Memorial Day weekend mega-post

It's been a ridiculously hectic week at work, and so I can think of no better way to decompress and kick off my Memorial Day weekend than to get my hands dirty and to take some photos of my lovely fruits and veggies.

We begin our blogtastic voyage in the strawberry patch. In my previous posts, these plants were covered up by a rowcover but they are now free from those restraints to spill out of the bed. This has been an unusually wet spring and the constant humidity of the cover was causing powdery mildew to start growing on the leaves. Thankfully, a few days drying in the sun seems to have cleared this up. There are a now a few berries too.

Ain't nothing gonna break my stride,
Nobody's gonna slow me down,
Oh no, I've got to keep on moving ...

first red berries!

Next, we turn to the alliums -- scallions, garlic, onions, and leeks. They are all loving this rain. The scallions are around 8-10 inches tall now, and will be ready to begin harvesting soon. However, the oregano blob has other plans for this patch of dirt. If I don't cut the oregano back soon, then I'm going to lose most of one row. Anybody need some oregano?

scallions

Here is the garlic jungle. It's getting tough to walk through here now. Last week, I mulched this garden with a bunch of grass clippings. It seemed to work really well for last year's crop by maintaining a good moisture level in the soil. We are still working on the last bulb of last year's garlic harvest. If 20 bulbs lasted us an entire year, what are we going to do with 120 bulbs? Oh boy.

The onions and leeks under this hoop house have some new neighbors this week. These are the various chile, bell, and sweet pepper plants. Onions are great companion plants for peppers and tomatoes, and will help to deter pests from the peppers.

The potatoes have hit their stride now and are starting to push the limits of their hoop house. I've already hilled the plants twice, which will help prevent greening of the potatoes. In the furrow that was left in the middle after hilling, I planted some bush beans. No space will be wasted this year!

This weekend, I also planted the concurbit bed. At the far end of this bed are the cucumbers, which will be trellised. I hope to build that trellis this weekend, if the weather holds up. In the front half of the bed is my tres milpas experiment. Corn shoots are now poking up, and I just planted the yellow squash and zucchini. The squash and zucchini will grow low around the corn, maximizing moisture and minimizing weed growth. Once the corn is about a foot tall, then I'll plant pole beans to climb up the corn.

I was hoping to also post about how great my peas were doing, but they suffered a blow from Mother Nature last night. A strong thunderstorm blew through and somehow knocked over the trellis. This amazes me since it was anchored with nails bent over the feet of the trellis. Anyway, the thing fell over and closed on it self, simultaneously chopping and crushing most of the snow peas. This is really frustrating since the peas were basically at their peak this week. I did my best to support the damaged vines, but I'm not sure if they will recover ...

it's touch and go ...

 

it used to be impossible to see through the trellis

some of the survivors

A few random updates ...

first and second sowing of salad greens

cilantro seedlings have emerged

carrots

And now for a brief gardening equipment interlude ... 

the new rain barrel and Mason bee lodge

'60s era garden tools from my Aunt Cora ... so retro!

my friendly neighborhood orb spider

The raspberry bramble is almost finished with flowering and fruits are starting to form.

The blueberries finished flowering long ago, and are now heavy with fruit. I think we should have ripe berries in about two weeks or so.

This year's fennel crop is looking much better than last year's. I think that the excess water is doing well for it. Also, I read that keeping the bulbs covered with soil will promote better growth. So, I topped this planter up with an extra two inches of soil. If you're wondering why these guys are in a planter, it's because fennel is allelopathic -- it kills other plants.

The swiss chard is not as pretty as the plants in the catalog, but the leaves taste great. We've already had it for dinner twice. Next year, I think that I'll plant a lot more because the leaves really shrink a lot when you saute them. A half pound of leaves probably ended up yielding only half a cup of cooked chard.

The sage and thyme have come back with a vengeance this year.  They are in need of a serious pruning before they engulf the rosemary, lavender, and mint.

Lastly, my little oak tree has come back to life. Maybe by the end of the season, the trunk will actually be bigger than the leaves ...

Well, this blogtastic voyage has now come to and end. Happy Memorial Day!

A short break from the rain ...

... was all I needed to snap enough pictures for this blog post. It has been raining more or less daily for the past week or so. At first, I was excited about all the rain so that my young transplants wouldn't dry out. However, now I am starting to get concerned that we are getting too much rain and that my garden is going to suffer for it one way or another. For the moment though, things are still looking very good.

Now that Mr. Potato has passed on to the big garden in the sky, I can now focus my attentions on the main crop of Yukon Gold potatoes. The growth of these spuds is quite variable, from the 10 inch tall plants shown below to some plants that are only now emerging from the soil. These large plants on the southern side of the bed, and perhaps that side warms better than the back side where most of the smaller plants are found. Also, I didn't chit my potatoes before planting them. Maybe I can try that next year.

potato, "Yukon Gold"

The first two rows of salad mix should be ready to harvest in the next week or. This is the "Wildfire" mix from Johnny's that we liked so much last year. I have to say that it doesn't seem to have as many red leafy greens as I remember, but maybe the colors will come out more with time. I have also sown two additional rows for a second harvest.

"Wildfire" salad mix

I think there is finally some hope that I can grow carrots. The greens on this year's crop look ten times better than anything I had last year. This year, I am using a variety called "Hercules". I thinned about half of the carrots about two weeks ago, but I think that they are probably due for another thinning this weekend.

carrot, "Hercules"

In the perennial vegetables bed, two of the three new rhubarb plants have emerged and are looking very nice. The asparagus crows continue to produce progressively thicker spears, but I probably won't be able to harvest any asparagus until at least next year.

rhubarb

asparagus, "Jersey Knight"

The alliums are all loving this cool, wet weather. I have about 50 onion, 12 leeks, and 110 garlic planted throughout my various garden beds. The other day I was able to harvest some garlic scapes for snacking during my chores in the yard. I ate about a half dozen scapes, but then I couldn't rid my mouth of the taste (and smell) of garlic for about two days.

onion, "Copra"

yellow onions (rear), leeks (front)

The row cover from my "tomato sauce bed" (tomatoes, basil, and onions) had to be removed because the cloth isn't large enough to cover the tomato cages that I put in this past weekend to support the new transplants. I'm not too worried about that since there wasn't much insect damage on any of these vegetables last year, and we are now well beyond the last frost date. The four tomato plants are all around a foot tall now.

tomato, "Big Beef"

basil, "Spicy Bush"

basil, "Sweet Italian" and "Red Rubin"

The pea plants are out of a control. The tallest vines are probably around four feet tall now. Also, I am very happy with how the pea trellis is working out. The tendrils of the plants seem to have no trouble latching on to the mesh. There are lots of flowers now, and so I hope to see some pea pods soon!

I'm going to try to keep the eggplants protected under a row cover for as long as possible. Last year, the plants were devoured by all sorts of bugs. They look pretty good since they were transplanted outside last weekend, but as you can see from the picture, bugs will always find a way to munch on plants.

eggplant, "Nadia"

Finally, the new strawberry bed looks fabulous. These guys are also going to be keep under a tent for as much of the season as possible. I am amazed by how intensely green they look. I guess that I must be doing something right. Best of all, it looks like we'll have strawberries soon.

strawberry, "Quinalt"

Sarah already has dibs on this one

Well, that's the end of this mega post. If the rain ends any time soon, maybe I'll be able to blog again ...

Potato and radish harvest

My experiment/practice growing potatoes in a kitty litter pail has come to an end. Mr. Potato, as he was known affectionately to his compatriots here at Dogstreet Farm, had been suffering from a yellow pallor for at least two weeks now. There were not many leaves left on his stems and it was time to finally put Mr. Potato to rest.

So, after dumping out the soil from the pail, I was happy to discover these eight small potatoes. None are equal in size to the potato that was originally planted, but I figure that this wasn't too bad of a harvest from a potato primarily grown indoors during winter in a kitty litter pail. In total, they weighed in at 0.61 lb.

Today, I also pulled up the remaining radishes. In general, they are pretty small, but they taste good. These were all planted way too close together and I never thinned them. My second sowing is just starting to germinate now, and these are spaced much better. Hopefully, the second harvest will be a little heftier. 

Sweet potatoes and basil

For the past 12 weeks or so, I have been growing my sweet potato slips indoors in pots on a sunny window sill. The longest vine was about 18 inches long, whereas the remaining three plants were about 8 inches to a foot in length. The plants seem quite healthy and the weather here has been unusually mild, so I decided to plant these slips outdoors.

I am going to try to control my vines a bit and have them grow vertically rather than sprawling about the soil and encroaching upon my salad greens in the next section over. To do this, I joined together two tomato cages and stabilized the structure with some short stakes made of PVC pipe. The four plants were then set in the four corners of the cage.

Given the height of the tomato cages, I was no longer able to use a single piece of Agribon to protect the entire bed. So, I wrapped the tomato cages in their own piece of fabric and then married the two pieces together with a bunch of binder clips and some twine.

Here is the view inside of the row cover from the opposite end of the garden bed. As you can see, there is airflow between the two sections of row covers. In the foreground, these are my carrot seedlings after thinning to about an inch apart. I will probably have to do another thinning in a few weeks.

In other news, the Copra (front) and Ruby Ring (rear) onions are growing strong in the "tomato sauce bed". This bed will house tomatoes, onions, and basil. My tomato seedling are about six inches tall under the grow lamps in my home office, but I will probably wait at least another week before I dare put those outdoors.

However, I had no such fears about transplanting my basil today. After cleaning out all the weeds, they were all set in the soil.

basil, "Sweet Italian"

basil, "Spicy Bush"

basil, "Red Rubin"