Summer 2020

As a gardener, I cannot help but feel that it's all down hill from here.  Each day will be a little shorter.  The birds will leave the nests and not sing as early each morning.  The early plants will begin to produce then age.  But for the moment, we are right at the pinnacle.  It doesn't get any better than this.  And we have had "perfect" weather.  Over and over.  Blue skies.  Sunshine.  Heat.  Its exhausting!  The house hasn't been cleaned in weeks, but my suntan has never looked better.  And we have had no rain.  In the past 4 weeks, we have had just a smidgen under half an inch and three other half-hearted sprinkles.  The lawns have burned out but the annual flowers, as long as they have been cared for, will never look better as there is no rain to dampen their blooms.

Right in the middle of this, the 500 gallon rain water tank ran dry.  Which hasn't happened since 2015.  Well actually, it almost ran dry, so yesterday I watered everything twice, including the apple trees, to drain it down to nothing, and then my husband's least favorite chore started.  Water Tank Maintenance.

First we clean the screen on the stone box which filters all
of the seeds and twigs off of the roofs with a wire mesh.
This has to be done two or three times a year anyway.

Then he pulls the submersible water pump

Attach the shop vac to the vent stack to pull fresh air in from the manhole

And then you've just gotta get down in there.

Then we begin to bail.  He uses a Cool-Whip container to scoop the sludgy water left at the bottom of the tank into a pail on a rope which I haul up and dump.  Then he uses a large drywall taping knife to scrape down the sides.  A hose to rinse off the sides, and finally, a sponge to wipe down the sides and soak up the last of the sludgy water.

There is no way to stay clean through this process.  This muck will turn anything black.

In the sludge there are some rust particles from the walls of the tank, but the tank itself is still in really good condition.  I hope I'm long gone before it rusts out and has to be replaced or abandoned

When all is finished its clean as a whistle.  Just a little rust above the average water line.

Because there are only hit and miss showers forecast for this week, we filled the water tank with the hose.  Like I have said before.  I can buy water.  I can't buy sunshine.

Clean and ready for more water.

Elsewhere in the garden, things have been growing great (including the weeds) 

At first I thought this was Vitaverde cauliflower, but now I'm sure it is a
Castle Dome broccoli that I used to replace some of the failed Cauliflower plants.
I can't wait for my first fresh Broccoli Salad!

I've found another advantage to using insect netting instead of floating row covers.  It is well known that cole crops prefer cooler weather.  And our weather has been in the high eighties, and ninety for several weeks.  My garden is generally about 10 degrees warmer than the ambient temperature, so it has not been unusual to see temperatures 100 or above.  But whenever I lift the mesh and feel the leaves, they are cool and comfortable.  I think the shiny fabric reflects away enough of the sun to keep the inside cool.  This isn't necessarily the case with summer weight fabric.  While it does filter some sun it also acts like a greenhouse and holds heat.

The cauliflower and broccoli plants are huge and healthy.

"Knee High by the Fourth of July"

I finally got my first row of slicing cucumbers planted.  I should have done that a week ago.  They were so happy to be set free they almost doubled in size over night.

I had to do some extreme weeding to clear the Purslane
Next I will remove the bolting lettuce and plant bush beans

My Garden Sweet peas finally took off and reached the top of the double trellis
Last year I put them on regular trellis and they flopped over.

Pretty soon I will be over run with peas.

I just love the velvet texture of cabbage leaves

The cabbages are beginning to form heads

My potato grow bags are doing well.  I've filled another 3 inches of soil on top and then added a layer of leaf mulch to keep the soil from drying out so fast.

Speaking of leaf mulch and containers drying out:  I am so pleased with my tomato container set-up this year.  The containers are probably 20 gallon.  I have water reservoirs in each one and below the reservoirs, I put coco chips to also hold water.  I filled the pot with moisture control potting mix and then topped them with a layer of leaf mulch.  Then I went two weeks in this hot dry weather without watering them even once.  Each time I stuck my finger down in it the soil was moist and cool.  Yesterday I filled the reservoirs with fish emulsion fertilizer.  My eggplants on the patio have the same set up.

Barlow Jap Tomato

Black Brandywine Tomato

Store bought Pineapple Tomato

Because my tomato transplants looked so miserable, I was afraid to throw out any backups.  I stuck one Black Brandywine in the end of a raised bed and it has rallied and taken hold. All of the plants are flowering.

Spare Black Brandywine

Throughout all this heat and watering and sludgy tank cleaning, the Rebecca Clematis has lounged on the bank overlooking it all and brightened our day. 

May Progress

After a really nice start to an early spring, the month of May turned on us.  The first week of May the high temperatures were in the low 50s (that's like 10 degrees Celsius for you all in Canada/UK) with frost or freeze every night.  May 13th I woke up to 24 degrees in the garden (-4 C)!  My cold frame is usually good for about 10 degrees, which, if the nighttime temps are in the 40s, is more than adequate. But the first two weeks of May it was nowhere near suitable for tender vegetables.  My Tomato plants had already been potted up into gallon pots in the mild temperatures of April and were not prepared for the Polar Vortex.  They all survived with some minor frostbite on their older leaves but of course they did not grow at all.

The garden Peas, Carrots and Lettuce were snowed on many times and endured a lot of frost with no losses.  However, they too refused to grow until things were looking up.  This past weekend with rain and sun and heat they have doubled in size and you can almost sit and watch them grow.

My Cauliflowers, Broccoli and Brussels Sprouts were also out in this horrible weather, protected by floating row covers.  To me they did not look like they were making any progress either.  I did lose a couple to either frost or high winds, despite their being somewhat sheltered.  The winds still get in under and can twist off a weakened plant and we had a lot of all day high winds to contend with.  This past weekend I switched to a mesh cover, and I can see that most of the plants are comparable to this time last year. 

Most of the row covers available in the US are "garden fleece" and not an insect mesh.  It seems they were created for frost protection and now double as insect protection.  But I think we can do a little better for just insect protection if we try.  In the UK, they have a product called Enviromesh which is similar to polyester tulle fabric, but made of UV-stabilized polyethelene.  I have found only one retailer in the US that carries it and they are always out of stock.  So I found what looks like a very similar product to try instead.  The main downside is that it is heavier when wet, but on the plus side you can see your plants.  And your weeds :).  

Brussels Sprouts

I bought a pack of Castle Dome Broccoli to fill in the empty spots in the Cauliflower beds, and then I could not resist the Cabbages.  I'm in the mood for homemade cole slaw.  So I bought a pack of Red Acre and Golden Acre cabbages to share the same bed as the Fordhook Lima Beans.

Cabbages with a few Calendula seedlings left at the very edge.

I am using my frost frame and a scrap of summer weight floating row cover to protect them from the Cabbage Moths.  I have this set up so I can pick the whole cover off easily and set aside to check on my plants.  That's not something I can do with the large hoop system.

Cabbage and Lima Beans

Elsewhere in the garden, I have lettuce transplanted.  I have seeded cucumbers in the cold frame to go in this bed as well.

I have Carminat and Monte Gusto pole beans seeded and I'm looking forward to trying them.  Tucked in between the bean poles are a few Pickling Cucumbers since I need to make Dill pickles again this year.  Lettuce is planted in the shade of the cucumber frame.  These are seedlings I picked out of direct seeded Lettuce in one of the Pea beds.

Bean poles and cucumber trellis

After my frustrating experience with direct seeding cukes last year, all of my Cucumbers and Summer Squash are being seeded in the cold frame.  Here is a trick I learned on Facebook.  Sometimes I like to use plastic wrap to cover a seed tray and hold the moisture in.  But wet plastic wrap is miserable stuff.  So instead, I'm using sheets of bubble wrap.  It is easier to handle, and clips easily to the sides of pots with clothes pins.

Cucumber and Summer Squash seed trays

To warm the soil enough for the Sweet Corn to germinate, I put polycarbonate greenhouse panels on the bed for a few days.  This bed has been seeded now and the panels moved to the next bed. 

A couple of times in the past I have tried Sweet Potatoes with moderate success.  I am in the mood again so I've put some Sweet Potato slips into grow bags.  Since the seed companies always send me more slips than I could ever want, I have also put them into the three whiskey barrels that I usually plant with annuals.  Why waste that large volume of good soil?  They sure don't look like much at first, but is a few weeks ought to be off and running.

a Grow Bag of Sweet Potatoes

Due to last year's success with tomatoes in large containers, my best tomato plants are in containers again this year.  I do not can tomatoes, and only use them for sandwiches so I don't need a lot of plants.  I used to plant dozens of plants every year (hence the name of this blog) but I have learnt my lesson!  I may have a few extra transplants that are worth saving (despite the abuse they've taken) and those will get tucked in with the Dill along the Strawberries.  The three best plants, two Barlow Japs and one Black Brandywine, look very good and are beginning to grow again already.

This past weekend was Memorial Day weekend.  It is as early as it can possibly be this year so gardeners who use it as their benchmark for planting must keep that in mind.  We really have one more week to go to get everything in on time.  But this week is going to be gorgeous growing weather.  

This past weekend was a mixed bag.  Friday started out cloudy and I made my sight-seeing visit of the big Amish greenhouse in the morning.  That was a disappointment.  I did get the hard to find items on my list, and they were good quality plants, but overall the place was picked over and everything looked like July leftovers.  Usually when I go in early to mid-May, everything is just at its peak and it is a pleasure just to be surrounded by it all.  This year everything is over grown and anemic looking.  This is probably because we got great weather with sunshine in late April and then endured two weeks of cold and clouds. 

Friday afternoon I dodged rain showers and got a few things done, but the weather was supposed to break late Saturday morning.  We went out to work, and the cloudy drizz turned to pretty steady rain showers.  We kept on going because once you're wet, you're wet.  One plus was that there was no breeze at all so I got my row covers changed out to the garden mesh without having to fight the wind.  It did take all day for them to dry though. The rain gave out around 2pm, and we were able to get cleaned up and enjoy a sunny late afternoon, knowing that we had accomplished a lot in spite of the weather.

Sunday all day was beautiful weather.  Mid-80s and sunny with high clouds and a light breeze. Again I got a lot done, mulching in the strawberry bed and moving some big planters around.   The lawn got mowed. I was able to get down in the soil and plant seeds without dealing with soggy soil.  By Monday afternoon we were in the middle of a heat wave.  Afternoon temperatures were 88 in the shade, and 93 in the garden.

The strawberries are blooming

As I knelt on the scorching walkway, hovering over damp, steaming mulch, I reached the end of my gardening rope.  It was time to go in and take a cool shower and put Memorial Day 2020 in the books.  Next weekend is again supposed to be sunny and clear, but 20 degrees cooler which will be welcomed.

Dinner Plate Dahlias mulched in
This is the last of the spring mulching!

I have made a final assessment of the Chilly Pear Tree.  Its going to live.  You can see a few leaf tips got burned by frost but not bad for several days of snow, high winds, and freezing temperatures.  When it arrived it did have a few tiny pears set but not surprisingly it dropped those mid-blizzard.  Maybe we'll have good luck with it next year.  It is grafted with Bartlett, Bosc, Seckel and Summercrisp pears.

The cold frame only moderates about 10 degrees of cold temperatures, but it magnifies hot temperatures.  On an 80 degree day, wide open, it will get to about 110 on the gravel.  As long as its open, that isn't the actual air temperature, but if you misjudge, you can cook things pretty quick.  So for this coming hot week the rest of my transplants have been moved to the east side of the garden shed where they get half a day of sun.  I have my eggplant babies transplanted into patio pots.  There are a dozen spare tomato plants, only one or two of them look tempting to save.  The rest are just average and won't be difficult to toss.  The other plants are herbs to be planted into the end of the large area where the pear tree is which I will get done some evening this week.  My husband keeps asking me if I'm done yet.  Once I get the herbs planted I can say "Yes.  For Now" and start round one of weeding and fertilizing.

Bed #1: Sweet Corn seeded 05/24

Bed #2: Pole Beans seeded 05/24, Lettuce transplanted

Bed #3: Prepared for Cucumbers and Lettuce

Bed #4: Prepared for Cucumbers, Lettuce growing

Bed #5: Peas growing (seeded 03/15 & 04/05) - Bush Beans later

Bed #6: Peas growing  (seeded 03/15 & 04/05)- Bush Beans later

Bed #7: Cauliflowers and Broccoli growing

Bed #8: Cauliflowers Broccoli and Brussels Sprouts growing

Bed #9: Peas growing (seeded 04/12) - Buckwheat to follow

Bed #10: Prepared for Sweet Corn

Bed #11:Peas (seeded 04/19) and Lettuce growing

Bed #12:Cabbages transplanted, Lima Beans seeded 05/24

Bed #13: Strawberries blooming

Bed #14: Waiting for Summer Squash

Containers: Carrots, Tomatoes and Sweet Potatoes planted

Cold Frame: Cucumbers and Summer Squash seeded

Basement: Herbs and Okra under grow lights

Potatoes chitting for Grow Bags

C'mon Let's Grow

I got to the end of my To Do List this weekend for the first time in weeks.  Because the weather was quite nice.  That must mean I'm caught up right?  Is any gardener ever caught up in May?

Six eggplants to the right and 4 borage to the left

My eggplant plants went out to the cold frame.  I'm pretty proud of these little guys.  They've put on quite a growth spurt of recent, and as soon as they are adjusted they can go out in their "big boy pots".  I'm trying them in containers this year for two reasons  #1 I am trying to avoid the flea beetles, and #2 all of my patio pots will hold edibles instead of merely ornamentals.  That actually gives me quite a range of ideas because a lot of vegetable plants are very attractive and have nice flowers.  My list includes eggplants, okra, herbs (Thai Basil is my choice) and Nasturtiums.

The cold frame is full of dwarf dahlias, repotted herbs and tomato and eggplants.  Our current weather pattern of warm and cloudy is perfect for the cold frame.  The weather forecast has increasing warmth all week and the zone 5 milestone of Memorial Day is approaching.

My strawberries are growing again and there are even a few flowers.

They need to be mulched now.

Yup, that looks exciting.  Lots of dirt.
This area will now be mulched with shredded bark mulch.

I brought my Dinnerplate Dahlias out of storage and got them planted.  

The tubers looked great and were already putting out tiny sprouts.

The first row of lettuce was transplanted. 

I always stagger my lettuce plantings using the largest plants first.

I spread my pea plantings over 4 weeks, but the awful weather has put the first ones behind and the later plantings are catching up.

All of our landscape beds are freshly edged and mulched.

The spring flowers, daffodils and primrose are beginning to fade, and the summer plants are growing by leaps and bounds.

Other happenings in the garden:

All garden beds have been aerated and amended in preparation for planting.

The first bed is being prepared for sweet corn with polycarbonate panels to warm the soil.

Potatoes are chitting in the chicken coop windows

Cauliflowers, compared to last spring, are behind in growth, but perhaps the fact that they survived that nasty polar vortex at all is a good sign.

The apple trees are blossoming.  Thankfully they didn't do that last weekend!

Chores for this week:

Filling containers for tomatoes, eggplants, and potatoes

A trip to the nursery for some fun extras

Fertilizing perennials

Still to come as the weather improves:

Setting out herbs

Starting cucumbers and summer squash seeds in the cold frame

Planting lima beans

The Dirt Locker

For several years now I have wished that I had a place to store lightly used soil.  Anyone who does a lot of gardening in containers will know what I mean.  Sometimes when you dump a container, there seems to be no soil left in there.  There is nothing but a mass of roots, and the dirt has completely disappeared.  Other times you have a large container half or three quarters full of slightly tired soil.

The Dirt Locker

Now there are a few things you can do with it.  You can dump it into gardening areas to improve the native soil, you can put it into your compost pile or you can leave it in the container for next year.  For my large whiskey barrel planters, of course I leave it in.  They are too big to dump over, and they are large enough to mix in new ingredients.   Before I plant again I will add a balanced fertilizer, and then top it off with fresh potting mix to replace what was removed with the roots as I pulled out the dead plants last year.  

A mass of roots, some empty plastic pots for filler,
but still some usable potting mix to reclaim

But my raised beds cannot take large quantities of new material each year.  Putting it into the compost seems a bit of a waste since it is still light and fluffy and full of peat and vermiculite and perlite.  As for leaving a bunch of half filled pots around - well I like to scrub out my containers and store them away each winter.  We have a lot of autumn leaves to deal with and we need a clean slate.  Stacks of containers everywhere just collects leaves.  And the winter weather will continue to age the planters unnecessarily.

Some of the ingredients that go into mixing your own potting mix
Absent from photo: large quantities of compost and peat or coir

Another plus of saving and reusing potting mix is the cost savings.  Whether you buy it by the bag or mix your own, potting mix can represent a large portion of your gardening budget.  You can go broke pretty quick growing a year's worth of potatoes in containers of brand new medium.  It never hurts to have a quantity of lightweight, clean potting mix on hand.  Often you just need it as a filler at the bottom of a large container.  I also have used straight compost for filler, since we usually have a substantial amount of that cooking, but that could be considered a waste of good compost.  In the cases where I've used compost, I always try to return it to the compost pile when I dump the pot.

So this weekend my husband treated me to a 73 gallon deck box.  Now I can store a useful amount of used potting mix for the filling of large containers.  I will still buy bags of new potting mix for topping off each pot, and those dump neatly into a large Rubbermaid container so I can tote it around and store it temporarily in a dry place instead of having half full opened bags of soil setting about.

My typical potting day set-up

I'm pretty tickled with my dirt locker.  It is just one more step towards getting all of my potting activities in one spot.  Next year the plan is to add a greenhouse where I can have all of my pots and supplies stored together near where I actually keep my plants and pot them up.  Right now I have containers and the potting bench stored way back in a canvas storage building.  My compost pile and messy work area where I store half filled containers is in another spot.  My cold frame for tender plants is up by the garden shed.  And my soil additives and hand tools in the garden shed.  I spend a lot of time in the spring bent over a wheelbarrow filling pots.  In good weather I bring the potting bench up to the garden.  On cold rainy spring days I round up everything and take it back to the potting bench and then haul it all back to the cold frame. I can put in a lot of steps in a work day.  Yet another way that gardening is good for your health!