Everything Cucumber

 It is Cucumber season.  These are number 4, 5 and 6.  Soon I will be having them for breakfast and lunch.

I have started collecting up Pickling Cucumbers for Dill Slices.

OOPS!

That's OK.  These over grown picklers are just as good to eat as slicing Cucumbers.  There are all kinds of things to find hiding in vines,

Cantaloupe

Pumpkin

Micro Tomatoes

And the wild Blackberries are starting to ripen.

June - Finally on Track for Summer

June is in full swing and the weather has stabilized, and although we have had some cooler weather, things are beginning to grow by leaps and bounds.  My Garden Sweet Peas, which I was beginning to be a little disappointed in, grew quite a bit and I think will rival last years results.  If they were on the normal pea trellis, at this point they would have reached the top.  They began to bloom the middle of last week and I have been keeping them watered to encourage this growth spurt.

the final planting of Penelope peas with the old lettuce seed used as ground cover

The first blossoms are always encouraging

Below is one of my large, self watering, containers of eggplants.  On Thursday afternoon the flea beetles arrived so I began using Neem Oil and so far the damage has been minimal.  The few beetles I find I remove.  I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but one of the plants is more pale than the others.  The center growth is not as dark purple, and the leaves are a lime green with no purple veining.  This puzzled me for a couple of days then I realized what happened.

I seeded the Eggplants in March the same time as my Cauliflower.  I used one pack of old seed which had a mixture of varieties (two of the varieties are Rosa Bianca and Beatrice, both lavender) and a new pack of seeds that was Barbarella (a deep purple but rounded fruit).  None of the old seeds came up, which wasn't a big deal, so I transplanted all of the Barbarella seedlings into pots and used the same seed tray for my tomato seeds.  Several weeks after I transplanted the tomato seeds, I realized that one of the "potato leafed' varieties looked an awful lot like an eggplant.  Well, apparently, one of those old seeds finally germinated and hitched a ride with the tomatoes and has now caught up with the Barbarella and is doing great.  I'm looking forward to seeing which variety it turns out to be.

Brussel's Sprouts
(some Cauliflower on one end, and Broccoli on the other)

I'm pretty impressed with the progress of all of my cole crops.  They are large, deep green, and growing fast.  The Brussels Sprouts are HUGE.  I ended up losing about a dozen Cauliflower transplants which I pulled out and replaced with eight Broccoli plants from the local nursery.  They are smaller but catching up. I'm also very happy with having kept the little green worms out so far.

Cauliflower

I thought for sure I was going to kill all of my tomato plants.  Every last one. There are three that now are beginning to look normal to me, and there have been days when I wouldn't have put even their chances very high.  They have not gotten tall, but are finally deepening in color and widening out into robust plants. I even picked up one nursery plant as insurance and planted one plant that I had completely snapped off in April (which therefore spent all of the rotten weather in May recovering under grow lights).  It is now tucked into the end of a raised bed which it will have to share with some other stuff.  Tomatoes are remarkably resilient when they are not pouting.  I have three more in the ground elsewhere but they are still pouting.

Black Brandywine

They are even beginning to bud.

Black Brandywine

I may move the tomato containers to the other side of the garden.  They are currently on the north side of fence posts where they get full morning and full evening sun, but diverted or dappled sun from about 11am to 3pm.  I think that is what saved them.  They were sunburning faster than they were acclimating for awhile.  Even though they were slowly hardened off, when the hot temperatures and clear days finally arrived (abruptly), they were mostly accustomed to clouds and coolness.  Now they are ready for full sun.

First Flower on the Barlow Jap

There is a lot going on in the Pole Bean bed.

In the center I have just transplanted pickling Cucumbers which I seeded in the cold frame.  I've had poor luck direct seeding cucumbers so I've stopped trying.  In the shade of the cucumbers I transplanted some of the direct seeded lettuce.  My older lettuce was sort of boring with mostly romaine lettuces so I grabbed some of the fancier varieties out of the crowd.  Any way you look at it, I have a lot of lettuce.

The Pole Beans have their first true leaves.  I have been filling in with more seeds because some seedlings did get snipped off.  No worries though.  I have enough seeds.

I transplanted my summer squash in and around the weed potatoes.  I seeded a couple more and plan to put at least one more Cue Ball plant where there is currently a nice bushy potato plant.  It never hurts to have some later plantings waiting in the wings.

The Summer Squash are under the wire cloches

I have thinned the first planting of Sweet Corn (Gotta Have It).  The germination rate was super so I had to snip off quite a few.  The second planting of a different variety ( SS3778R Hybrid) had poorer germination so I'm having to replant a dozen or so but again, I had leftover seeds so no problem.

Gotta Have It Sweet Corn

The Cabbages I got from the nursery transplanted well and are taking off.

Cabbages

The Lima Beans (Butterbeans) are out from under their protective cover.

Lima Beans

My Surecrop Strawberries are setting and looking pretty good for first year plants.  "They" say to pinch off the first year flowers to let the plants get established, but I've never done that.  I do discourage runners the first year.  I usually have more than enough berries anyway.  I just want a few for salads.  I can easily be over run with berries!

Other gardening activities:  I've gotten all of my herbs planted.  The Potatoes were put into grow-bags yesterday.  I have leftovers.  I'm thinking about ordering some more grow-bags, but I only want a few, not a dozen, and it looks like a lot of a dozen is the most cost effective.  I don't really want that many grow-bags hanging about.  Should I or shouldn't I?  Maybe I'll spend too much money on some pretty colored ones...

There are Okra seedlings hardening off.  Those will go in patio pots.  I've been through the landscaping a second time weeding and fertilizing.  A few things still need to be done with the perennials.   We got the front porch washed and opened up yesterday.   I'm ready to sit in the shade and watch things grow.

The Good the Bad and the Ugly 2018 -- Part 1

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.

Burpeanna

One of the second planting rows, the Burpeanna, can be considered a failure.

Penelope Pea

The other second planting row, the Penelope Peas from Johnny's seed were a success.

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.

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.

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.

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.

...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.

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.

It got ahead of me

The strawberry bed was doing really well.  I had thinned out the center so I wouldn't have a complete jungle.  I had disturbed the black oxalis weeds to the point I thought they would be manageable....

And then I covered the bed for the week the berries would first ripen to keep the chipmunks out.

And it got away from me.

I did get several pickings of nice berries.  As much as I wanted really.  But then the ants started farming aphids in there and it all went to heck.  All of a sudden it appeared that all of the strawberry plants were pretty much gone.  Frankly, it became an eyesore.  One that I had to walk past 10 times a day.  Something drastic had to be done.  I've reached the stage of gardening where I do not hesitate to pull something out and start over.  Or go to Plan B. 

Zinfandel Oxalis sold by Proven Winners

Now a "weed" is anything that is growing where you don't want it.  Some of the "weeds" that I deal with a lot are actually useful plants under some circumstances. Oxalis, Purslane, Bachelor's Buttons... some people even plant Golden Rod on purpose.  But the Oxalis is getting pretty tiring.  It's everywhere - both the light green, upright, yellow sorrel, and the sneaky, low growing creeping woodsorrel.  The yellow sorrel is pretty easy to deal with but the woodsorrel is nearly impossible to pull.

Maybe I should have weeded the strawberries more carefully.  

^That ^ is a tree.

Some pretty nice soil

My initial plan was to strip out the top 4 inches of soil and discard it.  Instead of planting the semi-permanent strawberries back in there I will use it first for fall lettuce, and next year for broccoli and cauliflower. But when I got to digging around in there I remembered that this was some of my best soil.  Just look at how well it grew weeds.  So the plan changed.  I will have to keep an eye on it and keep the oxalis cultivated out.  That will be easier with seasonal crops than with the strawberries.  The strawberries are going into "time out" in a strawberry tower where they can't get themselves into as much trouble.

Meanwhile. the neighbor's new raised beds are doing great.

The Tiger Lilies are in full bloom.  In fact, I think that bed may need to be thinned in the spring.  Tiger Lilies are quick to take over.

The neighbor's have also finished setting up their rain water collection.  This tank stores water from the barn rain gutters.  There is a submerged sump pump to pressurize the hose, and a wall light to tell you when the switch is on so it doesn't get left on.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Last year I wrote a blog about Cutting Back and listed everything that I can grow which I no longer bother to grow.  Well, this year is the same theme.  Having already finished the epic dry creek bed project, we are moving on to refurbishing the two car garage and building a deck at our side entrance.

The garage with its old shake shingles and
house wrap hides in the background

The garage is about 70 years old, has been routinely ignored in favor of all our other renovation projects and is in need of a major face lift.  I always try to leave it out of garden and landscape photos, but sometimes it sneaks in. 

"Needs to be refurbished" - ya think?
What it needs is a whole new foundation

Our side entrance has been on hold for years and has been dug up a few times in the past few, first to replace the septic system and then just last year to run city water into the house.  It presently consists of a non-glamorous set of steps, deteriorating railroad ties, an expanse of bare gravel, and a stalwart Porcelain Vine which does a lot towards covering up the air conditioner and distracting from the general lack of landscape.

The side entrance last year mid-water project

This is the year we plan to remedy all that, so the garden has been tightened up again to be low(er) maintenance.  I cut out more than half a dozen planters which are very time consuming as they require almost daily watering.   I successfully (for the first time ever) restrained myself to 5 tomato plants and no eggplants.  And that's really about it. Still, it will be a lot less daily work.  Here is a list of what is in the garden this year:

Zucchini and Yellow Squash
Out in the open the plants have to be protected
with a wire cage until they are mature enough to
be prickly and not appetizing to deer and rabbits

• Lettuce (lots of lettuce)
• Strawberries
• Peas
• Potatoes (in containers)
• Zucchini (way too many)
• Cucumbers
• Tomatoes (only 5 plants)
• Bell Peppers (in containers)
• Bush Beans (still to come)
• Various Herbs

Tomatoes surrounded by Nasturtium to keep
soil from splashing up onto the tomato leaves.  

Cucumbers shading the third planting of lettuce

Bell peppers in large landscape pots.
The Gro Thru grid will support the plants when
they become taller and heavy with peppers.

Right now, the strawberries are in their prime.  I pulled many runners to open up the bed, and to keep the plants away from the sides which is what caused my Strawberry Problem of 2016 where all of the plants grew through the cage making it almost impossible to remove for picking.  I am picking a couple of quarts every other day and what does not get eaten fresh goes into the freezer for Strawberry Crisp .

Peas are about ready to pick.  There are enough for nibbling but not yet for two servings at dinner.  I think probably if I feel around in the potato pots, I will find enough new potatoes for supper.

tall Wando peas

Maestro peas almost ready to pick

Potatoes in tubs
To harvest, I just dump one tub.  And I never damage
one like you might when digging

In addition to refurbishing, we also have a lot of seasonal maintenance.  The garden shed has been washed down and the doors painted.  The doors are white fiberglass, and you would not believe how much dirt they collected just from rain and atmosphere.  Within a couple of months, they would be grey with grunge.  This bronze color which matches our outdoor furniture and deck boxes will hide a lot of that.

So that's what' going on in the garden.  The weather has been beautiful, pests have been minimal, and everything is growing by leaps and bounds.  Time to start on summer projects.