Last Harvest of 2010

I decided it was finally time to pick what remained in the garden. I don't know why this picture turned out so dark, but there are brussels sprouts plants on the left (with no sprouts), arugula covered in snow in the middle left, a broccoli plant middle right, and some green onions on the far right. I left the Brussels sprouts and a few of the onions in the ground just to see what happens over the winter, and I picked the rest.

I got 1/4lb of Arugula, 1/4lb of green onions, and a small head of broccoli. Not a huge harvest, but pretty good for December!

A Few Random Things

The homestead finally got its first killing frost on November 6th. It killed the begonias in the topsy-turvy and the "wild" tomatoes in the front yard. Those tomatoes were leftover seedlings that I didn't have room for in the garden so I planted them in an empty area of a raised bed in the front yard. The area was pretty heavily shaded, but they grew surprisingly well. I had wondered in a post this spring or summer what would happen to tomato vines that weren't supported. One website said that it would become an impeneterable tangle of disease-wracked vegetation. I decided to let these tomatoes do what they wanted and see what happened. While it was an impressive tangle of vegetation, it was very much not disease-wracked. In fact, there was no sign of the blight that affected all the tomato plants in the garden and in the topsy-turvy. On the other hand, the plants produced exactly zero tomatoes (though they did flower a bit). I don't know if that was because they were the runts of the litter that didn't get planted in the garden, the lack of sun, or if it was the lack of support and vertical growth. I do think the plants spent more of their energy on growing vines rather than growing tomatoes.

The frost did not seem to affect the other plants still growing in the garden. There is still lettuce, pak choi, arugula, green onions, broccoli, and brussels sprouts growing. When I say growing, I mean that only in the loosest sense of the word. I noticed the growth of the plants slowing down quite a bit around the beginning of October. It appears that they haven't grown at all since about mid-October, even the usually very fast growing greens. I suspect there is some minimum amount of light/energy the plants use for just basic life processes and they need more than that to grow. Its good to know for next year that nothing is really going to grow after early October. At least the plants stay alive and tasty out in the garden rather than rotting in the fridge.

The garlic that I planted has actually sprouted up above the surface. I'm a bit worried about the garlic getting damaged by the winter cold if it starts growing, but the internet says its OK if it sprouts a bit. I'm tempted to leave some of the green onions and see if they survive the winter.

On a different subject, the wine is making good progress. The fermentation has slowed dramatically. While fermentation was going strong, the wine got progressively cloudier as the yeast grew. After fermentation slowed down, the cloudiness slowly settled out. I decided to add a little bit of yeast nutrient and stir up the sediment to see if I could wake up any yeast that were just sleeping instead of dead. After a day or so it started to settle again. It looks like it will take a week or two to fully settle. After it does settle, I'll rack it off the sediment. Here is what it looked like a couple days after I stirred it.

The 2010 Harvest

With the forecast nightly lows starting to dip below 32 degrees, I figured it was time to harvest what I could from the garden. I picked the last of the peppers and tomatoes (green). I also harvested a couple heads of broccoli. The only things I have left in the garden are the brussels sprouts (likely not going to produce anything this year, but I figured I'd leave them in just in case), one broccoli plant that is growing a head, a couple pak choi and lettuce plants, and a bunch of green onions. I then hacked up the plants that are done for the year and was going to put them in my compost pile, but I realized that the compost barrel was getting too full to really be able to mix up. The stuff in the barrel was mostly composted, so I dumped it out in a pile of leaves that I had put in the garden after I raked the front yard last weekend. The newly chopped up plants went into the barrel. So I now have a compost pile to go along with the compost barrel. You can see part of the leaf pile behind the hot tub on the right side of the picture below. You can also see the oats coming up in the areas of the garden that I planted them.In the spring I'll spread the contents of the compost pile and the compost barrel over the garden and mix it in with the dirt as a fertilizer. Between the stuff I emptied out of the barrel, the leaves, and the new stuff in the barrel, there is probably about 65-75lbs of fertilizer for next year, plus any additional stuff that we add over the winter. That seems like a lot for such a small garden, but considering the amount of vegetables that we harvested this year, that is probably necessary. How much did we harvest, you ask? Well, here is a link to the harvest summary spreadsheet. 143 lbs seems like a pretty good harvest from an area that is probably only about around 250 square feet of usable area. The prices in the spreadsheet come from Wegmans' website. I used prices for organic produce when I could find it (everything from the garden is effectively organic), and when I couldn't find it, I multiplied the price of non-organic produce by 150%. Between the CSA that we joined and the garden, Jaime and I were not really able to keep up with the amount of produce that we had. We've made the decision that next year we won't do the CSA. Instead, we will rely on the garden for most of our produce and supplement it with stuff from our neighborhood farmer's market.

Introducing the 2010 South Wedge Winery Traminette

Its that time of year again. As the vegetables in the garden wind down, the grapes are finishing ripening on the vines. Last month, Jaime and I spent a weekend in the finger lakes to celebrate our 1st anniversary. While there we did a wine tasting tour. One thing we learned while doing that is there is a second source of grape juice in the finger lakes for home winemaking. Fulkerson Winery on Seneca Lake sells a variety of juices and winemaking supplies. I decided to give it a try this fall.

This year I decided to make a Traminette. The decision was based not only on grape preference, but also price and availability date (they only offer each juice for about 4 days). Much like last year's Seyval, Traminette is a mid-level priced grape that has some resemblance to the region's famed Gewurztraminer and Riesling grapes. In fact, Traminette is a hybrid and one of the parents is Gewurztraminer. The hybridization allows it to produce higher yield and have better cold tolerance for this area than a pure Gewurztraminer. I'm still not quite ready to move up the to higher priced grapes yet. The Traminette is $10/gal. as opposed to $20/gal for Gewurzt. After I make a good wine that I'm happy with, I'll try a more expensive juice.

Here is a blurry picture of the juice pickup area at Fulkerson. Each spigot is labeled with a different juice type.

As you may remember, 2009 was a terrible growing season not only for vegetables, but also for grapes. The Seyval that I got last year needed a significant amount of sugar added as well as Calcium Carbonate to reduce the acidity. Last year, the Seyval juice had 15.8% sugar and a total (or titrable) acid level of 1.185. Ideal levels of those are around 22% and 0.5-0.85 TA. This year, the Traminette juice that I purchased had 22.8% sugar and 0.85 TA. The sugar level is just about ideal while the acid level is a bit high, but not so high that it will make the yeast unhappy or upset the winemaking process. Recall also that the acidity will be reduced a bit during fermentation and stabilization. That means no extra additives this year, yay! The only thing I added was a small amount of yeast nutrient and the yeast itself. I used Lalvin 71B-1122 yeast. (The winery added potasium metabisulphite to prevent bacteria and wild yeasts from growing.) Here is the juice being transferred into a glass carboy for fermenting. I started the fermentation on 10/19.

About 24 hours later, this is what it looked like. Note that you can actually see little bubbles coming up the side in the front-right.

Interestingly, it gets cloudier every day. I would assume thats because of the yeast multiplying like crazy. Here is what it looked like about 72 hours after beginning fermentation.

So thats about where it is now. The juice will stay in the carboy for probably a couple months fermenting. The vast majority of the fermenting takes place in the first week or two and then it tails off slowly after that.

Urban Foraging

My most common running route winds through residential streets to an area called Pinnacle Hill. I'm pretty sure its the tallest hill within the city (probably 100-150 feet from base to top), and there are a number of TV and Radio antennae erected near the top of it. The slopes of the hill are undeveloped, and there is probably 10-15 acres of wooded area. I'm not entirely sure who owns the property, though I suspect its the city. The property is not maintained in any way, and its not heavily used, but there are some trails on one side of the hill. There is even a vew from the top. I mostly see people walking dogs there. I often do part of my runs there because I prefer to run on trails, and I figure its probably good to include hills while I'm running.

So the last couple times I had gone running there, I noticed that a big, immature puffball had been kicked apart near one of the trails. I knew that puffballs are edible when they are young(though I'd never had one), and fun to poke when they are mature (spewing clouds of spores). I'd never actually seen a giant puffball, and I thought it rather unfortunate that this puffball was neither eaten, nor allowed the chance to propagate. There were several chunks of it near the trail, and another chunk about 20 feet away from the trail. This time when I went back, I noticed that the chunks near the trail were rotting, but the chunk away from the trail actually looked bigger that it was before. Upon closer inspection, that "chunk" was actually a different, whole, puffball. Knowing that these are prized edibles, I quickly picked it up, knocked the slugs off the bottom, and set off home with my 'shroom. I was quite excited about this.

I didn't know what puffballs tasted like, but I certainly wanted to give it a try. Personally, I think that mushrooms can have dramatically different flavors. The basic white ones and even the portabellos have a pretty mild, dirt-like flavor. Others that are cultivated and you can find at most grocery stores like oyster and maitake are usually pretty boring, too. In my opinion, Shiitake's are the one cultivated mushroom that have a really distinct flavor. I think they have a stronger flavor and bit of a metallic tang to them that I didn't like at first, but I've actually been craving lately. The uncultivateable, wild foraged ones are the more expensive ones, and from my limited experience, can have some stronger flavors. I love Porcini mushrooms, and they make a pretty amazing risotto. I haven't had Chanterelles or Morels, but those are the most sought-after mushrooms short of truffles. So you can see why I was so excited about trying the wild puffball.

People sure do look at you funny when you walk around a city residential area gingerly carrying a 5.5lb mushroom. I had one kid on a bike stop and say, "Wow! Is that a mushroom?!" As I was walking home, I started to notice the smell of the puffball. I can't say I found it entirely appetizing. At this point I was starting to realize that I may have (almost literally) bitten off more than I could chew.

As soon as I got home, I measured and weighed the specimen. It was approximately 10" x 12" x 14", and weighed in at 5.5lbs. I captured the moment with my phone camera.

The next step was to verify that it was, in fact, edible. Checking my mushroom identification guidebook and the internet, I determined that giant puffballs are indeed, "choice edibles." All puffballs are edible, but the larger species (like this one) are supposedly best. Disclaimer: Some highly poisonous immature mushrooms look like small (we're talking an inch or so) puffballs. Those poisonous mushrooms start off as little balls before popping up into things that look like normal mushrooms. If you cut the puffball open and you see something that looks like the gills and cap of a mushroom inside, don't eat it! If a puffball is more than a few inches in diameter, there really isn't anything else that it can be mistaken for (maybe a soccer ball?). You still need too cut it open to check the inside, though. Once the inside of a puffball has started to mature and create spores, its no good. Supposedly its not really poisonous, but tastes really bad and might "irritate" your digestive system, or so the internet says. So cut it open and check to see that it is a uniform white color inside without any purple or brown areas. Done:

That picture doesn't look too impressive, but that knife is actually a pretty good-sized 9" blade. I wish I had Jaime take a picture of me holding it for scale.

So now that I know its edible, how do I process it? The internet says not to wash puffballs because they suck up water like a sponge. Ok, so I just cut away the parts that had been nibbled on by slugs. Jaime refuses to eat it (or even allow it to be kept in the refridgerator or house). While she likes normal grocery store mushrooms, she's "got a thing about big mushrooms and fungus". So apparently I'm on my own with this thing. I did find one friend who wanted some, so I have him about 1/6 of it. Nobody else has shown any interest, so I'll probably give him a bunch more of it.

On to cooking.... The internet says the best way to cook it is to bread and fry it, or sautee it in butter. Done:

Hmm. Not only does it suck up water like a sponge, it also does the same with butter. It tasted like butter with a bit of generic mushroom flavor. It was surprisingly mild. I can't say that I'm entirely sad about that, though. I was pretty worried about the flavor considering that I wasn't too fond of the smell. I also tried chopping some up and putting it on leftover pizza. I couldn't taste it at all. I found the texture very interesting, though. The closest comparison I could come up with was the inside of a biscuit. Very soft. It didn't cook down to be rubbery or slimey like normal mushrooms do.

My brother (who didn't want any of my puffball because he and his wife already had a puffball of their own that they had found and were eating) suggested that I make puffball parmesan, which is his favorite method of puffball preparation. So I gave it a try.

I liked that quite a bit better than the sauteed in butter method. The puffball flavor wasn't too strong, but it was definitely there. The problem is, I'm not sure that I like the flavor. I want to like it, but I'm starting to think I don't. Its got some normal mushroom flavor to it, but its also got its own flavor that is hard to describe. Hang on, let me pull out my wine wheel.... In addition to the standard dirt-like mushroom flavor, I get hints of oak, medicine, and licorice. I don't know if that really does it justice, but thats the best I can do; the wheel was made for wine, not mushrooms!

I did hear about a few other interesting puffball recipes. I'm not sure if I'll try any of these or not. An internet recipe suggested stuffed giant puffball. You basically cut off the top and hollow it out like a pumpkin. Then you put in meat and chopped up veggies and some of the chopped up 'shroom that you removed and put it in the oven for a long time. I don't see myself doing that, and its already been cut in half. A friend of Jaime's said that her family coats slices in egg and cooks it like French Toast. Lastly, I saw a suggestion on the internet to cut it into slices and use the slices as crust for pizza. Just spread sauce and cheese and toppings on it and cook it like a normal pizza. Considering its mild flavor and bread/biscuit like character, that might be worth a try.

I'll have to do whatever I'm going to do soon, though. I can't imagine it will keep more than a few days wrapped up in a towel in our garage.

2010 Gardening Lessons Learned

As the 2010 growing season winds down, I thought I would summarize some of the things I've learned this year. Hopefully some of this will be useful next year. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. Vegetables take longer to grow than it says on the back of the seed package. My Broccoli this year is a good example. It should have been ready for harvest before summer (listed at 55 days), but it didn't mature enough before it got hot out, and the plants seemed to basically go into hibernation during the summer. The first harvest was actually at 120 days. Only one out of my 5 plants produced a head by mid-summer. Happily, they are producing well now in the fall. I planted my Brussell's Sprouts based on the directions of 3-4 months before the first fall frost, and now that it has been 3-4 months, it is pretty clear that they will not have enough time to grow their sprouts before the end of the year. Any veggetables that have a window of opportunity need to be planted early or start them extra early indoors and transplant them.

2. I'm not good at growing seeds for transplant. I'm not entirely sure what the problem is, though I suspect some combination of overwatering, not enough light, and not enough heat. In the spring I started some Broccoli seed indoors for transplanting. About two weeks later, I planted some seed directly in the ground. After about 4 weeks of growing, I transplanted the indoor seedlings into the garden. The outdoor seedlings that were half as old were the same size, and actually surpassed the indoor started ones in size soon after that. After being in the ground for a week or so, the transplants seemed to grow at the same speed as the direct-sowed ones. Its not just a matter of not having enough light/heat indoors, though. I started Brussell's Sprouts during midsummer, and I sprouted and grew those outdoors in full sun(in little plastic containers). I transplanted most of them, but didn't have space for all, so I left a couple seedlings in the containers in case any of the transplants died. I noticed that after a week or two, there was a dramatic difference in the size of the ones that had been transplanted vs. the ones left in the container. I suspect that at least part of the problem was overwatering. I'm really going to have to improve my seedling growing next year.

3. Use disease resistant seeds/plants. My disease/pest plan for this year was to assume that since I was in the middle of the city, and far from farm fields, I wouldn't have too much of a problem. I was actually most worried about varmints eating on my plants. Turned out not to be the case. I had one plant killed by a cat going to the bathroom on it and my Melon seedlings were maimed and killed(but not eaten) by some evil creature, but none of the plants were eaten by varmints. Bugs weren't too bad, though they might get worse in future years. On the other hand, diseases decimated some of my plants. Powdery Mildew killed my Spaghetti Squash, Downy Mildew killed the Cucumber, Bean Mosaic Virus prematurely ended the harvest of beans. Late blight affected the tomatoes, but not too dramatically. Most seed companies offer some varieties that have been bred to be resistant to different kinds of disease. Knowing that the above mentioned diseases are a problem around here, I will try to get varieties that are resistant to them.

4. Plants take up a lot of space. Granted, I tried to crowd some things in this year, but many of the plants exceeded my expectations for how big they would get. Who would have thought that a row of bush beans would spread out to be 3' wide? Potatoes that fall over and grow 3' sideways along the ground? Pak Choi growing to be 20" wide? Tomatoes growing 9'+ high? The Cucurbits were the worst. I had set aside a 4' by 4' area for the "Bush-Type" Zucchini. It grew to take up an area about 10' X 15'. The Spaghetti Squash grew to absurd proportions(multiple 20'+ vines), and would have been even bigger if it hadn't been killed by Powdery Mildew. About the only thing that didn't take up more space than expected was onions. Perhaps thats just because they didn't grow too well, though.

5. Good access to all plants is needed. Partially this is in reference to having a better path system between my plants than I did this year. Its also a matter of being able to get at each plant. I think part of the reason my peas were so annoying to pick this year is because it was difficult to reach some of the peas.

6. A roto-tiller isn't totally necessary for annual maintenance on the homestead. Since the garden is modest in size (~300 sq. ft.), turning my garden over with a shovel isn't a terrible ordeal. I'm glad that I had one when I was first making the garden, but now that the soil has been loosened a couple times, its not too bad with the shovel. It would probably take 3 hours or so to do the whole thing, but if I'm not renting or borrowing a tiller, I can turn over small parts of the garden individually when different crops are ready to be planted. Besides, using a shovel leaves more worms alive and I can dig deeper with the shovel than the tillers were able to dig.

7. The growing season is slightly longer at the homestead than other areas around Rochester. There was a frost advisory for the greater Rochester area on 10/13 with the comments that it would be widespread, with only areas near the lake escaping frost. We didn't get any frost, but I know that the farm that provides food for our CSA (its well outside of the city) did get hit. It was a similar story in the spring when the expected frost(s) did not appear. I think that being in the city proper and being surrounded by buildings on two sides and tall fence on the other two sides offers some protection from temperature extremes. Last year I planted some hardier things (peas, onions, pak choi) outdoors the first week of April and they seemed quite happy. Next year I may try planting some things as early as mid-march.

The 2011 Growing Season Has Begun!

Faithful blog followers have been begging for a post, so here it is! Before I get to 2011, a quick update on 2010. About 60% of the garden is done for the year, so I turned that portion over (with a shovel) and planted it with cover crops. I spread a mixture of oats and hairy vetch. The oats are supposed to grow quickly in the fall and die over the winter while the Vetch will grow slowly over the fall, survive the winter, and grow again in the spring. The Vetch is a legume and should add some nitrogen to the soil. The Oats grow quickly and should add a bunch of organic matter, and may help the Vetch survive the winter. Its definately later in the year than these cover crops should be planted, and the vetch might not survive the winter, but it can't hurt to plant them. Here is what it looks like after I had done about 40% of the garden.

As you can see in the picture, there are still some things growing. In the picture you can see green onions and broccoli. There are also still some cherry tomatoes, pepper plants, pak choi, lettuce, and brussells sprouts. Recently there was a forcast of widespread frost everywhere in the area except right by the lake, so I harvested most of the remaining peppers and tomatoes (most of which were green). It didn't end up frosting, so I'm glad I left some of the stuff on the plants. Below you can see that harvest.

In the bottom of the picture, you can see some garlic lined up. That brings us to the 2011 part I mentioned. I planted a dozen cloves of garlic. It should theoretically overwinter and be ready for harvest in the late spring or early summer. Those cloves came from a few heads of garlic that we got from the CSA this summer. Hopefully that means that they should grow well around here. Here is what the garlic patch currently looks like.

Sauce 'n Squash

My last post showed a large harvest from one of the tomato plants. Here is how the tomatoes look now.

It amazes me that around 13lbs of tomatoes, plus 2 onions and 3 peppers somehow turn into just over 3 quarts of sauce. I was hoping to get 6-8 quarts. I guess we'll just have to savor it that much more.

All the Spaghetti Squash vines are completely dead and brown now, so cut the squash off the vines and put them in the sun to try to get them to ripen up a bit more. Some of the vines died off before the squash on them had a chance to ripen. The color looks pretty washed out in the picture below, but about half of the squash are more green than they are yellow.

The stuff in the planters behind the squash is herbs. More Sage, Rosemary, Parsley, Chives, and Catnip than we can use.

Tomato Harvest

As I mentioned in one of the earlier posts, one of the tomato plants in the garden is an indeterminate variety and keeps slowly producing tomatoes. The other one apparently is determinate because it started growing all its tomatoes at the same time and didn't make any more flowers after that. Jaime has been wanting to make tomato sauce once the tomatoes from that plant ripen. A few had begun to trickle in over the past week, but it looked like the majority needed another week or so to fully ripen. Unfortunately, late blight has caught up to the tomatoes on that plant and have started to blight a few of the actual tomatoes and not just the foliage. In order to save what I could, I harvested all the tomatoes off that plant.

They might look like they are a ways from being ripe, but this variety is supposed to be marbled orange and red when fully ripe, so most of them are pretty close. That is about 11lbs of tomatoes. The smaller ones on top are a few cherry tomatoes from the other plant. We still have a few pounds from tomatoes that we had picked earlier, so we've got more than enough to make sauce with.

Potatoes

When I first dug up potatoes in mid-july, I found quite a lot of them. Since I knew we wouldn't be able to use them all quickly, I decided to leave most in the ground, hoping that they would keep well there. They are a thin-skinned red kind and not meant for long-term storage. We've gotten several shares of potatoes from the CSA between then and now, so we had no need for more potatoes. We finally burned through the CSA potatoes, so I dug up a couple plants from the garden yesterday. Here is what the potatoes looked like.

Not too shabby. A couple of them are rather calloused, but nothing to complain about. They are certainly in a lot better shape than most things would be after being buried in dirt for two months! I'm sure that you avid Miller Homestead followers recall that I was considering whether to thin out my potato plants or just let them grow. I thinned one row to 2-3 stems per tuber, while leaving all the 4-6 stems per tuber in the other row. I harvested one plant from each row yesterday, and though its a small sample size, you can see the difference. The bottom pile is from the thinned row and produce fewer, larger potatoes, while the non-thinned row produced more, smaller potatoes. That matches up with what the internet told me to expect. There is slightly more weight in the non-thinned potatoes, but not by a lot. Its hard to tell from the pic, but those two larger ones weigh a lot. Next year, I'll probably try to plant with somewhat fewer eyes (each eye sprouts one or more stems) per chunk of potato, but I won't thin them at all.

Since I was too lazy to post a pic of the garden in my garden update post, here is one.

The picture doesn't show everything because its too cramped to be able to see it all without a fish-eye lens, but you get the idea. The remains of the spaghetti squash can be seen on the left side and right side (where I let it grow through the old potato patch). Zucchini in the front. Broccoli is the blueish leaves in the middle with tomatoes behind that. You can just see the Brussells Sprouts plants starting to grow in the back along the wall. Pepper plants in the back right.

Which vegetables take up the most time?

I expected the garden to take up time this summer, but some of the crops took up more of my time than others. I'd guess that I probably spent about 3-5 hours per week on average. Here is a list of crops I grew this year, ranked from least time consuming, to most time consuming.

1. Onions: Not much to it, plant them, do a little weeding, yank them out of the ground, dry them.

2. Potatoes: Plant....harvest. If they didn't have to be dug out of the ground at harvest, they would be #1.

3. Leafy Greens: Not much work here, either. Did have to do some thinning and hilling up dirt to keep them upright.

4. Peppers: Had to do a little bit of staking the plants and branches to keep them from falling/bending over under the weight of the peppers.

5. Broccoli/Kohlrabi: Had to check often for aphids and spray for them periodically.

6. Beans: Just a matter of picking them, which is not terrible, but takes 10 min every other day for a month or so during harvest time.

7. Zucchini: Occasional harvesting, occasional spraying for powdery mildew, occasional pruning.

8. Ground-planted tomatoes: Requires occasional harvesting, periodic staking up, and frequent pruning.

9. Spaghetti Squash: Frequent spraying for powdery mildew, occasional pruning and harvesting

10. Topsy-turvy tomatoes: Just a matter of (quick) daily watering and frequent fertilizing

11. Peas: Putting in supports, training them up supports, and time-consuming picking made peas the most time-consuming crop of the year. 20 minutes of searching through vines to find peas every other day during harvest season really gets annoying after the first couple weeks. That doesn't even include the time it takes to trim the stems off (they were snow peas, shelling peas would be even worse) before eating. Its a shame the peas grew so well and tasted so good, because I'm tempted to not grow them next year due to the time it took to pick them.

Late Summer Garden Update

Its been a while since the last garden update, and I was going to make a really big post with lots of pictures, but then I got lazy. You probably wouldn't have wanted to read a really long post anyway.

August is supposed to be the month with tons of produce. Here at the Miller Homestead, it seemed to be the month of disease. After a prolonged battle, the Spaghetti squash has basically succumbed to a combination of Powdery Mildew and something else (possibly gummy stem blight). The Zucchini is pretty well covered in Powdery Mildew as well, though it seems to only be slowing it down rather than killing it off. The tomatoes are having problems with late blight, but the soil planted tomatoes are doing better than the ones in the topsy-turvy. The broccoli and kohlrabi have bad infestations of cabbage aphids. I'm keeping that in check with pyrethrin spray now, and the plants seem to be doing ok.

Despite the diseases, we have been getting some produce. Cherry tomatoes and paste tomatoes have been harvested. A couple of green bell peppers have been harvested. None of the peppers have turned the orange that they are supposed to, even though one started to rot on the plant. Sporadic Zucchinis, or course. We ate a couple of moderate sized spaghetti squashes. There are another 13 squashes of varying sizes and ripeness laying all around the garden; hopefully the unripe ones will still ripen even though the plant is basically dead. We've also eaten a few Kohlrabis. Basically, they are Broccoli stems, maybe with a slightly more cabbagy flavor. In case you haven't seen on, below is a picture of one. The picture is not from my garden (I told you this was a lazy blog post).

Not so sure I'd grow kohlrabi again. I think I'd rather have cauliflower or more broccoli or something.

There is still a good amount of stuff growing in the garden. We'll probably get tomatoes, peppers (green apparently), and Zucchini for the next month or so. Some of the spring planted broccoli looks like its just now starting to think about growing heads. I think they must have gone semi-dormant over the summer. Brussells sprouts have been transplanted, and I've also recently planted fall crops of Lettuce, Pak Choi, Arugula, and Green Onions (from bulb sets). Most of the potatoes are still in the ground, too. We have more than enough potatoes, and I'm hoping they'll keep well in the dirt till fall.

Garden Update

Its been a while since the last garden update, so here is another. The biggest development is that I lost the Cucumber to some sort of disease. Here is a picture of what it looked like shortly before its death. Sorry about the poor picture quality.

Whatever disease it had attacked the leaves making brown spots all over them until the leaf died. Unfortunately there are tons of leaf diseases bacterial, viral, and fungal that can attack Cucumber leaves and to my untrained eye, the pictures that I found online of each of them look remarkably similar. I tried spraying it a couple times with a baking soda solution that seems to help with powdery mildew on the squash, but it didn't seem to have any effect on the Cucumbers.

My bean plants may also have some sort of leaf disease. Here is a picture of what some of the beans looked like a couple weeks ago.

The brown spots also spread and killed the leaves on these plants. There is a chance that it is just old age for the beans since this happened as the second harvest was winding up. I'm not to upset about the beans either way since I got quite a bit of production out of them.

The tomatoes are doing very well. One of the plants (Heirloom Old German) dramatically slowed its growth and has almost 2 dozen large tomatoes on it, so I'm guessing thats a determinate variety. Jaime already has plans to make sauce out of those. The other plant (Heirloom Isis Cherry) continues to grow like crazy and has fewer tomatoes on it, so I'm guessing that is an indeterminate variety. Some of those are starting to ripen. That plant grew up to the top of my 8' wooden poles, so I pinched off those shoots (had to use a stepladder). I'll let some lower shoots grow up to the top now. Here is what the tomatoes look like as of mid-august.

Note in the picture that the vegetation is much thicker up to about 4'. That is the height of the previous stakes that I was using to hold up the tomatoes, and I had been trying to prune the plants to keep them at that height until I got the taller stakes. Thats what I'll be doing now, except it will be up at 8' now. The 3' high tomato cages are under there somewhere, too.

I was at a farm this past weekend and I took note of the way they supported their tomatoes. They were growing in a hoop house covered in plastic. The frame of the house had poles running the length that were about 10' off the ground. There were strings running from the poles on top down to horizontal poles on the ground, making 10' tall taught strings next to each plant. The tomato plants were spiraled up the strings as they grew and that seemed to be enough support for them. Not a bad idea. I could probably do the same thing around my wooden stakes next year.

I also learned while I was at the farm that scallions and green onions really are different. Green onions are just young onions that haven't grown bulbs yet while scallions will never grow bulbs. That is something to keep in mind for next year. I have two types of seeds that I was using to make scallions. One that was labeled "bunching green onions" did stop growing when they were still really small and made bulbs. The other was labeled "spring onions", and some of those continue to grow (and are pretty good-sized) without making any bulbs.

I didn't really have much hope for the pepper plants in the spring because they started out so slowly and were way behind all the other plants. They have done very well in the hot summer weather, though. There are probably about 6 or so peppers growing on each of the 4 plants. They are a sweet pepper variety that should ripen orange. I was expecting them to be smaller than bell peppers, but the largest of them are now approaching bell pepper size and are still green.

The Zucchini plant continues to grow vigorously. Even after trimming it back a bit, it has grown to be a dense canopy at least 10' by 10'. It is called a bush variety, but it seems to be basically a viney variety with really stubby vines. Zucchini production has been somewhat sporadic, though. Many of the baby Zucchini have shriveled soon after flowering, possibly because they aren't getting pollinated well enough. This week has been good for Zucchini, though. I harvested three large ones and there are two more that will get picked in the next couple days.

The Spaghetti squash continues to be the winner of the "Which plant can take up the most ridiculous amount of space?" contest. I originally allotted 5' x 5' for it. I let it take over the melon patch after the melons didn't really work out. Then I let it take over my paths and some shady areas that I wasn't planning on planting. Then it started climbing my fence (with mixed results). Then I let it take over the potato patch. It has been trying to take over the Zucchini area, but the Zucchini is putting up a pretty good fight. The Zucchini being taller and very dense, shades the squash vines that try to wind through it. Had I planted the squash in the middle of the garden and let it go where it wanted, I am quite certain that it would completely cover the entire garden. Its hard to tell how much squash we will actually end up with because its such a tangled mess and the squashes are various sizes. I've probably seen a dozen or so squashes, a couple of which are probably around 15" long and must weigh around 5lbs each.

One of the vines that went through the potato patch kept right on going past the potatoes, over to a lilac bush, and has climbed vertically into the bush. That bush is about 20' away from the planting location of the squash vine. Its now about 8' high in the bush and showing no signs of stopping. I'm curious to see if it will make it out the top of the bush, which is about 15' high.

Finally pulled the plug on the peas

The pea plants produced one heavy crop and then a whole series of progressively smaller crops as the plants slowly die off on their own. About half the plants have died, and the other half is showing signs of old age. There hasn't been any finite end to the pea production, but it is really starting to trail off. If I let them continue I'd probably get another half pound or so, but I need the space to plant Brussels Sprouts seedlings. Time for the peas to go.

I should have taken a before and after picture, but I forgot to do that, so all I have is an after picture, and a not very good one at that. I don't know why the left side of the photo is blurry, but on the right side you can see the area where the peas used to be. I chopped up the plants a little bit and turned over the dirt, burying the pea plants in the process. Hopefully that will be extra fertilizer for the seedlings. I'll plant them in a few days.

Supposedly Brussels Sprouts like cold weather and will keep growing through heavy frosts and even into December. That cinder block wall on the right side of the picture should help to keep them a bit warm into the cold months, too. Mmm.....Brussels Sprouts.

Tomatoes and Potatoes

Those who know me well know that I don't like Tomatoes. Once they are cooked (pasta sauce, cooked salsa, etc), they're fine. Its the fresh ones that bother me. Not sure what it is exactly about the flavor, but I've never liked the flavor. Now I have another reason to dislike them. They are annoying to grow.

Jaime wanted me to grow some Tomato plants in the garden, so I have two plants that I started from seed. One is a big heirloom variety (Old German) and one is an open-pollinated small cherry variety (Isis Cherry). We also got a Topsy Turvy and a couple of heirloom seedlings to go in it from Jaime's mom. The ones in the topsy-turvy seem to be progressing fine and are starting to flower. The ones I planted in the ground are progressing more than fine.

I knew that Tomatoes aren't the sturdiest of plants, but I had a couple of 3 foot high conical tomato cages to support them. That should be good enough, right? Once it started getting warm, they began to grow rapidly and after they reached about 3 foot tall I realized it was time to put up the Tomato cages. A week later they were >4 foot and were tipping and bending the cages and threatening to fall over. I took 4 foot tall wooden stakes from the peas and tied strings to them to hold the Tomatoes up. I started to prune the new shoots so that they would stop getting taller and start making tomatoes. That didn't work so well. They are starting to grow fruit now, but they basically sent up two shoots rather than the one I had just cut. I have been literally pruning them every day to keep them in check.

Around this time, I put a few random pieces of info together and realized that Tomatoes are actually vines. They have no intention of supporting themselves and would be quite happy to fall over and grow along the ground. Not only that, but the stems will develop roots if they fall over and touch the ground.

Okay, so if they want to be vines, maybe I should let the be vines? The problem is that I have no room in the garden for them to do that. I have only allocated about 2ft X 4ft for the two plants. So maybe next year I could let them be vines if I grow Tomatoes again? A bit of internet research tells me that isn't such a good idea. Apparently the plants are less healthy and less productive if laying down, or as it was stated on one website: "By season's end, it will be an unsightly, impenetrable, disease-wracked tangle."

What ever happened to survival of the fittest?!? If a plant can't stand upright on its own, and can't reproduce well if it falls over, maybe it shouldn't be grown. I'm just sayin'.... At the very least, can't somebody please create a self-supporting Tomato breed?

Ok, back to the current problem. Given self-destructive 4+ foot tall tomatoes that seem to want to keep growing larger, how can I cheaply support them? Here's what they looked like this morning.

I stopped at Home Depot today and they were (of course) out of 8ft tall wooden plant stakes($5 each). I looked all around the store for a long sturdy object that could be used to replace the missing stakes. Copper pipes, steel pipes, PVC pipes, steel rebar, shovel handles, broom handles, wooden trim pieces, etc. All were either too flimsy or cost too much. I don't have the space or the desire to spend $25 each on their nice Tomato trellises. Finally, I found some 1"x2"x8' pine pieces ($2.60 each!). Together with velcro plant ties (which I highly recommend, BTW), the total cost was under $8. I had to cut the wood at angles at one end so I could pound it into the ground, but that didn't take long. The picture below shows what my support system looks like now. The Tomatoes are now free to grow upwards as much as they'd like.

Ok, enough about Tomatoes. Lets move on to a more pleasant topic like Potatoes. Here is a representative view of the Potato patch.

Recall that a mere 4 weeks ago, the Potatoes were a vigorous, 3 foot tall carpet of greenery threatening to take over other parts of the garden. Now they are a sad pile of browning leaves with a few sporadic areas of healthy-looking growth. It could be disease or maybe they are just dying off naturally because its their time. In either case, the Potato plants aren't doing much so I've started training some squash vines in that direction (right side of above picture). There are still are a couple patches where the Potatoes are growing, so before fully allowing the squash to take over, I figured I should see if there are any actual Potatoes under ground.

I've read that you can carefully dig around Potato plants by hand before they are fully done and get some baby Potatoes. I had half-heartedly tried rooting around one of the plants a couple times. I looked in a couple spots about 12" from the the stems, but didn't find anything. That seemed to be a bad sign. Today I decided to fully dig up one of the 10 plants to find out for sure whether the plants had time to make potatoes before dying off. I didn't find anything at first and I was starting to despair, but I finally hit the jackpot, right up against the stems. I found 6 respectable potatoes (all within a few inches of the stems). Now I'm excited. That was the smallest, most-shaded of the Potato plants and I still got almost 2lbs of Potatoes from it. I can't complain about that. Here are the Potatoes, fresh out of the ground. The seedlings seen in the picture are baby Brussel's Sprouts that will be transplanted into the area currently occupied by the peas in a couple weeks.

When looking at the roots, I did notice that there were several tiny baby potatoes (around 1/8"). I'm wondering if the plant was still trying to grow more Potatoes, or if that is just how it will always look. In the picture below, you can see a couple of the baby Potatoes. They are on the end of the thick roots that are closest to the stems. The other 3 thick roots used to be attached to Potatoes.

Even if the Potatoes are trying to grow a secondary smaller crop of tubers, I think I will let the squash take over, periodically harvesting the potatoes as the squash overgrows the area. The squash certainly needs the space more than the potatoes at this point. The last picture shows most of the day's harvest (there was also some beans and the tail end of the peas). Those Cucumbers are going to become pickles tomorrow.

July Garden Update

This is what the garden looks like as of 7/12. The first picture is facing roughly south. Topsy Turvy is back left, potatoes mid left, some Broccoli and Kohlrabi front left. Zucchini to the right of the Topsy Turvy, Cucumber is hidden behind the Zucchini, Spaghetti Squash is everything to the right of the Zucchini, and Tomatoes in the immediate foreground.

Facing to the West now. Peas on the far left side, going along the wall there are 4 pepper plants and then a short row of beans at the end. Potatoes in the top right, Broccoli and Kohlrabi right in the middle, some onions at the far right and mid-left, Tomatoes in the bottom left corner, and some more beans in the bottom middle.

It may not be easy to see everything in the pictures, but things are going well. The leafy green stuff is basically done, but other stuff has taken over. The peas have started a second round of fruiting. The beans seem to be peaking now. Onions have stopped growing tops and are developing bulbs. The potatoes seem to be unhappy, but I can't tell if its because its just time for them to go or if there is a more nefarious reason. The recent hot weather has helped quite a few of the plants. The Tomatoes are starting to get out of control and I've been pruning them to keep them at 4-5 feet tall. I would let them keep growing but I don't really have a good way to support them. I've harvested 4 Cucumbers so far and I've been pruning back the vines. Its supposed to be a small "Spacemaster" variety, but its still growing pretty large. The Zucchini is huge and I've harvested 3 zukes so far. The Spaghetti Squash is quite seriously out of control. I prune it back literally ever single day. Every time I cut off a vine tip, it grows multiple side shoots. The vines seem to grow about 6-9" per day! Note the squash vine growing up the fence in the first picture. I cut it off when it got to the top and it actually has 3 squashes on that one vertical vine alone! I allowed the Spaghetti Squash to take over the melon area, as well as the the area along the fence. It still wants more space and I'm letting a few grow towards the potato area in case the potatoes really are done.

I gotta say, so far the garden has produced more than I expected, and it looks like that will continue.

Powdery Mildew

Since I'm a first year gardener, I'm a bit of a hypochondriac when it comes to pests and diseases in the garden. I was worried about some potato leaves that kind of looked like they had blight, but that didn't seem to spread, so it probably wasn't. There was attack of flea beetles on my Pak Choi, but that seemed to pass. Two of my Broccoli plants seemed to just wither and die, which made me worried about club root. The rest of the Broccoli plants seem OK and when I pulled up the dead plants they didn't have messed up roots, so it probably wasn't that. The newest thing to worry about.....Powdery Mildew (heartofore called PM).

After noticing white spots on a few of my Spaghetti Squash leaves, I started doing research. PM is arguably the most common garden ailment. Its a fungus that attaches to the leaves and can spread rapidly. It drains nutrients and eventually kills individual leaves. It can kill whole plants in bad cases that are allowed to run rampant. It can affect most types of garden veggies, but each vegetable type has a specific species of PM that can infect it, so PM on squash won't infect potatoes. Some species are more suceptible to PM, though. That list of most suceptible plants includes Cucurbits. Turns out that is the actual name for the group of plants that I have been calling "viney plants". This includes squash, melons, cucumbers, gourds, etc. Most of the pictures I have seen online range from white blotches to a general white dust on the whole leaf. My white spots are very well-defined, but I did see a couple pictures that looked like that. The picture below is one of my Spaghetti Squash leaves. Its possible that this is something else, or its nothing at all, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

There are some pretty nasty sounding fungicides that I could spray that should be effective in controlling PM, but I'd rather not go that route if I don't have to. There is quite a bit of talk on the internet about a baking soda solution being effective. This appears to be backed up by studies at Cornell and other places. It is believed that the high pH affects the fungus a lot more than the plant leaves. So I mixed up a batch of 3-4 tsp baking soda, 2-3 tsp vegetable oil, and 1-2 tsp liquid soap with one gallon of water. The oil is to help the solution stick to the leaves, and the soap is a surfactant that helps to disperse the oil evenly throughout the solution. (As an interesting aside, the dispersants talked about so much in relation to the gulf oil spill work the same way and are very similar to dish detergent. They just cause the oil to break into fine droplets and diffuse throughout the water column rather than just floating on the surface.) I sprayed the solution on all of my Cucurbits (Spaghetti Squash, Cucumber, Melon, and Zucchini) yesterday. I sprayed the tops of all of the leaves, and the bottoms of the leaves that had white spots (25% of the Spaghetti Squash leaves and one Zucchini leaf). I really hope that protects them since those plants are doing very well at the moment. Perhaps its not even Powdery Mildew, and I'm just being a hypochondriac.

One thing I certainly am not imagining is bugs on my Broccoli and Kohlrabi. There are a few little green worms and a whole lotta aphids. I saw a few aphids and was just going to knock them off, but after I looked closer I saw big clumps of them on all the baby leaves. Some of the leaves were so infested that they are curled and crumpled. So much for the idea that a natural, healthy, diverse garden will have a balanced ecosystem with predatory bugs to keep parasites in check. Time for some chemical warfare. I pulled out a spray-bottle full of pyrethrins and went to town. Pyrethrins are derived from Chrysanthemums and are certified organic, but very effective against many types of bugs. I think thats actually what is used in most flea sprays.

Time to start freezing

I've been harvesting peas for a while now and they actually look like they are starting to wind down now. So far I've harvested almost 4lbs of them. Jaime and I have only had a couple meals of peas and each meal only used about 1/2lb for both of us. Thankfully, peas should freeze well. I've now got about 2lbs of them in the freezer.

I went out to the garden to pick some peas this evening, and I decided that I should look over the bean plants since I noticed them flowering last week. Turns out the first beans are ready to harvest! I also checked on the Zucchini plant which had a few fruits that had just started growing in the middle of last week and one was already more than big enough (it was over a lb) to harvest. Yikes, time to get eating! Here is my harvest from this evening along with two previous pickings worth of peas in bags.

I'm a little worried about the potato plants. They look like they are dying off, but it seems earlier in the year than that should be happening. I looked online for how quickly they should die off, and all I was able to find was 2-5 months. Hmm. According to my spreadsheet I planted those in mid-April (2.5 months ago). The ground does look like it is pushed up in a bunch of places near the base of the plants so its possible there are potatoes under there. I don't know what else to do except wait and hope.

Overcrowding in the garden

I knew when I made it that my planting map was a bit optimistic in terms of how closely space my plants were. Part of it was just that I wanted to plant a lot of different things and in order to get enough of each type to make it worthwhile, I really had to cram things in. I also figured that some crops might fail completely, giving other crops more room. Early on in the season the spacing seemed pretty reasonable, and in a couple places I even tried to fit a few more things in because it seemed like there was extra room. Now that we are in the middle of the growing season and many of the plants are getting pretty good-sized, things are getting awfully crowded. Many of the paths are disappearing under foliage, and plants are growing over and around other plants. I knew that the Spaghetti Squash plant was going to want to expand beyond its 5’ X 5’ allocated area, but I didn’t realized the size that many of the other plants would achieve. I figured the Zucchini (which is an heirloom bush-type), might stay within a 4’ x 4’ area. While its not really growing vines, it is turning into a gigantic bush that is managing to take over some of the surrounding areas.

I initially figured 18” for Broccoli spacing, and that might have been ok, but when I transplanted seedlings I had a few extra that I tried to cram in, and now that the biggest plant is over 20” wide, things are getting a bit tight in that area. The row of bush-beans is now almost 3 feet wide. The pea plants got pretty big and the more southern of the two rows is blocking most of the light to the northern row because they were too close. Obviously the potatoes got bigger than expected, too.

I think I’m going to encourage the Spaghetti Squash to take over the Melon area. The Melons were small, slow-growing, and behind schedule when I transplanted them at the end of May. After they were killed by some evil critter, I planted seeds in early June, but the plants are only to the 4-leaf stage and we’re hitting July now. The other viney plants have been flowering for a while and are now starting to set fruit. I think the Melons may be a lost cause, but the Squash would be happy to use that area. I’ve also decided to let the Zucchini take over the Swiss Chard area since Jaime and I don’t really like the Chard. Actually, I’m not sure what I could do to stop it even if I wanted to.

I’ll probably add a column in my planting dates spreadsheet for size of the mature plants. It started off just as a way to keep track of when I planted stuff, then I started putting comments on it about how well stuff was growing, then I added on a column for weight of vegetables harvested, and now I’ll add a column for size of plants. The spreadsheet will be very useful for next year.

Taste

The first time that I thinned out my baby Rainbow Chard seedlings this spring, I rinsed off the micro-greens and sprinkled them on my salad along with sprouts from the Arugula and Pak Choi patches. After a couple bites, I started wondering why my salad tasted like beets. My parents used to force me eat beets from their garden when I was growing up, and I never liked them. I’ve only rarely had them since, but the flavor is quite distinct (I’ve even been nervous about eating radishes because they kind of look like beets). I quickly figured out that the flavor in my salad was coming from the Chard. I’d never tasted Chard before and didn’t know much about it other than people saying that it is delicious and I should plant it in my garden. I don’t think I knew at that time that it was related. Sometime after that salad, I looked up Swiss Chard on Wiki to see if it is in the same family as beets. It turns out that not only is Chard related to common Beets, it is the same species! Not just the same species, but even the same subspecies! It is just bred for vigorous leaf growth rather than for a big root.

Fast-forward to this past weekend when Jaime and I were talking to a couple friends about vegetables and Chard came up. I mentioned something about tasting like beets, and I was shocked to find out that our friends didn’t think that it tasted like beets(though one of their grandmothers thought it did). I just assumed everybody thought it tasted like beets. The next day, Jaime and I had my parents over to the house for a dinner. Since Jaime has discovered that she doesn’t like Chard, and I’m not sure that I do either, we decided to cook a bunch of the chard so we could get rid of it. It also happens to be prime Chard season. I felt certain that my parents would really like the Chard since they like beets. I just sautéed it with some butter and salt. Somehow, they didn’t think it tasted like beets at all! My Mom thought it tasted like Spinach. Spinach?!?

After thinking about it, I was starting to doubt myself just a little bit. Perhaps my palette is just not refined enough. Yesterday I had some of the leftover Chard for lunch. Totally beets! This is not a subtle thing. It was like somebody smacked me across the mouth with a Beet. Absolutely no mistaking it. The only explanation I can come up with is that there is a specific chemical in beet plants (and therefore Chard also) that I can detect while some other people can’t. I’m not the only one, either. A quick internet search seems to show that some people think Chard tastes like beets, and some people think it tastes like a regular leafy green like Spinach. There also seems to be a pretty polarized community online about liking or hating Beets.

There is another “edible” plant that produces even more polarizing opinions amongst foodies. Cilantro has been in the news a lot lately because of its growing popularity, and with it an increasingly vocal anti-Cilantro crowd. Jaime and I fall into the group of people who feel that Cilantro tastes bitter and a kind of like dirty socks or soap (or plastic covered in dish soap in my case). Sure, I get a bit of the citrusy-herby flavor that people rave about, but its overwhelmed by the bitter soapy flavor. A small amount of it easily infects large quantities of otherwise tasty foods. There have been several articles recently suggesting that there is a genetic component to the Cilantro taste debate. The only real experiment I’ve read about relating to this was a pretty flimsy sounding twin-study, but the theoretical idea behind it seems entirely reasonable. In fact, there has been some hard science showing that there are some chemicals that some people can taste while other people cannot. This is also related to the idea of supertasters. I really wonder if Jaime and I are just able to taste a compound in the Chard that some people can't.

I’d be very interested to see a study that asks people who don’t like Cilantro whether they like Beets or Chard. I suspect a large percentage of those who don’t like Cilantro or Beets won’t like the other two. Isn’t there some federal stimulus money laying around that hasn’t been used yet? I may have to start an informal survey of my own.

Are Potatoes supposed to do this?

Aren't potatoes supposed to be upright plants? Mine don't seem to think so. They prefer to fall over, lay along the ground and grow longer and longer . The potatoes are now starting to take over the garden. I was not expecting this.

Note the lighter colored leaves in between the potato plants near the bottom of the picture. That used to be a lettuce patch. I'm not too concerned about the lettuce since I have it planted in other areas as well, but the potatoes are now crossing a main pathway and are threatening Swiss Chard in the upper right of the picture and the broccoli/kohlrabi bed that you can see the edge of at the bottom of the picture.

Not really sure what to do about this. The plants don't send down any roots where they touch the ground, so theoretically they are movable, but the stems and branches are somewhat delicate/brittle and if I tried to point the plants in other directions I'd probably do significant damage to them. The potato plants are just starting to flower, so maybe they will stop growing and start trying to make seeds/potatoes?

On Fertilization

I went into this whole gardening thing hoping that I wouldn't have to fertilize the garden. I mean, I started out with good, nutritious soil, added a nitrogen-fixing cover crop that got tilled into the soil in the spring, and the little bit of compost that we had made over the winter also got tilled into the soil in spring. That seems like a good amount of food, and the compost and cover crop should slowly break down. That was the theory anyway. After watching weeds that I've killed and just left on top of the dirt, I've realized that vegetation actually breaks down really quickly and all the stuff that got tilled in during the spring is probably long since decomposed. On top of that, the sheer volume of plant material that my garden has produced so far makes me think that most of the easily accessible nutrients must have been mostly used up (at least in the Potato, Pea, Pak Choi, and Arugula beds). So its time to think about getting some fertilizer.

If this were a standard garden, I could go pick up some industrial NPK chemical fertilizer, but we try not to do that sort of thing here on the homestead. If we had some sort of a regenerative, beyond organic farming system with chickens wandering through the garden picking bugs and turning them into their own version of fertilizer and the overflow from a fish pond drip-watering the garden, I probably wouldn't have to worry about fertilizer. Sadly, that is not the case. So what sort of nutritious, easily available, relatively cheap organic fertilizer is available to homesteads like this one? I've been thinking about it, and this is the list I've come up with:

- My own vegetable compost: Its not ready, and there isn't much of it. We put more stuff in there several times a week and it keeps rotting down to almost nothing. I may just build up a year's worth and till it into the soil next spring.

- Composted cow manure: Moderately nutritious, but its available from multiple stores nearby in easily transported bags, and the cost is pretty reasonable.

- Composted chicken manure: Supposedly highly nutritious, but I haven't seen it available anywhere locally. I've found it online for not too much money per bag, but the shipping cost is rather prohibitive

- Worm compost. I've found one local producer, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to get my hands on it. Also not sure how nutritious it would be. I guess that probably depends on what they feed the worms, but I suspect it would be similar to regular vegetable compost.

- Bone Meal, Blood Meal, Fish Meal, combination organic fertilizers. I can find all this stuff online, but the shipping isn't cheap. I might be able to find some of it locally if I look hard enough. But it kinda seems like cheating to me. Its organic, but all this stuff isn't going to be made by any small local places, it will be made at some massive slaughterhouse in the midwest.

I've also been seeing a lot of stuff about "compost tea". Basically you steep worm or other types of compost in water, then water your plants with that liquid. That seems kind of silly to me. Why wouldn't you just put compost on top of the soil, and then you get compost tea every time it rains. Plus, you make sure all the organic material eventually makes its way into the dirt. Am I missing something about compost tea?

I'm thinking that I'll probably get a couple bags of composted organic cow manure for now because its cheap and easy, and I'll keep my eyes open for the local worm compost or chicken manure.

Attack of the giant Pak Choi!

I can't really complain about the greens that the garden is producing. We have more Arugula and Pak Choi than we know what to do with. Exibit A:

I don't know if the picture does it justice. That thing is huge. It probably should have been harvested a week and a half ago when I noticed it starting to bolt (go to seed). We had so many greens as it was and we had just eaten a bunch of pak choi, so I held off. It just kept getting bigger. Finally this morning when I went out to check on the garden the wind and rain from last night had knocked this guy over. It weighed in right around 2.0lbs. There was a pretty hefty flower stalk in the middle that I discarded, but I kept the flower buds (they look just like broccoli florets) and any leaves on the flower stalk. Jaime had a stir-fry recipe to try that called for 5 cups of cut-up bok choy (same thing as pak choi). After I cleaned and cut up the head, it made around 25 cups. Made a double recipe, heavy on the choi. Not too shabby.

In other garden news, I've noticed the first pea pods of the year. They should be ready to start picking by next weekend at the latest. I know that this is unusually early for that and peas around here aren't usually ready till the end of june or beginning of july. Works out well for me, though. I'm planning on putting Brussels sprouts in that area at some point in july. Next year it might be better to plant Brussels sprouts in a plot after greens to lessen the chances of overlapping times.

A couple weeks ago I planted some Asparagus roots. It will take a couple years before it is ready to harvest, so I wasn't sure I wanted to plant Asparagus. We should be around at least that long, so why not give it try. Its a bit late to be planting it, too. Better late than never? I put it in a spot that is mostly shaded at ground level by the fence. Asparagus gets pretty tall, so I'm hoping that it can grow up into the sun. I planted two purple plants, a green jersey knight and one other green kind. As of now, only one purple and one green have sprouted. I'll probably plant the last two remaining roots (the second green variety) that I have where those two didn't sprout.

I had been letting weeds grow in the heavily shaded area along the fence in the back yard. I realized that they will probably start sending out runners and seeds into my garden, so I decided I should hack them down. Turns out its kinda difficult to get rid of established weeds. Ugh. After 3 weeks of hoeing, there aren't many sprouts coming back up anymore. So then I had a nice approximately 1 foot wide nicely hoed dirt strip. I figured that since greens don't like hot weather, maybe they'd grow ok there where it is cooler and wetter. Not sure how they'll handle the full shade, but we'll see. I planted a bunch of pak choi, arugula, bibb lettuce, and swiss chard.