Too Many....

This blog will, until further notice, be referred to as "Too Many Zucchini".  Once again, ONE plant is more than enough for one person.  Why did I plant the Eight Ball plant too?

Last night I cooked three zucchini.  There were still two in the refrigerator, and tonight I picked 6 more.  Important to pick them small... what would I do if I allowed them to get big?

My favorite way to eat Zucchini:  Saute some diced garlic and sliced onion until they caramelize.  Add a sliced zucchini and brown them.  Season with Borsari salt.  Serve over angel hair pasta and sprinkle some shredded mozzarella cheese over the dish allowing it to melt.

What's For Dinner?

I'm always talking about growing food, but seldom about eating it.  On tonight's menu, besides a boring slice of ham, we have grilled Eight Ball zucchini, Circus Circus tri-colored carrot blend from Renee's Garden Seeds, baby red Pontiac potatoes in butter and Borsari Season Salt and a Sweet Success cucumber and Sun Gold tomato salad drizzled with Italian dressing.  And of course, homemade Reisling wine from Mike and Shelly's wine cellar.

That Borsari seasoning salt is a staple in my kitchen.  I use it alot on vegetables, potatoes and pork.  It is a friend of mine's old family recipe.  The past few years, he and his wife have gone into marketing this salt along with another salt, olive oil, and a delicious bloody mary mix.  If any of you have a Wegman's grocery in your area, Wegman's has picked up the salt and begun selling it under Wegman's label as "Garlic Herb Seasoning Shaker".  Same stuff.  A couple of weeks ago I ran into her passing out samples at our local Wegman's and she gave me a great Gazpacho recipe using their products and a lot of fresh veggies.  I may have to feature that someday soon.

On a more gentle note

These photos make me want to buy fancy tall jars with old fashioned rubber seals and can carrots.

Williams and Sonoma knows just how to market to people like me.  They have me by the nose.

But I rarely cave in and spend the money.

 Not even this spring when they tried to sell me a chicken tractor.

Ninety Eight Degrees

It's July.  And it's Hot.  And Tim and I lost patience with ourselves and each other at about 89 degrees.  And then in the mid nineties we both lost patience with the garden and more specifically wildlife in the garden.  The boiling point was 98 degrees.

It's rather annoying to come out in the three mornings out of every week and have to spend 10 minutes cleaning up stuff like this.  If I had the time and the patience, I could fill this blog with the destruction of the past 2 months.  From the robin's next on the front porch (x 3), to the swallow's nest on the garage light.  The deer nipping off blooms here and there.  I could show you plenty of stems without flowers.  9 geranium stems this morning alone.  Geraniums?  I have netting and fencing and electric strung far and wide in various tried and proven booby traps.  We spent a couple of hours in the hot sun today, stringing up a new electric fence around the black eyed susans, and I joyfully baited it with foil squares smeared with peanut butter so she gets it on her wet little nose and not on her insulating fur.  (Tim says I'm vengeful)

The raccoons have been extraordinarily annoying this year.  I sort of cured them of rootin' around in my pots (see above) but I have more pots than rat traps, and it takes at least three per pot to cover all angles.  I am tired of vacuuming potting soil out of the gravel (it lifts the soil and leaves the gravel) and replanting petunias, righting watering cans and rounding up discarded seed potatoes and baby eggplants with tooth marks in them.

The demise of the garden ornaments was sort of the last straw.  And lately we seem to have developed a mysterious genetic flaw in our coon population.  One died of lead poisoning, two seem to have had major heart attacks, and the fourth begged to be relocated far far away.  **Shrug** I don't hold out much hope for any others that might be lurking out there.

The Great Potato Pot Experiment 2012

I needed some potatoes for supper and the next ones in line are the red Pontiacs in pots. This is the second year I've put my "scraps" of seed potatoes in the only remaining available space... pots. I tried it last year, and unfortunately managed to burn and kill 99% of my plants by watering them on a hot sunny day. I still got 11 potatoes out of one plant. When Tim saw that he said "tell me again why we're planting them in the ground?"  We were only averaging 6 potatoes per stem in the rows.

I had trimmed back the foliage earlier in the day in preparation for harvesting.  I discarded the plants in our "land fill" area far from the garden.  Because of all the lovely soil born foliar diseases that the nightshade family are susceptible to (early blight, late blight, septorial speck, bacterial wilt, anthracnose...), I never compost tomatoes, potatoes or eggplant trimmings.  The pot on the right will be next on the slate.  The plants are beginning to look a bit ragged and over grown.

Potatoes, in a pot or in the ground, are always a bit of a surprise.  You never know how you are doing until you dig the plant up.  Then there is no going back.  Once you decide they are ready to pick, you are committed.

It's a bit like Christmas morning. You begin unwrapping and the anticipation is killing you...

What's inside?

Are there any potatoes at all?

Has the waiting been in vain?

You stir the dirt, and they begin to appear.

 

Smooth, hard, red treasures.

1, 2, 3, 4...

17 potatoes!

This will make at least three meals for us.
Had they been left in longer to fully mature, that would have been a 5 pound bag of potatoes!

I sifted through all the soil and put it back in the pot.  I will use it as needed to "hill" the potatoes I planted a week and a half ago in the tree containers.

I have decided there are at least 7 reasons why pot potatoes are superior to potatoes grown conventionally in the ground. 

1.  It saves space.  Traditional rows of potatoes take up a lot of space.  No room to add a row?  Put a pot on the patio.  If you choose the wrong spot, just pick up your pot and find a sunnier or shadier spot.
2.  You do not have to worry about rotating your crops as long as you start with clean, disease free potting soil each year.  You can either solarise, amend and reuse your soil for potatoes in the future, or repurpose it for flower containers.
3.  You do not run the risk of damaging the potatoes with a fork as you dig them.  I always spear one or two no matter how careful I am.
4.  You will not be leaving any behind accidentally so you increase your yield in that respect.
5.  No worms.  These roots were completely blemish free.
6.  They are easy to "hill" as long as you have a good supply of soil on hand which I do.  No digging or piling.  Simply add a few scoops of soil to each pot once a week or so.
7.  No weeding.

And really, they are rather attractive plants, especially when they bloom.  I don't think you can go wrong planting potatoes in a container.

Happy Fourth of July

The Fourth is here and the garden is in full swing.  The peas are all out, and the results are in.  From the first planting of peas, the yield was 19 cups.  From the second planting the yield was only 8 cups.  Same variety (Survivor), same amount, the reason for the difference is two fold.  The earlier peas had a much better germination rate than the ones planted in warmer weather.  Secondly, the dramatic heat in May reduced the number of flowers.  I may put in a fall planting this year.  I've had decent luck with them in the past and I have the peas purchased.  Some varieties are better for fall than others.  I chose Maestro (which I've fall planted before) and Wando.

In addition to the peas, we are eating potatoes, onions, garlic, and herbs.  The lettuce is still edible and we are beginning to pick smallish cuccumbers.  The first planting of Marketmore plants from the nursery are not very impressive, but the second row from seed looks good.  I think I'll try planting a third row today.  The zucchini will be big enough to harvest today or tomorrow.  The first planting of potato plants is beginning to die back, and I am removing the new potatoes one plant at a time.  Today I will trim the dead plants off the all of white potatoes and leave them in the ground a week or two before digging.

Believe it or not, the local farm stand began selling local sweet corn on June 30th.  The rule around here is "Knee High by the Fourth of July".  The farmers who gambled and lanted early in the warm spring are beginning to yield results.

Pests, Problems and Preventative Measures

The end of June, every year, we are invaded.  It's Japanese Beetle time!  They showed up right on schedule last Wednesday.  I found two on the pea plants, and I knocked them down and squished them.  Really, they don't do a whole lot of damage in the garden.  They munch on the bean leaves a little, but they really wreak havoc on Tim's Linden trees, and anything that threatens Tim's trees is considered an arch enemy.  Which means its really not wise for me to ignore them in the garden.

They also munch on the blackberries, raspberries and wild grape vines.  I have a porcelain vine in the front landscaping, concealing the A/C unit, and they find that particularly delectible.  So these are good places to catch them.  We use a variety of methods to control them.  Each fall we treat a portion of our lawn with Milky Spore.  What this is is a powder containing bacteria which infects the grubs and kills them before they can hatch.  This is a long term program, but its easy and effective.  You can purchase it at most lawn and garden stores.

Secondly, there are beetle traps. A smelly lure (smells sort of like black licorice) is placed above the bag.  The stupid little buggers are lured onto the plastic card by the hundreds and slide down into the hour glass shaped bag where they are unable to escape.  You hang this in a tree up wind from your garden so they follow the smell away to their deaths.  Beetle traps are great if you want to see a volume of the pests dead in one spot.  They have two drawbacks.  #1:You will draw beetles in from all over your neighborhood, and they will stop for lunch along the way (in your beans).  #2:  Racoons find the bags full of bugs to be an irresistable snack.  But, in really bad years, I will hang three or four traps just to put a dent in the population.  Well, three drawbacks.  Every few days you have to empty a bag of smelly dead bugs and put a fresh one up.  And if you are particularly unlucky, it will also be full of rain water and will likely pour down the front of you, or at least fill your shoe.  But, I've found the most fun and satisfying way to wage war on beetles.  Soapy Water.

Japanese Beetles are slow and clingy. They have two thoughts on their little bug brains. Food. And Sex. Which means they are really easy to sneak up on. All you have to do is walk around with a cup full of water and knock them off the leaves into it. Actually, the prescribed plan is "soapy" water. But yesterday, when I noticed there were enough beetles around to warrant catching, I didn't have any soap handy. So I just grabbed a cup of water and knocked them in there. I figured the soapy part was to slow down their escape with a layer of suds. Nope, they aren't getting out of that. They just swim around in there, poop, and pause for a little pool sex.

As I was wandering around with this cup of swimming, pooping, fornicating bugs, I began to wonder what I was going to do to kill them.  Obviously it was taking them awhile to drown.  I could either leave the cup of water out in the sun and boil them (seemed a little cruel even for bugs) or pour them out on the pavers and try to stomp them all before they regained their senses.  In my travels, I happened by the house.  So I went in and got my old fashioned organic Castile soap which I use for the occasional organic bug spray and I squirted some into my cup o'bugs.  Well by Golly!  That's what the soap is for!  In under 20 seconds every last beetle was doing the deadman's float.   So that's how you deal with Japanese Beetles.

Next on the list of July Pests and Problems is Powdery Mildew.  What starts out as little white specs on your concurbits...

Soon turns to a rash of spots.  Then the leaves begin to yellow and die.

Besides being ugly and reducing your lush, dark green summer squash plants to shriveled, yellow vines, it stops the plant from flowering and producing, spreads into your cuccumbers, and will eventually kill every vine.  And we don't want that.

In the past I have messed around with copper spray (Organic copper spray of course), and pruned off the infected leaves, but really, you need to attack this problem before it gets started.

#1.  NEVER water at night, and always avoid dampening the leaves.  No sense inviting trouble by giving mildew exactly what it is looking for... cool, damp leaves.

#2. Stay on top of the first signs of it and immediately remove and destroy the infected leaves.

#3.  (This should actually be #1) Prevent it in the first place.

Back in 1999 a study was conducted in Brazil which showed that simply spraying your plants with watered down milk was extremely effective in preventing powdery mildew.  This article explains it briefly better than I can.   How to Spray Milk to Prevent Powdery Mildew Disease .  If you google "pwdery mildew milk spray" you will get a lot of information.   What the milk spray does is change the PH on the leaves and introduce microbes which inhibit the growth of the mildew.  In addition, it appears to boost the plants overall immune system.  But you have to start before the infection sets in.  About 4 weeks before.  And you have to spray at least once a week.

So, since the day I planted them, I have been spraying all my squash and cuccumber plants with a 30% milk solution in the morning unless is is going to be cool or rainy.   They have now been sprayed regularly for 3 weeks, and I will continue to spray at least once a week and watch closely for signs of mildew.  So far so good.  The mildew is setting in on all the usual places, but thus far my plants are clear.

Now, on to the bacterial spec and early blight....