In the Garden: July 27, 2014

"Fallow" bed.  Contains a few old cabbages, a few dill plants (our dill did not germinate and thrive well) and some volunteer zinnias.  Also, sprouting buckwheat, a cover crop Jo just planted a few days ago.  (We plant dill because it is a favorite host plant for black swallowtail butterflies.) 

Corn:  Last year at this time, I was lamenting that our corn was just now tasseling because we'd planted so late.  This year, it's not yet even to the tasseling stage.  Pretty soon we will be growing fall corn.  The only problem with that is:  In a (more normal) hot and dry summer, the corn won't produce much -- or, maybe, nothing at all.

Potato Digging Day:  Bed before digging.  Potato plants have died back.  Volunteer coreopsis is doing well.  I'll try to dig around the flowers and save as many as I can.  Native bee pollinators visit them often.  Unfortunately, a bloom on the end of a long, spindly stems makes capturing their visits in a photo difficult.

Red potatoes produced well, but we harvested almost no Yukon Golds.

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In the Garden: July 27, 2014

Garden 2011: Recap #3

It just wouldn't be spring if we weren't running behind with everything.  The photos above were all taken on May 5.  The main feature of all of them is that it's obvious the grass needs mowed.  Between preparing for art fairs, traveling to art fairs and all the rain we've received, I'm very much behind with my mowing.  I was finally able to attack our garden area with the mower on Tuesday (5/10/11).  Now we can at least venture into the garden without having to wade in almost knee-high grass and weeds.


Clockwise:  

• 1.) Tomato plants are still under cloches.
• 2.) The cloches need to be removed from several tomato plants.
• 3.) Cauliflower.
• 4.) Chinese cabbage.
• 5.) Lettuce, spinach, chard, radishes directed seeded into the garden.
• 6.) Broccoli.
• 7.) Potatoes.

Our irises are well into their blooming sequence. We don't grow a lot of flowers, but have gotten into growing irises because friends gave us rhizomes when they thinned their beds. The flowers are beautiful, and irises are one of the few flowers deer won't eat.

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Garden 2011: Recap #3

Garden 2011: Mid-April Recap

Strawberries are in full bloom.  (4/13/11)


Datura (jimson weed) is coming up from roots.  It's surrounded by garlic chives shoots which have since been pulled -- for all the good that did.  Garlic chives is very invasive.  It spreads by multiplying bulbs underground and abundant seeds.  It's requires a constant effort to keep it from taking over the bed.  (4/16/11)


It's about time to remove the cloches covering the broccoli, cauliflower and Chinese cabbage, especially since the plants are trying to grow out the tops of the plastic jugs.  (4/16/11)


We've been enjoying fresh asparagus for a couple of weeks or so.  We totally replanted the asparagus bed last year.  This year's harvest is modest.  (4/16/11)


I'm beginning to mulch the broccoli bed while the plants are still protected by cloches.  (Note:  The plastic jugs have since been removed.)  (4/13/11)

It's about time to remove the wire covering our garlic before the plants grow up through the wire.  We plant garlic in the fall.  The plants come up and then go dormant over winter.  Once spring arrives, they take off growing again.  Neither deer nor rabbits eat the garlic, but we cover it with wire over winter to make certain an armadillo doesn't come through and till the bed for us.  (4/13/11)


Our potato plants are poking up through the mulch.  I cover them with a layer of fresh mulch when they do.  (4/16/11)

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Garden 2011: Mid-April Recap

Garden 2011: Update Collage

Top Row:  Veggies sown directly into the garden on 3/22/11 are up and doing well.  They will need to be thinned soon.  These include (left to right) two different lettuce blends, spinach and chard.  (Yes, we raise rabbits.  The garden is fertilized with partially composted rabbit manure.)


Bottom Row (l to r):  Potatoes planted on 3/17/11 are starting to poke up through their mulch covering.  I'll need to add more mulch as they grow for a while.  Cherry Belle radishes planted on 3/22.  Dill is a weed in our garden, a friendly weed, but a weed nonetheless.  We first planted dill about fifteen years ago so we'd have it available for making dill pickles.  (Jo hasn't made dill pickles in over a decade.)  It grew well, flowered and went to seed.  Now, dill reseeds itself throughout the garden.  Hundreds of dill plants sprout and we pull up or hoe most of them.  Still, we allow dozen that are not in the way of some other planting to grow and go to seed.  Dill is attractive green plant, it releases a nice aroma when you brush against it, it's clusters of tiny yellow flowers attract a lot of pollinators for me to photograph, and it is a host plant for black swallowtail butterflies.

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Garden 2011: Update Collage

Garden 2011: Planting Potatoes

Jo planted potatoes on St. Patrick's day, our first planting for Garden 2011. We always divide gardening chores equally: Jo plants and I photograph and document her work.

Potatoes like lots of mulch.  Fortunately, this bed had mulch remaining from last fall.  As the potatoes sprout and grow, I'll need to apply more mulch.

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Garden 2011: Planting Potatoes

Our 2009 Gardening Season Begins

Jo is weeding the bed where our red potatoes will soon be planted.


The veggie gardening season of 2009 has officially begun. On the one hand, it's terrific that we can finally get outside and get to gardening. On the other hand, ahead lies about six months of almost daily work out in the garden.

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Our 2009 Gardening Season Begins

Pathetic Potato Harvest

Background: Due to a variety of circumstances more or less beyond our control, Jo and I didn't even begin preparing the beds and planting our garden until after our last spring art fair which was held on the first weekend in June. Because of our late start, we didn't bother planting some crops -- like corn. We anticipated problems with other crops. We figured the question was: Would the crops produced before succumbing to the prolonged heat and dryness typical of our late summer?

One barely full flat of Yukon Golds is our pathetic potato harvest for 2008. We normally have four or five of those wooden flats heaping full.

That question proved irrelevant. The later part of this summer was much cooler and wetter than most. Had I known this in advance, I would have predicted a bumper crop of veggies. I would have been wrong. Some veggies -- like tomatoes and green beans -- produced well. Others -- like the potatoes we harvested today -- did not do so well. I really do not know why our potatoes produced so poorly. I've heard others also had poor potato yields. Ditto for peppers (bell, jalapeno, etc.) which are usually a "nothing to it" plant to grow.

A half of five gallon bucket of sweet potatoes instead of our normal harvest of 3+ buckets full.

As far as conditions unique to our garden that might have contributed to our dismal potato crop: The Yukon Golds never produced the normal amount of foliage. First they were attacked by a heavy infestation of squash bugs sucking out their juices and then blister beetles ate what little foliage the potatoes had managed to grow. Mid-season squash bugs and late season blister beetles seems especially bad the year. Squash bugs aren't usually a problem on potatoes in our garden.

We actually planted fewer sweet potato slips this year. Jo thought she might be planting the sweet potatoes too close together so they competed with each other for nutrients. She experiment by planting fewer potatoes farther apart, thinking each plant might produce more and/or larger potatoes. That experiment was a resounding failure.

The sweet potato vines were still growing well. The rabbits had even stopped keeping the edges trimmed.

We normally dig sweet potatoes right before the first frost which isn't even in our forecast yet, but we decided to go ahead and harvest them today since the ground is relatively dry and rain is in our forecast. I doubt the potatoes were apt to get any larger or more numerous.

Finally, both potato beds were hard to dig because of the tree roots that had grown into them over the summer. Perhaps those roots had robbed nutrients. (Cutting trash trees that have grown up around the edge of the garden is one of this winter's projects.)

While we dug potatoes, a variety of butterflies were enjoying the garden flowers. The zinnias are getting a bit ragged this late in the season, but they are still growing and attracting butterflies.

(Left to right: Monarch, Cloudless Sulphur and Painted Lady)

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Pathetic Potato Harvest

Garden Flowers: The Last of the Season

Jo picked a few more tomatoes, dug some volunteer potatoes and cut a few flowers to bring inside this afternoon. I suspect that tonight's temperatures really will finish off everything still growing out in the garden. The forecast is calling for temperatures down into the mid-twenties here and a freeze is predicted almost state wide.

The dogs helped Jo in the garden while I changed the oil in the van.

Garden Flowers: The Last of the Season

Saturday, 7/7/07

Sunflower out in front of Jo's studio.




Potatoes: Dug our Yukon Gold potatoes today, a total of 63 pounds. We've harvested more potatoes, but it's been a few years. While digging the potatoes, I uncovered a rabbit's nest. No wonder we have so many rabbits in the garden. They're raising their young in there. Or, I should say, they were raising their young. Rusty and Bucket may be lazy house dogs, but when those rabbits broke from the nest, those dogs' instincts kicked in. There are no more bunnies.







Tomatoes: Our first tomato harvest of the 2007 gardening season.







Internet: This morning the phone was working, but our ISP was down. It took a while, but we finally got our telephone and our ISP working at the same time.

Saturday, 7/7/07

Garden Update

The cauliflower and broccoli are doing fine. We should be picking within a couple of weeks.



Jo got the sweet potatoes planted and covered with wire.



The new potatoes made it back up through the mulch and are still growing.


The green beans should be blooming soon.



The tomatoes are in the garden and caged. Believe it or not, a few of them are already blooming, even as small as they are.

Garden Update