Garden Update With Lots of Pics

Somebody complained about there not being enough pictures in my posts, so I took the good camera and took a bunch of pictures of the garden. These were taken three days ago. Its kind of amazing how different the garden looks in just a few days.

First up is the lettuce patch. It looks like random chaos, but there was a new section seeded each week. The most recent ones have just come up and can be seen towards the back of the picture.

The closest area of the lettuce bed now looks different since I just harvested three big heads and a couple smaller ones (1.5 lbs worth). After washing and draining, that filled up two dinner plates for salads tonight, a decent-sized tupperware container for salad tomorrow, and stuffed a large tupperware container for the future.

Here is what the garlic looks like. It used to be the most impressive looking plant in the garden, but it hasn't actually grown any new leaves in at least a month. It did grow scapes for us, though. Hopefully its putting all its energy into garlic heads underground now. The leaves are starting to die off at the bottom and when about half of them are brown, it will be harvest time.

This is the three sisters patch. The corn is separated into three different groupings (planted a week apart) and the bean plants near each corn plant starting to climb the corn. You can't really see the cucumber or melon plants that are growing between the corn/bean patches, but they are starting to grow pretty well. The corn is also growing well (maybe an inch a day), but its the beans that are going crazy. As soon as they started to send out a vine, they started growing like crazy. The vines seem to be growing about 6 inches a day...literally. I'm quite worried about the corn because just in the last couple days, the beans seem to be be pulling the corn towards them and bending it over. I'm trying to relieve the corn as much as possible, but there isn't a lot I can do without just cutting off the bean vines, which I suspect would be rather traumatic for the bean plants. Perhaps if I just cut off some of the vine, it will slow it down and the vine will just send out another shoot. I have my fingers crossed that the corn can stand up to the abuse of these rampant beans. I really don't want to have to choose between the corn and the beans. The whole point of the three sisters is that they are supposed to grow well together!

Two cauliflowers on the right and three (actually 4 since that one near the bottom is actually a pair) broccoli on the left in this picture. The fourth broccoli was dug up and transplanted over near the potatoes after this picture was taken. Also, the plants got significantly bigger in the last three days. Seriously. I was just in the garden. They are bigger now. You can also see a radish in the middle of the picture. I took that out after taking the picture because much like its brothers and sisters, it was starting to bolt without making a radish.

This is an ugly looking patch, but everything is there for a reason. The right side has 6 pepper plants (3 pairs of bell, small sweet, and cayenne). They are really starting to grow well now and are covered in flowers. If you use your imagination you can kind of see a row of radishes on the left. It looks kind of patchy, but that is because I have brussels sprouts just sprouting in between. I just planted the radishes there because the radishes should be fully grown before the brussels sprouts really start to get big enough to shade them. Lastly in that picture you can see some bent over plants with little white flowers near the front left. Those are arugula plants that bolted a long time ago and I'm going to see if they can grow usable seeds. There are tons of seed pods on them already and they aren't really causing problems for anything else at the moment, so we'll see what happens.

Here you see the topsy-turvy with sickly looking tomatoes in it. I think the problem is that they have been too wet. They have never quite dried out and every time I water the rest of the garden with the sprinkler the topsy-turvy gets wet again. Nevertheless, they are trying their best and actually have a few green tomatoes. On the ground under the TT is kale. Its growing slowly, but starting to pick up steam. Against the fence is the asparagus patch. The highest fronds are 4-5 foot high, but as you can see, there are also fronds that are only 1 foot tall. All of them are unable to stand up on their own and have thus been staked up. That fence shades the low ones for most of the day, but the higher ones get a good amount of sunlight.

The onion patch. The bigger stuff is a mix of red and yellow onions grown from sets (mini bulbs). The smaller stuff in the front right corner is scallions grown from seed. We also pulled out some of the ones grown from sets that were over-crowded for use as green onions. You can see that some of the onions are falling over in this picture. Once they fall over, they stop growing bulbs and slowly die. Since I took that picture, many more have fallen and probably only half are upright. Unfortunately, most of the bulbs do not look very big. We might get a decent amount just by the sheer numbers, but it seems like it will be a less impressive harvest than I was hoping. I think the bulbing onions were another victim of the terrible spring growing season.

Peas. Not particularly impressive here, either. Again, an early season crop. We have gotten 1/2lb or so and the plants are still producing, but it is a far cry from last year when we were overwhelmed by peas.

Edamame. Not a lot of plants. I just wanted to try it out as a crop. These guys have started picking up the growing pace also and look bigger today than they did when the picture was taken.

The potatoes are now the most impressive section of the garden. Since taking this picture three days ago, the plants have spread apart with the outermost plants laying out across paths and they are showing no signs of slowing down. However, it was around this time of year last year when the short season potatoes started to die down. Half of these are short-season reds and half are longer-season whites.

Feast or Famine II

Perhaps I shouldn't have complained about not having enough rain, but 6 days straight of rain and clouds seems like excessive retribution by Mother Nature for my blog post.

AARRRRGGG!!!

Today I thinned the last planting of corn. I had planted 3 seeds together in each spot and there were 2 or 3 happy plants growing in each spot. They were big enough that it was time to thin them, so I snipped off the extra plants and left the biggest one in each spot. A couple hours later, I came out to put something in the compost pile, and found this.

In case you can't tell. That corn plant was neatly cut off at ground level and pushed off to the side. The critter obviously didn't want to eat the plant. It seems like it just wanted it out of the way so it could scrape up the dirt?! I have to say that I am really quite upset about this. I assume it was a squirrel, but I don't know for sure.

Feast or Famine

The title of the blog post unfortunately only refers to rainfall, not actual vegetable production (no feast, just famine). We have gotten a few salads worth of lettuce and the peas are finally starting to produce, but the garden is still underperforming expectations. Its still early in the year, but its got some catching-up to do.

As far as the rain, we got record near-record rainfall in April, and May wasn't a whole lot better, but June has been extremely dry. 20 days in and we've only gotten 0.25" of rain. While that makes for nice weather and lots of sun, it means I have to keep watering the garden every couple days.

Jaime says posts without pictures are boring, so I'll try to post some pictures of the garden next post.

First Real Harvest Of The Year

Finally, I was able to pick a respectable amount of stuff from the garden at once.

Yes, most of that is mostly bolting greens and thinnings, but its enough to eat! There are pak choi, broccoli rabe, arugula, green onions, pea shoots, and bolting radish tops. In case you were wondering, broccoli rabe and pak choi have yellow flowers, arugula has white flowers with streaks on the petals, and radishes have pretty lavender colored flowres. Anyway....that is almost a pound of greens, but after cleaning and removing the tough stuff and cleaning them, its more like 1/2 lb. There is also the first radish of the year. All of the earlier plantings bolted without making bulbs.

Potato Status

When I planted the potatoes, I dug trenches and only partially filled them in, leaving the trenches 4" or so below the rest of the garden level and the extra dirt was left mounded up along the side. The idea is to let the plants grow up a ways and then fill the trenches in, covering the bottom 4" of stems. Some people say that this promotes additional potato growth since potatoes grow off of the underground portion of the stems. My potatoes are growing very well and are about 18" high, so I've been meaning to fill in the stems for a few days. This morning I noticed that some of the potatoes are actually growing flower buds. I think that last year my plants started growing potatoes right around the time that some of them grew flowers, so it definately was time to push in the dirt. I also used the opportunity to direct the plants away from the nearby lettuce. Here is what they look like after I filled in the trenches.
While I was pushing all the dirt around the stems of the potatoes, I was amazed at the amount of creatures living in the dirt. There were a few slugs, spiders, and grubs and lots of worms, centipedes, and other creatures. Some of those things may not necesarily be good for the plants, but I guess it means that there is a lot of nutrients in the dirt feeding this thriving underground ecosystem.

This year's broccoli and cauliflower bed was last year's potato bed. In a couple spots, potatoes have sprung up. One was a tiny, weak looking plant that must have come from a tiny little potato that I missed during harvest last year. I pinched that off a couple times and it hasn't come back since. The other one was a pair of pretty sizeable stalks. I felt bad killing this relatively vigorous plant, so its still growing and is now starting to overshadow one of the cauliflower plants. I was thinking about letting it grow and killing off the cauliflower plant that wasn't growing very well, but last year my broccoli didn't due much till the late summer. Sadly, I think the potato plant is going to have to be removed. You can see the little cauliflower plant there at the base of the potatoes.

I gave up on the Asparagus too early

It took until almost the end of May, but there are now 4 asparagus plants that have sprouted. They are still pretty sad looking, but a couple of them are taller than any of the stalks last year. Much like last year, they do not seem capable of holding themselves up for some reason. They are in a partially shaded area, and they only get good sun if they are upright, so I decided to stake up the larger stalks. Here is a bad picture that gives you the general idea. Down near the base of the stake you can see a couple little tiny stalks laying on the ground. They are alive and photosynthesizing, they just don't want to stand up for some reason.

Other random garden news:

- It has been sunny and dry for a week or so! The ground has now gone from saturated to overly dry. The plants have had so much water this spring that they probably aren't used to not having water, so I've been watering the smaller more sensitive plants.

- I still haven't harvested anything significant from the garden yet, but it might be getting close for some of the lettuce.

- The newest "leaves" growing from the garlic don't look like leaves at all, so it might be time for garlic scapes in a few weeks!

- The rest of the Arugula, Pak Choi, and Broccoli Rabe has bolted. I'll probably harvest what I can of it in the next few days. I might consider planting some more greens since it will still be a while before I put Brussel's Sprouts in that spot. I did already plant some radish seeds there today.