Re: Bri's 2017 veggie garden
First of what promises to be many months of chard harvests. Cooked this up with some snow peas from the back garden and doused it in lemon-tahini dressing. Life is good right now. It's mouth-watering.
April 1st broc/lettuce bed after harvesting nearly all the lettuce. I have two huge containers of lettuce in the fridge, should last 1-2 weeks of daily salads. I would have liked to stretch the harvest out a little bit longer, but the broccoli is getting close to setting heads and I wanted to free up the soil space for the broccoli to put new roots into. Once I pulled the lettuce I threw down a ton of fertilizer, hoed it into the top surface, and watered. The broc will produce much larger central heads and side shoots with this extra growing room/fertility.
Breezy day yesterday knocked this one over, but I think it's going to be fine (lettuce carcasses visible)!
The other front bed. This is turning into one of my most productive beds ever. I normally like to give these kinds of veggies a little more space, but I decided to try a little closer spacing with more fertilizer and water. If I had a large garden, I wouldn't need to, but a little more intensive for this bed seems to be working out.
Parsley! I'm growing a lot more herbs this year. Never grown many herbs, so I'm learning.
My giant rhubarb
(lots of updates on the back yard garden coming in next posts)
Lettuce and brussels sprouts doing well
Potted peppers doing great. In-ground not so much. The symphs are definitely having an impact. As an experiment (I read about someone doing this and getting results with symphylan infestations), I planted a bunch of buckwheat around the peppers. Apparently the symphs love buckwheat roots. The idea is that they'll leave the peppers alone and go eat the buckwheat roots, allowing the peppers to recover. Once the peppers get big enough, and before the buckwheat competes too strongly with the peppers, I'll just cut down the buckwheat. Hopefully by then, the peppers will be large enough to withstand the symphs. *fingers crossed*
Peas - pretty much done harvesting these. Will see if I can get some seeds before I need to clear this bed to make room for some winter crops.
Yukon gold potatoes doing great.
And the May 15th lettuce/broc bed doing well.
I'm really disappointed in these purple potatoes I tried out. They've been in the ground for over almost two months, and took weeks to emerge, then grew really slowly, and now are flowering! I'll go try and see if I can find the variety. Edit: variety is Purple Viking.
The siletz, yellow crookneck, and dill bed, and close-up of the siletz tomatoes.
The indeterminate tomato bed. They're about 6' high already. Setting fruit fairly steadily.
Supposed to get to about 100 for a couple days this weekend. I decided to use my mobile shade station on the mature broccoli, rather than the young lettuce/broccoli. The young ones won't like it, but they'll recover. The mature broccoli might bolt or set small heads, so I'd rather put it there. The other end of this bed gets afternoon shade from a neighbor's tree, so I put it on the opposite end.
Well, it hit 100* two days in a row over the weekend (which is unusual for around here). Most of the plants look fine, but one of the maturing broccoli put up a small, loose head. I cut it, hopefully it will produce decent side shoots. The other ones look little worse for the wear, which is good.
I did lose some basil that had just emerged in a pot that wasn't connected to the automatic irrigation system and got fried, but I can replant. A couple growing tips on one indeterminate tomato look like they might have fried, but the plant as a whole should be fine.
Finally got some side shoots from the early broccoli! I think I started those guys a week or two too early, as the timing of them has just been off the entire time. But at least now they seem to be producing. I hope to get one more set of side shoots before pulling them to make room for fall/winter crops.
I did lose some basil that had just emerged in a pot that wasn't connected to the automatic irrigation system and got fried, but I can replant. A couple growing tips on one indeterminate tomato look like they might have fried, but the plant as a whole should be fine.
Finally got some side shoots from the early broccoli! I think I started those guys a week or two too early, as the timing of them has just been off the entire time. But at least now they seem to be producing. I hope to get one more set of side shoots before pulling them to make room for fall/winter crops.
Broccoli heads starting to form out front
Carrots starting to form underground. I think I'll give these another week or two before pulling one to see how filled-out they are.
I liked the at-ground-level shot for the carrots so I tried again with onions. 
Will probably look cooler once they start bulbing, heh.
Something took a couple chunks out of what was going to be my first ripe tomato. 
Luckily starting to notice some color on some others.
And this week's lettuce harvest:
Will probably look cooler once they start bulbing, heh.
Dug out the lame purple viking potatoes today, luckily my yukon gold's are doing really well. Just hilled them for the 2nd time. I replanted the bed with some fall broccoli. I was going to wait until mid-July to do this, but decided to give them a little extra time to grow - they should provide plenty of side shoots well into the fall if the main head comes a little early.
I have two small beds left with which to stagger lettuce for the rest of the season. I decided to plant 1 row every 2 weeks, starting today, through August 15th. I think this will work a little better than planting mixed variety all at once and trying to pick off it for an extended period of time.
The plan then is to use my front bed for winter kale and overwintered broccoli, and plant fall spinach in pots to avoid symphylans (and because I won't have any more in-ground beds!). I dream of the day I can garden a 1/2 acre or so! Until then, it's quick turnovers!
I have two small beds left with which to stagger lettuce for the rest of the season. I decided to plant 1 row every 2 weeks, starting today, through August 15th. I think this will work a little better than planting mixed variety all at once and trying to pick off it for an extended period of time.
The plan then is to use my front bed for winter kale and overwintered broccoli, and plant fall spinach in pots to avoid symphylans (and because I won't have any more in-ground beds!). I dream of the day I can garden a 1/2 acre or so! Until then, it's quick turnovers!
May 15th lettuce/broccoli bed
Yukon gold potatoes, probably on their last hilling. Noticed flowers starting on some of the largest ones.
Brussels sprouts and "Summer Purple" broccoli. Supposedly this is a purple sprouting type that will bloom without over-wintering. We shall see.
June lettuce/broc bed
Herbs! Cilantro, summer savory, and basil. The dill is really slow-going and still not very big at this point. I'm wondering if it's a slow-growing plant? If not, the symphylans may be eating it.
Front bed
Some harvest
Every year I grow sunflowers and I get these bees feeding on the nectar... I call them "drunk" because they sit there gorging themselves, then are unable to fly away. They'll literally hang out, covered in pollen, without moving, for hours.
And a garden project... dog fence built! I adopted a rescue a couple months ago and have been tripping over the makeshift chicken wire fence I put up ever since. Finally got around to building a proper fence to keep her out of the garden.
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Taiji
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It all looks great.
I'm a couple days away from my first ripe tomatoes. Unfortunately these are fruit that set long before our ongoing 100+ heat wave. Was looking at your little shade structure in a previous photo and got to thinking maybe I could roll out some shade cloth over the top of my structure where the tomatoes are. Maybe I could get some new fruit set.
As it is, I will have a long lull between tomatoes once the ones that are on there now are gone. In the meantime, we wait for the summer monsoons down this way! They will moderate day and night time temps and things will do much better.
I'm a couple days away from my first ripe tomatoes. Unfortunately these are fruit that set long before our ongoing 100+ heat wave. Was looking at your little shade structure in a previous photo and got to thinking maybe I could roll out some shade cloth over the top of my structure where the tomatoes are. Maybe I could get some new fruit set.
As it is, I will have a long lull between tomatoes once the ones that are on there now are gone. In the meantime, we wait for the summer monsoons down this way! They will moderate day and night time temps and things will do much better.
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wisconsindead
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KitchenGardener
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Monsoons sound like the kind of thing that could wreak havoc on some hastily tied down shade cloth, so be careful!Taiji wrote:Was looking at your little shade structure in a previous photo and got to thinking maybe I could roll out some shade cloth over the top of my structure where the tomatoes are.
.......
In the meantime, we wait for the summer monsoons down this way! They will moderate day and night time temps and things will do much better.
Once flowering stops, the vines will start pumping all their energy into producing potatoes underground. When the vines brown and die back, they're spent and you can dig potatoes. How long this period between flowering and vines dying back lasts depends on lots of factors, not the least of which is weather and watering.wisconsindead wrote:Bri,
When do you harvest your potatoes? I am struggling to determine the time that I should harvest. My potatoes are just about done flowering.
I recommend cutting off watering when you start to notice the vines deteriorating (the first signs of yellowing/browning, the vine will usually slowly die back for another week or so). This will harden the skins of the potatoes a little more to improve storage. So you also want to dig when there hasn't been rain for a week+ if possible.
If the weather is warm and the soil moist at the end of the cycle, the potatoes will sprout in-ground and this is obviously very bad for your harvest and to be avoided.
So basically the trick is to try and have your vines die back when the weather has started to cool a bit and is expected to be dry, but if they die back early the potatoes can be fine in the ground, to be dug later, as long as it's dry. If they die back early and you can't keep them dry, dig them immediately.
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wisconsindead
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Thanks Bribri80 wrote:Once flowering stops, the vines will start pumping all their energy into producing potatoes underground. When the vines brown and die back, they're spent and you can dig potatoes. How long this period between flowering and vines dying back lasts depends on lots of factors, not the least of which is weather and watering.wisconsindead wrote:Bri,
When do you harvest your potatoes? I am struggling to determine the time that I should harvest. My potatoes are just about done flowering.
I recommend cutting off watering when you start to notice the vines deteriorating (the first signs of yellowing/browning, the vine will usually slowly die back for another week or so). This will harden the skins of the potatoes a little more to improve storage. So you also want to dig when there hasn't been rain for a week+ if possible.
If the weather is warm and the soil moist at the end of the cycle, the potatoes will sprout in-ground and this is obviously very bad for your harvest and to be avoided.
So basically the trick is to try and have your vines die back when the weather has started to cool a bit and is expected to be dry, but if they die back early the potatoes can be fine in the ground, to be dug later, as long as it's dry. If they die back early and you can't keep them dry, dig them immediately.
I suspect raccoon or rat as the perp eating my ripe tomatoes. Any tomato too close to the ground is subject to this. Not a huge deal once my staked indeterminates start ripening further up the vine, but kind of annoying right now. Although I suppose if it's a rat, it could climb the vines/stakes a lot easier than a raccoon.
Back yard wider shot. The empty beds are getting ready for fall/winter crops.
Well, I snuck out to the garden with a flashlight tonight and busted one very naughty rat eating my tomatoes! So mystery solved... now to figure out what to do about it. I don't believe in killing animals just because they're trying to survive, and I live in a city, so rats are part of the environment.
A few years ago I had a rat living in my strawberry patch. It never left. It'd sit there eating strawberries all day long and felt perfectly safe under the cover of the thick leaves in the patch.
Raccoons would have been easier to deal with, but rats are smart, can fit through smaller openings, and can climb my staked tomatoes without knocking them over. This will be a difficult one to solve.
A few years ago I had a rat living in my strawberry patch. It never left. It'd sit there eating strawberries all day long and felt perfectly safe under the cover of the thick leaves in the patch.
Raccoons would have been easier to deal with, but rats are smart, can fit through smaller openings, and can climb my staked tomatoes without knocking them over. This will be a difficult one to solve.
So I think I'm going to try a spray of essential oils. Apparently mint, lemongrass and thyme are effective rat deterrents. Going to pick up some essential oils today and mix something up into a spray bottle and spray around the base of the plants. I do wonder if it will affect the taste of the tomatoes for me, too, though.
April broccoli. Getting lots of side shoots from these. Honestly I don't know why I mess around with other varieties, the one in the foreground is the variety that constantly produces best for me (Arcadia). It grows bigger plants, with bigger heads, and more side shoots. The others are a hybrid variety pack. Produced ok. I think it's all Arcadia from now on, except for MAYBE 1 early sowing of a couple fast-maturing hybrids, we'll see.
And my other front yard bed... completely covered in veggies! I have to constantly pick the chard leaves away from the longer-growing stuff like onions and carrots. The carrots are looking like they're fattening up, so I will probably pull one or two soon. I wish the cauliflower would head up already so I could pull them out and give the rest of the plants some more room!
Brussels/summer purple... growth seems to be slowing. Time to side dress some fert, I think. Also considering spraying the brussels with some neem oil. I have never successfully grown them due to aphids/cabbage worms, and it's been a couple years since I've tried. I remember now how hard it is to get in there with soap spray and get them, they're starting to be an issue again.
Yellow crookneck and siletz, with dill in between. The dill has really been a disappointment, I think the symphylans got to them. I started new ones in pots to see if they do better.
Yukon gold potatoes. As an experiment, I planted this bed with the largest seed potatoes on the left, and the smallest on the right. Clearly, the size of the seed potato makes a big difference in the size of the plants (and then, most likely, the size of the harvest).
May broc/lettuce bed... been harvesting lettuce here. About to take another 7 plants.
June broc/lettuce.
Indeterminate tomatoes, over 6' tall and bearing heavily!
Herbs! Summer savory and basil!
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wisconsindead
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So planting buckwheat in with the peppers seems to have done the trick to keep the symphs off. These plants had been "stuck" for weeks, with ZERO new growth. Finally growing again now that the buckwheat got in there. I just cut this buckwheat back about halfway, added some fertilizer, and will wait another week or two before cutting the buckwheat all the way back. Hopefully, that will have provided enough of a growth spurt for the peppers that the symph predation will not impact them as much. But, I am considering sowing another round of buckwheat, hoping that if I can continue to give the peppers a few more weeks of unencumbered growth into August, they'll be big enough to bear some decent fruit in the late-summer/fall.
New growth!
Pepper shots.
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KitchenGardener
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It's "Cozumel." The picture makes it look whiter than it is, they're actually a pale yellow and ripen to full red:applestar wrote:Was that white one Roumanian Rainbow? Or maybe Antohi Romanian?
https://www.territorialseed.com/product/ ... epper-seed
Made a quart and a half of pesto!
Side shoots from the front yard bed. Because the main heads formed during a heat wave, some of these side shoots were larger than the main heads. This is the advantage of NOT growing a bed intensely, and giving the broccoli new, fertile soil to grow into even as the main head matures.
Pulled the first carrots! These are good-sized but subsequent ones should be longer.
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KitchenGardener
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