June's been busy!

Somewhere along the way, June disappeared. 

So lets see. I had to reseed the green beans, something kept eating the plants to a nub. Now I have a wicked nice bushy plant but so far no green beans. I'm afraid the excessive heat we've had the last two weeks are not helping the plants flower. 

The broccoli was all harvested early. The heads were small since we had so much heat and the plants were done and tore out by mid June. 

I also over planted my spinach and was eating spinach salad every day in June. What's left now has all bolted and the seeds I planted have not grown. Not sure if it's the heat or what.

Everything is huge now, this was in the middle of June.

 

The 2nd weekend in June we went camping and came back to zucchini that needed to be harvested.

For the last week of June I was gone for work and came back to baseball bat zucchini. That's my size 9 shoe.

I've also been able to harvest enough basil to make 4 cups of basil pesto to put in the freezer. At the end of May I chopped the oregano way back and made 3 cups of oregano pesto for the freezer. Since then the oregano has gone wild again and needs to be whacked back again.

Tonight I harvested the first cucumber and I see that I should have enough pickling cucumbers by the weekend to make a small batch of pickles. I also picked the first 4 banana peppers as well. 

My potato plants started dying back two weeks ago. The plants were huge and wonderful but it seems to be like last year. The heat does them in. I've decided to just leave them be until there's nothing left of the plant but stalks. That seemed to work last year and we'll see what I get. 

Way behind on notes, time to catch up

I'm way behind in making garden notes, so here goes:

My seed trays did very well however I lost half the summer savory. I need to have these in a different seed tray next year, they don't like the same amount of water that the rest of the sprouts need. Here's the trays on March 29th and then again on May 4th:

I planted broccoli, kohlrabi and brussel sprouts from plants I bought at the nursery. I've already harvest the broccoli heads and now I'm working on the little sprouts that come up from the stalks. These were put in at the end of March and these photos are from May 4th:

And this is May 16th:

I've harvested a couple kohlrabi as well (yummy) and I'm sure the rest will be harvested in the next couple weeks. By the end of June I expect the broccoli and kohlrabi plants will be gone, which is good because I have a couple volunteer potato plants coming up in the midst of them. I'm hoping it's the blue caribe potatoes that I planted their last year. I foolishly didn't save any seed potatoes and won't make that mistake again. 

This year I'm growing potatoes in potato grow bags. Awesome idea! You roll down the bag and put some soil in, then as the plant grows you add more soil to the bag until you have it fully unrolled and full of soil. The potatoes grow on the stalk of the plant and with this method you get more stalk under the soil so there's supposed to be higher yields. To top it all off, no digging! When it's time to harvest, dump the bag out. This year I've planted kennebec, red pontiac, purple majesty and an irish rose fingerling. Here's the red pontiac and purple majesty and then next photo is the kennebec's on May 4th:

This is kennebec on May 16th. The bags are fully unrolled for all but the purple majesty and fingerlings now and I'm starting to see some flowers.

I planted the carrots, beets, and peas in March. Here they are with the overwintered leeks, and celery I put in as starter plants in March as of May 4th

And then again on May 16th

I planted everything I needed from the seed trays on the weekend of May 5th/6th and gave the rest of the starter plants to friends. These are catsup tomatoes planted with the green beans behind and spinach and basil interplanted around the tomatoes:

This is sweet banana peppers and eggplant with basil and spinach interplanted around them. At the other end of the bed I planted two zucchini hills and nasturtiums. 

This is a picture from May 4th of the bed that has the asparagus and garlic from last year. In March I planted kale and romaine. Since this picture I've added carrots in around the romaine because the romaine will be gone by the time the carrots need space. I've also added, cucumbers to climb the fence and put my hot peppers here, hopefully far enough from my sweet peppers in the other bed that they don't cross pollinate. The hot peppers I planted this year are jalapeño, cajun, and poblano.

And last but not least is the herb bed. The oregano comes back on it's own every year and was huge so last weekend I trimmed it back and made a bunch of oregano pesto to put in the freezer. Oregano pesto is our favorite but it's the most work. Took and hour and a half to pick the tiny leaves off enough to fill a cake mixing bowl which then only produced 3 & 1/2 cups of pesto.... but delish!

This picture is from May 4th. In addition to the oregano is the sage which I severely cut back each year and still ends up huge. I've also added thyme, cilantro, dill and planted some summer savory seeds. No signs of the summer savory yet but the rest is looking good. 

I'll have to catch up more later but this is a good start. Excited to harvest everything. 

Sprouts

During the heat wave we had in March, I had a sudden rush that I was behind the game with my garden. I wasn't but thank goodness for the push to get going.

My sprouts have been struggling though, we've been switching back and forth in the weather so that I cannot always get sufficient light on them. Last year was the first year I seriously tried seed trays and I have not yet purchased grow lights. I may have to make an investment next year. For now I'm taking advantage of all the windows in my dining room and just how much light is in that room. Even still, some of my sprouts are leggy, especially the tomatoes. Last year they produced despite being leggy although it was a rough season for tomatoes in general. The tomatoes last year didn't get very big but I'm not sure if that was from the weather or my leggy starter plants.

Some of this years sprouts are looking good though, especially the eggplant, leeks, cilantro, parsley and sweet banana peppers. I can't wait for the weather to consistently warm up so that I can get them outside in the ground so that they can have the better lighting from the sun.

Heat Wave

Well I thought the weather might turn and it did, wow did it get hot!!! The last weekend in March was record breaking heat... high 80s and low 90s, crazy hot!

I didn't do any gardening this past weekend. Other than watering the plants and taking my seed trays out to enjoy the sun, I didn't do a thing... too hot! Monday night though I broke down, despite the heat and tilled the tomato bed, and... once again, tore the peppermint out of the herb garden and tilled it. Never, ever, ever plant mint in the ground. I'm going to regret that forever.

I've had a lot of discussions with local gardeners and they are saying to go for it and plant seeds even though we're not at the frost date yet. Theory is that the ground is so warm now that even if the temps drop some that the ground itself won't get cold enough to hurt the seeds as long as their not the high temp plants.

I decided to gamble in a safe way and planted green bean seeds. For the rest I'm going to wait until I the weekend and wait to see what the long range forecast is predicting. The last frost date here is between mid-April and the end. If this weekend's long range forecast looks reasonably warm I'm going to plant a bunch of seeds. My seed trays are going to be kept safe for a while longer though. Not willing to take a gamble on those cause I don't get a chance for a "re-do" on that.

Crazy warm weather and tilling

The temps have been in the 70s and 80s for the majority of the last two weeks. It's been crazy, unseasonable, awesome weather for gardening! A week ago I planted the carrot, beet and pea seeds in the garden in a nice lovely rain. They are sprouting nicely now.

Over the weekend I bought myself something to make gardening life easier... a tiller! I've been turning the soil by hand all these years with a shovel and a maddox (a form of pick axe). When I had two more raised beds added to the garden last year (making a total of 5 raised beds not counting the herb bed) my back starting singing.... so this year I got a two cylinder Craftsman mini-tiller... I can't believe I've gone all these years without it!!! I can till up a bed in a half hour now without breaking a sweat other than what the temps are causing.

Now that I have beds tilled, I planted some more this weekend using starter plants from my favorite local nursery since I didn't have time to get these going myself:
- Celery
- Broccoli
- Kohlrabi (something new to try)
- Brussel Sprouts (another new attempt)

I also seeded some Romaine lettuce and Kale.

For now I'm sticking with the cold weather crops, I have a sneaky suspicion that this unseasonably warm weather is going to break at some point in April. So for now I'm keeping my fair weather sprouts in the house in seed trays and sticking to the reliable cold crops outdoors.

Seed trays

I've decided that I will no longer use the plastic domes that come with the seed trays. I think that is the reason my seedlings get "leggy". I remember (decades ago) when my grandfather started seeds.  He just used egg crates in the sun porch. Just good old fashioned direct sunlight, and he grew the best garden... in his senior years he cut down to just two acres, lol!

I pulled the plastic cover off the seedlings this week and those that are coming up now are looking way better than the first sprouts which are leggy, this includes my tomatoes which are the worst. I've seeded a new bunch of tomatoes, just in case. I'm hoping everything else works out ok.

Planting seeds in the rain

Tonight I followed the advice of the almanac.com planting calendar for my area and planted seeds... in the rain no less. I find that planting in the rain, a light rain not a downpour, is excellent for seeds planting!

In the new bed that is part shade I planted,
- Frosty Peas (Earl May seeds) - and this year I used an inoculate for the first time. We'll see if it helps because I've never had much luck with peas.
- Early Wonder beets (Earl May seeds) - I've planted these before with good luck
- and my favorite, Little Finger Carrots (Earl May seeds) - which I plant every year with good results every time.... yummy!

My seed trays are doing well although I realized late that I should've taken the plastic cover off sooner. My tomatoes are leggy, I hope they recover ok. I think I'll plant a few more tomato seeds just in case.

I think my asparagus is taunting me

I planted asparagus roots last year, starting from roots to save a year from the "establishment" cycle. This year the asparagus are looking mighty luscious! If I didn't know better, I'd think they're taunting me.

Unfortunately though, I have to wait at least another year before I can slice off a few spears.

For now my notes are:
- didn't cut last season's stalks until this past weekend. It seemed to work really well. The spears were tiny and after cutting they shot up 4 inches in two days. Crazy!!
- I didn't cut the old stalks down low, left a good 3 inches.
- from what I read I may not get away with not trimming every year. Something about a "rust". I may have just been lucky since this was such a mild winter and so early in the development cycle
- also from what I've read, I really need to work on keeping those asparagus ferns contained upright, they can spread from seed. Last year they were leaning over the lawn, the last thing I need is asparagus in the lawn.... I already have peppermint trying to take over the lawn.

Garden log and Seed plantings

Up until last summer I kept a separate journal on my computer of my gardening notes, just quick nothing fancy notes. Well that software program crapped out last year and I wasn't able to access my notes. I just figured out how to find and read the notes after digging in the program files and was able to get them out as text. Going forward, I've resolved to keep these notes on my blog where I don't have to worry about this again.

So, that said....

I started my seed trays this week. The weather has been fabulous, in the 80s and because of the warmth I feel so behind on my gardening tasks... which I am, but not too behind. The seeds I started are:
- the last of the Summer Savory seeds from last year (lake valley seeds)
- the last of the American Flag Leek seeds from last year (lake valley seeds)
- sweet banana peppers from Early May
- black beauty eggplant seeds from last year (Ferry Morse heirloom)
- sweet italian basil (lake valley seeds)
- mammoth dill seeds from last year (lake valley seeds)
- triple curled parsley seeds from last year (Burpee organic from Menards)
- cilantro seeds (Earl May)
- catsup roma tomatoes (Earl May)
- dwarf marigold seeds from last year (Earl May)
- and St Johns Fire Salvia seeds (lake valley seeds) that J insisted on planting because he wants to take photos of them

I also need to get the beds turned and get on top of planting these seeds I picked up, I'm always late getting these in (usually mid April) and they are always stunted or slow:
- dwarf dates blue kale - curled scotch sees from last year (Early May)
- little finger carrots (Earl May)
- early wonder beets (Earl May)
- frost peas (Earl may)