Gardening

Well, we went on a quick weekend trip to St. Louis last weekend. When we arrived back home, I noticed that a lot of the corn was knocked down. Therefore, my first thought was that we had some strong storms come through and it knocked the corn down.

Upon further investigation, I went out to pick tomatoes that day and all of the corn cobs were eaten! There were some on the ground and some barely hanging off of the stalk. So, I knew it wasn’t wind! The neighbor came out and said “It is a shame what happened to your corn”. We talked further and he said that raccoons got in and ate it all! He said that they got about half of it on one day and then the second half on the next night. Very unfortunate because there were at least 20 good ears of corn left. We managed to get about 30 or so ears that were picked previously – but this would have added on a good amount – not to mention, it is really going to hamper my amount of produce per square feet of space.

So, today I went out and took down the PVC pipe that had holes spaced 8 inches apart for the corn – and put in two rows of pipe with holes six inches apart – then planted another round of Bush Blue Lake 274 beans.  I am really doubting that they will have time to full develop and produce by the time the first frost hits, but I do have the floating row covers and may give them a try.  I don’t think that will work though because green beans are warm-weather plants, not cool-weather.

But, hopefully the green beans that were planted along the road (the flower bed) will produce.  Many have blooms on them – but the deer have been sneaky and keep getting the deer netting away from the green beans and eating some of them down.  So I had to put rocks down on both sides of the netting to hold it in place.

Up at the Tri-Star strawberry pyramids, they look awful.  I’ve watered them quite often but yet they continue to die.  I guess they just simply cannot tolerate the mid-to-high 90 degree days we’ve had for the past few weeks.

The grapes in the arbor are doing OK – but even the grapes have some kind of brownish spot on most of the grapes.  I’ve almost given up on the fact that we’ll have any usable grapes on the vines – and it has turned to be more of a landscaping effect now.

The tomatoes are doing very good this year!  There are four Better Boy plants, four Roma, one Red Cherry tomato, and two Best Boy tomatoes.  I put the two Best Boy tomatoes in the ground much later than the others – but they have caught up and have a half dozen or more tomatoes on them.

You can see a row of green beans in front of the tomatoes here.  They are getting crowded out, but they have provided about 10 pounds of beans this year.

But, today I picked more tomatoes!  We have a huge amount of tomatoes already this year – and I picked another 8+ pounds today.

We are definitely getting a lot more Roma tomatoes than Better Boy.  But, the larger the tomato, the less you get because the plants cannot support as many – and it takes longer for them to ripen.  That is why I like the Roma tomatoes – you get a lot of them and they are of a decent size.

In addition to the tomtoes in the front, the California Wonder peppers are trying to make it.  Out of the eight that were planted, five survived – but the are battling the tomatoes and green beans for light and space.

The plants are probably a bit over a foot tall – about 1/3 the size of the Anaheim Hot Peppers in the container on the driveway.  So, I put some epsom salt around the peppers today to see if this will help boost their growth rate.  I also went ahead and pulled all of the peppers off the five plants – hopefully allowing them to grow more and put on more peppers.

Notice the big brown spot?  I’m not sure what is going on this year (I think this happened last year too) – but many of the peppers get a small brown spot on them – and then it gets larger until it could consume the entire pepper.  It is rotting out and makes them unusable.  The Anaheim Hot Peppers are really bad (unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of them) and so half of those peppers have to be thrown out.

But, here is a photo of the two Anaheimi Hot Peppers in the container in the back.  They are at least three feet tall.

By the peppers are a few radishes that I let to go to seed.  Well, the seed is pretty much done so it is time to pull them down and start taking the seeds off.  I’ve already done a little bit of it – and here are the seed pods I’ve done thus far.  By doing this, I don’t have to purchase radish seed next year – but it does take a bit of work to open all the pods and get the seeds out.

Also in the patio garden is the basil.  I chopped the basil down last week and dehydrated it – but right after that, they started sending up more flower stalks!  I thought by chopping the plants a bit, it should have caused them to get bushy.

Then in the carrot & potato bin – I think it is getting close to time for harvesting the carrots.  I’ve always wondered how you know when carrots are ready to be harvested – but really don’t know.  It seems that I always tend to harvest carrots within the first ten days of August from my previous journals – but haven’t been too happy with the sweetness of them.

Well, several weeks ago all of the onions were harvested.  It took a couple of weeks to harvest them all – because I was waiting for nature to tell me they were ready.  When do you pull onions?  Well, you pull them when the tops start to fall over.  What I mean is this – down by where the bulb and the “leaves” of the onion join, the “leaves” will bend over on their own right near this spot.  When this happens, you know it is time to harvest!  I can definitely say that we got many more onions this year than last – and out of all the onions harvested, only four of them were rotten!  Last year it seems that about half of them rotted out.  Anyways, the onions are now fully dried and cured – since they were sitting out in the garage for a few weeks now.

Alright – what else is new this week?  Well, I turned over five of the ten black buckets that had Kennebec potatoes in them.  What I found was very discouraging.

The potato vines were looking very deathly – so I thought they needed watering.  Well, they didn’t!  it was a nasty gooey mess when I was digging for the potatoes – and only TWO of the five (the two that were by the patio garden) had potatoes in them.  The other three had completely rotten potatoes and they smelled horrendous.  So only five potatoes from five buckets – and only 11 3/8 ounces were achieved.  So, no more putting potatoes in those buckets.  It took at least an hour to dig through them, get the potatoes out, dump the soil, and then wash the buckets out.  Not worth it for less than a pound.

I also picked – yet another – well-past due Burpee Pickler cucumber.  Good and yellow!  We haven’t sliced into it yet, but we had another one that was the same way and it tasted just fine.

The cucumber vines in the back are doing alright.  The two Burpee Pickler vines are doing the best with large, healthy leaves (towards the middle of the picture below).  But the other three – the Little Leaf H-19 Pickling Cucumbers – have very tiny leaves, a LOT of blooms, and ZERO cucumbers.  I won’t be using this variety anymore.  As for the potatoes in the back – they are about ready to be dug up.  Something to do next weekend I suppose.

And for the garden beside the house – the watermelon are taking over!  You can see here that they continue to grow – and are growing past the fencing onto the driveway.

There are three good sized Crimson Sweet watermelons on the vines (three plants too!).  Two are pictred below.

Then, towards the left, the watermelon vines continue to grow!  They are growing on the pathway and landscaping now – and a new watermelon is growing at the very end of this mess!

That takes care of everything going on outside – but what about inside?  Yes!  I just started some lettuce seedlings on the 3rd (three days ago).  I planted seeds of Buttercrunch, Red Salad Bowl, Parris Island, and New Red Fire – and because Simpson Elite is our favorite, we planted twice as many of them.  I have eight black plastic 3-pack containers – so four cells were used for each plant – with eight being used for Simpson Elite.  I had to construct the PVC holding system for the flourescent light yesterday – because several Parris Island and Simpson Elite already have sprouted in TWO days!

We never can get enough lettuce around the house (well, we can – because we actually wasted a bunch this year from the garden).  So, I’m going to try to grow it for a fall planting and use the floating row covers to give it a few extra weeks out in the garden.

Been another two weeks since my last post.  There have been a few things going on around the garden – but not enough to make another weekly update.  I’ve also been incredibly busy with other things lately as well.

Last week we were exceptionally busy tearing apart two bedrooms upstairs.  We fully took off the paint on the walls in the spare room, pulled out all the trim, re-painted, put new trim in, and made the room into an office.  So I also made a table as well.  When it was all said and done, this is what the new “office” looks like:

Alright, let’s get back to the garden.  The week that we were putting the office together, we had quite a bit of Honey Treat sweet corn.  So much so – that I’m impressed with this hybrid – but unfortunately they discontinued it.  Off of about 12 stalks, we had 23 ears of corn.  Yes, almost an average of two each!  Last year we were lucky if we got one ear of corn for every TWO stalks.

It looks like they are multi-colored – but this is a fully yellow hybrid.  We always boil the corn right after it is pulled off of the stalk for a good five minutes, dip it in ice water to cool it down, let it dry, then put it in freezer bags to put in the freezer.

On the 23rd, I got out and walked around the garden.  I was amazed.. there was a cucumber that was yellow!  Never even saw it.  Both of these were Burpee Pickler cucumbers.

On the 26th, more corn was picked.  We got another 12 ears of corn.  Some of these were not fully done – but yet they still are sweet.

Now, it comes down to pictures that were taken today from around the garden.  We also had a very nice harvest of tomatoes.  We’ve previously also harvested quite a few – but today was the largest.

OK – so here is the Anaheim Hot Pepper by the patio.  Not much has changed since the last photo.  I did take about eight peppers off that were still green.  They still seem to be rotting out right on the plant – so as long as they are picked before the entire pepper is consumed, they are usable.

The radish seeds are just about done since they are drying up.  With the weather in the high 90’s we’ve had, I’m not surprised that they are drying out.  I’ll have quite a few radish seeds for next year.  In addition, the single oregano plant seems to be doing well too – and is growing again.

On the opposite side is the basil.  This was taken before the basil was chopped.  All of the plants had several flower stalks – so all of the flower stalks were chopped off – along with some leaves.

After the choppings, I barely was able to fit them all on the dehydrator.

Over to the side garden, I didn’t really take a full picture of it – only the watermelon area.  The side garden is looking pretty dead since there are just Yukon Gold potatoes in that area.  It won’t be too much longer before it will be time to take all those out of the ground!

Here is a closer view of two Crimson Sweet watermelon.  Supposedly these should average about 24 pounds per fruit – but based on other reading, I’ve found that most home gardeners only get about 12 pounds out of each.  I bet these are getting pretty close to that.

In the back garden, the Kennebec potatoes look just as dead.  The vines are dying back.

Also in the back garden is the five cucumber plants; two Burpee Pickler and three Little Leaf H-19.  Overall, I think I may go back to the Straight Eight cucumbers.  We still have several cans of pickles that were made last year – and they simply are not being eaten.

Back onto the driveway – carrots.  According to my prevoius journals, it will be time to pick the carrots in about a week.  I did de-weed this area today and notice that many of them are peeking up through the soil – so it is about time!

Next is the front area.  The Tri-Star strawberries look awful.  They looked bad last year about this time as well.  I’m wondering if they go into some kind of remission during the summer because no matter how much water I give them, they don’t seem to do much.

And the Bush Blue Lake 274 green beans that were planted in the flower bed.  Two rounds were planted – and this shows the round that was planted earlier.  There are finally some flowers and some small beans starting on them.

Here is the last remaining corn.  All of them have an ear on them!  Unfortunately I was not as dutiful this year so I didn’t put clothes pins with the date the silk emerged.  It is usually said that once the silk emerges, the corn is ready to be picked in about 20 days.  That is why the last batch didn’t look like they were done when I picked them; they were not given enough time to fill out.

Cherry tomatoes!  At least we have some this year.  I only kept one cherry tomato plant from the seedlings.. and the deer at it down.  Luckily it came back pretty good and is producing some.

Over on the opposite side is the Better Boy tomatoes.  They are doing very good – and this was taken before I harvested all those large tomatoes.

Well, that is everything in the garden.  I failed to take a better picture of the California Wonder peppers in the front – but you can kind of see them off to the left side of the picture above.  They still are quite small – but they do have a few small peppers on them.

Well it happened again.

The “well” ran dry.  Even though the rain barrel system can hold 660 gallons of rain water, it has ran out.  I had to hook the hose up today and run some water into it from the house and fill the entire thing back up.

It has been exceptionally hot over the past couple of weeks.  We got a bit of a reprieve yesterday and today as the temps were in the mid 70’s or low 80’s.  But, we’re going back up into the 90’s tomorrow and for the next week.  It is even supposed to hit 96 degrees in a few days!

Of course, that just means a higher water need.  The strawberries were looking pretty bad – but finally got some relief today with some water.

They don’t look terrible in this photo I took this morning – but after I arrived home today, they looked awful.

In other news – all of the Cascadia snap pea vines have been fully removed.  I know it is time to remove them when the powdery mildew starts to take over.  Of course, they also quit making pea pods too.  So, the side garden is looking pretty bare now.  I’ve also removed the three last Green Goliath broccoli plants that didn’t produce well in the side garden – although this picture shows them.  In the front, you can see some Bush Blue Lake 274 green beans and three Crimson Giant watermelon plants.

Believe it or not, there are about a half dozen watermelon on the plants thus far; an average of two per plant.  A couple of them are a bit larger than the size of a softball – and here is one to show:

What else is new?  It is onion harvest time!  Well, as in my previous post, I explained how you can tell when onions are ready to harvest.  On the neck near the bulb of the onion, the top growth will begin to fall over.  When it does this, you know it is time to harvest.  Or, if a lot of the tops start to die back – that means you may have some rotten onions.  Yes, I so far have had about three Copra onions and one Varsity onion that was rotten in the ground that had to be discarded.  But that is still much better than last year when there were a lot of rotten ones.

Anyways, I’ve collected quite a few Copra onions.  Onions definitely need a lot of light.  Those that I put in the cinder blocks at the back of the garage were getting crowded out by the potatoes – and needless to say, the size of those onions were probably half – if not smaller – than those in the front yard that had full sun.

Now, compare that to the few Varsity onions that have been harvested.  I so far am finding out that even though the Varsity onions didn’t have as long to grow, they indeed are larger!

Well, I hated to see the tops to go waste – so the first harvest of onions were fully used.  I cut the tops off and they were loaded into the dehydrator.

It took about three days at 135 degrees to get them fully dried out.  I then crushed them up and put them in an herb container – completely filled it to the top!  I then used some on some potatoes that night – and it turned the olive oil and the top of the potatoes green.  Was a nice garnish although there didn’t seem to be too much of a taste.

Alright – well, let’s get started with the garden walk.

First up is the Anaheim Hot peppers growing in the container.

They continue to grow very well – but, I’m a bit concerned with some of the produce.  Just like last year, there is a mushy brown section that is on some of the peppers.  I’m not too sure what this is – but it was a problem last year and would rot out the peppers.

The above one is pretty bad and I hate to pick it – but I may need to in order to save what is left.

Moving on – here is the patio garden.  All of the lettuce has been removed since it was no good.  The basil is growing well – but because of the heat, they droop over and do not look good by the time I get home of an evening.  The radishes are in the background.

Of course, the radishes are not edible at this point.  I’m waiting for the pods to fully dry up and then I can harvest the seed – so I’ll be able to have Easter Egg radishes for next year!  Here is a closer look of those seed pods.

Next is the back garden.  Here is the full view.  It seems that some of the potato vines are beginning to die back.

See – no more peas in the above picture.  You can actually see some of the cucumber plants!  Well, here are two photos showing a comparison of growth.  This first one is Burpee Pickler.

Now, look at these small Little Leaf Pickling H-19 cucumbers.  They are not a hybrid like the Burpee Pickler above – but they just are very small!

Well, a quick view of the carrot bed and the Kennebec potatoes growing in the container.  Not much going on here.

And off to the front  yard!  I planted another 50 Bush Blue Lake 274 green beans in the flower bed this past weekend.  So far, about 17 have germinated as of today.  I had to get more deer netting to fully cover all of them.  I originally planted about 50 in this area – but didn’t have all of them covered.  So, the deer got a free lunch.

So far, we’ve only harvested green beans from about 20 plants – and have yielded about six pounds so far!  That is already more than we had all of last year combined.

Over at the grape arbor, it is filling out quite nicely.

And for the main garden in the front yard.  Up front is the remaining Copra onions that still need harvested.  A few more fell over last night since I’d previosly picked them – but others still are not ready yet.

Most of all the celery has been pulled out – as you can see above.  Some still remain – as I’ve let one go to seed so hopefully I can save some seed from it.  Celery seed is so small, I’m not sure if I’ll be that lucky.

But, the Honey Treat corn is still doing good!  Some of it will be ready to be harvested in a few more days.  So far, I’m still impressed with this variety and the number of ears it puts on per stalk.

So, how are the California Wonder peppers doing?  Well, they are growing a bit faster – but still are no where near as large as the Anaheim.

And alas – the tomatoes.  We have Best Boy, Better Boy, Roma, and Red Cherry tomatoes all in this big mess.

See all of the tomatoes!  But not one of them is ripening up.  We are eagerly awaiting to pick some tomatoes to start our salsa making process.

And lastly, we’ll close out with a photo of the Rose of Sharon bush in our landscaping.  Until next time!

Just yesterday – we picked our first batch of green beans.  Last year, we used the Greencrop variety – and they did terrible.  This year, I went back to the old standby – Bush Blue Lake 274 – which did well the year prior.  Out of maybe 15 plants, we got over two pounds of green beans!  There were about six or seven plants in the watermelon bed in addition to another six or seven up front that were harvested.

As you can see, there are also some strawberries in the back.  We got another 9 ounces of strawberries on Friday as well.

In addition to the green beans and strawberries, another pound of Cascadia Snap peas were harvested.  It is kind of interesting – because in the past two weeks, there has been over five pounds of peas harvested – which is probably pretty close to what was collected for the other 1+ months!

Unfortunately, the peas are getting powdery mildew pretty bad.  The peas next to the house were pulled out a few days ago.  So, the only thing that remains next to the house are the potato plants that were gasping for sunlight – and a few broccoli plants.

In the back garden, the potatoes don’t seem to be growing much more – but have made it nearly impossible to walk.  The peas back here are also looking poor – and they will probably get pulled out this evening after it cools down a bit.

What else is new?  The Crimson Sweet watermelon.  As I was pulling green beans last night, I saw a tiny watermelon that was beginning to start!  I didn’t get a picture of it – but it was sitting on the sidewalk because the watermelon have completely overtaken the 3 x 8 bed they were placed in – and have overgrown to the sidewalk as well.

The Anaheim Hot Peppers in the tote are doing well.  They grew exceptionally quickly – and there is at least a half dozen peppers on the two plants thus far – with another dozen or more blooms.

The California Wonder peppers in the front garden are doing better now – but still not nearly as tall as the Anaheim peppers.  There is even some blooms on them as well – and a small pepper is growing on one of them.  Didn’t get a picture of it unfortunately.

Otherwise, the rest of the patio garden looks to be in dis-array.  The basil is growing well – not as well as last year though – and the Easter Egg radish plants still have large seed pods that are maturing.

Most of all the lettuce has been removed – but some remains.  I need to get the rest pulled out because at this point, I don’t think any of it is edible.  I probably need to get started on seeding the next round of lettuce for the fall soon as well.

How about the carrots?  Well, they’ve really moved right along as well.

This is a closer look of the carrots.  Those on the left are Sugarsnax and those on the right are Scarlet Nantes.  Can you tell the difference?  I certainly can; the Sugarsnax seem to be further along and are growing better.

Going to the front yard.  The grape arbor is overflowing with grape vines.  Hard to believe that it is all from two vines.  Here is a close-up of some grape clusters from the Flame Bunch grape vine.

The corn is doing MUCH better than in years past.  I finished filling out the bed with mulched leaves last weekend so the entire bed is now full with leaves to keep moisture in – and help to fertilize a bit.  I went out and pollinated about 15 stalks – and many of those stalks put up a couple of different tassels.  Out of the 15 stalks, there are a total of 28 ears that look like they may turn into something good!  I’m sure hoping so.  Still – it seems odd that this area had room for about 60 stalks of corn – and only 15 of them have been pollinated.

It would be nice to fill this area with more green beans once the corn is done – but many stalks of corn were put in later and still have a ways to go in order to be fully mature.  That would put green bean planting past the time where they would be productive.  That is why I planted another 50 in the flower bed this morning.  Unfortunately, the deer got to the original 50 that were in the spot because I didn’t have any extra deer netting – but now I’ve purchased another 100-foot roll of deer netting that should give me sufficient supply.

Next is the tomatoes.  I certainly hope I’ll be able to find all the tomatoes in this big cluster!  They have grown so close together that the only tomatoes I’ve seen are those around the outside.  There are tomatoes on every single plant.

And lastly – the Copra Onions.  They have really bulbed up lately.  Many of them haven’t really provided much of a bulb at all – especially those that were planted in the cinder blocks in the back garden – but those in the back garden don’t produce well at all because the potato vines just take over the area and shade the onions out.  In reality, I just need to stop planting them back there – unless we harvest them as green onions going forward.

As you can see, there are some decent sized onions in there.  This is in the front yard where they get full sun all day.

So – how do you know when to harvest onions?  Well, simple!  Onions are ready to be havested when the tops start to fall over.  Well, what does that mean – when the tops start to fall over?  Here is an example.

Do you see the one onion “top” lying on the ground there?  Well, what happens is this – when the onions are ready to be pulled out, right where the “leaves” attach to the bulb of the onion – the “leaves” bend over – much like in the picture above.  That signifies that the bulbing is completed.  It is really hard for me to believe that some of them are already falling over!  The summer solstice is what causes onions to begin bulbing – and that is around June 21st.  So it hasn’t even been 20 days and already, there are at least a half dozen onions that have “fell over”.

That is all for this week’s garden checkup!

It has been two weeks since the last post.  Nothing really interesting went on last week at all.  The weather was nice – in the 70’s and raining every other day – so the plants loved it and I didn’t have to water!

But now it is back into the high 80s to 90s.

A lot of the lettuce has been pulled out of the patio garden because they just got old or the temps were too hot.  On the right-hand side, you can see one of the New Red Fire lettuce plants that is very tall and bolting.  In the front is the basil and there are other lettuce plants still in.

Over by the door of the patio is the two Anaheim Hot Pepper plants.  They are in a large 30+ gallon tote.  These two are very tall and looking good – and there even is a small pepper beginning to start on one of them.

Compare that to one of the California Wonder peppers in the front garden that is maybe six inches tall.

Moving on to the other bed on the driveway.  This has some Kennebec potatoes in it at the front along with some Sugarsnax and Scarlet Nantes carrots.  The Sugarsnax carrots definitely have grown faster than the Scarlet Nantes.  Time will tell to see the quality of the carrot and whether buying the more expensive hybrid Sugarsnax is worth it.

Over in the side garden, the Cascadia Snap peas are finally succumbing after providing some sweet, tasty peas.  I picked two pounds of peas just a few days ago – and there are still more that need to be harvested.  All of the cauliflower has been pulled out and only a few broccoli plants remain.  The rest of the vines you see are from the Yukon Gold potatoes.

See a little bit of yellow color there in the back?  Yep, one of the Premium Crop broccoli plants had the main head cut off – and it put up some side shoots.  I never got around to cutting them and so it is flowering.

And just to the left of this area is the watermelon bed.  The Crimson Sweet watermelon have taken over the entire area and the Bush Blue Lake 274 green beans are really doing well.  You can also see some potatoes in small buckets as well in the back.

The back garden is almost to the point where I no longer can walk through it!  The potatoes have really taken over.  The peas back here have also begun to die off as well.  There are five cucumber plants in this area – but they are hidden pretty good and haven’t sprung up quite yet – making them impossible to see.

Now – the front garden.  Things have really taken off up here!

The Copra onions are really beginning to bulb up, some of the corn is beginning to shed pollen, the green beans are still trying to fight for sunlight, and the tomatoes have really taken over!  Note to self – planting tomatoes two feet apart from one another in each direction is WAY too close.

Take a look at one of the Ventura Celery plants – it is also bolting and has a flower head on it as well.  We have harvested a bit over half of the celery so far – and two of them rotted in the ground.

Here is a back view of the Honey Treat corn area.  Unfortunately corn was planted four different times because it simply did not sprout well.  Much less than 50% germination between all the times that they were planted.

Take a look at this!  There are THREE ears of corn starting on this one plant!  Last year I tried to grow Sugar Dots corn in this area and it failed horribly; growth was stunted and we might have got one ear of corn for every two plants.  This year – the corn is doing well!  I put in a good layer of mulched-up leaves and tilled it in last fall – then placed another good layer directly on the soil after the corn was out of the ground.  Also used some pelletized fertilizer – which I don’t like doing – but I wasn’t going to have a failed corn crop this year.  But THREE – that is the best I’ve had yet.

Nestled over by the tomatoes, the green beans are trying to fight for sunlight.  Many of them already have little green beans started.

And look at the mess that these tomato plants are in!  There is zero space between all of them.

There are quite a few small green tomatoes starting on them though – so I can’t wait until we start to get some good tomatoes out of the garden!  This picture below is from one of the plants I had to buy – Better Boy.

And that just leaves one picture left.  My wife planted some wildflowers down at the curb of the road and our driveway.  There is a pretty nice selection of colors and flowers that look pretty nice.  The flowers are pretty tall, but do look nice.

We finally got a reprieve from the summer temperatures this week!  Last week, it was in the 90’s almost every day.  At the beginning of the week, a cold front came through and we had some days where it only hit about 70 degrees.  But, it was definitely well received – for me at least.

Unfortunately because of the hot weather, it has caused the Cascadia peas to stop production.  I’m not sure if they will start producing again, but there are not any other flowers on the peas.

One thing that continues to grow is the lettuce.  We absolutely have more than we can use.  I’ve given three gallon-sized bags to the neighbor and one to my parents.  We made a “7 layer salad” the other day with quite a lot of the salad – but we still have two full bags of lettuce in the fridge from a week ago now.  Certainly shouldn’t complain since last year we may have had one week worth of lettuce – and we’ve had at least four or five weeks of lettuce so far.

The basil in the front of the patio garden is coming along well.  It is a good thing too – because we are almost out of basil from last year!

Way in the back – the sunlight is drowning it out, but I have several Easter Egg radishes that are going to seed – and so they have flower stalks that are about four feet tall!

One thing doing well is the cauliflower and broccoli!  However, I’ve learned from my mistake and will not place them so close next year.  Watching a show online, they said that Green Goliath broccoli could be placed a foot apart.  They certainly can grow, but the heads of broccoli and cauliflower are much smaller.  Here is a picture of two heads of cauliflower that were taken from the side garden where they were spaced 12 inches apart.  The cauliflower in the front is one taken from the flower bed where they were spaced at least two feet apart – and it is about twice as large.

The Green Goliath broccoli on the right side was from the side garden – but it is one of the exceptions.  Most of the other broccoli in the side garden isn’t nearly as large.

In the back garden, none of the cucumber plants have managed to show their faces yet – but the potato plants have absolutely taken over.

The watermelon are growing well too.  The area has green beans around the area with three Crimson Sweet watermelon in the middle.

Over on the driveway, the carrots are doing well and the potato bin is growing good too.  The Sugarsnax carrots are definitely further along than the Scarlet Nantes.

Moving to the front yard – here is the flower bed garden.  This shows one broccoli and one cauliflower along with onions in the back.  The cauliflower seen here was just pulled yesterday.

And the front garden with a lot of celery and onions.  The onions are starting to bulb now – so I can’t wait to see how large they will get this year.  Only about half of the celery has been cut thus far.

The tomatoes are growing very well along with the Honey Treat corn.

So, that takes care of the garden pictures for this week.  Hopefully the corn will get going a bit faster – because it seems very slow this year.

This week, a few heads of broccoli and cauliflower have been picked.  I must say, I’m pretty happy with the Snow Crown cauliflower.  The curds are very large and it seems like this is a much easier variety to grow than the old Snowball X that I grew before.

This is the first one that was picked just a few days ago.  This weight about two pounds!

And here is the second one that was just harvested yesterday – along with a HUGE Premium Crop Broccoli.

Here is the other view of the large broccoli head:

Speaking of broccoli, a Premium Crop broccoli was also picked a few days ago as well from the side garden.  This one isn’t very large and came in just over a pound.  I think it is because the one below was spaced 12 inches apart amongst the other broccoli and cauliflower – whereas the one above was seprated by about two feet.

In addition to broccoli & cauliflower, we had quite a few Easter Egg radishes that were ready to be picked as well.

You can see what they weighed here:

We’ve also picked several more stalks of celery in the past week – including two more yesterday.  The temperatures have been extremely HOT around here – around 95 degrees.  We’re finally in for a bit of a cool-off this weekend where it will be about 80.  But, celery simply cannot tolerate the heat (much like lettuce) and I need to start getting all of this pulled out before it goes bad.

As mentioned, we’ve also had a lot of lettuce.  Last Saturday, I went out in the morning and got well over another two pounds of lettuce.  That seems to be the ritual now – got out once a week and pick some lettuce.  Here is all the lettuce plants currently:

You can see the basil in the front there is beginning to get larger as well with the increase in the temperatures lately.

Below shows the whole patio garden with the peppers, lettuce, and radishes.  I’ve staked up a couple of radishes because they are blooming and they will provide me seed for next year.

Just on the opposite side of this picture is the watermelon bed where three Crimson Sweeet watermelon were planted and some Bush Blue Lake 274 beans.  They are coming along well.

And just behind that is the side garden.  Because of the high temperatures, the peas have not been putting on any flowers.  I certainly hope we get more peas since we only have about three pounds for the year (a bit less than that).  But, these Cascadia Snap Peas are by far my favorite now – they are very sweet and tasy – and you can eat the pods!

Turn 90-degres and we have the back garden.  The potatoes are really growing and have almost taken over my walkway!  This week, I also transplanted the two Burpee Pickler and three H-19 Little Leaf Pickling cucumbers to the back garden – although you certainly cannot see them in this mess of plants!

Over on the driveway, the carrots are still growing.  The potatoes in the potato bed are doing just as well as those in the back as well.

Going to the front yard, the day lillies have been in full flower mode.

And the grape vines are starting to fill out the grapes a bit.

In the flower bed, a few broccoli plants remain along with some onions and a cauliflower plant.  I’m thinking that I’ll be planting more green beans here over the weekend.

So that just leaves the front garden where there are onions, celery, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, and corn.

Three of the California Wonder pepper plants are not doing well and most likely will not produce – but at least there still are five in good shape.

And all of the tomatoes – Best boy, Better Boy, Roma, and Red Cherry Tomato – are doing very well.

And lastly, the Honey Treat corn.  At least about 26 of the 45 corn that I planted a week ago have sprouted – but there still are gaps.  So, that means I’ll be planting more corn soon too.

This was a great week out in the garden!  The temperatures warmed up this past Friday to over 80 (almost near 90) – and this morning, things were cooler at around 72 degrees because we had a nice gentle rain shower for the first half of the day.  The temperature only got to about 80 degrees today – but over the next week, they are saying high 80’s to low 90’s.  Reminding me of last year again!

Very productive week.  A good amount of radishes were picked – although this is just one photo.  The radishes are Easter Egg radishes.  This is a new variety I’m trying this year – and I like it because the radishes are fairly large – and they are an assortment of colors!

In addition to radishes, we have picked about one pound of Cascadia Snap Peas from two pickings so far.  These peas are the type where you can allow the peas to get larger – and both the peas and the pods are edible.  The longer you wait to pick them, the sweeter they are!  Of course, you don’t want them to get over-ripe either.

What else?  LOTS of Tri-Star strawberries!  We’ve picked about a total of six pounds of strawberries thus far out of two pickings.  There are more that need picked already!  Certainly would be nice if these were larger – but they still are good to eat.

And…. a total of two Ventura Celery have been picked.  The first one was last week – and it weighed in at about 2 pounds, 9 ounces.  This one – which was just harvested today – weighed in at 3 pounds, 2 ounces.  That by far busts the amount of celery we picked last year.

Over the weekend, we had some company so I got out and picked a bunch of lettuce.  Here is a photo showing just the Red Salad Bowl lettuce:

And a photo of the mixed lettuce.  This consists of Red Salad Bowl, New Red Fire, Simpson Elite, and Buttercrunch.  Over two pounds of lettuce here!

And then today – I decided it was time to cut down one of the Parris Island lettuce plants.  This weighed in at just over a pound by itself.

Alright – time to go on the garden walk now to see how each area is doing.

The back garden continues to look good.  Not sure what the difference is – but notice the size of the potato plants on the left side.  Those in the front are smaller than those in the back.

And the side garden with peas, cauliflower, and broccoli.  There are some Yukon Gold potatoes between the two – but almost cannot see them.

Here is a photo of the potato “bin” and the Sugarsnax & Scarlet Nantes carrots.  I don’t think the carrots are growing nearly as quick this year.

The full patio garden.  This is where all of the lettuce is at.  The basil in the very front is also beginning to grow a bit faster now that the temperatures are going up.  I also picked a few stems of oregano over the weekend and dehydrated it.  Dehydrated oregano has a very nice scent to it and is fairly strong.  The oregano is on the back left – and then there are some large radishes in the back that I’m hoping to get some seeds out of.

As noticed in the above picture on the very right, the Anaheim Hot Pepper plants were cut off – but here is a better view.  They are doing fantastic and are light years ahead of the California Wonder peppers in the front garden (that are maybe two inches tall)

Also taking up home still in the patio garden are the H-19 Little Leaf Pickling and Burpee Pickler cucumbers.  These need to be planted sometime soon.

Going to the front now – this is the grape arbor.  There are a lot of little grape clusters starting on these this year.

And notice to the left of the picture above – I have taken over the flower bed with broccoli and cauliflower.  They are doing well.

That leaves just the front garden now.  Here is a look at the Ventura Celery and Copra Onions.  This was taken before I took the second celery stalk out today.

I missed this photo last week – but here is the corn growing area.  Notice how bare it is – I went through and planted another 45 Honey Treat corn in this area just a few days ago.  Just doesn’t seem like this corn has very good germination.  Previously, I started 51 Honey Treat corn in black plastic 3-packs.  Only nine of those sprouted – and they were transplanted to the front a few days ago.

And lastly – the section with tomatoes, green beans, peppers, and radishes.

As seen above, you can see all of the tomatoes in the front.  These are Better Boy, Best Boy, Roma, and a Red Cherry Tomato.  At least the Red Cherry Tomato bounced back after being almost completely eaten from the deer.

You cannot even see the peppers in the above photo because they are still very small.  One of the peppers had been completely eaten to the ground – but it seems to be trying to make a comeback.  Another pepper – in the same row just 18 inches away – also seems like something has really been eating on it as well.  I’ve never had this problem before – but this year it isn’t going too great with the peppers.

A bit late on the post this week; been fairly busy lately and we had some strong storms pass through yesterday – so you’ll notice some of the photos below look dark because of the storms.

The big “news” for this week is the compost tea system.  A few weeks ago, I dumped the old mixture that I had in the barrel that makes the compost tea.  This had been in the barrel since last year – and I figured it was time to rotate the batch.  The batch that was dumped had full leaves along with good chunks of left-over veggies.

The new batch was finely shredded leaves and grass clippings.  The grass clippings came from the neighbor and the leaves were from what I mulched up last fall.

Needless to say, because everything was very small and finely chopped, the compost tea barrel plugged up.  I was attempting to run some water through it – and I stopped when the barrel was full.  It is then supposed to equalize amongst three other 55-gallon drums next to it – but it never did.  I waited a good week.  Here is a view of the barrels.  When I took this, I didn’t have the one barrel on the right added – but all of the compost is in the white barrel – and they are all then hooked up to equalize between four – so I can then pump it back up into three barrels for the rain water system.

So, the inevitable had to happen.  I took the pitch fork and started getting as much of the material out of the barrel as I could.  It was incredibly smelly and my neighbor was not happy.  He always likes to sit out back on the porch each evening and I heard him say “That has one helluva odor to it” as he got up, went inside, and slammed the door.  I think I made him mad.

Anyways, I got as much out that I could – and it still wouldn’t flow.  I was ticked off at this point, so I just took the barrel – even though it probably weighed 300 – 400 pounds, and pulled it off the 2×4’s that it sat on.  It was a bit too big for me and as seen above, this area is on a fairly steep hill so it all completely spilled out and knocked me to the ground.  I was soaking wet in compost tea!  nasty!  It really bothered me that all of that high-quality compost tea that was just brewed in brand new compost was completely wasted – but what more could I do!

So, I had to come up with another solution.  The small spigot on the white barrel (as seen above) simply wasn’t cutting it and the flow was not good.  So, I got some 3/4″ PVC fittings, drilled a hole close to where the spigot was, and this is where the new attachment will be – with a ball valve on the outside.  This should certainly help the flow dramatically.

I knew that wasn’t going to be enough, however.  How would I prevent it from plugging up again – or pushing some of the compost material into the other barrels?  Well, this part was a pain.  I came up with a different solution afterwards, but the idea was to get some treated lumber and put some of the patio screening over the top of it – and use small push pins to hold the screening in place.

So, the 1×6 treated lumber was cut.  Oh my – next problem – wood floats with water!  So some adhesive that adheres to plastic and wood had to be added across the bottom.  Can’t punch holes or screw the wood in from the bottom – because then that would just create a leak.

So, below, you can see the structure I setup in the bottom.  I also tried to “pressure fit” the wood to the barrel to help keep it in place.  You can see the new 3/4-inch hole where the PVC is attached for the new outlet with a LOT of sealant around.  I put sealant around the PVC on both the inside and outside.

OK – now, next problem.  I simply was not happy with the idea of using the patio screening.  Why?  Well, once it was tacked down, it couldn’t be removed.  In addition to that, patio screening is not that strong – and as you can see above, there is zero support around the perimeter of the barrel – so the weight of the compost material would simply have fallen right through.

I was mad.  All of this work on this thing and I simply had no idea how to go forward.  I needed something rigid, fairly strong, that would allow water to pass through.  A screen was absolutely what I needed – but it just isn’t strong enough.

So, I went looking around the garage – and found some 1/4-inch concrete backer board that was used for the bathroom project last year.  I was ecstatic – because it was just BARELY big enough to use.  But, it was a lot of work to perfectly cut out a circular area from it.  The idea here was – to simply make a circular cut so that it would fully work around the perimeter – then cut out an area in the middle where I could then attach the porch screening.

But, after I finally was able to get the board to fit into the barrel, I had a second though – maybe it would just be best to drill holes all over the backer board – so that way no screening needed attached – and then I could remove it when the barrel needed cleaned.  So, that is what I did.  A few hundred holes later, I finally had ONE section done.  It took a long time to do.

So, there is half of it.  Yes, I didn’t do absolutely perfect around the perimeter of the concrete backer board, but for the most part, this should work very well.

Alright, that should have been a post all in itself!  But, I must carry on and show some pictures of the garden for the weekly update as well.

Starting off – more Honey Treat corn was planted; a total of 51 were planted into black plastic three-packs with water put in the tray and the clear plastic cover over the top.  Only about 18 of 75 grew in the garden – even after soaking the seed for about 36 hours.  The trouble was – after I planted it, the weather turned cool into the high 50’s and mid 60’s.  Hybrid corn simply does not tolerate cool soil temperatures so I fear most of the seed simply rotted.

As of Wednesday, four of the corn have sprouted thus far.

Next – the watermelon was transplanted into the watermelon garden.  This area is between the patio and the side garden next to the house.  We grew a couple of crops of potatoes here, but the soil was too harsh so it was fully excavated and compost put in.  Out of the seven Crimson Sweeet watermelon that came up, three of them were planted and we’ll give the others away.

What else?  Peas!  The Cascadia Snap Peas have been flowering lately – and there are some pods beginning to form.  The Cascadia Snap Peas are only supposed to get three feet tall (so they say), but just like the Dwarf Grey Sugar peas that were only supposed to get three feet tall, they keep on growing.  The fencing is five feet tall.

Over the past weekend, I also decided it was time to mulch the potatoes in the back garden.  That took quite a while to do and allergies really flared up during that process – but, it got done.  Was absolutely surprised how much it took!  I have two large dumpsters full of leaves – and it basically took a full dumpster to much the potatoes!  I still have to mulch the potatoes on the left side (near the peas) and the front gardens too!

Over to the side garden, this shows the whole view of the peas, cauliflower, and broccoli.  Some of the Premium Crop broccoli have begun to form heads – but none of the Green Goliath broccoli as of yet.

None of the Snow Crown cauliflower have begun to put on curds in the side garden, but continue to grow well.

But, what is interesting – is there are two cauliflower plants in the flower bed that have curds growing already.  They are spaced out more than what I did in the side garden – so we’ll see if the side garden provides any produce.

OK – about half-way done now.  A quick peak at the potato “bin” that is also all mulched up:

And the patio garden is doing very well.  I transplanted the lettuce that had finally sprouted after a long period of time into the garden this past week as well.  I think there is more than enough salad here now – more than we’ll be able to eat!  But, I’m also surprised that it seems the only first three rows of lettuce are doing well – and the other rows don’t seem to be growing at all.

In the red cups above – those are the cucumbers that have been growing.  Two of three Burpee Pickler cucumbers sprouted (seed is three years old now) and all three of the H-19 Little Leaf Pickling cucumbers sprouted.  You can also see one of the Anaheim Hot peppers in the bottom right corner that is doing fantastic – compared to the extremely slow-growing California Wonder peppers in the front.

And for the last four pictures – a quick view of pink Peony that opened up.  I’m quite surprised; we got these put in and transplanted last year from cuttings – and they have blooms already.

And the strawberry beds.  We picked about 6 ounces of strawberries this week – and there are already loads of them that need to be picked again.

The Ventura celery and the Copra onions.  I think it is time to pick one of the celery plants; there are 16 – 18 celery plants here and even if we were to pick one each week, the majority of them would go bad by that point with the heat of the summer coming.

… and lastly, one portion of the front garden.  I took a picture of both – but the other one was very blurry and wasn’t worth posting.  The other area of the garden is where the corn is at – and not much worth seeing there with only around 18 Honey Treat corn in there.  But, this row shows the radishes down the middle, the variety of tomatoes in the back, and the peppers close to the front.

We were blessed with another good amount of lettuce this week.  Just over one pound!  I have the four piles separate so you can see the colors.  Red Salad Bowl is in the upper right side, Simpson Elite, Buttercrunch, and then right in the front is New Red Fire.  New Red Fire is new this year and is doing very well – almost providing more than what the good ole Simpson Elite is providing.

Ahh.. and all the mixtures together!

The lettuce plants then looked bare again after they were picked.

In addition to lettuce, we had about ten Easter Egg radishes that were ready to be harvested.  Overall, I wasn’t too impressed with the size of them.  I chose Easter Egg because I expected they would get large per the descriptions.  Oh well – at least it is something!

The weather has turned to be quite cool this week.  We had 80 degree weather last week and that all changed on Saturday.  We got over two inches of rain on Saturday and the temperatures never hit 60.  It has been that way this week – but we did manage to get to around 64 degrees today.  So, the cool-weather crops are loving this year.

OK – time to make the rounds in the garden.  Here is the patio garden.

The six Kennebec potatoes in the “potato bin” and the carrots.

The potatoes are really growing well – since the weather got warmer.  But now that it is cooler, they’ll probably slow down a bit.  But, they are still going well in the back garden.

The Cascadia Snap Peas continue to climb up very quickly next to the house; they are not climbing as quickly in the back garden as pictured above.  The broccoli & cauliflower are doing wonderful as well.

The broccoli and cauliflower in the flower bed by the road are a bit slower – but they were also planted here a few weeks after those above.

And how about the front garden.  Not too much happening since last week though.

I think I’m going to be required to start some corn inside.  Out of 75 Honey Treat corn that was planted, only about 15 of them have come up in over a week now.  I even soaked the seeds (along with the Bush Blue Lake 274 seed).

As you can see though, the onions continue to grow and the celery is continuing to grow as well.  I’m almost tempted to harvest one of the larger celery plants.  Heck, I really need to – otherwise, what are we going to do with over 18 Ventura celery plants all at once!

The tomatoes and peppers are still growing fairly slowly; not much to report on there.

Alas – and the Crimson Sweet watermelon.  They are starting to put out other leaves and I think before long, it will be time to plant them in the ground.  I only need about three of these – four at the most.  So I’ll have a few to give away.

That leaves two pictures left.  First is the Tri-Star strawberries.  They are really supporting the netting – actually, I think they are bound by the netting.  There are a few red strawberries on them – but not enough to pick yet.

And lastly, the grape arbor.  The vines have really begun to shoot out of the wood from last year – and there are already a good dozen – if not more – small little grape clusters that have just begun.  Now, just to keep the deer away from them.