Bolting

Many kinds of vegetables grown for their leaves will decide one day to stop growing leaves, and start growing flowers and seeds. As they do this, they often become tough and bitter, rendering them useless for eating. This is called "bolting". Plants like lettuce, pak choi, arugula, kale, and even radishes will do this.

Why plants bolt is a bit of a mystery, and may be a combination of factors. Most commonly I read/hear from gardeners that it happens when it gets too warm and these early-season plants see the heat of summer as their cue to flower. More reputable sources suggest that it is primarily triggered by either length of day or total length of daylight received (since sprouting), though some sites suggest that other factors like dryness of the soil also affects the timing.

Well, for whatever reason, my earliest plantings of greens have decided that it is time to bolt. I have bolting pak choi, rapini, arugula, and radishes(no bulbs). Since it has been such a terrible spring for growing, they are bolting while still tiny in size. Note that in the picture of pak choi plants below, even the tiniest ones with only two leaves are actually doing their best to make buds. Last night I harvested all the plants that were bolting, plus some lettuce, pea sprout, and onion thinnings. The first harvest of the year! All this together made well under 1/4lbs. Pretty sad, indeed. I sauteed them in garlic and oil, added a bunch of frozen spinach from last year, and turned them into pasta with beans & greens. Yummy!

Happily, not everything has bolted. None of the lettuce or kale has bolted. The later plantings of all the greens still haven't bolted yet (adds credence to the total amount of daylight hours received theory). Interestingly, I planted two different kinds of pak choi at the same time. Only one of the kinds bolted. It was supposed to be a very fast-growing variety, while the slower growing variety is still going.

I just realized I could check back on my posts from last year to find out when stuff bolted then. It was at the very end of May, and I planted stuff probably a week or so later last year, so that also lends support to the total amount of daylight hours theory). Looking back at that post from a year ago, the difference in size of the plants at the same time of year is amazing. What a terrible growing year so far...

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.

Its (unofficially) Fall

Night time temps are dipping into the low 50's or even lower. Some of the daytime highs aren't even hitting 70 degrees. That hasn't stopped the garden, though. The beans continue to grow, and while I was gone for a little while they overtook one of Jaime's herb pots. The beans have tons of flowers and little beans on them, so at least they're being productive while being annoying.

The corn looks like its ready to be bundled into a front-porch decoration.
The potatoes are somehow still going strong. What you see here is actually half of the potato plants. I grew early season red potatoes that finished and died off in june. Since I had some potatoes in my root cellar, I just left them in the ground. Now the long season Kennebec potatoes have totally overgrown a huge area and show no signs of slowing down. I can't even get to the early potatoes without damaging the greenery, so I've just decided to wait till it all dies back. Also in the picture below is a random broccoli plant that is just now growing its first head.
After being away for a while there was a good amount of stuff that was ripe/overripe and needed to be harvested. Broccoli, peas, beans, and two kinds of peppers. There are tons of Cayennes that are ripe also, but I'm leaving them on the plant as long as I can so that I will have a maximum number of ripe peppers at the end of the season for making hot sauce.
After harvesting the onions at the beginning of July, I replanted the area with various greens and some radishes. Seen below is one of the radish plants that is neither bolting nor growing a radish bulb. It is just growing like crazy instead. Radishes are supposed to be easy and quick, but I have not had good luck with them.
I had a viewer request for a picture from further back showing the whole garden. This is about as far back as I could get. This shows about 90% of the garden. What is left of the three sisters is against the garage to the left, peppers, broccoli, and brussels sprouts in the middle, pototoes on the near right side, and greens and peas in the back right.

Another Garden Update

The last of the transplants went into the ground today. The garden is starting to fill out nicely. The melon seeds that I planted have sprouted, though they got mauled by some sort of very small little bugs that I could see on the newly sprouted leaves. They're in sad shape. Depending on what happens over the next week or so with them, I may consider buying a melon plant or putting something else in there.

A couple of the early season crops are nearing the end of their cycle. The first planting of Arugula bolted. I was going to try to cut back the flower stalks and see how long they would keep producing leaves, but they're not really making leaves at all. They are just sending up lots of flower stalks. In the end, I yanked out the whole plants and took what leaves I could. I can see flower buds in the hearts of the biggest Pak Choi plants, so I harvested one, and there is still one more really big one left in the garden.

Recall that when I planted the potatoes, I dug trenches and only partially filled them in. The plants are over 2' tall now and are having a bit of trouble staying fully upright, so I decided this would be a good time to fill in the trenches. Pushing in the dirt mounds added another 4" or so of depth around the stems.

I've notice on two of the plants that there were some leaves turning brown and dying. It looks suspiciously like pictures I've seen of blight. Ugh. I cut off and discarded any branches that looked diseased. Not much I can do about it if it is blight. I'll just cross my fingers.

Between Arugula plants bolting, Pak Choi being harvested, and some other greens and onions being thinned, we got a pretty good harvest today. Between stuff from the CSA and from our garden, we will be hard pressed to keep up with the greens this summer. For reference, the white bucket in the picture is 10" diameter.