Early July Vegetable Update

 These twice monthly status reports are very helpful to me to look back on and gauge the relative progress each year.  I checked back to last year's post and I can see that the corn and tomatoes are doing well, the cucumbers are ahead this year and the beans are behind.  This is due mainly to the weather because the weather initially dictates when a crop can be seeded and then the temperatures will makes changes in the growth rates.  Initially, cold night time temperatures in early June stalled some things (tomatoes) and then the extreme heat affected others (pole beans).  Overall, it is a good year and things are on track.

Solstice Sweet Corn

Gotta Have It Sweet Corn

Both varieties of sweet corn showed tassels this weekend so I side dressed with fertilizer and put another layer of string to keep them from being blown over in the wind.

The cantaloupe vines are short but flowering.  The Sunflowers down the center are doing great.

I think the cucumbers are ahead.  There is fruit set on the earliest vines.  The zucchini are flowering like crazy, but the male flowers just started so the earlier flowers did not pollinate.

The Blackberries and Black Raspberries are growing great and I will get some Blackberries to taste.  This bed will need support, but I want to see the growth habits before I make any final decisions.  I think I will sink a post in the middle of each end and run a cattle panel down the middle.

Grapevines

The Pole Beans are behind despite getting a good start.  They suffered in the extreme heat, and I should have gotten them mulched ahead of time because the leaf tips nearest the soil burned a bit.  Now that they have mulch and cooler roots they are growing again and putting out flowers.

The early peas are pretty much done.

The vines are dying and I can start pulling dried pods.  Harvesting for seed is different than harvesting to eat and satisfying in a different way.

The later peas are in their prime.

The tomato plants are doing very well.  They have been trimmed and supported.

The early fruit set from when it was transplanted is growing, and the vines are flowering again.

The bell pepper plants are looking terrific.  These were pretty pale and spindly when I planted them, but they love the container set up and the partial shade from the fence rail and they are branching out well from the lower leaf nodes despite having shed all of the original lower leaves.

They are flowering and setting fruit.

My Havasu Hot Peppers are having a great year.  They grew well under the lights and were setting fruit at transplant time.

The peppers are just beginning to show some ripe (orange) color around the stem.

The onions are behind this year but I side dressed with fertilizer and they loved that heat wave.

All in all it is a good, average year.  No disappointments yet, and just your average challenges.  I didn't say much about the cole crops because I was too lazy to uncover them.  The Broccoli was good and the plants were healthy enough to leave standing for side shoots.  The Cauliflower has been slow and small.  The one that we already harvested was small but exceedingly sweet and the next one is about ready.

The Romaine Lettuce has been excellent and the Cabbages are ready.

Weeding

 I finally got around to some weeding today.  I weeded the Cole Crop bed in preparation for mulching it with shredded leaves.  The Cabbages are beginning to form heads and the Romaine Lettuces at each corner are of a useful size with three or four smaller ones interspersed for later harvest.

Next I need to weed the Blackberry bed and mulch that too.  The thornless Black Raspberry plant finally arrived to join the thornless Blackberries that I planted last fall.

My Tickled Pink red grape vine is finally putting out some leaves thanks to those two days of hot weather.  The  white grape is alive and has tiny green buds on it but still no leaves.

I have begun prepping the bed for the Tomato Plants but will wait until this weekend to plant them.  I have two Perpetuo variegated Basil plants on the end, and Candy onions along the sides.  I have seeded more Candy onions for a later crop.

The first and second plantings of peas need to be weeded also.  Those are not all lettuce seedlings along the sides.

Many Peppers and Tomatoes still to plant and distribute and some experimental Marigold cuttings.

I seeded Cucumbers and Summer Squash inside and placed them under a grow light since everything is still set up in the workshop.  As soon as the cotyledons appear I will relocate them to the cold frame to grow in the sunshine.

Laster yesterday afternoon when I wend out to close down the cold frame I noticed that one of my transplanted Coleus had snapped, maybe in the wind.  I didn't notice any damage as I was planting.  I brought the "cutting" inside and put it in water to watch it root.  I can always use one more Coleus...

Transplanting Peppers

 Yesterday I started transplanting Peppers.  I am using PRO-MIX Organic Vegetable & Herb Mix which I have used for several years.  I prefer the compressed bales because they are dry to start with.  Last year I bought the smaller bags and the soil was wet right out of the bag.  This year I am finding that the mix is again holding quite a bit of moisture.  When I transplanted the Tomatoes the other day I added both Perlite (to improve drainage) and Espoma Bio-Tone Fertilizer.  I did the same for the Peppers.  I need the soil to dry out at least in 48 hours with a fan.  The added Perlite seems to be helping with the Tomatoes.  When I bump up from the cells I go to 3.5" pots.  I have a lot of 4" pots and only a few 3.5" accumulated from buying plants over the years.  The 4" take up too much space and too much soil so I purchased 3.5" to round out what I already had. With that size you can fit 18 plants instead of only 15 in a 1020 tray 

I planted six different varieties of Ornamental peppers and some Hot Peppers that I use for pickling.  I may as well buy Bell Peppers, because they are easy to find and ornamentals are impossible.  I got two to four specimens of each variety plus some spares.

These are the spares.

I potted them up too and kicked them out in the cold frame to fend for themselves.

The Durango Marigolds shot right up.  I planted Red (a "red" Marigold is really deep, burnt Orange), Yellow and Bolero which is Yellow tipped with Red.  I get really tired of plain Orange Marigolds.  It seems like every seed mix gets more than it's share of Orange so I mix my own.

The Cole Crops are thriving in the cool, wet weather.

And so are the Peas

1st and 2nd planted rows

Direct Sown Lettuce

3rd and 4th plantings of Peas

My Strawberry bed is amazing this year!  They are apparently loving the cooler weather and blooming their heads off!  This end of the bed is my favorite, dependable June bearing plants called Honeoye in their second full year (planted fall of 2023) and the far end is Day Neutral variety called Seascape which should produce all summer.  I ordered and planted the Seascape last spring.  Technically this is their second year but the bare root plants were actually pretty pitiful when they arrived and didn't really root in and begin growing until last fall.  

Now all I have to do is protect the berries from the slugs and the Chipmunks.

A Late Start

This time last year we were already done with edging and mulching.  This year we are just getting started.  The weeding and clean up is already done but we just started edging and refreshing the mulch.

We edged the front fence line and tomorrow we will lay down some mulch.  162 feet of edging is no small task for two older folks, one of which recently had his "good" knee scoped.  Actually, this slower approach to spring cleanup and mulching has allowed me to get other things done at my own pace which has been very relaxing.

Today I planted my fourth and final row of peas.  The first two are up, and the third is starting to show some little green sprouts.

The Cole Crops spent the day under insect netting only and they look like it agreed with them.

Cold Snap

 We have a high today of only 35F.   The wind is pretty bitter, This morning, the temperature in the garden was 32F and there was a dusting of snow on the roof tops.  In preparation for two cold days, I had replaced the shade cloth with a heavy frost cover on top of the insect netting yesterday. This Supreme Frost Cover is supposed to give you 6 to 8 degrees of warmth which is plenty for Cole Crops.  I had already begun lifting the sides of the shade cloth and this frost cover blocks 50% of light, so it handles all of the crucial elements of the hardening off process.

I will have to remove this cover tomorrow afternoon or the next day because we are expecting warmer weather again and this cover does create a greenhouse effect that could cook the transplants.  I may throw the shade cloth back on for a few hours during the afternoons as necessary.  It will depend on how the plants look.

Planting Cole Crops

 The rule of thumb for setting out Cole Crops is to transplant them between 4 and 6 weeks after sowing.  Five weeks, when I usually transplant, would be on Friday.  But they could not look nicer and the weather suits so I put them out today.

Below is a picture of my Cole Crops from 2024 on the same date.  They looked great in the past.  This year, with the Vego LED Grow Lights they look more than great.  I am very happy with those lights.

I had already organized the hoops and insect netting.  I used a power auger to drill the holes in undisturbed soil which hosted Sweetcorn last season.

The placement of plants in this bed is fairly critical.  This is my plan:  The Belstar Broccoli will continue to produce all season, but the Flamestar Cauliflower will not.  So the Broccoli should be in the center where the hoops are highest, and should alternate with Cauliflower because the Cauliflower plants will be cut out leaving more room for the Broccoli to grow.  The Cabbage can go along the edge, alternating Golden Acre and Caraflex because Caraflex shoudl be ready earlier.  The four corners don't really have enough room for Cabbages or Broccolis so I planted Romaine Lettuce.

I used Espoma Bio-Tone Starter Fertilizer in the holes and watered them in well.

The Insect Netting will offer some shelter from both wind and sun.

Because I did not harden them off before setting out, I placed an additional shade cloth to block the sun.  I have used this lazy, non-hardening off, method for years now and it has worked well for me.  The forecast is for warm, cloudy weather which is much better for them than hot sun.

I will still need to mulch the bed with shredded leaves to keep down weeds as I do each year.  And, they don't make much of a picture, but the Peas planted on April 1st are coming up today right on schedule.