Picking and Poking

Today I picked enough beans to freeze a gallon.

Then I caught up on picking pickling Cucumbers.  A few got too big.

And I planted the spare Clarimore Zucchini plant where the slicing Cucumbers were taken out.  Back in the high humidity of July, after a rainstorm, the original plant exhibited one very wilty leaf.  Concerned that it was the beginning of wilt disease or an indicaton of Squash Vine Borer damage, I immediately cut that leaf off and sowed a potential replacement.  It has been hanging out in a gallon pot where it has recently decided it can't make it through the day on its allotment of water.  It will be easier to keep watered in the ground and it can go ahead and crank out too many squash.

A morning Sunflower....

 

First Tomato and August Update

 I picked the first slicing Tomato today.  It is my PaPaw's Tomato.  Not a surprise.  It is often the first to ripen.  All of the Tomato plants are covered in fruit so soon I will be giving them away.  But tomorrow, this will be my lunch!

Right now it is all about Corn and Beans!  We are finishing up the early Solstice Corn which has been awesome, and by next weekend we will be starting on the larger Gotta Have It variety.

Gotta Have It

Seychelles

I am having to make water choices now.  I am half way through my water tank and just a 50/50 chance of a thunderstorm mid-week.  The late Corn and the Beans get as much water as they need, and after that it gets rationed to the containers with Sweet Potatoes, Peppers and Eggplants.  The Tomatoes are fine without and the Cucumbers are wrapping up.

I fully expected to pull the Pickling Cucumber vines first.

But today the Gateway slicer vines went over the hill so those came out.  They were showing the first hint of wilt, and since they had no babies coming along, rather than let the wilt get worse I just pulled them out.

Zucchini with Dahlias in the background

Dahlias and English Cucumbers

I have Chelsea Prize English Cucumbers blooming now.  They are obviously not bred for disease resistance because they are a greenhouse Cucumber and usually greenhouses are much more protected environment.

Chelsea Prize English Cucumbers

Last year I did not water the Compost Volunteer Cantaloupes even once, so I am taking the same route this year.  The Pumpkins don't get water because they are just for fun, but the Pumpkins are gaining size anyway.

Cantaloupe and Pumpkins

Last year I religiously watered the Belstar Broccoli and got an exceptional second crop.  But then I did not have Sweet Corn hogging the water.  This year I am watering sparingly and they are still putting out new branches.  You can see the fresh, bluish foliage below.

The Tomatoes and Bell Peppers are disease free and producing.  I would say that the plants are not as thick as they were last year and that is probably due to them stalling out in early June from the weather.  But I also have one less Tomato plant in the row than I did last year.  So far I think that the fruit production is going to be comparable.

Wall-O Tomat-O

The Sweet Potatoes and Carrots in containers are growing well.  The Carrot greens are beginning to get weary.  I haven't pulled a Carrot recently but I am sure they have reached the bottoms of the containers by now.  I also have a row of YaYa Carrots fending for themselves behind the Strawberry cages.  I pulled one yesterday for a snack and they are doing well.  I will leave those in the ground past frost to use for autumn cooking.

Sweet Potatoes and Carrots

Beans!  We have lots of Beans.  I have picked many meals from them a handful at a time and then made my Dilly Beans and tomorrow I will start picking to freeze.  We go through two gallons of frozen beans a year.  I water them well at least every other day.  They have Marigolds at their feet to keep the roots cool and shaded and I haven't had much trouble with them wilting in the hot afternoons.  We are pushing 90F now and they are very happy.  You have to be more careful when maintaining Bush Beans because if they wilt they stub the Beans against the ground and you get a lot of curly Beans.  Pole Beans are comparatively easy.  These look even better than last year.  Last year the yellow Monte Gusto variety had quite pale vines and I never got them to green up and look nice.  These are very happy.

Monte Gusto on the left and Seychelles to the right

The Dwarf Tomatoes and Onions are doing fine. but the Kookaburra Cackle and Summertime Gold varieties are showing quite a bit of disease.  It is not really passing to the Adelaide Festival plant at the head of the row.  Last year that one was very disease resistant.  

The Kookaburra Cackle Tomato will be the first Dwarf to ripen.  It is a brown Tomato descending from Cherokee Purple. We'll see if it is a keeper or not. 

I am down to just a handful of container plants.  A backup Zucchini plant, some Strawberry babies and ornamental purple Peppers.  

Once again I am fighting a losing battle against flea beetles on the Eggplant, but Little Prince does not seem to mind and is producing "an abundance" of fruit just as advertised.

Just look at all of those lousy beetles

The landscape is looking nice and not presenting any problems.  

I just have to keep my eyes open for the occasional weed! 

Turn your back just for a minute!

Pickle Season Has Begun

 My pickling cucumber vines have been producing very well.  It took three days of picking to gather a hydrator full of cucumbers.  There are four pounds here.  I also picked my first slicing cucumber today and there are three or four that will be ready in a day or two.   I like to pick pickling cukes quite small to get more small slices to cram into the jars.  A couple of them got away from me and got too big, but still not over ripe.

I wanted to put some onions in the jars this time.  I've never done that, but as a child one of my Mom's good friends made pickles with her grandmother every year from her own garden and my favorite part of the pickles were the little rings of pickled onions in each jar.

I just use Mrs. Wages quick process packets, but this year, since I have peppers and onions handy, I plan to experiment with pickle spices from scratch and make some sweet relish.  We do not use much relish, so two or three pints will keep us in relish all year.  But first I have to make the dill slices to store.

I made six pints to store, which is about how many we will use in a year.  There is also a seventh, lightly packed jar with some of the largest slices that I will open first to use,

Red-Spotted Purple Butterfly on Vanilla Marigolds

P.S. I just went out and picked my first handful of Seychelles pole beans for supper.  The Monte Gusto, despite being thriftier than the others, have just blossomed.  They should only be three days behind the others but they are lagging.

Early July Vegetable Update

 I like to go through about twice a month and just take photos of each raised bed so i can compare year to year.  This year's garden is feeling pretty good... that is until Facebook popped a photo of mounds of colorful, blooming Nasturtium from a few years ago.  Okay, my Nasturtium are still tiny this year.  But overall, this is one of my best tended gardens and the list of things to change next year is very, very short.

The peas came out yesterday.  They were still green and beautiful, but completely picked clean.  The best part was - not a weed to be seen.

That bed has now had mulch added, the open pollinated Dahlias from seed I saved last year are transplanted and the other end is set up for a later planting of Cucumbers which are seeded in cells.  The Dahlias were starting to suffer, and their little tubers were poking through the drain holes, but they will turn around quickly.

Here are the rest of the beds one by one:

Pickling Cucumbers and Slicing Cucumbers
I am going to keep these from mingling in the center so when the pickles have been made, the vines can come out.

From the other side.  They are flowering, and will soon be shading the Celery

Solstice Sweet Corn planted May 20th

Gotta Have It planted June 1st

Clarimore and Dunja Zucchini together
It took about three tries and a dozen seeds but I finally got a Dunja plant.

Cantaloupe and Pumpkin

Cole Crops

Cauliflower

Golden Acre Cabbage

Indeterminate Tomatoes

Carbon babies

Bell Peppers full of buds

Potted Bells

Havasu Peppers

Havasu Baby

Sweet Potatoes, Carrots and Herbs
I have been pulling a lot of carrots

Dill, Sunflowers, Sweet Potatoes and Eggplant

Sunflowers soon

The Pole Bean bed still looks ragged, but things are good in there

First seeding of Seychelles is climbing

Dwarf Tomatoes and Onions

I am still learning about this growing Onions from seed thing.
The one in the middle is one of mine, and the larger on each side are the nursery grown Candy Onions

Dwarf Tomatoes

Setting fruit

Micro Tomato

I am proud of this Eggplant.  These are the two spare plants I hid on top of the potting bench which ended up rallying and out growing the other pair I had in a larger pot.  I have switched the pots now so the larger plants are in the larger pot.  Not long ago Aphids found these and I spent about a week spraying with Neem Oil every morning.  Now I am getting an occasional flea beetle but the Aphids are finally gone.  I wrote at length in this blog entry about my love of soft, blemish free Eggplant leaves.

Yukon Gold Potatoes
I dug a plant the other day and they are beautiful and scab free.  Iron-tone (with a 17% sulfur content) seems to have done the trick on that.