Yup, done it again...

This past year I was worse than usual and did not get around to blogging about my garden. My new spring resolution is to be better at keeping notes about the garden. For now though this is from memory....

Let's see... the potatoes did not make it. There was a crazy heat wave and termites got into my potato growing bags and ruined them all. I had waited until after vacation to harvest, in hindsight I should have dumped the bags before vacation because I saw rotten remnants of what might have been lovely potatoes that the termites ruined.

The zucchini went bonkers in the heat, as usual and lasted into August before the squash bugs ruined the plant. Normally I would've been sick of zucchini by that point anyway but I discovered zucchini fritters and couldn't get enough of them.

The eggplant produced nicely and I thoroughly enjoyed making eggplant hummus out of them.

The big surprise was the banana peppers. I got tonnes of them and decided to try making salsa with those instead of bell peppers.... WONDERFUL! I will be growing lots more again for making salsa.

The tomatoes didn't do so great. I am struggling with the seedlings in the seed starter. They get leggy and when they are planted outside don't produce a lot of fruit.

For the things that did typically well, the carrots, beets, leek, celery, cucumbers all grew like every other year.

I actually got a nice bowl worth of peas this year. Making progress. I used the legume inoculant and it really made a difference. I think if it hadn't been a crazy hot year I would've had lots of peas.

I tried the already started plants from the nursery for broccoli, brussel sprouts and kohlrabi and they all did well. The broccoli didn't put on too much because of the heat though. The brussel sprouts grew tall. Since I didn't know when to prune the leaves I started too early. This year I need to leave it alone till the fall I think.

The beans put on nicely after I finely got them to grow. Something kept eating the plants off so I over seeded and ended up getting enough to have lots to freeze.

In around all the tomatoes and peppers I planted spinach which worked out really well. I was able to harvest lots before the heat stopped them from growing.

I put a lot of basil plants in and harvested early to make pesto which worked out the best. With the heat they went bitter again and I couldn't use them later in the summer.

I also grew lettuce in a planter box and these grew really well until it got hot. I will definitely do this again too.

The nice surprise was the cajun peppers and jalapeño that I got starter plants for. These were yummy and I will start a bunch from seed this year. I also tried poblano but they didn't grow very well. They were all small and not big enough to stuff. Also, in the fall I pulled the entire plants out just before a heavy frost and hung them in the basement. Surprisingly enough they do ripen that way.

Now it's time to start planning this year's garden :D

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.