This year's report needs two parts. I've found these posts really useful for going back over and comparing season to season. I really meant to plant less stuff, but it seems like I ended up with a whole lot going on. These are the crops I chose to plant this year:
Lettuce
Peas
Carrots
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Green Beans
Cantaloupes
Potatoes
Celery
Radicchio
Cutting Flowers
Cover Crops (Buckwheat)
I think I've gotten pretty good at planting the right amount for us to use and store and I've got my succession planting down pat so that we have our favorites for the longest time period possible.
Lettuce: It was an average year for lettuce. I under planted this year. I did not have one huge, gorgeous, lush bed full of way too much lettuce. Instead I had three separate plantings of single rows in different beds. I picked as much as I could store just before it bolted at the end of our hot hot June and we ate lettuce until the third week of July. It was not amazing but it was useful.
Strawberries: It was a bad year for strawberries, as it turned out. I really thought I had these all figured out. Until I lost them. I'm tired of strawberries. They require year 'round supervision and I don't really love strawberries anyway. Next year I'm just going to have some potted plants. That's about how many berries I really want.
Peas: It was an average year for peas. I did a detailed post on the peas HERE.
March and April were cold and miserable. I planted the first row on Good Friday. They took three weeks to come up and got snowed on at least once.
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| Burpeanna |
One of the second planting rows, the Burpeanna, can be considered a failure.
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| Penelope Pea |
The other second planting row, the Penelope Peas from Johnny's seed were a success.
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| The first nice Barlow Jap |
Tomatoes: It is a very good year for tomatoes. This year the purpose for the tomatoes was to replenish my stock of Barlow Jap seeds. I haven't saved seeds for several years and even though they still have a great germination rate, I know I need to get a fresh batch put away. I started seeds the 3rd of April and I transplanted the weekend before Memorial Day. The plants had been put into gallon pots and had been living in the cold frame for three weeks. They were about a foot tall when they went into the garden.
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| Blue Beauty Tomatoes |
As always I ended up with more plants than I needed. I did destroy a few spares this year but I also put three extra plants in the bush bean bed. In the past I've tried planting the bush beans flanking the tomato row. This doesn't always work out well for the beans. With only three plants though, there wasn't too much shading or water competition and everything went well.
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| Lenny and Gracie's Kentucky Heirloom |
A couple of years ago I planted all Kentucky Heirlooms. One variety I chose was Lenny and Gracie's Yellow Kentucky Heirloom. The seeds didn't do well, the transplants were sluggish and they never got as far as the garden. I tried them again this year from the same seed packet and had great luck. This is a lovely little beefsteak. Low acid, with a delicate sweetness. They are a little tender and accident prone though. Best picked a day or two before full ripeness and coddled in the house. Otherwise they can bruise themselves against their own stems. They are such a pale yellow that by the time you decide they are fully ripe you are a day too late.
My tomatoes plants have not gotten any significant blight yet and Gracie is at least 8 feet tall. All of the plants have begun a second round of blooms. If frost is late this year I may have a second late crop.
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| The Pickle Bed |
Cucumbers: This was a good year for cucumbers. I planned to make several batches of pickles and relish. I chose Burpee's Supremo Hybrid for pickling and also planted a pack of jumbo Dill. It all worked out as planned. The pickle bed thrived and I picked a hydrator full three weeks in a row. Each Sunday we made a batch, dill slices, bread and butter slices and sweet pickle relish.
I'm still getting a few cucumbers off of the vines but they look like heck. Tomorrow I plan to make a few quarts of sweet dill spears and then the vines are coming out.
Last year I did two rows of Johnny's SV4719CS slicing cukes.
They were awesome! It was a tough act to follow. This spring cucurbits were very sluggish to germinate. Instead of having a dozen nice transplants I had two and I direct sowed the rest of the row.
The direct sowed plants never really took off. They got anthracnose early on and didn't produce much. I pulled them out last week.
This leaves me with three or four really nice plants at the one end of the row and I really can't complain about their production. They are putting out a few large, straight cucumbers each week. And I don't need extras for pickles, because I've got that covered. So we're getting by.
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| ...come on |
The second weekend in July I seeded the second row of SV4719CS. Again the sluggish germination and waiting. The next weekend I filled in the spaces with more seeds and again the wait.
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| anything? |
I also planted a second row of bush beans at the same time with similar results. I did everything I could think of to get a great second crop of cucumbers. I added blood meal and worm castings. Finally...
Terrific growth in both the cucumbers and bush beans.
Next year I think I ought to get a 50# bag of those worm castings! Not only do I have vigorous deep green growth with huge leaves on both the cucumbers and bush beans. The first cuke plant to come up has two female flowers and you'd better bet I made sure those were pollinated! I was out there this morning with my paint brush making sure...
Next Post - what's going on with Bush Beans, Cantaloupes, Carrots, Cover Crops, Critters and other Odds and Ends.
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