Everyday Household Items for the Garden Shed

Our garden isn't very far from the house, but we've learned that keeping the garden shed well stocked saves trips in and out of the house which in turn saves both time and cleaning.  We have a refrigerator in the shed which we keep stocked with water and other beverages and also has room to temporarily store produce.  Maybe I've thought of a few things you haven't, but I'd love to hear what your essentials are.

• Spray on Sunscreen: It is so much easier to spray on sunscreen and reapply throughout the day if you have dirty hands or gloves on.  SPF 50 applied hourly allows me to stay out in full sun for 6 hours or more without any burn.
• Hand Sanitizer:  Even if you have soap and water, if you have been handling blighted tomato leaves, sanitizer is a good extra precaution.
• Bactine: for those scrapes and cuts that you don't want to run into the house and doctor right this minute.
• Castile Soap: I keep a wall mounted pump dispenser mounted on the post next to the garden house spigot so I can wash up any time I need.
• Paper Towels or Scotts Rags in a Box:  I almost always have one tucked into my shirt somewhere.  Good for wiping faces, blowing noses or actual cleaning.
• Chlorox: for disinfecting scissors, reusable tomato ties etc.
• Avon's Skin So Soft:  Nothing repels deer flies any better.  
• Technu Extreme Poison Ivy Scrub: for those times you think you got into it despite precautions.
• Mineral Oil: for oiling tool handles
• Plastic Sandwich Bags: for bagging fruit on the tree
• Beer: for making slug traps (also used tin pie plates)
• Table Salt: for salting slugs
• Knife Block: I picked this up for about six bucks at an outlet store.  I use the knives for cutting broccoli etc. The kitchen shears also come in handy

• Apron: If you really aren't dressed for hauling around a wet dirty pot but you don't have time to change into mud clothes
• Nitril Gloves: for really wet, muddy jobs.  These fit inside regular cloth gloves
• Plastic Bowls or Colanders: for picking peas or beans.  I picked up a whole stack at a church rummage sale
• Measuring Cups: for measuring concentrated fertilizer or for flicking beetles into
• Funnel: for refilling quart spray bottles with something nasty like deer repellent
• Wooden Clothes Pins: for pinning on row covers or blanching cauliflower
• Band-Aids: for covering blisters or repairing fingers

Sometimes I think the everyday household products out number the actual gardening products and tools.

A Pile O'Peas and a Cluster O'Cauliflower

Yesterday we picked the largest batch if peas I've ever processed in one sitting.  10 cups.  And today we did another 7 cups.  I've finally figured out the right number of rows to plant - eight.  For a long time I've planted four rows each year and last year I upped it to six.  Eight is the right number.  Eight rows fill up the freezer fast and also give us daily meals.

I began picking the Cauliflower.  Not a big yield, but not bad for a beginner.  

Four months is a pretty long commitment for a bowl of cauliflower.

These are Snow Crown and Vitaverde.

P.S. Found two Japanese Beetles today.  Two weeks later than usual

Swimming Hippos

I really think I need these to cheer me up in very rainy months.

Wind and Weather

June 30th - June was not Boring

Remember how I've always said that "June is boring".  Well, unless spring is four weeks late.  Then June is gone before you know it, and maybe July will be boring.

The earliest lettuce is bolting already, and peas are in full swing.  I have half of my freezer peas in (30 meals) already and Sunday was the first large picking.  

I cut three of my four Broccoli florets.  None of them were very large.  Hopefully they will send out some side shoots.  My Cauliflower is looking a little more promising.  Almost half the plants are beginning to flower and the heads are already larger than the Broccoli ever got. 

This is my first colored Cauliflower Vitaverde and its picture perfect.  

No sign of a head on the yellow Flame Star yet.

I'm working out a system for composting in the Buckwheat cover crop.

It was not as vigorous and tall as last year and I did not let it flower and go to seed.

I'm still admiring the container tomatoes.  

This is the best result I've ever had with containers

These nice Calendula reseeded from last year.

These Portulaca were nibbled off by deer about a week after transplanting.  Portulaca LOVE to be pruned back.  They are in pots this year because the area I plant them in is in a state of flux.  They have to stay under a wire cloche all of the time or risk being re-nibbled

This is part of the above mentioned flux project.  This new planting bed was formerly a patio with the cold frame and chaise lounge chairs.  We used the pavers to extend the walkway down the south side of the garden to match the north side.  This weekend I pulled up all of the bricks and reset them.  The brick walkway used to slope down to the lawn.  

The bed and walkway in progress.

That lawn is going away so the bricks needed to be raised to RR tie height.  The soil in the bed was taken out of the lawn when the walkway was put in so it is a mixture of loam and decomposed mulch.  A third of it is rotted horse manure.  I'm not sure what is going to go in there next year.  Maybe more potatoes.  A formal herb garden?  Cutting flowers?

When I was going back through previous years end of June photos I pulled out examples of particular plants that were thriving to compare to this year's progress.  The main photo is this year.  The inserts are previous years.

Cantaloupe not doing very well

Eggplant holding it's own

Tomatoes size is about right but after the first fruit set we got a heat wave of several days 85 or above and all of the other blooms in the cluster died out without setting,  The plants are just now blooming again

Zucchini not too bad considering I direct seeded at a late date

The garden is looking green and lush and providing meals.  Tonight we had peas and new red potatoes with some finger sized carrot thinnings chopped in.  The surrounding lawn is torn up with our landscape project which includes a drainage issue, a horseshoe pit, fire pit, new seating areas with plantings and a lot of sweat-equity.  At the end of a long day of dirty work we can sit under a tree and admire the garden while we shell peas.  And believe it or not, we could use some rain!

The End of June

The whole point to a garden blog, besides finding kindred spirits to compare notes with, is that you can easily look back over the years and compare conditions and progress to years past.

June 2013  June 2014  June 2015  June 2016  June 2017  June 2018

 Comparing the last week of June in previous years to my garden today, I can confirm what I believed to be true.  Lettuce is great, peas are OK and worth the wait, tomatoes and potatoes are typical, zucchini and cucumber are lagging and cantaloupes are a bust.  Nasturtiums should be blooming.  Too much rain in June is not uncommon.  Mother Nature is unpredictable.

Every year has it's challenges, successes and failures.  I don't think I've ever had a year where everything I wanted went as planned or better.  Something always fails.  It might be melons or sweet potatoes or even summer squash you just never know.  Heck in 2013 I killed a cherry tomato plant!  Those things usually get eight feet tall and six feet wide.

A few things worth mentioning this week:

The tomatoes in pots are beautiful.  Deep green, healthy and blooming.
They are keeping pace with the tomatoes in the bed. 
They are four rungs tall on the ladder which is typical of this week

I love watching sweet corn follow the sun throughout the day

I'm about ready to forget about cantaloupes this year
and proceed with bush beans instead.

Four Weeks Late

So let's examine this observation that is being thrown around here in town:  "Spring is a month late"

Below is a list of the pea varieties that I planted on March 23rd.  March 23rd is a fairly early planting date in my area, but peas do well in cooler weather.  I planted as usual, soaking over night.  The weather was cool and wet. The plants took about three weeks to emerge which is absolutely normal.  Last year the peas were right on schedule, no more than two days past forecast maturity date.  Today I picked the first peas and froze two cups.

Easy Peasy Peas - 60-65 days maturity  March 23rd + 65 days=May 27th (that was almost four weeks ago)
Wando Peas - 68 days maturity (May 30th)
Garden Sweet Peas - 60-65 days maturity
Penelope Peas - 59 days maturity would have been May 21st.

These are the Garden Sweet which were supposed to grow to
28"-32" high and outgrew the standard 37" pea trellis by about two feet. 
Then they flopped over which makes it more difficult to pick
 them on one side, but doesn't hurt the plants.

These are the "self supporting" Easy Peasy variety.  The whole row was laying over one
side or the other which was keeping them from drying out when the rain did finally stop
 so I pinned them upright by placing stem supports on either side ever couple of feet.

These are the varieties of cauliflower and broccoli I transplanted on April 10th
Diplomat Broccoli - 68 days maturity April 10th + 68 days = June 17th. I saw the first sign of a bud June 14th.  It was not ready to eat June 17th.  But at least it's growing
Snow Crown Cauliflower - 50 days  (May 30th) I just found the beginnings of a head this week
Bishop Cauliflower - 65 days - no sign
Flame Star Cauliflower - 62 days - no sign
Vitaverde Cauliflower - 71 days - no sign

Please don't bolt please don't bolt.....

Yep.  Spring is a month late.  Peas are four weeks late.  Cole crops are several weeks late but yet to be determined.  Tomatoes began to set about a week late.  I don't even want to talk about cucumbers and cantaloupe.

The tomato plants are about hip height and I have several ping-pong sized fruit

"Gotta Have It" sweet corn is almost knee high and thriving

The cucumber row has been bolstered by the seedlings started in the cold frame.

Rebecca clematis vine in full bloom

Bagging Apples

"They say there is no such thing as an organic apple in the Northeast".  I remember that quote from Bill Alexander's book the $64 Dollar Tomato.  Chapter 4.

Typical bushel of homegrown New York Apples

The author had fond memories of his father growing perfect organic apples when he was a child, and his first attempts to grow apples using only organic methods of pest control was a disappointment.  After several years of failure, he finally caved in and purchased malathion and the smell of it was familiar.  All those years he remembered his father growing this wonderful healthy produce, turns out Dad had been using chemicals after all!

My PaPaw spraying his apple orchard in Kentucky 1977 

Since I only have two apple trees and they only produce a few dozen apples, I have found that bagging the apples gets around the chemical problem very nicely.  It prevents insects from laying eggs on them (the origin of those little green worms), it makes them unappetizing to deer and it keeps the airborne/rain borne diseases like Sooty Blotch off of them.  But you have to do it as early in the season as possible.

Not Bagged and covered in Sooty Blotch

Bagging makes a huge difference in the appearance of my apples.  Sooty Blotch is my biggest problem.  Sandwich bags prevent it completely!

Bagged and beautiful

The first question I get asked when I have visitors to the garden is "what is in the bags?"  My trees are covered in them.  You might think they would be hard to keep on or that they would catch the wind and make the apples more likely to drop but that isn't the case.  Yes, the trees will drop some apples even after thinning.  Depending on growing conditions the tree will drop any fruit it can't support.

Some people staple on brown paper lunch bags, but I prefer the zip-lock sandwich bags.  I think with our annual rainfall that the bags would disintegrate before the season was up.

The bags need a little prep before you apply them.  First you cut off each lower corner which will allow any water to drain out.  Then you cut just through the zipper so you can close each side around the stem without there being a gap.  A gap would allow more water and insects in as well as encouraging the zipper to unzip.  To apply, just open one side of the zipper, place the bag over the apple, and zip it tight.  

While you are bagging the apples is a good time to thin them out.  

Clusters of multiple apples should be thinned down to the strongest one.  

Remove any already damaged fruit.

Eaten by insects, most likely ants.  This fruit will drop before maturity

An insect has laid an egg in this apple.  This apple will mature but at least be lopsided.
At worst, a little worm will eat it's way into the core ruining the whole apple.

A bag full!

The apples will grow just fine in the bags.  I've had some apples which got so big the bag had to be cut off of them because they had stretched the bag and were too big to come out the top. 

Not Bagged

As you can see, the bagging makes a HUGE difference in the appearance of the end result.  Clean, uniformly shaped fruit.

Bagged

A brief recent article from the Farmer's Almanac:  Growing Organic Apples with Fruit Bagging

An article from the University of Kentucky:  Bagging Apples: Alternative Pest Management for Hobbyists