Today's Cucumbers

As previously mentioned, half of one row of my cucumbers didn't germinate well, came down with anthracnose early on and were pulled out last week. The other end of the row which remains is doing this....

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's 93 degrees out. This must be Pickle Day

I was unaware that we were expecting a heat wave.  But it got up past 93 degrees today.  With some humidity to boot.  This is the third Sunday in a row that we have canned something.  First dill slices then bread and butter slices, today sweet pickle relish.  Relish is simple but seems more time consuming because of all of the chopping. 

 As Tim peered over my shoulder this morning I said "I tried this with the food processor once but all you get is "  Mulch?  he asked.  Yes.  Mulch.  That's pretty accurate.  So it's hand dicing.  And I am not proficient at hand dicing.  But I diced up 4 pounds of cucumbers, an onion and a red bell pepper.  That made 13 cups of material.  After that it was easy.  I was aiming for six pints (12 cups?) but ended up with only 5 pints after it cooked down.  "That's it?"  Tim asks. "That's it?  It's cheaper to go by a jar of relish."  Yep.

I've been reading the book "Little Heathens: Hard times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression".  This is a great book to read if you miss having your grandparents around to tell tales of their childhood.  One thing I've been mulling over is the laundry facts.  That Monday was laundry day and housewives wore one dress all week.  I think not.  I think they must have at least had two to switch on and off while the other one dried.  Because even with air conditioning, my minimum is two sets of clothes a day.

Here is my early August garden tour.  Today I was feeling that this year there are about three times as many weeds and then I remembered:  I'm using three times as many beds!  So that's the problem!

The Pickle Bed is about played out.

 This is about the time when the newbies on Facebook start freaking out and asking "What's wrong with my cucumber vines?!?"  They're old.  They're tired.  They're giving up.  Nothing lasts forever.
I remember when I could stand at this spot and not be able to peer through and see any cucumbers.  Only a wall of leaves.  Beautiful, lush, green leaves.  Now they're old and withered.  Threadbare.

There are still some nice little cucumbers coming.  But the rush is over.

I remember when I was worried that I wouldn't have any dill.

Next project is sweet dills.  The dill blooms are just right.

The second planting of slicing cukes will be blooming soon.  I had trouble with the germination on these this year.  Two different packets of the same thing planted at three different times, and about 50% germination.  Not typical.  But still enough cucumbers. Just not an excess.

There is a row of celery lurking in the shade of the cucumbers
And some renegade lettuce.

The first vines are still healthy and producing.  I have seen exactly ONE cucumber beetle.   

Which is fine by me.

The Blue Beauty tomatoes are ripening.  These are a nice little tomato that's fun to grow now and then for the novelty.  But they are on the small side.  It takes two slices to make a sandwich.

Lenny and Gracie's Kentucky Heirloom is more my style.  This is a nice, flavorful, sweet tomato and large so one slab of tomato makes a complete sandwich.  The vine is about seven feet tall.  I'll have to remember to put her in a stacking ladder next year.

Cantaloupe Success

They should be ripe in a week or two.  The vines are beginning to suffer in the heat, even with a good morning soaking.  But they get shade around 4pm and recover quickly.

They are pretty melons

This is one of the earlier Buckwheat beds.  This is all reseed.  Two of the early beds I've already raked in.  The cut stems below have composted well, and the second growth is now true "green manure".  Pretty good bang for your buck(wheat)  haha.

This is a later planting of Buckwheat that went in after the garden peas were done.  They are just now beginning to flower well and soon they will be full of bees.

A little Bumble Bee has already found it

The apples are now about as big as my fist.  We're going through a period of dropping due to hot dry weather.  I find one or two apples shed on the ground several mornings a week.  There are still a few dozen left and they will be over 10 ounces each.  It takes only one and a half apples to make a deep dish apple pie.

The zinnias are beautiful and the dinner plate dahlias are juuuuust beginning to open up.

I put in a few sunflowers here and there to fill in gaps.

Well, that's the garden right now.  Everything is working pretty well.  Maybe next weekend I'll do my annual "garden of Good and Evil" post.  I can probably find something going wrong in there

Just a walk up the dry creek bed

Just an evening walk through the garden

The pickle bed.  I'm always amazed every night when
I pull out half a dozen cucumbers that weren't there yesterday.

A view of the garden from the garden shed

Supertunias.  These things need to be watered every day and fed several times a week. 
No exceptions  But after I figured that out they are looking really nice.

It's Tomato Time

State Fair and Hot Crayons zinnias.
I'm still waiting on the dinner plate dahlias to pop.

Cantaloupes sprawling all over

What a lovely bunch of cantaloupes

Blue Beauty tomatoes.
I don't know why they didn't name them purple
because they are the purplest things I've ever seen

More Supertunias.
For some reason this whiskey barrel requires much less work than the planters by the garden
These are watered only if we haven't had rain in a week, and fed once a month

Daylilies Coneflowers Sunpatiens and Begonias
This is the veiew that greets me every afternoon when I come home

Purple Fountain Grass in the barrel rings

More Daylilies out back

And back to the garden shed...