yaya

This is the first year I grew Yayas and it will be the last. I grew it because others I know have grown and liked it. It grew well. It made a good spring or fall carrot. But I found the taste bland. It didn't have the wonderful carroty taste. Though I don't have a side by side yield comparison of my fresh eating carrots, it grew well and certainly produced well enough. And it was a pretty enough carrot. 6" long and tapered. But when growing something at home, taste is everything. And a want a really powerful carrot flavor. So this will not be grown again.

Mokum

Mokum is an 8" blunt carrot that I've grown for years. It is probably the sweetest of all the carrots I grew. It had a nice carrot flavor and didn't get bitter as a spring carrot. So can be grown both in the spring and in the fall. It is one of my favorite carrots. Like Yaya it produces well, though I have no numbers to back that up. You can bet that I'll grow this one again.

SugarSnax

I've grown this one for years too. It has the typical grocery store carrot profile. Long and tapered. I've had them get to 14" but usually they run about 10"-11" for me. They do not do well in the spring as they get bitter. They are strictly a fall carrot here. They are quite sweet. Not as sweet as a Mokum, but still quite nice if you like sweet. They have a resiny carrot taste to them. It is full of flavor, but I find the taste better cooked than raw. To me the Mokum makes a better raw carrot. But the SugarSnax's flavors hold up to cooking better, probably because they are bolder. It has been an OK producer here. The problem is that it doesn't like the partial shade it ends up in as the fall progresses. When I've grown it in the sunny spot in the garden (the circle garden) they grew enormous. But even with the early planting, in the main garden, they struggle to get big enough.

Bolero

This is the first year I grew Bolero. Again others that I know have grown it and liked it. In addition in some Massachusetts field trials, they were one of the longest lasting storage carrots. So they seemed like a good carrot to try. I would have liked a longer carrot for this as I have very deep and loose soil. But I wanted to see if I could find something better than SugarSnax which is what I'd used in the past. Bolero is a blunt 6"-8" carrot. I didn't find any that were longer and most were in the 6" range. But they got very wide and produced an amazing poundage. They aren't as sweet as SugarSnax, but they are still sweet enough to make a good raw carrot. And the taste is wonderful. Better than all the others. It has more of a depth of flavor than Mokum has, with none of the challenging piney taste of SugarSnax. Though I haven't cooked with them yet, I think they will make just as good of a cooked carrot as they do a raw carrot. I will probably grow this one as my only storage carrot next year (unless I decided to trial another variety). The short wide carrots are easy to process in the kitchen. And they handle my partial fall shade as well as the Mokums do.

Basically if I grew one carrot I'd grow Bolero. Mokum still wins out in a fast spring carrot though. Bolero is a 75 day carrot and Mokum is 55. And in the spring I need a carrot to produce fast because the bed needs to be turned over to the fall crops in July. The same over the summer. I want a carrot that can start producing when my spring carrots get used up. So sometimes the faster the better. Another difference they have is that Mokum is more orange than Bolero is. They are both orange carrots, but it probably means that Mokum has more of that lovely beta carotene.

And I told you that I harvested 35 pounds of carrots from that one storage carrot bed. Over the year I've harvested 78 pounds. That is a record for me. But to be fair I had more beds in carrots than ever before too. I do love my carrots.

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.