2011 West Chester Vegetable Garden

August 28, 2011 Hurricane Irene

2011-09-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

I know that this is a bit after the fact, but I I wanted to post a couple of pictures of what the garden looked like following the hurricane. For all the preparation we did for the house, I didn't feel that there was a whole lot I could do for my garden.

All the sunflowers have blown over. They were snapped at the base but we were able to cut a few for the table.

All the tomatoes had blown over too. A few are starting to grow again despite leaning heavily.

All in all it looks like the end is here for the garden this year. There are a handful of peppers to pick and hopefully a couple more fresh tomatoes before I have to shop for them at the grocery store again. I don't think the hurricane destroyed the garden, but it did push it towards the end a bit faster than I had hoped. It's time to start the clean up soon.

August 20, 2011 - Dinner at the Brown Barn Cafe

2011-09-02T12:54:00.000-07:00

After our visit to Hillside Farms we went for dinner at the most appropriate place the Brown Barn Cafe. It's a new (and tiny) place at "Ah! Some Chocolate" (get it?) on East Overbrook Road in Shavertown, PA that specializes in using only local and seasonal ingredients.

The food was amazing and the service was great. Here are some pics from our dinner:

Since it's a BYO place, we brought a bottle of red wine along with Pretty Things Baby Tree Quadruple and Dogfish Head's Namaste a Belgium White Ale.

Started off with a slush flavored with anise, mint, and orange zest. Simple and refreshing.

For appetizers we had:
1. Peach salsa which had an incredibly well done balance between the sweet and spicy.
2. Fatuous that was deliciously dill flavored.
3. And a cheese plate with Stilton, smoked Gouda, and a triple creme Brie served with white and black cherries and flat bread.

For the main course I had the Forbidden rice with peaches and a side of pickled daikon radishes. Deceptively filling.

This was the beef stew. It came with all sorts of add ins to mix in to your desired heat and spice.

Does that look like someone who is disappointed?

Stacey had the Eggplant Lasagne with a side of corn and chili lime butter. It's amazing how fresh ingredients can make a meal.

Lemon meringue cake was light and not too sweet. A fantastic choice, but not for me...

...I had to try "The Elvis" - a piece of banana cake topped with peanut butter, mascarpone, chocolate, and banana ice cream! Decadence at it's finest.

August 20, 2011 - The Lands at Hillside Farms

2011-09-02T12:20:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post this for a while now, but being the map guy for an Emergency Management Agency where an earthquake and a hurricane strike within a week kept me busier than normal. Better late than never!

----

We visited our friends at the Crooked Farmhouse the weekend of August 20th and this time we finally got a chance to visit the famous Lands at Hillside Farms. Hillside Farms is a 19th Century dairy farm billed as a "412 acre classroom without walls'. It was a fine place to go for a walk on such a nice day!

This old greenhouse had just finished being renovated. It was mostly empty but there was one room filled with cherry tomatoes and japanese eggplant. I can't wait to see what they have in it next year.

It had an interesting mix of 19th century mechanical wheels to open the vents and CFL bulbs to light the place.

The pictures don't do the grounds justice. There are patches of flowers and vegetables everywhere.

The 5 pound jar of honey on the right shelf looked about the size I wanted. It would of made some good mead.

They grow amazing looking produce which is for sale in their Dairy Store along with their own cheese, honey, milk, ice cream, bread, chicken, beef, and eggs. The store was pretty no frills but it's focus was clear: fresh ingredients. I don't know if I've ever seen milk sold in glass jars like that. I love the idea and everyone swears by the milk here.

The ice cream shop: where the magic happens. I watched them take their fresh chocolate milk and mix it with their home made chocolate ice cream for the most epic chocolate milk shake I'd ever seen. To bad I already ordered...

I had a strawberry cheesecake ice cream - it looked and tasted even better than it sounds!

It's hard to tell without context, but these were some of the most massive sunflowers I'd ever seen. Most impressive.

Here's a couple of the chickens that roam the grounds. I couldn't get a good shot of the one with the fluffy mohawk. If I get chickens I want one of them.

The milking barn in the background

And it up close.

The ladies...

Matty and I trying to figure out where the smell is coming from.

August 11, 2011 - WTF is Eating My Tomatoes?

2011-08-11T16:40:00.000-07:00

Good News:

All the sunflowers are huge! They've turned out real good. The Giants weren't as giant as advertised, but they had been eaten pretty good by caterpillars.

Lots of good fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and other garden bounty landing on my plate lately. I love Caprese salad best when it is home grown and there are a sample of tomatoes. Add some homemade bread and some buttered corn and you have a meal!

The peppers for the most part are a non-event this year. A couple of them have some good ones, namely the Banana Peppers and this particular Italian Frying Pepper plant.

While it looks to be an absolute mess of weeds and grass, the watermelon patch seems that the groundhogs have had their fill of melons (or they can't see them in the weeds) and a few are coming back. I counted 5 Orangellos and 3 Golden Midget. Just in time for Labor Day!

Annoying News:

I also learned during the insanely hot July we've had that Purple Basil does not tolerate sustained high heat. I did a little research and it seems that it'll bolt and loose it's color at around 95 degrees. Had I know that I would of brought it in for a few days. Oh well. There is plenty of Italian Basil to go around right now. I'm glad I had started so many early in the summer.

The Powdery Mildew has begun on the Butternut Squash, luckily there are a couple of (almost) ripe fruit.

Bad News:

So here's a little mystery that's come up over the last couple of weeks. The tomatoes are getting gutted on the vine and there doesn't seem to be any obvious culprits. My theory is birds. It starts with a small hole on some, then it gets bigger, until finally the entire fruit is gutted. Any thoughts? I'm losing a fair amount of the plums to whoever it is!

Phase 1: A small hole appears.

Phase 2: It gets bigger

Phase 3: All the insides are missing.

July 21, 2011 - Garden Business

2011-07-21T16:50:00.000-07:00

The harvest has definitely began! The yellow squash and zucchini are coming in fast, lots of cucumbers too. I've roasted most of them but also baked a couple loaves of zucchini bread.

The cherry tomatoes are in ripening and now some other tomatoes are ready too!

The cucumbers are going crazy and I have already pulled in a few dozen. I've made some cucumber salad and a cucumbers soup. I have several more I picked yesterday. Pickles next?

The butternut squash almost looks ready, but as there are only two real nice looking fruits I'm going to give it a little longer to ripen up. It's my first time so I don't know what is too ripe verses not ripe enough.

And the big thing is the watermelon... I was so excited for the watermelon but when we came back, something has eaten nearly all of them. Some of them only have some nibbles on the skin, but most are gouged out and lay rotting on the vine. I was able to harvest two of the golden midgets and they are sweet! I have two suspects as to who ate them: a groundhog that has been spotted in the melon patch, and a rabbit who I've caught now twice in the garden. The rabbit is a huge problem that may need "solving"....

July 21, 2011 - San Diego Food

2011-07-21T16:41:00.000-07:00

There are some glaring ommisions looking back at the pictures, but I tried to get a pic of all the different delicious foods and cool resaurants we visited. Missing are some fish tacos, king crab BLT, sushi, ballpark franks, a variety of appetizers at Harbor House, Balboa Park cocktail party food, and lots of little quick stops around the Gas Lamp district. My favorite was the Nobu Omakase - expensive as hell but worth it!

Basic Pizza

Caprese Pizza (with Joe from Princeton, NJ) at Basic Pizza

The Marble Room

Seared Ahi tuna (mine)

Shrimp and Scallop scampi (Stacey's)

Joe's Crab Shack

Dungeness Crab Bucket at Crab Shack

Frosted Robin's Cupcakes

Fancy cupcakes from the Seaport Village

Solei @ K

Shrimp and Avocado flat bread

Heirloom tomato flat bread

Breakfast Buffet every morning here too!

Nobu San Diego

Course 1: Tuna Tartar

Course 2: Oysters New Style

Course 3: Tuna and Salmon Salad

Course 4: Tempura Rock Shrimp in Spicy Ginger Sauce

Course 5: Miso Coated Poached Cod with Fresh Ginger

Course 6: Miso Soup

Course 7: Sushi

Course 8: Frozen Yogurt Over Berries

July 22, 2011 - Back from San Diego

2011-07-21T16:16:00.000-07:00

A really enjoyable work conference took Stacey and I to San Diego last week. I can't say enough about how beautiful and amazing that town is. Interesting buildings, people and places - with great weather. I didn't want to come back, especially now after experiencing the "Heat Dome" over the Philadelphia area.

Here is a brief photo tour of the trip ( I took well over 1,000 pictures in 7 days). First, some random shots of the city.

The ESRI User Conference itself was exciting for the map geek in me. I learned a lot and met some great people.

We went to the world famous San Diego Zoo. I was impressed!

Took a tour of the USS Midway. Amazing bit of history and a marvel of engineering.

Rode the ferry out to Coronado Island to see the Hotel del Coronado...

...And had a few delicious tasters at the Coronado Brewing Company. Great place!

Cocktail party at several museums in Balboa Park

We caught a Padre's game since it was a block away from where we were staying.

Lots of Navy activity in the bay.

July 3, 2011 - First Crop

2011-07-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

The garden is looking great an no real problems to report. All the plants are taking off and starting to produce some goodness.

Cucumbers are looking bushy and healthy.

Here is one of dozens of little cucumbers growing. The Crystal Apple cucumbers are not nearly as strong at this point - no fruits to be seen. I've already pulled off five cucumbers and made a batch of cucumber salad. I need to find some more recipes involving cucumbers!

Only one shot of the tomatoes, but all the plants are fruiting well. No signs of any issues at all. I spotted the first red fruit today.

I'm having a hard time taking a picture of the tomatoes that give them any kind of context. They are huge this year! All but the stunted plant are around 5 feet tall! It's a tomato jungle at the end of the garden. :)

No bell peppers, but there are the hot peppers and Italian peppers are looking good.

The watermelon patch has gotten out of control! It's next to impossible to walk through it now.

On top of that there are seven volunteer plants down near the electric fence. I'm assuming they are from the patch that was here a few years ago, but seven more watermelon plants is NOT what I need? It does seem like the deer have munched down the volunteers without touching my patch. Strange!

There are now around a dozen softball sized watermelons. Both varieties are making a good show!

Squash plants are super healthy and productive.

Around ten yellow squash are growing. I bet they're ready to pick in the next week or so.

I've pulled six zucchinis off and will be making the second batch of zucchini bread this afternoon!

A few butternut squash are fruiting.

They also hayed the field last week. It's cool to see the transition from wild field of five foot grass to bales on the lawn. That machine baled the entire field in an hour or so.

June 17, 2011 - Beach, Progress, and Fruiting Plants

2011-06-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

Well the garden survived this years trip to the shore. Last year there were some visitors that ate all the beans and cucumbers. It was the beginning of the end for last years crop so I was a little nervous when we came back and first took a look at the garden - especially without the electric fence.

R&R @ OC, MD

Garden Update:

The long view of the whole garden. I'm very pleased at this point!

After a week away the tomatoes have now completely filled their cages. They are lots of flowers and a few fruits in the way. Even the unhealthy looking Golden Jubilee plant has fruit.

The cucumbers are climbing tall. They're doing so good I'm thinking about thinning them out a bit. There doesn't seem to be enough room for them all on the trellis!

The peppers all seem to have recovered from their near death experience. They do seem a bit stunted compared to last year, but they are flowering and getting larger by the day.

I'm second guessing my locating the butternut squash so close to everything the eggplant and trellis plants. They are getting huge fast.

Watermelon patch is getting full. I wonder what the hell I'm going to do with hundreds of pounds of watermelons!

Fruiting plants:

Blackbird in the orchard.

Banana Pepper

Amish Paste

Green Zebra

Watermelon (not sure what variety yet)

Yellow Squash

Zucchini

Grapes

Berries

June 7, 2011 - Thermal Evidence

2011-06-07T17:22:00.000-07:00

After a long day of cleaning out long forgotten equipment cages and back closets at work, someone found a thermal imager. I convinced its new owner to let me borrow it for the weekend and see if I can capture anything string too close to my garden at night.

A cool side note: while using the imager to watch two bats do aerials I had aimed the device up to the sky. While aiming up I saw a shooting star. I was blown away by the chance just happening to be looking through the screen as a meteorite went by that particular patch of sky. I aimed it at another point of night sky and sure enough another meteorite. In the course of the few minutes of remaining battery life I saw a dozen or so meteorites! You can see so many more by their thermal signature than you can with the naked eye. I wish I had discovered this earlier in the weekend!

Things just look cool though this thing!

If you look close you can see three deer on the screen. They were almost impossible to see without the imager! They are a ways out in the field so I guess they were behaving.

Here's one that got pretty close just after dark. He's within 30 feet of the patio but still a ways away from the garden.

And finally, here is conclusive evidence that the stupid deer are venturing into the garden at night. Without the electric fence it's only a matter of time before I go down to check on the garden and get angry that my plants are eaten!

June 7, 2011 - Flowering Vegetables

2011-06-07T17:08:00.000-07:00

Everything is humming along fine. We've been without rain for some time now after getting six straight days of it a few weeks back. We are suppose to have record hear the next two days before breaking Friday. I'm trying to be proactive and keep the soil good and moist. Good thing that drip hose is working!

Cucumber flower.

Cucumbers are looking pretty good! You can see the crystal apple plants are noticeably smaller than the other cucumbers. I don't remember there being so much difference between their growth.

First pepper flower belongs to the banana peppers!

My peppers are doing OK considering the start they had. Two of the second round of peppers are flowering. The rest are just catching up. All of the plants do seem fairly small compared to my parent's plants.

The butternut squash are starting to vine. It's my first time growing them so I wasn't sure if they'd vine or bush. I'm glad they're vining because they are a bit close to the zucchini.

The zucchini and yellow squash are getting bushy fast!

Zucchini and yellow squash are both flowering.

Tomatoes looking good!

All but one of the tomatoes are flowering. (Not including the one eaten by the deer)

The watermelon is beginning to vine.

First watermelon flowers. It's the only one of the twelve....

Beans are looking good, but no flowers yet.

June 1, 2011 - Pesky Pests

2011-06-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

All the plants are in (again). The week following my last post, after all the plants were in, it rained continuously for about a week. A day after a break in the weather I went down to check on the garden. Turns out they did NOT like all the rain.

The leaves had turned black/brown, some curled, others just fell off completely. The pepper plants seems to be most affected by this condition, and one or two of the tomatoes also suffered enough to make me wonder if they were going to make it. I suspect that all the moisture led to some fungus issues, so I purchased a fungicide from the local hardware store. This was on the Tuesday (May 24). By Friday I was convinced that I would have to replace most of my pepper plants. With the planting season already getting late I was worried the market would no longer be carrying new pepper plants after this week so I made sure to get there early on Saturday morning - fortunately there were plenty.

That afternoon I began to replace the dying pepper plants only to find that they all were starting to look better. The black leaves had mostly fallen off at this point, but new healthy leaves had become to sprout. I found myself unable to trash them so the new plants got moved past the tomatoes where some flowers had grown last year and was overgrown. Only two were permanently removed after buying six more. At the same time I also planted the sunflowers I had started. It'll be interesting to see how fast they grow relative to the peppers.

I'm still unsure if the fungicide or the change in the weather made things improve, but I don't really care as long everything is doing better-a week on and everything SEEMS to be looking better! No trace of the discoloration and all the new leaves that have emerged all have a healthy look to them. Take a look at the difference in the above photo.

In addition to the weather/fungus issues, I've been battling a nasty garden pest: the Colorado Potato Beetle. I've found it on my eggplant and tomatoes in adult, nymph, and egg stages. Last time I tried growing eggplant it was a flea beetle problem that killed them, this time it's this little fucker. I'm keeping a close eye on all my plants, but I would consider it a huge coupe if I could actually eat a home grown eggplant this summer!

Colorado Potato Beetle (not my pic, but I've seen them)

Close up of the nymph and their damage to a tomato leaf:

Close up of the eggs:

May 20, 2011 - Video Update

2011-05-20T16:55:00.000-07:00

May 15, 2011 - Tomato and Pepper Varieties

2011-05-16T17:24:00.000-07:00

So here's the breakdown of what tomato and pepper varieties are in the garden this season:

TOMATOES

Green Zebra - "Bred by Thomas Wagner of Tater Mater Seeds and introduced in 1983. Olive yellow 1½ - 2½" fruits with deep green zebra stripes. Sweet zingy flavor." [source]

Golden the Best Yellow - No reference can be found! WTF!?

Pink Brandywine - "A large beefsteak-type tomato with a superior flavor unrivaled from most other varieties. There are numerous Brandywine strains, with the classic Brandywine tomato itself having a pink-skinned color. The named 'Pink Brandywine' differs only slightly from its more famous namesake. Fruits generally weigh over a pound, and have a rich tomato taste." [source]

Golden Jubilee - "This is a large yellow-orange round beefsteak that has a high Vitamin C content and less acid than most other varieties. The tomato fruits are produced in a heavy yield from upright and uniform Indeterminate vines, which make this variety easy to manage. This tomato variety was originally introduced in 1943 by the Wm. Henry Maule Seed Company of Philadelphia." [source]

'Be My Baby' Cherry - "This productive cherry is the ongoing result of a cross of three famous tomatoes, an heirloom potato-leaf beefsteak and two cherries, one orange and one red. The crossing and selection process began in 1997. Although it has been selected for a red cherry with regular tomato foliage, about 10% of the plants still showed potato-leaf foliage in 2006, and you can expect some in your patch. Rogue them out because their flavor is not as desirable as the rest." [source]

Roma - "A Roma tomato is a paste tomato. Paste tomatoes, like roma tomatoes, generally have a thicker fruit wall, fewer seeds and a denser but more grainy flesh. Roma tomatoes tend to be oblong in shape and heavy for their size. The also tend to be more firm than a non-roma or paste tomato." [source]

Amish Paste - "First listed in the 1987 SSE Yearbook by Thane Earl of Whitewater, Wisconsin. Commercialized by Tom Hauch of Heirloom Seeds, who acquired it from the Amish near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Bright red 8-12 ounce fruits vary in shape from oxheart to rounded plum. Delicious flesh is juicy and meaty, excellent for sauce or fresh eating." [source]

Pineapple - "This heirloom tomato is a stand-out in everyone's garden. Bicolored red and yellow fruit grows very large, up to 2 lbs., and is streaked with red both inside and out. The flavor is wonderful, rich, fruity and sweet." [source]

Granny Cantell - "Regular leaf plant with a good yield of 12-18 oz pink beefsteak fruit with very good flavor, family heirloom of Lettie Cantrell of West Liberty, KY, Lettie passed away 12-21-05 at age 96." [source]

PEPPERS!

Granada Seasoning -"Mild; Habanero Type; 1.75 to 2 inches long by 1 to 1.5 inches wide; medium thick flesh; matures from green to bright yellow; pendant pods; green leaves; 30 to 36 inches tall" (1 - 1,000 Scoville Units) [source]

Anaheim Chili -"Very mild, medium sized chile to 6-10", often used when green. The basic variety ripens to a dark green/reddish color, but other strains ripen to full red." (500-1,000 Scoville Units) [source]

Hot Banana - "Medium sized, waxy yellow pepper up to 6-8" long. Flavor is quite good when eaten in its ripe yellow state. The Hot Banana is mildly hot in taste." [source]

Corno di Toro - "Big, plump, twisted 8-inch red peppers are jammed with spicy-sweet tang." [source]

Golden Wonder x 2 - " Golden Wonder is a heavy-bearing, disease-resistant, vigorous pepper plant. Thick-walled and blocky, about 4" tall and wide, with a crisp, mild flavor and terrific sweetness. They mature from golden-yellow to red on the plant" [source]

Long Red Cayenne - "Very hot fruits 5 in. long and ½ in. thick. Use fresh or easily dried for winter use. Harvest starts about 75 days after plants are set out." [source]

Sweet Italian - Frying Pepper

Red Knight - "A large, early, green-to-red pepper. Big, blocky, thick-walled, and turns red early. Fruity and sweet." [source]

Early Red Pepper - "Another easy to grow pepper, very full of flavour leaving aweful glass grown hydroponic peppers in the shops way behind in the flavour stakes! These old traditional cultivars crop very heavily.This one is red when mature but can be eaten at the green stage, and is bell shaped." [source]

May 11, 2011 - All Set!

2011-05-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

With much anticipation the West Chester Growers Market opened this past weekend! I've been waiting for it ever since the first marathon snow shoveling day back back in January- and now it's finally here. We didn't have much time to browse and explore since we were heading on a road trip to visit friends at the Crooked Farmhouse as soon as we finished, but it's looking to be a great market season complete with all the usual vendors and a few new ones.

Here's my Tomato Guy Paul, who is affectionately known as "Neil Young"

The herbs this year were a bit expensive (4 for $10), but they were real nice and healthy looking. And a great variety!

What a helpful wife!

Here's the final list of what's going in this year... well there's still a few purchases this weekend (weather pending) that need to be made that are listed as 'coming soon'.

In the Garden:
Pink Brandywine
Grandma Cantrell's Tomato
Amish Paste
Golden Yellow
Be My Baby Cherry
King Aurthur Red Pepper x2
Eggplant x 2
Peas
Butternut Squash
Crystal Apple Cucumber
Cucumber
Yellow Squash
Zucchini
Golden Midget Watermelon
Orangello Watermelon
Purple String Beans (coming soon, almost ready to transplant)
Green Beans (coming soon, almost ready to transplant)
Hot Peppers (coming soon)
Sweet Pepper (Frying Pepper maybe? coming soon)
Another (or two) Heirloom Tomato
Another Plum Tomato

In Containers:
Red Leaf Lettuce
Deer Tongue Lettuce
Spinach
French Breakfast Radishes
Dragon Carrots

Herbs:
Rosemary
Lemon Thyme
Majorum
Spicy Oregeno
Cilantro
Dill
Taragon
Sage
Purple Opal basil
Lemon Basil
Italian Basil x 2 (coming soon)
Flat Leaf Parsley (coming soon)

I finally admitted defeat and determined that my hose mending skills were not up to the challenge of so many busted and neglected hoses. It seemed that every one I pulled up was cracked and the connections were bad. So I finally broke down (after some encouragement from Stacey) and bought all new hoses).

The new system isn't too complicated, but I made a few improvements as to what was previously there. Now hose runs out out of the barn through a bit of PVC pipe. I ran it slightly underground (about 4-6 inches) to the post I replaced. From here it splits into a 4-way array. One of the arrays flows slightly underground again along the north side of the plot to a second post. From here I put a 2-way split on it. One leads to a 50' hose with a spray nossel, the other to a timer connected to the irrigation system - which is now fully operational!

After some testing, I also admitted defeat with the electric fence. The apparatus that sends the current to the fence itself seems to have stopped working. The landlord now has it in his possession and will try to repair it, but to be honest I'm not expecting him to be successful. For one thing it says "not for outdoor use" on the box and it has been an 'outdoor' fence for several years- which begged the question: who uses indoor electric fences? So now I'm trying out Plan B: Liquid Deer Fence. It smells like "the rotten asshole of a roadkill skunk" (sorry but it does, it was the only way for me to convey how foul it is) so it better work! The spray bottle lives outside BTW.

On that note: Cheers!

April 6, 2011 - Green is the Colour

2011-04-06T15:59:00.000-07:00

On the way home today I noticed the brush and the undergrowth along the road are all turning green so I started humming this tune (which I don't think has anything to do with Spring, but seeing green made me think of it and Gilmour is a genius so here it is).

I took a half day on Monday because it was 75 and the only dry day of the week to get some stuff done. All I ended up doing was cleaning up a bit around the garden, mending the hoses, and plant the peas. I started the (first round) peas around St Patty's day, but only seven of the plants grew. So I purchased two other varieties: one Sugar Snap and one Sugar Daddy (no joke) both of which are edible pod varieties. I started them last week so they haven't sprouted yet - but they're now in the ground.

Stacey and I took a walk around the field this afternoon before the rain moved in and found this old chair in the middle of the field. Made for a cool picture, that's the barn in the back.

Across the street her spring flowers are all in bloom, ours are on the north side of the barn and have just now started to bloom. The rest down by the garden were devoured by the deer - even with the fence on. Not a good sign of things to come!

Did I mention it snowed on April Fools day. Not a joke. It sucked.

And finally, this has nothing to do with the garden but I wanted to share: Historic Cope's Bridge on Rt 162 across the scenic Brandywine Creek is now open! My morning commute has now been cut in half - I can now get to West Chester in five minutes (although it takes me ten minutes to get to the east side of town in the mornings, go figure). The bridge was out for a full 16 months and the project only ran four months behind schedule... It took forever, but it does looks good.

March 18, 2011 Some Garden Prepwork

2011-03-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

I've been away this week for training at work so I've been unable to get the update posted from all the work done last week:

Ah... the first signs of spring. After looking it up it's actually an invasive from Europe called a "Birdseye Speedwell" but every year in the field it's the first bit of color that shows itself in Spring.

I've installed the electric fence for the season. Not too soon either as there have been some of the bulb flowers (not sure what is what anymore down there) had come up and then disappeared with deer evidence around the missing flowers.

The posts have been pounded installed and the chicken wire has been strung for the trellis. All I need are the peas to start coming up - only 7 of the 40 are ready to go in. Not sure why.

I'll wait for the pictures until it is finished, but I also have a post set for the hose array. I've purchased a handful of hose mending products hoping to not spend a fortune running new hoses. Work and crappy weather (it snowed twice this week in the morning, WTF) have kept me from finishing up.

The debris pile on the left got even bigger after the watermelon patch had been cleared. I hope my landlord doesn't wish to use this area this year. It was vacant last year so I was hoping to use it for my Orangello and Golden Midget watermelons (he's welcome to all he can eat as I think there will be hundreds of pounds to go around).

I took a walk around the orchard to see what was doing. The trees look a mess and have what looks like some kind of black fungus or knots on all the branches. Fortunately it's not my problem. During the walk I noticed that the electric fence needed some work after all the snow over the winter. The fence has two strips of conductive cloth strung between the posts - the bottom one was completely covered by flattened grass. It took some work to get it all cleaned up, the posts straightened, and the fence material restrung.

Before

After

February 27, 2011 - Pre-Spring Cleaning

2011-02-28T15:56:00.000-08:00

Today was abnormally warm and sunny. It was nice be able to get down to the garden and see what the winter has done to it. Turns out it looked a mess - worse than these pictures do justice.

Before:

After:

I was able to clean up a lot of the brush and weeds around the grapes, berries, and the annex. It's looking a lot better, but I feel that here are several hours worth of clean up work left. I also have to figure out to do with two large piles of debris...

In addition to the clean up I took a look at the soil and it doesn't look good. I need to get rid of these rocks.

I'm thinking about building a little sieve out of some 2x4s and chicken wire to sift them out, but we'll see how that goes. I have some more pressing issues. If needed I may just try and run the tiller over it and see what happens. The stones are soft and flaky consisting mostly of mica schist, and I suppose they will grind down or maybe improve drainage if not (trying to be positive).

The hose situation is pretty dire too. The post on which the hose array was mounted had rotted through, and two of the three hoses no longer function with all the holes in them (I have no idea where the operational hose goes. All I know it doesn't go anywhere near where I need it to). All of this means if I want to utilize the soaker-hoses, I need to get this fixed before the season gets underway. I don't even want to mention the state of the electric fence- I'll save that for another day. I'm hopeful it won't be too big of a deal.

I started some flower seeds for Stacey, 75 peat pots plus another 20 lavender plants should about fill the deck! I'm also trying out some basil from seed this year to see how that goes. I have 25 peat pots going with the hope I can have an enormous basil crop for an endless pesto supply this summer for sandwiches and pasta. I'm not sure if I'll be planting them in the ground or have a large part of the deck covered in sweet basil - it'll probably be half and half to see which does best.

Stacey planted some flower bulbs last year and they're starting to break though the soil. I can't wait to see some color down here!!

February 17, 2011 - Fake Spring Day

2011-02-18T11:51:00.000-08:00

Today is about 70 degrees and sunny, the driveway is snow-free for the first time in months, and the seeds have been ordered from Seed Savers Exchange. If it were not for a possibility of snow Sunday night I would have thought Spring had arrived.

So after taking inventory of my seeds leftover from last year I really didn't need to order a whole lot for the vegetable garden. The only two that I ended up ordering are two wild looking watermelon varieties. They sound good! I'm planning on planting them outside of the garden in a plot the landowner had used for watermelon two years ago - if it goes unused again that is.

Other than that I ordered some sunflower seeds and a few other flowers for Stacey. I'm officially ready to play in the dirt!!

Golden Midget Watermelon

Orangello Watermelon

January 26, 2011 - I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

2011-01-26T14:57:00.000-08:00

Above is the preliminary plan for the 2011 season. It's similar to last year with the exception of the location of the plants. I figured it was time to rotate some of the locations.

I have received my 2011 Seed Saver's Exchange catalog and have gone through it a couple of times. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to be ordering yet, but it looks like I'll be getting some funky watermelon, pea, sunflower, herbs, and perhaps a few more that catch my eye. There are some real tempting varieties of tomatoes, but I'm still not ready to start tomato or peppers from seed. And as long as the West Chester Grower's Market keeps bringing in some fun varieties then I'm OK paying a little markup.

In addition to the garden plot I plan to do more container gardening this year. The last two seasons I've grown a variety of herbs in pots and they have been very successful. In addition to the herbs I'm going to try some lettuce, spinach, and maybe a few other plants in pots. In years past they've grown well initially but the cooler weather of the Spring doesn't seem to last long enough and they bolt in the heat. My hope is that Keeping them mobile I can move them to a cooler shadier spot when the days start getting too warm to extend their life.

I may also try and really clear the annex from 2009 and try my luck with some watermelons again. The plan is still in it's early stages and will surely be refined a couple of times before March!

January 26, 2011 - A Winter Update

2011-01-26T13:52:00.000-08:00

It's snowing....again. So I'm starting up the blog again in anticipation of warmer and brighter days.

It's been some time since I've last checked this site. The last blog post was nearly seven months ago at the end of June so I kind of feel the need to explain what happened at the end of the season.

Last year there were two major catastrophes that led to the death of the garden: deer and flooding. The garden had become so bad and I became so discouraged that I gave up on trying to document it. I even stopped going down there except to try and salvage a few tomatoes and cucumbers here and there.

Not too long after the last blog post (the beginning of July) I started to notice that many of my plants were being eaten. At first it was a missing leaf here and there, but a few times I went down to find every leaf and flower missing from my cucumbers, or a tomato plant was half gone. There was no doubt that deer were to blame due to the foot prints brazenly left in dirt, but what I couldn't figure out was how they were getting past the electric fence. Why was it all of a sudden completely ineffective?

About three weeks went by. I tried moving the fence farther away, I tried moving it higher, doubling the wires, baiting the fence - all sorts of things. Nothing would stop the deer. That is until I tried something very simple: I grabbed the fence myself. I felt nothing. It turns out that someone came to mow the grass near the main fence and completely disconnected the inverter from the fence. So each time I plugged in the fence no actual juice was making it to the wires. As soon as I connected the inverter to the fence by attaching a little wire I had no more deer problems. Dumb.

The second issue I had was equally dumb, and worse it was completely my fault. I had turned the soaker hose on one morning with the intent of turning it off when I got back from work. However I had forgot I had a doctor's appointment that afternoon. Without going into the details, the doctor told me I was suppose to stay off my foot for a day or so and I never went down to turn off the hose... for three days. By the time I remembered and hobbled down to the garden it was WAY too late. The squash were drown and the rest of the garden was in real bad shape. While somethings did eventually rebound, the garden wasn't the same.

So that's where we ended the year. On a positive note, we were able to harvest enough cucumbers and hot peppers to pickle. I opened up the last jar two days ago. While a bit salty they were very flavorful and kept their crunch!

June 29, 2010 Summer Vegetable Harvest Begins

2010-06-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

Much of the summer crop is starting to ripen! I've been looking forward to some fresh tomatoes for some time now. Especially since I was forced to buy some really bland ones a month or two ago in the grocery store. I'm also trying out the video capabilities with the new iPhone 4 to start uploading the occasional video update. Early tests (of a really cool clearwing hummingbird moth) were not very HD but they were uploaded straight from the phone, so we'll see what this looks like after processing.

Tomatoes

Yellow Pears. They are sweet! Only a few are ripe right now, but there are a ton on the vine

Pink Brandywine. I wasn't sure if this was fully ripe, but when I looked at the picture it also has a bit of green on the top. I think I'll have his one with what ever dinner is tonight!

Wild Cherry. I've been popping these for a few days now every time I walk by and see a bright red one. Very small fruit even for a cherry tomato, but man are they good! And like the yellow Pear plant, there will be plenty more.

Giant Belgium Pink

Peppers

The other bell peppers are looking pretty decent. A few medium size peppers per plant. But below are the highlights for the peppers thus far.

Purple Beauty Peppers. I have three on the vine that have turned a deep shade of purple. I still want to give them a few more days to make sure they get as big as possible

Sweet Italian. There are two very nice size peppers with several more forming. I'm looking forward to these the most!

Cherry Bomb. There are about two dozen peppers on this one plant. It's a good think I only planted one hot pepper plant this year! It always seems like they are way more bountiful than bells or other mild peppers.

The purple bean flowers alone are worth it.

Purple Beans. I was walking out in the garden not two days ago and there were no beans worth picking. today however I harvested two large handfuls! Some of them are almost too big to eat!

Both the Yellow Squash and the Zucchinis are producing fruit now. We've already had to dust off the Zucchini bread recipe and had a little of both types of squash in the roasted vegetables last night with dinner. Three of the zucchinis that i picked late last week were WAY to big to eat. They grow so fast it's hard to keep up with them!

Cucumbers. The Cucumbers have bounced back after the deer attack. I pulled my first full size cucumber yesterday and like everything else there are a plenty more on the way. I have not seen any fruit on the Crystal Apple cucumbers yet. They have grown quite large and have many flowers ( I think there are a little ones coming soon).

June 13, 2010 After the Honeymoon

2010-06-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

The wedding was a whirlwind of good food, good friends, and good beer in two beautiful locations followed by a relaxing few days at the beach. We couldn't have had a better time! Everything was perfect! Now that were trying to get back to real life (and a full work week starting tomorrow) I spent some time in the garden and now getting a chance to update the blog.

One of our wedding presents was a drip irrigation system from my friend Tom. He had it all set up, all I had to do was to unfurl the sub-main and add attach the drip line. So the Sunday after the wedding I weeded (it was much needed) and installed the irrigation system. You can see the system in a couple of the pictures. It couldn't of come at a better time as a few days before the hose was ran over by the tractor making it a huge pain in the ass to water the garden.

Cucumber damage...

Purple and green beans damage...

While we were away the electric fence was left off. I had initially turned on Friday (6/4/10) to make sure none of the nephews zapped themselves. And then with wedding on Saturday and getting ready for the honeymoon at the beach I completly forgot about plugging it back in. Sometime in the last week a deer must have tested the fence, found it off, and then munched on every exposed leaf hanging on the trellis. Nothing else was touched, but all the beans and much of the cucumbers on the south side of the trellis were devastated. I'm guessing that he only came through once because some of the plants have already started sprouting new leaves. Needless to say, I'm going to be more vigilant about plugging in the fence for the rest of the season.

Peppers are looking great! Although the peppers on the left are much smaller then the plants on the right. The closest tomato plant near the shortest pepper is the Matt's Wild Cherry plant which has grown well outside the cage. I'm pretty sure that it is shading out the closest pepper plants despite my best efforts to increase spacing.

Even the smaller pepper plants are already larger than the best plants from last year. No peppers yet but all the plants have begun to flower. Each plant has between two and three times as many flowers as last year. It's a good sign!

After not being in the garden for a week I think the greatest difference that I immediately noticed were the tomatoes. All of the plants have grown significantly and have flowers and green tomatoes.

The first red tomato is on the Matt's Wild Cherry. Even for cherry tomatoes the fruits on this plant are small, roughly the size of a nickle. I'll give this red one another day or two before I'm going to test it out.

This the big fruit on the Green Zebra plant. You can already see the stripes forming.

I decided to pull the peas and lettuce today. The lettuce had bolted and tasted pretty bitter. We got quite a bit off of the pea plants and cooked them up for a delicious meal, but the plants have begun to yellow and remaining unpicked pods are better for seeds than for eating at this point. The timing of the weather this year really messed up my spinach, peas, and lettuce. That's how it goes I guess!

And finally a couple of cool pics from the garden...

Some bug posing inside a cracked scallion

One of the scallion flowers

May 28, 2010 Mo' Distractions, Mo' Problems

2010-05-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

I've been too busy and distracted to really focus on the garden this week, and again haven't been posting. This sporadic schedule will likely continue until a week or two after the wedding....

The weather since the last post has been typical late Spring weather: a few days of rain followed by consecutive warm/hot days. I finally made it out to the garden this past weekend to weed, mow, and take stock of what's doing. So much change in such a short period of time! Take a look at the field, it has grown well beyond the point of being able to walk through it- even the deer are hard to spot these days

Yesterday we had a really nasty thunderstorm roll through that just missed us. I get excited watching the big red cells on the radar barreling down on us only for the damn storm to blow just to the east. It happens every time!! All round us were the lighting and heavy rains, but we only actually got about 20 minutes of mild rain.

Well I've missed quite a bit (pics from Sunday May 23rd):

The spinach bolted before I could use any of it. I harvested one plant for some sandwiches and the rest bolted in 5 days.

The peas all of a sudden are six feet tall and beginning to yield.

The beans are all well established and starting to climb the trellis. Even the cucumbers are starting to show signs of looking healthy - I bet they're triple in size next week!

The first tomatoes are on the vine.

The squash plants tripled in size.

Peppers are looking good, but haven't grown explosively like the rest of the garden.

May 15, 2010 Overdue Update

2010-05-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

I liked this view over the black berry bushes in full bloom!

It's been a few weeks since my last update and quite a bit has changed. We've been busy with work, finishing arrangements for the wedding, and watching the Flyers dominate the Eastern Division! In between I've been keeping up with the garden but I've not been able to find the time to document it as often as I would like... so here's an update:

With the exception of this weekend there has been a number of cool days and colder nights over the last two weeks. This has been good for the leafy veggies and the peas, but the cucumbers and one of the peppers look a bit stressed. Here's a wide shot of the spring crops.

Here's a couple of the French Breakfast Radishes right out of the garden. I like radishes in general, but this variety is fantastic. There a bit more mild in bite than a traditional radish, but have great flavor, color, and texture. I think this is going to be my go to radish in future years. I liked them so much I planted a second row!

The peas are looking amazing! They are much bushier this year and have grown taller than last year. I can't tell if it's the difference in seeds, or the weather has been cooler this Spring. Either way they are all flowering and look super healthy.

The lettuce is also benefiting from the cooler weather. In just a week they nearly doubled in size. I've picked a few leaves here and there to try them out and they're pretty good. The Deer Tongue is a little bitter, but has a pleasant taste. I think that this week I'll be able to throw all them together in a salad. I planted a new row of each variety to ensure that they keep coming up when I need them.

Not much new with the tomatoes. They're slowly getting bigger, but the cooler temperatures have kept them from exploding. I finished adding the remaining stakes and placed a cage over all of the plants. They're just waiting for the summer to show...

The peppers are about as good as the tomatoes. They're slowly growing and are looking good enough. The King Arthur variety have a few leaves that looked a bit stressed but all in all they're in good shape.

The squash are looking pretty good. The cold weather turned one leaf on each plant black. I was a bit worried at first, but they've grown several new leaves to replace dead. Since the cold nights they've looked fantastic and are steadily growing!

Cucumbers are looking ratty. I'm hoping they're just off to a slow start with the weather, but I'm getting a little nervous. I seeded several of them in peat pots and transplanted them. A few days later it got down to the mid 30's. I covered them the first night but a few days later it got down to the upper 30's at night and I let them be. I seeded some additional plants to replace the ones that looked real bad. So far they've mostly sprouted but they don't look as good as last year.

From here on out it's suppose to be warm, so I'm hoping my troubles with the cold nights are behind me!

May 2, 2010 After the Market, All the Plants are In

2010-05-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

It was a hot day for the opening of the West Chester's Grower's Market yesterday, but that didn't stop it from being BUSY. We got there before 11am and there was still able to get everything I needed. There were only a two stand selling vegetables seedlings, although there were two or three more selling herbs. I got nearly everything from my go to guy. His basil plants are what got me started gardening on my fire escape just after college.

I ended up getting 8 tomato plants, 6 peppers, a yellow squash, and a zucchini plant. The garden plan only called for seven tomatoes but I couldn't make up my mind between the crazy varieties he had available. After seeing them in the ground there will be no problem with adding another plant. All of the plants are spaced out quite well and have marigolds between all the plants. I shouldn't run into any of the crowding issues from last year.

I do have some space behind the cucumbers that I originally intended to put one or two eggplants in. But I might balk on that and add a couple more peppers. The annex is so over grown, it may end up going fallow this year. I'd like to pull it up to make room for another squash plant, but I'm not sure I'll get to that this year.

So here are the tomatoes that I purchased:

Amish Paste

"Very productive heirloom from Wisconsin that produces up to 12 oz, deep-red oxheart-shaped, meaty fruit. (Probably one of the largest paste tomatoes) Lots of sweet, tomatoey flavors from this coreless meaty fruit. A great slicing and sauce tomato." [source]

Yellow Pear

"These organic tomato seeds produce huge, bushy plants that yield very large quantities of 1 oz., 1 1/2-inch, bright yellow, pear-shaped cherry tomatoes that will give you fruit until frost. The tomatoes of this yellow pear tomato variety are zesty sweet and delicious. A beautiful salad or snackin' tomato. If you are growing several colors of cherry tomatoes include this one. A great tomato choice for a patio or planter garden. A good producer even in cooler coastal regions." [source]

Black Krim - (aka Black Crimson and Black Crim):

"Originally from the Isle of Krim on the Black Sea in the former Soviet Union. This rare, and outstanding tomato yields 3-4" slightly flattened dark-red (mahogany-colored) slightly maroon, beefsteak tomatoes with deep green shoulders. Green gel around seeds. Fantastic, intense, slightly salty taste (which is great for those not wanting to add salt to their tomatoes)." [source]

Pink Brandywine

"Plant produces good yields of 1 to 2 lb pinkish red beefsteak tomatoes. Tomatoes have rich tomato flavor and pinkish red when matture. This variety won several taste testing awards and is one of the best tasting tomatoes in the world. An Amish heirloom variety from the USA dating back to 1885." [source]

Giant Belgium Pink

"The 'Giant Belgian Pink' Heirloom Tomato Plant has huge, sweet fruits that average 1 to 2 pounds and have weighed in at almost 5 pounds! It was one of last season’s most popular heirloom varieties. Each pot contains 1 tomato plant. Giant Belgian Pink Heirloom Tomato’s dark pink fruits feature a smooth blossom end, with a low-acid, mild flavor, so sweet that they’ve been used in winemaking. It has solid meat and hefty size, excellent for sandwich slices." [source]

Cherokee Purple

"The Cherokee Purple was rediscovered by tomato grower Craig LeHoullier. LeHoullier claimed that it was more than 100 years old, originated with the Cherokee people. The Cherokee Purple tomato has a unique dusty rose color. The flavor of the tomato is extremely sweet with a rich smoky taste. The Cherokee Purple has a refreshing acid, is watery, thick-skinned and earthy with a lingering flavor. The Cherokee Purple plants are very prolific making this plant a good heirloom for gardeners and farmers." [source]

Green Zebra

"Developed in 1985 by tomato breeder Tom Wagner, this is an unusual and exquisite green tomato chosen by Alice Waters for her restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California. The 2-inch round fruit ripens to a yellow-gold with dark-green zebra-like stripes. The flesh is lime-emerald in color that has an invigorating lemon-lime flavor. A great green tomato for brightening up salads and other tomato dishes. Try our Green Zebra Tomato Seeds for your tomato garden and enjoy a wonderful addition of color to your salads and sauces." [source]

Matt's Wild Cherry

"These small cherry tomatoes are packed with more taste than you can believe. 5/8- 3/4", deep red, round fruits have a tender, smooth texture, and loads of sweet, full flavor. High sugar content (11º Brix). Though the taste is superior, it doesn't yield well and the fruits are soft, so grow on a trial scale at first. Teresa Arellanos de Mena, a friend of former Univ. of Maine AG faculty members Drs. Laura Merrick and Matt Liebman, brought seeds to Maine from her family's home state of Hidalgo in Eastern Mexico. It's the region of domestication of tomatoes, and where these grow wild. Matt gave us the seeds." [source]

And the Pepper Plants:

Early Sunsation

A great early pepper. Early Sunsation pepper produces large, smooth fruit that mature from dark green to bright golden-yellow at full maturity. Combine this with good tolerance to bacterial leaf spot and you could have the perfect golden pepper variety. The blocky shaped fruit have thick walls and a very sweet taste when left to ripen yellow. [source]

Purple Beauty

Plant produces good yields of 3" long by 3" wide sweet purple bell peppers. Peppers have thick walls and turn from green to purple when mature. Excellent for salads, stuffing, and gourmet dishes [source]

Sweet Italian

The Italian red peppers grow to a length of six to eight inches. They are wonderful eaten raw in strips or in salads. In our opinion, they are better tasting than the red bell peppers. The red Italian pepper adds color to many cooked recipes, but we believe that cooking them is a waste of their wonderful raw flavor. Select Italian red peppers that are firm and free of blemishes and wrinkles.

King Arthur

This hybrid produces a quality blocky shaped, 3-4 lobed sweet bell pepper that matures green to red, and has excellent yield potential. The jumbo 5 inch fruit have medium-early maturity. This dwarf variety is quite early for having such large fruit. Maturity 65-70 days from transplanting. Approximately 25 seeds/package. [source]

Red Knight

Throughout the Northeast and Midwest, growers are reporting good yields of large, thick-walled fruit on X3R Red Night. Maturing in the mid-early slot are high quality, blocky bell fruit that measure 4½ in. W x 4½ in. L. The shiny, attractive fruit ripen from a dark green to an intense red color.

Cherry Bomb TMV

Heirloom/Open-Pollinated. Red Cherry Bomb is an old-fashioned heirloom favorite that has a nice, 1-1/2 to 2" round shape. It is not very hot when dark green, but fiery when it fully matures to red. It can be used fresh, dried, or pickled, but I really like to use it in salsa! This is a particularly easy-to-grow variety, and a great choice for the home gardener. 2500-5000 Scoville Units [source]

April 24, 2010 Herbs, Flowers, and More

2010-04-24T14:03:00.000-07:00

I took this picture yesterday and thought it was a good shot of Spring!

Here's the new flower bed, it turned out great! Stacey got some good looking flowers at Distinctive Gardens. And as good as it looks now, in a few weeks when everything is established and growing it's going to look even more amazing.

I put in a full flat of Marigolds today and placed them between what will be tomatoes. It added some much needed color to the garden. This will force me when it comes to Market time to stick to the plan and only plant seven tomatoes.

The herbs are in! During a trip to Distinctive Gardens today they had all the herbs out and I couldn't wait another week. They looked so good that I got weak and bought everything I saw. So we have (starting with the upper left) Oregano, Basil, Basil again, Thyme, St Johns Wort, Dill, Cilantro, Majoroum, and Sage in the middle.

The cucumbers are now in the ground. I debated a little about putting them in with what I hope is the last cold night forecasted for Tuesday. I thought that I'd chance it as they were starting to get pretty large in the peat pots. I hope they hold up to the 40-43 degree night.

Here's a long shot of the garden (except for the flower bed at the end). It now has some nice color to it. Next week is the Grower's Market to fill the rest in!

The lettuce looks like it has finally taken. Although last year at this time they were much larger. I guess that since the first round didn't survive they got a head start last season. All three varieties now look VERY different. Although it's not in this picture , the carrots are making slow progress. This year I'm definitely going to get some production from them.

The peas are growing strong. Most of them are climbing the trellis on their own, but a few still need some help grabbing hold.

The shallots have exploded with tons of new growth. I planted ten but only eight have sprouted. Judging by the way the first eight have grown, I'm not holding out much hope for the last two.The garlic in the foreground is also doing well. Only one of the three bulbs seems to have been a dud.

The spinach is looking fantastic! In only a few days they have grown significantly. I will need to thin a few of them out in the next day or two. The radishes are getting there too. I accidentally pulled one thinking it was a weed and the radish root was there - what a great color they have!

April 19, 2010 Preparing for the Market

2010-04-19T13:47:00.000-07:00

The West Chester Grower's Market is under two weeks away from opening so it's time to get the rest of the garden in shape. I don't know how this happened but there seems to be TONS of rocks in the garden. The soil has never been ideal (it's far from bad), but I don't remember there being this many stones last year. I think I would have noticed and removed them if so. Regardless of how they got there I spent some time today removing hundreds of small stones and weeds from the whole plot today. I will give it another once over when I purchase my plants to fill the garden but I thought it was a good idea to do as much work as possible now.

It's been kind of cold here at nights the last week or so. Even though the last frost date was April 17th, there has been several nights in the upper 30's and lower 40's. I started my cucumbers last week in peat pots with the intention of getting them into the ground this week, but it looks like the weather isn't going to change much so I'm playing it safe and waiting until it's warmer to get them in.

Not much has changed in the garden from last week. Everything is growing slowly. The spinach all have true leaves, the radishes are starting to grow secondary leaves, the lettuce is poking up slowly, and the peas are starting to climb the trellis. It still looks like a big patch of dirt with a sprinkle of green. I can't wait for the market to open to really get things going!

Aptil 10, 2010 Quick Progress Report

2010-04-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

The Carpenter Bees are back this week. I know that they can do some serious damage to blah blah blah... I don't care, they're fun to watch! There are about a dozen of them buzzing around and doing some crazy maneuvers. There a great sign that the warm weather is here to stay! So here's a quick round up of how things are going:

The peas are growing pretty quickly thanks to the nice weather. All of the plants came up but one, which is pretty good. Most of them are 4-5 inches now and the smallest is just an inch above the surface. They're even starting to climb the trellis!

Radishes are popping out. They're not exactly in a neat little row but who cares, they are a welcome touch of green in the patch of dirt where I planted my seeds.

Not much doing with the lettuce thus far. There is something small and growing there but it's too soon to tell if it's actually lettuce!

What I thought were weeds are indeed spinach! A quick Google search confirmed that this is what they look like at this stage. I thought it was grass with the long and skinny first leaves, but if you look closely at the picture the first rounded bits of delicious are starting to pop out!

I'm guessing that this is the shallots sprouting. They've only been in the ground a week and they're already coming along. I'm very pleased!

These are the green onions that I put in last week. I purchased them to be part of dinner, I saved the bottom piece with the root and simply stuck it in the ground. I got the brilliantly simple idea from some page I found with Stumble Upon (Greatest tool for the web btw) but I didn't bookmark it to give the person credit.

New this week to the garden, well actually to two strawberry pots on the porch are, well, strawberries! I've never seen strawberries sold this way so I had to give them a try, They were selling them in bunches of 25 with a pretty decent root system already to go. I'm looking forward to seeing how they do!

What is this you might ask? It's a pretty substantial Goldings Hop rhizome. I'm super excited about this (Thanks to Mark Prior for the donation) as I've been thinking about how to first find, and then plant some hops for my home brewing since last year. I'm not sure how much this one massive rhizome is going to yield, but Goldings whole leaf hops sell for about $5 an ounce. And it would be real cool to brew a "Backyard Harvest Ale" this fall! I'm hoping that this baby gets me at least an ounce or two for one good hoppy ale... I planted it an a 2x2x2 foot pot and plan on running the vines along the metal mesh of the porch for easy harvesting. It's just crazy enough to work!! Here's a great article about growing hops if anyone is interested: Growing Hops in Containers

April 3, 2010 Sowing More Seeds

2010-04-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

Spring is in full bloom. Across the street is what was once the manor house to the barn we live in, and the field above the stone wall that runs along the road is full of daffodils and other bulbs bursting with color! The trees are all white and pink with blossoms, and the days of 3 feet of snow everywhere are starting to feel like like a distant memory (nightmare).

I spent some time today adding another six feet to the garden plot. I've ceding this space to Stacey to plant some flowers here to make the garden look a little nicer. It'll look great in a month or so when the flowers start going in. It'll be nice to have some color to look at from the porch!

Check out the before and after pics. It looks much cleaner now with the ratty grass pulled up. There was a bunch of mint and catnip growing wild there so I left a little bit of each. I've dug out the boarder and set the old fence posts into the ground rather than just laying there. I got about half way done but I plan on finishing up this small project week.

I also gave up on the lettuce I had transplanted. For three days after I planted it we had an inane amount of rain and colder nights that destroyed them. The peas seem to have fared much better, but there was nothing left of the lettuce. So now I have (from left to right in the picture) Yugo Red Lettuce, Deer Tongue Lettuce, Slow Bolt Lettuce, Red Dragon Carrots, Scallions, Radishes, Spinach, Shallots, and Garlic. I found the shallots and garlic at a newly discovered garden store down the street. It's literally 3 minutes away and I had never been there. Really nice stuff and helpful staff for good prices, I recommend this place if you're in the area: Distinctive Gardens

It's apparently time to start plugging in the electric fence. Before I did any of the digging I noticed a fresh set of deer tracks running right down the middle of the garden. It's like they're taunting me!

March 27, 2010 First Planting

2010-03-27T12:36:00.000-07:00

Although it was about 20 degrees cooler today that last weekend, it still ended up being a perfect day to get out into the garden and start my planting. I had started some lettuce, scallions, and more recently some peas in peat pots. Everything was more then ready to get into the soil.

The first thing I had to do was get the soil in shape. Last week when I tilled the area around the trellis with a shovel, it brought up a lot of very clay soil. It was noticeably tanner in color than the rest of the plot. Stacey had the great idea of taking the old potted herbs and flowers that we had dumped over the end of the deck, and them shake out reuse all that good soil. Between the big pile root balls and some left over dirt in some additional pots from last year I had more then enough rich soil to add without having to make a trip to a hardware store. I ended up with almost two inches for the entire area around the 12 foot trellis where I needed to plant today. I spent about an hour with a hoe and a rake working it into the top few inches of soil. Take a look at the before and after pics, what a difference!

The first plants I put in today were the peas. Although I have read in various books and websites that it isn't a good idea to transplant peas, I had no problems last year. The peas sprouted very quickly in the peat pots. In a matter of days the seeds were bursting through the soil and the roots were pushing out of the bottom. I carefully ripped the peat pots from the seedlings before planting them to make sure the roots don't have to struggle too much. I spaced them pretty close together fitting a double row of 30 in about 4 feet - roughly 3 inches apart.

The second thing I planted today was the lettuce. I have four plants of three varieties of lettuce started: Yugo Red, Amish Deer Tongue, and a Slow Bolt variety. I spaced them far enough apart to put another row in three weeks or so from now. Despite being three very different looking varieties lettuces, I was amazed how difficult it was to tell them apart at this early stage. If I had not labeled the plants it would have been nothing more than a guess as to what went where. I'm sure that will change in the next week or two.

Next to the lettuce is a space reserved for the Red Dragon Carrots which I will hopefully plant next weekend, but just a foot over from that empty plot is where the scallions went. The scallions went in very easily. I simply pulled the peat pots apart and laid them out in a single row trough of ten plants. The roots and plants are so small that the one I attempted to remove from the peat pot crumbled apart. I was able to gently place it in with the rest, but I decided after that to just leave the rest in the peat pots.

Beside the scallions I also sowed two rows of spinach seeds. After loosening and leveling the soil in the area, I took a stick and dug out a narrow trough about an inch or two deep. The spinach seeds are pretty small but large enough to handle. I threw about 20 between the two rows knowing that I'll have to thin out some of them. I'm hoping to have about 5 or 6 of the best plants per row.

This season is starting pretty smoothly so far!

March 21, 2010 Soil Testing

2010-03-21T16:09:00.000-07:00

On a whim yesterday I purchased a soil test kit at Ace just to get an idea what I was working with. Everything grew pretty mightily last year but I was curious to see if there is anything I should be amending the soil with to improve the P-K-N balance as well as the pH to make this year even more successful. So I ended up buying a Rapitest brand Soil Test Kit for $17.

The kit was pretty easy to use and yielded fast results. For the pH meausrement you add a small amount of soil, some water, and then the contents of a capsule. The P-K-N tests took a little longer as you have to first mix the soil with a water at a ratio of 1:5. You then let it settle out and sample the 'clear' water along with one of the capsules. I do have one major complaint with the kit. The chemicals that you add to the water or soil come inside these little capsules that you are expected to seperate and add to the small side of the container. That was much easier said than done. It was easier to cut the capsule open with a sharp knife over a piece of paper and add it from the paper.

With the exception of the Phosphorus on Sample 1, all the results were pretty consistent. I'm doing just fine with the Potassium, but could use a little boost on the Nitrogen and Phosphorus side. I bungled the pH samples by throwing out the dirt that I needed in a premature attempt at cleaning up. I did manage to take take a pH reading of Sample 1, but the rest will have to wait.

Sample 1: Around the Tomatoes

pH 6.0-6.5

Sample 1: Around the Tomatoes

N1-N2 Adequate

K2 -K3: Sufficient

P4 +: Surplus (Human Error?)

Sample 2: Around the Peppers

N1-N2: Deficient

K2-K3: Sufficient

P0-P1: Deficient

Sample 3: Around the Lettuce

N1-N2: Adequate

K2-K3: Sufficient

P0-P1: Deficient

Sample 4: Around the Zucchini

N0-N1: Deficient

K3-K4: Surplus

P0-P1: Deficient

March 20, 2010 First Day of Spring!

2010-03-21T09:16:00.000-07:00

First day of Spring and this weekend couldn't be finer. Sunny and in the 70's, all that snow is starting to feel like distant memory!

The lettuce and the scallions are almost ready to get into the ground. I just want to make sure the soil doesn't need any last minute adjustments! I even had a lady bug pose in this shot, I hope they stick around during the summer!

I soaked the peas for a few hours and then sowed them in peat pots. I read that peas don't really transfer very well, but I had no problem last year using the same method. I'm shooting for about 30 pea plants, which is about 10 more than I originally planned for. I'm going to test out the inter-planting of the peas and beans along part of the plot. The idea is to plant the peas now, and then the bean next to them in the coming weeks. By the time the peas are waning, the beans should be flourishing. There should be enough of each planted separately that if this goes doesn't work that there won't be much of a loss.

Since I won't be able to till the whole garden today I decided to target the area that I am going to plant first. I dug up the area around the trellis about a foot or so down and mixed up the dirt pretty good. This was the area that last year didn't get roto-tilled, and it shows. The soil here was especially clayey and was compacted but after some time began to look a little better. If I wasn't just renting or knew that I'd be working this spot for four or five years I would get a load of compost delivered and really make this soil great. But it seems to be a pretty large expense with that uncertainty.

I've decided to test the soil this year. I chose four spots: 1. Around the tomatoes, 2. At the Peppers, 3. Around the lettuce/beans, and 4 near the Zucchini. The test kit I purchased for about $17 has a separate test for pH, Nitrogen, Potassium, and Phosphorus. I'm curious to see how it come up (I'll post the results some point soon).

The trellis is now in good shape with the extra fence post in place. It' much more stable and really wasn't a lot of work to fix. I was expecting it to be a pain to line up properly and get it all attached. It's all set now for the peas!

March 10, 2010 WSJ Article

2010-03-10T14:47:00.000-08:00

About a month ago Anne Marie Chaker from the WSJ contacted me about a story she was working on detailing mistakes made by enthusiastic first time gardens. I guess my enthusiasm and misfortunes documented in this blog were horrific enough to pique her interest. :) Well the story finally made it to the paper, here's an excerpt:

"David Sekkes in West Chester, Pa., was thrilled last year to have his own plot for a vegetable garden at his cottage on 15 acres of farmland after years of growing herbs on his apartment patio. But the 29-year-old Mr. Sekkes, pronounced SEA-kiss, got carried away at the farmer's market shopping for plants and bought more than he originally intended. He planted them a little too close together to fit them in. The peppers shaded each other out and didn't fruit well. A powdery mildew developed on the leaves of the zucchini plants, likely caused by lack of air circulation. Four hot-pepper plants turned out to be way more than he needed. Then, Mr. Sekkes went away for a long weekend near the end of the summer. He came home to a mess. "It was sad having to throw away all those tomatoes," he says. This year, he plans on growing fewer zucchinis and pole beans—and spacing them farther apart—but also dabbling in new varieties of tomatoes."

Link to the Full Article

Pretty cool.... with any luck maybe next year's story will feature the successful tomato bounty from my garden! Who knows?

Thanks Anne Marie!

March 7, 2010 Clean Up Day

2010-03-07T13:24:00.000-08:00

What a beautiful (almost) Spring day! Sunny and in the mid-50's, just how I like it in March.

After being out of the garden for some time now I was a bit fearful of what I would find today. Man, what a mess! I had a huge amount of work with the clean up today. There were broken posts, stumps of old plants, and weeds galore to all take care of today. Somehow the weeds can grow under several feet of snow, who knew? So I weeded most of the garden and removed all the old pepper and sunflower stumps that I should have taken care of in the Fall. There were also several root clumps to rake up, and when it was all done I hauled all the debris into the trees. Progress...

As I suspected, the trellis is going to need a little repairing. The wooden center post has cracked with the weight of the snow. It was only there to provide a little stability (I had an extra post), but now I think I need to replace it with a steel fence post to make sure the whole structure is sound. All those beans and cucumbers are going to hopefully put some weight on it!

The old smaller wooden trellis used for the peas last year has now been completely dug out. The only wooden posts left were supports for the tomatoes last year. I plan on leaving them for now as they seem to be in decent shape. However I think that I'm going to get some cages to help support the lower branches of the tomatoes. It kind of worked last year without them, but I think that it would have been better in retrospect to have had cages too.

After I weeded and raked a bit, I covered the area where the lettuce, spinach, and peas are going to be planted with plastic. My hope is that with the next week or so foretasted to be sunny and in the 50's the sheet will help warm up the dirt so I can start tilling sooner. I don't know if it's worth covering the whole plot with plastic, but since I had this big piece left over from last year I'd give it a shot.

I still have lots of work to do if I'm going to meet my 3 week deadline - I haven't even begun to tackle the annex or the stone wall yet!

March 6, 2010 It's the First Warm Day So I'm Sowing Some Seeds

2010-03-06T15:29:00.000-08:00

I received my seeds from the Seed Saver's Exchange today in the mail! They came pretty quickly and were perfectly timed to arrive on the first warm day of the year. Even though there are remnants of the snow everywhere, it truly felt like Spring is almost here. So Stacey and I took a trip to Ace to get a bag of dirt and some peat pots to start the first sowing. We also purchased three dishpans from the dollar store (I think that's what they're suppose to be used for at least) that are just the right size for the peat pots.

Not wanting to jump the gun too much I only sowed a dozen lettuces (4 of each kind) and 8 scallions. I did a little reading and it seems that these can all be started now in anticipation of them getting into the ground in two or three weeks. So that officially sets my deadline to get the garden cleaned up and tip top by March 27th, and I think since we get an extra hour of daylight starting next week it's a realistic goal. I'm going to spend some of tomorrow taking stock of what needs to be done. The snow is now completely gone from the garden so I can finally get a good look - and from the porch it looks like a real mess!

February 28, 2010 Ordered the Seeds

2010-02-28T10:43:00.000-08:00

I placed my Seed Saver's Exchange order today. Here's what I ended up with:

When you add up the number of seeds it seems like a lot. I was thinking that I wanted a good variety of the veggies I grew successfully last year. For example I'm looking forward to the Purple Pole Beans, the unusual Crystal Apple Cucumber, and a couple of new varieties of Lettuce. Will I need 750 heads of lettuce or 250 Radishes? No. But I figured I could give some seeds away and hold on to the rest for next season. And I know I said I wasn't going to do radishes this year but I once again couldn't resist. This variety is long and supposedly has a mild flavor. I'm a sucker for anything I can harvest that early!

I've got a week or two until they arrive (free shipping!) so I need to figure out the the logistics of starting the seeds indoors soon. All those seeds are going to take up some serious space!

We also had our 4th blizzard of the year roll through this past week (although this last one was mostly wind and the snow accumulation was way lower than the 12-14" they were predicting), so the snow is still ever present. The forecast for the next few days is in the mid-40's with lots of sun. So I'm hoping that the snow will melt away and the ground will finally begin to thaw soon. I haven't been down to the garden plot in a month because of the 70+ inches of snow this season, but from the porch it looks like I've got a lot of work mending the trellis and cleaning up the plot, but I'm looking forward to it!

February 6, 2010 Planning During the Blizzard

2010-02-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

NOAA foretasted about a foot of snow for this past Friday into Saturday as early as Monday and the storm did not disappoint. We ended up with nearly 2 feet! There was enough warning that we were prepared with groceries and libations this time! While the snow was blowing outside I stayed warm hashing out the 2010 garden plan.

This year I am planning on a little less of everything to allow for greater spaces between plants. The three biggest changes will be to the tomatoes, peppers, and the squash plants. I'm going research what flowers that both look nice and will attract beneficial insects to plant in the spaces between the tomatoes. I also still may find room for more peppers, but I am definitely giving them more room. One square foot just wasn't enough. The same goes for the zucchini. I'd like to plant only two in the same space I had four last year to see how that helps with the powdery mildew and overcrowding. If I can, I'd also like to swap out one of the two zucchini for a yellow squash plant to give a little more color and variety during harvest time.

Gone this year are the watermelon, cantaloupe, and sunflowers. They just didn't work out well for me and I needed to cut some things to make room for the extra spacing. I am however going to give eggplant another try so I'll have to be watchful for the flea beetles again. Gone also is the separate trellis for the peas. Trying to make my life easier and keeping all the climbing plants to one trellis.

And finally I'm looking into trying some more things from seed this year, especially the salad greens, peas, beans, and cucumbers. I have a $30 order in my shopping cart for the Seed Saver's Exchange site (thanks Anne Marie for the tip) waiting for me to pull the trigger. We're trying to figure out first how much room inside we have to set up little sun boxes to start them in. There's a bunch of really interesting plants on there and I want to experiment with at least a few this year.

I These caught my eye:

Listada de Gandia Eggplant

I haven't thought yet about what to do with the "Annex" I recovered from the weed patch next to the berry bushes. It might just be flowers, or another zucchini. Any suggestions ?

January 17, 2010 - Lessons Learned From 2009

2010-01-17T13:06:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year and all that stuff...

While the snow in this picture has melted it still very much looks like Winter out there. The Spring seriously cannot come soon enough! Until then I thought I'd take a look back and put some of my thoughts about last year up for everyone to see. Although it was a very successful garden, there were a number of things that I can improve upon....

1. Give The Plants More Space
I was pretty adamant about using the Square Foot Gardening book as a guide on spacing of the plants last year. I think the biggest lesson I learned last year is that there needs to be more room for everything to grow. The tomatoes grew haphazardly and after a month or so they had already begun growing over top of each other. Two square feet just wasn't enough! The zucchini and peppers also suffered from this. I have seen huge pepper plants a few feet tall that yield dozens of peppers per plant. While some of the plants (Cayenne and Banana for example) did real well, I think that the Bell Peppers and Jalapenos suffered from being over crowded. Like the Tomatoes, they grew fast at first until they shaded out each other. As a result, the Peppers were a bit smaller than I was hoping.

2. Less Is More (sometimes)
I'm sure I won't listen to this advice when the weather is warm and I'm at the Growers Market starring at the sea of flats begging to be planted. But just because I buy zucchini in a four pack doesn't mean I have to plant all of them. Someone remind me of that in May!

3. Focus On What We'll Eat
Cantaloupe and Watermelon are definitely out this year - the 'loupes didn't grow well and the watermelons were not necessary as my landlord grew tons! No radishes as I'm the only one that eat them, less Beans (see below). The sunflowers are out of the garden, although I may plant some down by the stone wall for decoration. They were fun to grow but I never really eat any of the seeds. I'm going to need the room they took up to space out the Peppers some. Which brings me to the Hot Peppers. I had 5 or 6 varieties of Hot Peppers last year, this year I think two will be enough. I love them, Stacey doesn't.

4. It's Real Hard To Work Between Two Sets Of Trellises
Last year I had a long trellis of Bean and Cucumbers, and a smaller trellis with Peas. The weeds got real bad in between and when it was time to harvest the Beans it was a huge pain in the ass to get in there. Especially because the Beans needed to picked every other day! So I think I'm going to pull up the smaller trellis and move the peas along with the Beans. A little less Beans shouldn't be a problem as they were so productive last year it was impossible to keep up.

5. More Prep Work And Maintenance
Before I get everything planted I've need to prep the soil a bit more carefully this year. I need to get compost, eggshells, and other goodies worked into the soil along early. I hope this will be a bit easier this year since I don't have to pull up the sod. I also need to try and keep up with the weeds better and prune the tomatoes more often. Easier said than done!

---

Over the next week or two I want to finish up a draft layout of the 2010 garden. Any suggestions?

Spetember 25, 2009 End of the Year

2009-09-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

I'm officially calling an end to the garden for the year.

I've learned a lot and had a great time this summer with everything! The end of the year totals were not too bad, but should of been much greater. A lot of produce went to waste from both pests and my own neglect. It seems that at the end of the summer when I was the busiest was when I needed to be out there every day harvesting and tending the garden. I had visions in the Spring of eating vegetables from the garden every day during the Summer, but that just wasn't the possible. Lesson learned...

At some point over the coming months I'm going to sit down and evaluate what worked and what didn't to hopefully improve my plan for next year. One thing that is for sure is I'll be scaling back a bit and not use the recommended square foot garden spacing as much. Plants like the peppers, for example, quickly became shaded out from the tomatoes. When I was forced to prune and remove some of them a few weeks back, they almost doubled in size. If the frost comes late and it remains warm I still may get some additional peppers from the new growth. Next year they'll get much more space between each plant and whatever gets planted near them....

This weekend I plan on ripping out everything and cleaning up the space for the fall/winter. By the looks of it it seems like a lot of work!

I'm really looking forward to putting this year's experience into practice next year!

August 30, 2009 Back From Vacation

2009-08-30T15:37:00.000-07:00

After a week away at the beach, this is the mess we came back to. All the sunflowers were drooped from their own weight, many tomatoes rotting on the vine and on the ground, all the cantaloupes rotting, a watermelon split and rotting, and even a few of the peppers were rotting. I guess I picked the wrong week to leave everything!

I removed two tomato plants and pruned back the others. All the rotting tomatoes are now in a pile along with some other garden refuse. so things look a little more put together now. I harvested all that could be salvaged and there are still plenty of green tomatoes yet to ripen. So the season isn't over yet, but I definitely lost quite a bit!

August 16, 2009 Melons and Sunflowers

2009-08-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty busy the last two weeks, hence the lack of updates. In that time all sorts of things have gone to hell in the garden. I haven't weeded the watermelon patch in about a month or so and it was so over grown that you couldn't even see the watermelon plants let alone the melons themselves. Stacey put a huge dent in pulling the big stuff the other day and I finished off the little she left for me yesterday. I hope that will buy me some time!

The real issue I've been having is with my tomatoes. It seems that they're a little top heavy and with only a single stake holding up the center the branches laden with tomatoes have become a problem. Some have broken off with some of the heavy storms, others are resting on the dirt where the bugs, critters, and fungus has taken some (but not all) of the 'maters. Next year I need to do three things different --

1) Cage them along with the stakes to support the branches.
2) Prune them back MUCH more.
3) Space them out even more. They're currently about 2 feet apart, but I'm going to try to add another foot between them.

Despite the problems I'm having, I still have more tomatoes than I know what to do with! Nice.

I also wanted to share some pics on how the melons are doing:

Also the sunflowers are all in full bloom! A couple of the flower heads have seeds set and I'll need to harvest fairly soon before the birds take too many. I've read a few methods of cooking the seeds but I'm going to try this one:

Sunflower seeds can be roasted by heating in a 300 degree F oven for 15-25 minutes. If salting is desired, soak seeds overnight in a brine of 2 tablespoons of salt to 1 cup of water. Boil the seed brine mix for a few minutes and drain. Spread seeds thinly on a cookie sheet and roast in a 200 degree F oven for 3 hours or until crisp. If roasted long enough, they are easy to shell.
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/ptlk/1828.html

And finally I was taking pictures of all the bugs on the butterfly bush and thought this was a good one of a large carpenter bee hanging out.

August 4, 2009 Zucchini Pruning Update

2009-08-04T16:29:00.000-07:00

here's an update on the pruned zucchini plants:

Take a look at the pictures of the day I cut the plants and a little over a week later. They seem to be coming back a bit. Some new flowers (all males) are popping up around the stem. Although there are several new leaves that have grown, most of the original leaves I left on it have a fair amount of powdery mildew. Not a good sign! But they've already exceeded my expectations - I kind of figured they would have been shocked to death after two days. If I get any more zucchini off of any of the remaining three plants I'll call it a success.

This was from July 24th:

...And this one from August 4th:

Check out the update to the Harvest count. It's starting to get impressive. I guess I have some more tomato sauce to make this week:

Several of the sunflowers are in full bloom. They ended up being between eight and nine feet tall. I'm pretty happy with that with so many in a small place. I think I'll space them out a little more than a foot next year!

July 27, 2009 Goodbye to the Zucchini

2009-07-27T18:37:00.001-07:00

The powdery mildew has gotten the best of the zucchini. I decided to pull one completely and prune back the other three to the newest leaves that are not (currently) infected. The plant has powdery mildew on the stalk as well so I don't think this will work, but I couldn't bring myself to destroying the plants without trying. We'll see how long they last after loosing 90% of their leaves in a day. I'm worried that their proximity to the cucumbers may be a problem, but so far they are showing no signs of being infected.

I took a large garbage bad and covered as many leaves as I could and then started snipping the leaves off at the base. I tried not to shake the leaves too much in an attempt to keep the spores from spreading. I have cucumbers and melons fairly close by. I'll try and post a couple of pictures in the next couple of days to see how they do with so many leaves gone. Even though I ended up harvesting over thirty of them and couldn't eat them fast enough (my coworkers and friends helped out a bit) I'm going to miss pulling one or two every couple of days. I have my the zucchini bread recipe memorized now!

The tomatoes have been ripening up lately too. It's been a nice treat to snack on the grapes. I've also made two batches of sauce out of the larger ones. It's kinda cool when the sauce has three or four different varieties in them, especially the yellow Lemon Boys which turn the sauce almost orange. The place smells good from all the cooking on Sundays!

Here's a summary of the video:

The pumpkins and watermelon are both getting big. I counted 6 watermelon and 7 pumpkins on their way!
Three decent sized cantaloupes are on the vine. I hope I can time the melons right to get a couple of days worth of fruit salad.
The beans are coming in faster than I can eat them.
Cucumbers are plentiful now.
A couple of the bell peppers are turning red and the hot peppers are all maturing nicely!
The sunflower heads are growing, but not as large as I had hoped...one of them is about to open.

July 18, 2009 Powdery Mildew Fight

2009-07-19T09:10:00.000-07:00

So I lost the fight against the flea beetles for my eggplant. And I have a feeling based on how far gone the problem is I'll likely lose the fight against powdery mildew for my zucchini. It was a few days since I was out there and it has gotten pretty bad. Nearly every leaf is covered. Only a few of the leaves have actually turned yellow/brown but I'm sure that it's not too long before the whole plant just can't take it any more and dies.

The good news is that I've already pulled nearly 20 delicious zucchini from them, but I'd still like to get 20 more! I've talked to some people in the area who say that Powdery Mildew kind of just happens in this area at a certain time of the year, and to get zucchini all summer you should do a few plantings of one plant through out the late spring/early summer. There are certain preventative measures you can take, like watering in the morning and only at base. But it sounds like even that will just delay the point at which you'll eventually get it.

So what to do? I read that using plain 'ole milk does a better job than any commercial fungicide on the market. So that's what I'm trying... read more here:

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/powdery-milk-mildew.html

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/3125/title/A_Dairy_Solution_to_Mildew_Woes

Check out this haul today!

July 18, 2009 Late Blight Warning

2009-07-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

I was listening to You bet Your Garden this morning and heard a bit of bad gardening news: a really bad case of Late Blight has infested the east coast. As of today it's primarily in New York and New England but has been identified as far west as Ohio and down into the Carolinas. "So what?" you might ask, well this apparently it has the potential to devastate tomato and potato plants (amongst other related plants) for both home gardeners and commercial growers. This is the same disease that cause the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-1800's.

It's recommended that you inspect your tomatoes and potatoes daily and if you find any of your tomatoes are infected with late blight to destroy the plant and bring samples into local government agricultural labs to ensure that it's tracked. I just checked my plants and so far nothing that looks like the pictures. (Pictures of late blight symptoms) Good luck to all!

Here's a piece of the YBYG article:

And late blight spreads like wildfire on a windy day in bone-dry weather. If people don’t promptly remove and destroy infected plants the spores will travel with the wind to the next garden—or farm. A single spore can travel many miles. And the cool, damp weather that plagued the affected parts of the country throughout much of June provided the ‘perfect’ conditions for this nasty actor to spread rapidly. Oh and just to make SURE you don’t sleep well tonight, this is the earliest and most widespread it’s ever appeared.

The Associated Press has done an excellent job of reporting on this potential crisis. According to their story of July 3rd, the disease appears to have originated in tomato plants shipped to ‘Big Box’ stores on the east Coast—specifically Lowe’s, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and Kmart. Infected plants were found at almost every store that was checked, so be especially vigilant if you or a neighbor got plants from such a store.

If you grew your own plants from seed or got them from a purely local grower—who didn’t mix their stock with bulk-purchased plants—your only risk is the spores blowing into your garden. If you’re in a community garden or other ‘shared’ situation, make sure your fellow growers are informed, and agree up front that any infected plants will be immediately destroyed.

Full YBYG Article:
http://www.gardensalive.com/article_mcgrath.asp?ai=1&bhcd2=1247942148

More info from Cornell University:
http://www.nysipm.cornell.edu/publications/blight/

July 14, 2009 Stuffed Zucchini

2009-07-15T04:25:00.000-07:00

'Nuf said.

July 13, 2009 -The End of the Peas, Begining of the Beans!

2009-07-13T17:48:00.001-07:00

Here's a new video of the garden!

1. Zucchini have powdery mildew, but I've got the egg shells in the dirt so at least they won't have blossom end rot!
2. Cucumbers are in season
3. Pole bean bonanza!
4. Sunflowers are about 6 feet tall and starting to form the flower heads
5. Peppers a plenty
6. The tomatoes are starting to ripen, and not just the grapes
7. A watermelon is growing pretty quick, it's not the size of a small baseball

And here's a shot of the harvest today. It made a great green bean casserole. Stuffed zucchini tomorrow...

July 7, 2009 Pole Beans Are Here

2009-07-07T16:51:00.001-07:00

The pole beans are starting to produce some beans that are ready to pick. Right now it's only the first five or six plants that are producing but the rest of the row is not far behind. It's my understanding that you have to keep picking them otherwise they shut down - the more often you pick the better the harvest. I think I'll give it until Thursday before I start to pick just so I can figure out what to cook with them.

Also all three melons have fruiting flowers on them now. I've been a little worried about the cantaloupe because there have been flowers for a few weeks now, but no females. Today there's a big fuzzy one growing so I can expect at least one!

The 'Loupe

Two Pumpkins

Only one watermelon

July 2, 2009 The Harvest Has Begun!

2009-07-02T10:20:00.001-07:00

I have been unable to get to the garden for a few days, luckily we've had some evening rain to keep everything healthy. The garden seems to be moving along pretty fast! The tomatoes are exploding with all sizes of green fruit, the bush beans produce a full bowl of 5-8 inch beans without me noticing, 3 large cucumbers (one of which I picked) popped up, and the zucchini are growing like mad! I've started a running count on what I harvest on the right side of the blog. I thought I better start now before there's too much to count! Here's some pictures of the different peppers coming in:

Mystery Pepper

Luigi Pepper

Cayenne Pepper

Bell Pepper (Red I think?)

Ancho Pepper

Now to the zucchini problem:

I have noticed a problem with my zucchini, and it's been on going now since they began to fruit. Some, but not all, of the fruit begins to grow and either - 1. Becomes yellow and mushy at the end farthest from the plant, or 2. Grows fat near the plant and skinny and yellow at the far end (not shown). This could be the same problem, but it does look different on the plant. to me. The following picture shows three zucchini on plants right next to each other. The first looks great, maybe a little big, but great! The others, well not so much. Luckily there enough good ones for me not to worry too much.

I was able to do some research and found out that zucchinis (and almost any fruiting vegetable) can have blossom end rot. I experienced this last year with my tomatoes. I simply added a bunch of crushed up egg shells a few inches under the soil near the plant and it kept the black spots away for every tomato there after. Fully aware of this, a I dutifully kept my eggshells for a while and a few weeks back put a healthy does around the tomato plants, but I didn't even think to do it for the zucchini or peppers. So far the peppers have shown no symptoms of blossom end rot, but I'm going to start having eggs three meals a day to get enough shells for the zucchini!

There is a chance that some of the problems have to do with poor pollination, but I'm not convinced that is what is happening in my garden. There area all sorts of insects, and several bees specifically that I see all the time out there. But if the extra calcium from the egg shells doesn't work then I'll explore that a little further. There's plenty of sites on the Internet that give a good explanation of how to hand pollinate plants.

Here's a great link to Common Zucchini Problems from MichellesGarden.com where the above image was taken (stolen): http://www.michellesgarden.com/Main/Pests/squash.shtml

Just to give an update on the one tomato plant that had the leaf curl:

The plant seems to be doing a bit better. The fruit are starting to turn red and the new growth is looking healthy - it even has more flowers growing. It's very stunted compared to the overflowing mass of the other tomato plants, but it'll still produce I think. Thanks for the advice from those that gave it!

And finally, here are six pictures of the garden to compare a few weeks ago from the same spots. It's looking FULL!

June 28, 2009 A Few Days of Neglect

2009-06-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

So we've been away for a few days. It was a long drive, but well worth the fun. I had a chance to meet a lot of really nice, gracious, and fun people. I now know more snail jokes, vermin stories, and puns than anyone this side of the Brandywine River! Cheers to everyone in Rochester, Montrose, and Washington County!

In the time we were away it was apparently the hottest and driest days of June so far, and everything in the garden showed it. The ground was cracked and all the flowers and herbs on the deck are either wilted or dead. But the vegetable garden looks like it survived!

Things to note:
1. Lots more zucchinis to pick
2. Even more peas are ready
3. A full size cucumber, plus a second not too far behind
4. The first green bean on the bush has grown
5. The first tomato is turning red
6. LOTS more tomatoes on the vine
7. The watermelons have tripled in size (not in the video)

Here's a video from when we got home:

June 22, 2009 Video Tour of the Garden

2009-06-22T15:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my new iPhone 3GS I can now now shoot some videos of the garden! So since today was the first full day without rain in some time I wanted to get out and see how everything is doing. So here is the first of what will be many video tours:

June 15, 2009 Extra Ten Square Feet

2009-06-15T16:06:00.000-07:00

I pulled up the "carrots", removed what was left of the eggplants, and the last of the radishes that I left to flower. So now I have a fair chunk of space in the garden that's empty - and I have no idea of what to put in there. Any suggestions as to what will produce after being planted this late in the spring?

June 13, 2009 Garden Salad

2009-06-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

Lots more rain today. I don't think the thunderstorms will stop for a few more days. I hope then everything will dry out!

I was able to harvest a good amount of peas along with some lettuce today. A delicious garden salad to go with the crab cakes and corn bread. Yum! Can't wait for the rest of the garden to start producing...

June 10, 2009 Big Weather

2009-06-10T15:25:00.000-07:00

There have been lots of thunderstorms rolling through the last week. Yesterday was the most intense. Before work we got some strong winds and some real heavy rain along with some tiny hail stones. It was the first time we've lost power since moving and I was happy that it wasn't out for more than three minutes. After that storm cleared out, there was a second round that rolled through around 3pm. This one came complete with a tornado warning. The funnel was more then 10 miles away, but a coworker's wife snapped this picture of it coming down. Pretty cool!

I have been having a problem the last few days in the garden - and it's not the eggplants this time. One of the plum tomato plants has been looking a little funky. The leaves have been curling and it's size is noticeably smaller than the rest of the tomatoes. Take a look at these two pictures:

I did a little Googling and there are several potential causes, but one of them in particular sticks out as the likely cause. It seems that with lots of water , poor drainage, and severe pruning it can stress the plant severely (from the GardenWeb). If this is the case, a few days to dry things out should help. I did take a major limb off this plant that had several leaves covered with aphids, but I'm not sure if that is considered 'severe' pruning (I debated taking it off, but it was the only part of the plant that had aphids and I didn't think it'd stress the plant this much). I also find it odd that none of the other tomato plants have been affected the same way. I looked back into my photos from the last few weeks and it seems that about ten days ago was the first time that I can notice that this plant is noticeably smaller than the rest. We have received a lot of rain in that time. It still has healthy looking flowers and six or seven green tomatoes that look just fine. I'll post an update on what happens in a few days...

Here's how the rest of the plot is looking...

The peas are really starting to take off. I plan on picking the first round in the next few days. I've already snuck a few and they're tasty!

Several of the pepper plants are already showing some good signs...

The tops of the pole beans are reaching almost three feet!

June 1, 2009 Progress Report

2009-06-01T10:18:00.001-07:00

It's a beautiful start to June! I spent a few hours this afternoon taking care of the weeds and taking some pictures for an update. Everything is taking off and looking good except, again, for the eggplant. It might be time to admit defeat and try and put something else in it's place. The garlic spray was not effective against flea beetles at all. I think the eggplant was too far gone for anything but the most potent insecticide. However, it wasn't a complete failure: I spied a cucumber beetle on the eggplant one day and give it a squirt. That thing dropped right off and went crawling away. So I may try it again.

I have also given up trying to wait for the "carrots" to mature so I can find out what it was that took over. There were a lot of bugs coming from that little patch and it was time to thin it out. In a separate effort to reduce the number of insects, I took care of the weeds completely overgrowing the berry bushes adjacent to my patch. It was getting to the point where they were choking out every bush. They also were flowering and I didn't want them to go to seed and make matters worse! But the benefit of that is that patch was just covered in leaf hoppers and various other bugs. When it was all said and done I removed a bout a 4 foot pile of weeds.

I actually started removing the weeds last week. You can see how big the problem was in the picture above (the bare patch in the picture was completely covered). I ended up removing enough to put a few more plants in. So in the annex, I put in 5 Watermelons and two more little tomatoes (Thanks Olivia!!). They both have a big hill to climb to catch up the the rest of the tomatoes, but there's plenty of time for them to grow! I hope the watermelons have enough room there.

And finally, here are five pictures of how everything else is coming along:

May 26, 2009 First Vegetable Flowers

2009-05-26T16:06:00.000-07:00

The first flowers started to appear on my vegetables and it happened almost overnight! We were out there yesterday and there were only a few flowers on the tomatoes, and a little bud on the zucchini. It's pretty encouraging sight to see!

Pepper buds...

Pea flowers...

Cantaloupe flowers...

First tomato... it's a Plum!

Zucchini flower...

And here are three shots walking down the garden to see how the rest is looking:

May 26, 2009 Battle For the Eggplant

2009-05-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

After a little research I have identified the bug that's been devastating the Eggplants: Flea Beetles (Here's some more info). So I am taking swift action by first trying an organic solution. I read on several websites that a garlic spray will deter them. I used a modified version of this recipe (I used less water and substituted dish soap).

Garlic & Pepper Spray

Protect your garden plants from cabbageworms, caterpillars, hornworms, aphids, flea beetles and other chewing/sucking insects by routinely using a natural spray that you can make at home. The spray must be applied regularly, especially after a rainfall. Brew up a batch as follows:
6 cloves of garlic
1 Tbsp dried hot pepper
1 minced onion
tsp pure soap (not detergent)
1 gallon hot water
Blend & let sit for 1 - 2 days. Strain & use as spray. Ground cayenne or red hot pepper can also be sprinkled on the leaves of plants (apply when leaves are slightly damp) to repel chewing insects or added to the planting hole with bone meal or fertilizer to keep squirrels, chipmunks, dogs and other mammals away from your gardens. Be sure to reapply after rain.
--From the Capital District Community Garden Website

It's going to rain for the next few days, so I'll make the first application soon... I'll try and document it's effectiveness.

May 22, 2009 Memorial Day Weekend Update

2009-05-22T09:25:00.001-07:00

First the good news:

The sunflowers have been planted, and although I've said it before: THAT is the end of the planting in the main plot. All but one are looking good after being in the ground for a few days. They were looking real leggy in the peat pots, but they have now seem to have taken. (The double-row on the right side of the pic below)

The new peppers have had no problems adjusting. The first set of six peppers are noticeably bigger than the second and third plantings. I've never had luck with any pepper but the hot peppers I grew three seasons ago. All the bell peppers I tried in containers were tiny and misshapen.

The tomatoes are all looking good. The one plum tomatoes is not growing as fast as the others, but it's too early to worry about it. I have had to pinch off several suckers on the rest. Here's a good article about tomato upkeep and some discussion on how best to remove suckers: http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/pruning-tomatoes.aspx

This is the largest of the zucchinis. The rest are doing just fine, but this one has two more leaves than the rest.

The peas are growing strong and tall. I'm hoping they start producing before it gets too warm out.

Now for the bad news:
I've lost two cucumber plants, however the six remaining plants all look good. I'm not sure what went wrong with them and haven't had the time to research it. It seems the stems went limp, and they just fell over dead.

Additionally, all four eggplant are looking a little suspect. They seem to have attracted the most attention from what ever bugs, slugs, and caterpillars. They're not down for the count yet, but some of the leaves are looking ravaged and they don't look as strong as some of the other plants in the garden. I've read that they're slow to grow to begin with, but I'm worried that if they get to too stunted this early in the season I'll have problems down the road.

May 16, 2009 Hot Peppers From the Market

2009-05-16T04:50:00.000-07:00

I was able to find a good variety of Hot Peppers today at the market as the vendor last week promised. I stayed away from the Habenero and bought some edible peppers: 1 Ancho, 1 Jalapeno, 1 Cayenne , and 1 mystery pepper that didn't have a tag on it and by the time I got home I couldn't remember what variety it was. I guess I'll find out in a couple months. I also filled in all the room I had for tomatoes with two more Plums and a Grape.

So that does it for vegetables in the garden. The last thing I'm putting in will be some Sun Flowers I started from seed last week. They're starting to get big and will try and get them in by mid-week. At the same time I also started from seed 5 Watermelon and 5 Pumpkin seeds. The plan is to put them along a stone wall currently covered with weeds. It's going to be a fairly large project to clean that up which we haven't had the time yet to do. But as soon as the seeds start to get too large for the peat pots I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get it done.

Over the last couple of days all the seeds in the garden I planted out there have started to sprout. The Cucumbers are moving a little slow, but the entire row of Pole Beans have all come up. The first of the Bush Beans have also sprouted. You can see in the picture below the difference between the ones that I started indoors (in the back) verses the ones I planted as seeds (front left).

Peas are still looking good!

The Zucchini have all grown some new leaves. I was a little worried about them when the first (round) leaves were turning yellow. All the true leaves (spade-shaped) that opened look good and no insects have tried to eat them yet.

The other bit of news is that I pulled the first vegetables. Just a few radishes and a couple of the larger heads of lettuce for a salad with dinner tonight. Tuna steaks and a garden salad... yum.

And finally, here's the latest schematic of the garden:

May 9, 2009 Slug Attack

2009-05-09T18:41:00.000-07:00

I checked on the garden the other day and noticed that the radish leaves were full of holes. I'm sure that this is only the first of many attacks from the thousands of insects in the fields. While I'm not 100% certain what eat the leaves, I was able to find a problem that has been getting worse with all the wet weather. Slugs. (the pill bugs supposedly are OK, I read that they only eat decaying matter).

After a quick Google search I learned that beer traps seem to be the most effective way of getting rid of them- at least the ones that you don't take care of by hand. So I marched into the local beer distributor and asked for the cheapest, crappiest beer they have. That's right you guessed it: Miller Light.

I set out a few plastic containers full of the "beer" and sunk it into the dirt about an inch. The You Bet Your Garden guy recommended that they stay above the soil an inch or so to keep beneficial insects from falling in, so I did. I also turned over all the boards lining the garden and flicked them all off into a tub of salt. I hope that will keep them under control!

May 9, 2009 More Plants From the Market

2009-05-09T16:47:00.000-07:00

Today was the second week of the Grower's Market in West Chester. We got there a little later in the day this time so the selection was a little weak. But I was able to find some of the items I was looking for. I left with:

4 Cantaloupes
2 Purple Peppers
1 Sweet Banana Pepper
1 Luigi Pepper (They look like Frying Peppers, but have no heat)
1 Lemon Boy Tomato (large all yellow)
1 Mr Stripey Tomato (also large yellow but with stripes)
1 Super Sweet Cherry Tomato
3 Eggplants (American this time)
1 Rosemary Plant
1 Marjoram plant
1 Sage Plant

All I'm missing now are 2 more Plum Tomatoes, 1 Cherry Tomato, and a few more Pepper plants. I was especially disappointed that no vendor had any hot peppers today. I was promised by one of the farmers that next week there will be six varieties of hot peppers to choose from- and that's just one stand! I plan on getting a Jalapeno, a Hungarian Wax as they are spicy but still edible. I'm toying with planting a Habanero, but I'm not sure that I'll ever eat a single one! I like to keep my peppers at 100,000 or less... Here's a chart. I'm open to suggestions, but I guess I'll see what else they have there next week.

I think I'm also now set up with the herbs I want to grow this year. I have now 2 basil plants, 1 Thyme, 1 Oregano, 1 Cilantro, 1 Tarragon, 1 Rosemary, 1 Sage, and 1 Marjoram. I have everything but the Basil and Rosemary in two long planters. It's the same set up as the previous two years and it's worked well. The closer they are to the kitchen the better!

All the plants are now in, and my hands are sore from all the additional yard work. Place looks great though! (Thanks Stacey for mowing the path!)

I also had decide to change out the tomato cages for large wooden stakes. The cages I had were only three feet tall and I'm hoping the tomatoes get a little larger than that. It was the best I could do when I was growing them in pots on the roof of my old apartment, but not now. So I pounded in some stakes and reused the tomato cage for the bush beans. I took the larger, more sturdy three-sided tomato cage and used that for the cantaloupes.

Here are the Loupes and Eggplant:

And the Peas are climbing!

May 5, 2009 A New Plan After the Market

2009-05-05T15:44:00.000-07:00

It's been raining in West Chester off and on now since Saturday and won't stop for another three days. After work on Saturday I put in all the plants we got at the Grower's Market as well as support for the beans. It was a lot of work, but it was fun. I ended up putting in two 7 foot poles and strung chicken wire between them. It wasn't exactly Swiss engineered but it's much sturdier than I thought! A MUCH better job than what I did with the peas. After all the plants were in I realized that the garden plan I came up with in March needed to be revised. So here's the current plan (green are in the ground, yellow is planned, and red went in but never came up):

I was able to get out into the garden after work again today to put in the last of the seeds I started. I also finally snapped some pictures of all the work on Saturday. So here they are:

Four tomatoes - 2 Plums, 2 heirlooms

Six peppers: 4 Red, 1 Orange, and 1 Green

The peas are starting to climb the support.

This is a Japanese Eggplant. The guy at the stand that sells the Asian vegetables convinced me to get one. It sounded interesting enough so I decided to make room for it along with three regular eggplants in the plan.

Here's the first pole beans that desperately needed to get into the ground. They sprouted super quick and were outgrowing the little peat pots in a matter of days. I started 30 more after we bought some more dirt and had them in peat pots for a couple of days, but I decided to plant them before they sprouted just to get them in the ground.

The original plan had room for only two, but they were sold in a four pack at the market. You can never have too many zucchini right?

Should be able to eat some of this soon... yum.

It's looking a more like a garden and less like a dirt patch!

Here's the reverse angle!

May 2, 2009 Opening Day at the Market

2009-05-02T17:52:00.000-07:00

I was able to get the market for a few minutes today. Enough to snap a couple of pictures, buy a few plants, and run back to my car. Since I got back from work Stacey and I spent the rest of the day mowing, planting, re-potting, tilling, and weeding. Busy day! I ran out of light to get to any pictures of the results, but if there's a break in the rain then I'll post what we put in today...

For now though, here are a couple of pictures from the Grower's Market today:

May 1, 2009 May Rains

2009-05-01T16:25:00.000-07:00

It's been raining for two days and more is on the way. But in a break in the rain today after work I went down to check everything out. So here's what everything looks like today:

The radishes (on the right) have grown quite a lot. I may dig one up this weekend to see how they're looking! On the left are what may or may not be carrots. I'm going to let it go for a while longer and see what happens. I'm now fairly sure that most of them are the weeds that have been popping up everywhere, but at least I'll find out what they are!

Here are the peas. I still need to find something that they climb up that doesn't have such wide spaces between. In the upper right is the spearmint that came up by itself. I may have to get rid of it to make way for the beans that will be going in soon.

The lettuce looks like it has appreciated all the rain.

And here's a close up of one of the grape vines. What I thought were flowers were actually the leaves budding out. But these look a lot like grapes to me...

In addition to all that, a few days ago I started a dozen pole beans, 4 bush beans, and 6 cucumbers from seeds and they've all germinated. Also, tomorrow the Grower's Market opens in West Chester and I'm going to try and sneak down for a few minutes and see what's available. I'm anxious to get the summer vegetables started and in the ground! I have an obligation tomorrow during the market hours, but next week I'll have lots of time to browse and go crazy by filling up my trunk with seedlings... I can't wait!

April 25, 2009 Pea Support

2009-04-25T15:43:00.001-07:00

It is beautiful this weekend, it's pushing 90 and lots of sun!

I installed my support for the peas today. We found a three-sided tomato cage that I stretched out and put a six foot post at either end to give it a little extra support. The peas aren't big enough to start climbing, but I bet with the nice weather this weekend (and the rest of the week) they'll be there soon. I'm still not certain if the pole beans will out grow the cage (it's about 4 1/2 feet tall). Any suggestions if this system will work? How tall do pole bens tend to be?

The lettuce has really started to take off too. I noticed that several of them are noticeably bigger even after just a couple of days. I may be able harvest a little in a week or two. The second planting is starting to take as well. The second set seems to be growing quicker than the first. Perhaps now it is a little more appropriate fro them to be out and in the ground than the first planting. You can see in some of the pictures that a few from the first planting didn't make it.

Since it's going to be hot and dry for a few days I wanted to figure out how I'm going to water the garden. It's been kinda nice having so much rain that this is the first time I had to worry about water! There is an array of spigots attached to a post near the barn, and one of them is connect to the hose that runs along the north side of my plot. All the hoses run underground so it took a little trial and error until we figured out which lever works what hose. The hose that runs along my plot is connected to a second hose at the far end that goes all the way to the trees in the orchard. I disconnected that and used it to water my portion, but the hose is in bad shape. It leaks pretty bad at the connection and more importantly it's a pain to disconnect and then reconnect every time I need to water. I'd like to put together some kind of automated system, or at least replace the hose and have a splitter where the connection is now.... I'll look into that soon.

In other news: the grape vines are starting to bud. They look like they're going to put on quite a show when they open up!

April 23, 2009 Is That A Bat In Your Poop?

2009-04-23T15:56:00.000-07:00

I took advantage of the nice afternoon and spent some time in the garden. The bag of bat crap is now out of my trunk and into my dirt. I decided to just dump it where I don't have anything growing yet and spread it out as much as possible. So the tomatoes and zucchini I hope will get a little extra boost when I plant them in a few weeks.

I did have to sift out some debris that got sucked up along with the guano but that was expected. What I didn't expect was to have a dried out bat come with the guano. I don't know if he was dead before or after he was vacuumed up, but he sure wasn't flapping around in the bag when I picked it up! I toyed with the idea of chopping him up with the shovel and raking him in the with his own feces, but decided to instead flick him in the trees up by the road. I don't think I'm hardcore enough to use whole animal carcasses as fertilizer yet! It sounds like a bad idea.

I yanked out another hundred or so weeds in the areas with plants growing - they had gotten especially bad near the lettuce. I also raked out a bunch more in the areas that are empty. The lettuce is still looking good. The radishes are getting bigger and the peas are about two inches tall. Everything is growing fast!

The NWS has issued a frost advisory for tonight, but I'm not going to worry it. It's suppose to be in the 80's this weekend!

April 21, 2009 Misty Morning

2009-04-22T15:45:00.000-07:00

Nothing doing with the guano yet. But I thought I'd share this pic I took this morning of the mist rolling over the hills. I took a quick walk through the orchard before the rain came in this afternoon and everything seems to be doing good. The lettuce finally seems to have started to take - it's starting to grow fast!

...Just after I posted the above pic, I looked out the window and noticed this:

April 20, 2009 Local Super Poo!

2009-04-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

I received a crazy message today while at work: "Hey Dave, do you want any of this bat shit?" To which I replied, "Absolutely!" Chef Rob Boone down at Northbrook Marketplace was doing some spring cleaning up in the old barn and collected for me a couple pounds of some magical super poo.

The site Bat Guano Products has some details about the make up of guano on their home page (note the 500lb minimum order- that's a big pile of bat crap!). After a little checking on the Google, it sounds like it has a ton of both Phosphorus and Nitrogen and is an all round amazing organic fertilizer. A thread from the Helpful Gardener details some of the benefits of such potent poo. The one post even says: "It was so highly prized by the Incas that there was a penalty of DEATH! for anyone found killing a bat." I'll have to have snopes.com check that out, but if the Incas were willing to kill over it, then it must be magical. (True: according to a BBC page cited by Wikipedia)

It's raining pretty good outside right now and I'm a little sleepy from Chef Rob's amazing BBQ brisket, so the bag of bat crap is going to stay in the trunk of my car for at least a day before I figure out how best to use it. If I get off work early enough tomorrow I''ll try and get it out in the garden before I head down to south Philly to watch the Flyers beat up on the Pens. I think most of it will end up directly in the soil, and the rest in the compost pile. The BBC page linked above says that it is a great compost activator.

It also seems that there are also some precautions I need to be aware of when handling it. I read that you shouldn't handle the guano with bare hands and should avoid breathing it in in excess - both life lessons I learned long ago regarding ANY kind of excrement. I'll comply.

Thanks again Rob!

April 16, 2009 After the Rain

2009-04-16T15:21:00.000-07:00

It's been a little cold and raining non-stop for the last few days. But the next few days are forecast to be warm and sunny. I think that finally the cold nights are behind us and the threat of frost is past. The Farmer's Market will be opening in a two weeks and that's when I'll really get down to business with the planting! Right now it looks like I'm just growing dirt.

I finally got around to the weeds this afternoon. Too many for one day, but I put a good dent in them! I left the section with the carrots alone because I can't tell what (if any of them) are carrots. But anything growing close to the peas, lettuce, and radishes got taken out.

The peas are growing fast. Only 12 of them have come up and only in one row. I'm not sure what happened but it'll still be enough for the two of us.

I need to start thinking about how to support them and soon! I had originally planned on some complicated rig but I think that I won't have the time to design, buy, and put it all together before they're needed. I'm likely going to settle for a bamboo tripod and save the engineering for the beans. There will be more of a need for something more complicated for the numbers I have planned for the beans.

Other than that the radishes are all coming in fine. The secondary leaves are just showing. Most of the lettuce seems to have survived. Only three of the Merlot Red Leaf didn't make it. I can't tell if it was varmints or weather, but I'm going to blame the weather for now... I'll drive myself crazy trying to outwit 'dem varmints. Although there is a ground hog hole within the orchard fence that I found and a chunky one living under the woodpile. So I probably will have to put a second wire low to the ground when I start to plant more.