When I was walking around the garden this morning, I noticed these Marketmore cucumbers. Now that I look at them they don’t look quite as huge as they did in the garden!
I weeded in the young pumpkins this morning, and this evening I picked a gallon of green beans. We haven’t been keeping up at all, and they are almost finished. I was about to pick strawberries when I saw a car pull into our driveway- it was a guy who I had some classes with at the Junior College and his wife. His family has an old ranch where they grow chestnuts and I guess some grapes. He studied oenology, viticulture, and I think maybe he also got a certificate in Sustainable Agriculture. I like listening to his stories about how things were when he was growing up, what his son is up to (beekeeping, some gardening, and some small building projects). His wife works with little kids, so she likes to come by and see T.
photo of the bed I was weeding today- one can see young pumpkin plants, as well as tons of weeds. The left side of the bed is pinto beans (iirc)
Today was the first time that I was ever separated from T by a big bridge – he and his dad went to the East Bay for a few hours.
the pumpkins are starting to grow into the strawberry bed. Several kakai plants have pumpkins growing! That’s a week from flowering to fruiting.
It’s been a bit of a crazy week, as I had two morning doctor’s appointments. That can really mess up a morning in the garden, I tell ya!
Two days ago I harvested 4 baskets of strawberries; today I only got 2. It’s been damp at night and in the mornings. Today the sun didn’t come out until well into the afternoon.
We picked an Armenian cucumber yesterday. It was a teeny bit green inside, but good 🙂
There’s a Charentais melon coming along:
charentais melon
I keep getting this feeling of foreboding – the weeds are getting out of control, some of the lower leaves on the tomatoes are yellowing, some of the strawberries look bad, etc.
view of our tomato (left) and pepper (right) bed. Basil and marigolds are also visible
Z was out for hours with T- I got to sleep in an extra 2 hours (I was a wreck). Then I worked in the garden for about 2 hours. After my garden tour, I worked on hoeing my main lambsquarter crop and putting last year’s purchased compost on it. I’ve been planning on putting peas there. I have 3-4 loads’ worth to do in that bed. All that remains of the old compost is this:
the rest of 20 yards of compost that we bought a year ago
Z finished putting in stakes for the pole bean trellis. You know, I looked at the weather this morning and it said that our nights are down to a low of 49-50 degrees. No wonder those poor pole beans are having so much trouble! That is _cold_!
The cucumber beetles are terrible everywhere (I assume they are to blame for the holes in every single pinto bean leaf), and I have been noticing for a while that the undersides of tomato leaves tend to be wet. Tonight I got 2 tiny slugs on me. We never strung the tomatoes up, and the plants are so overgrown and bent over that it would be hard to do without losing fruit. That said, PLEASE, SOMEONE, HELP ME DO IT! Ok, maybe I need some short stakes for the job… gotta send Z to work with the truck, since he works close to Harmony Farm Supply…
I am still struggling with crop planning. I have at times been diagnosed with ADD, and it shows here:
We both froze and picked 2 baskets of strawberries today. I picked nearly a gallon of green, yellow, and purple beans. These are my last big planting of green bean-type beans. We are having trouble keeping up.
a handful of the compost that was delivered on FridayZ sits next to some potatoes that his dad, he, and I harvested today
That’s because I _am_ unproductive. I did harvest 4 baskets of strawberries and some greens today (plus I helped a bit with the potatoes), but I didn’t harvest blackberries, broccoli, cabbage, etc. I did a tiny bit of weeding in the north pumpkins and in my sad attempt at a late planting of pumpkins and green beans. But I have like 41 yards of compost to spread and plants to pull (bolting kale, tho) before I start a new compost. I have like 5 buckets full of stuff outside the house, plus several around the garden.
Grey Kitty on top of a mountain of compost
The 40 yards of compost that I ended up ordering from the place in the next county over where our green waste is theoretically trucked to looks pretty good. There is some trash in it, but it doesn’t seem like as much as the stuff I used to buy. There seem to be more “fines,” but I wonder if that stuff is going to just blow away (ideally we would tarp the 4 piles, huh?). The compost is pretty warm. I’ve been hearing from people that the compost they’ve gotten from various companies has been too “hot,” meaning that it hasn’t quite finished breaking down. That’s ok, I still have a yard or so of compost left from last year… ok, that won’t get me very far!
Some thoughts about the potatoes: we turned off the water like 2 weeks ago because the gophers had started eating the plants and tates. The ground is still wet down there. There were not a lot of potatoes- a large one, and medium one, and a tiny one per plant — but the gophers ate parts of the biggest ones :(. Z’s dad commented that they weren’t very deep. I hadn’t gotten to hill them up more than once. We picked tates from where Z had planted (he opened up the ground with a sledgehammer. Yes, he hurt his back doing it). There are still more to pick. Z baked some of them with olive oil, some herbs de provence, and salt. They were delicious. A bit sweet.
We saw our first sunflowers and pumpkin flower this week! Both tend to have pollinators stuck to them!
A beautful reddish-orange sunflower with a bee on it
I came to the realization today that it is really time to stop trying to plant summer crops (I never finished the north sunflower row, and the latest planting of pumpkins is not growing much and was likely a waste of seed). I got pretty sad when I realized that. I hate winter, and the fog came in hard this evening. This month it’s time to get peas and greens into the ground, and see what else I can plant while I’m at it. In another world I would harvest all that lambsquarter seed and use it for food, but I’ll be lucky to get it all hoed and out of the pea bed before it plants itself again…
some of the dino kale and dwarf green kale that I picked today
Today I harvested 3 cabbages, 3 kinds of kale kale (the kale is starting to bolt), dill, 3 kinds of basil, broccoli (including the kind of tight heads that one finds at the store) and broccoli greens, nearly 4 baskets of strawberries, a handful of Sungold cherry tomatoes, and a handful of onion greens. I picked 3 carrots to see what they were like- tiny and without roots. One was rotten halfway up the carrot. Too much water and too many gophers? Soil disease? Time will (or may) tell.
For dinner Z made pasta with sausages and pesto with our basil and a salad with cabbage, the neighbors’ lemon cucumbers, our dill, onion, garbanzo beans (gotta have ’em), and lemon juice.
My father-in-law picked a basket or two of blackberries, and my mother-in-law picked like 4 baskets of the old strawberries (how did she find that many?).
We still have not decided on a farm name. Kind of need one, depending on how I’d announce its existence/what’s available. What if we brought in like $50 a week? How would I even have time to interact with customers, nevermind pick stuff for them?
I picture me listing us on localharvest.org and saying “inquire about availability” and”by appointment,” but really all I need is a sign on the fence. Tho the website would help find foodies who might be able to pay a fair price. SIGH!
Name-wise, something related to our location would make sense, but then again, it’s a common street name. Maybe something about being on the urban edge… Here’s an article I don’t have time to read about Farming on the Urban Fringe On this subject, I just want to say that a really nice acre on the street near us that goes from the fringe into the city was getting dug up by heavy machinery last week. 😦 I sure hope they’re putting in affordable housing!
I texted my neighbor (on the garden side) the other day to tell him we have veggies to share, and didn’t hear back. I persisted because the fridge was so full- tonight I said “and strawberries.” That got him out to the fence! I gave him the half-basket I’d picked, the oldest one from the fridge, 2 cabbages, and a half a bag of green, yellow, and purple beans. T helped carry one of the cabbages, and the neighbor’s kid carried that one to their residence.
I also called the neighbors on the other side of us and they said they are drowning in green beans and cabbages, but would try to help out by taking some stuff and bringing lemon cucumbers. I think lemon cucumbers in northern California are a bit like zucchini everywhere- once they come on, there are too many. Speaking of which, I didn’t pick green beans last night and there were a lot that were too big. I put most of them into the compost.
I made a call about delivery of compost from the company that I and many other local sustainable growers am/are loyal to, and found that I could save $40 on delivery of 20 yards, or spend $60 less to get 40 yards from the other company I’ve been looking at. When I put it that way, I guess I should just get 20 yards delivered! For some reason, both are located in Marin County (atm) and neither is in Sonoma County. But it’s from farther away (as they lost their site last year, muy complicado), and they are only CDFA organic rather than OMRI-approved (they are on a new site this year). It’s not clear to me if this “organic” designation actually means anything.
This morning I harvested 5 cabbage heads and 4 or 5 bunches’ worth of kale. This evening I picked 2 baskets of strawberries and 3/4 of a gallon of green beans. And basil. And, later, Maybe 1/4 of a gallon of blackberries. My in-laws picked 4 baskets of old strawberries. (They are almost finished for now. I do not know why the plants at the edge are dying. Z did take out the middle drip line this week, but that shouldn’t affect the edge like this!
dying strawberry plants on left. Note gopher damage on right
I didn’t take any pictures of the huge harvest, but I sent most of it to a friend in Berkeley! she said the ones I sent were the best strawberries she’d ever tasted.
I spent midday taking the leaves that were damaged by leafminers off of the chard plants.
volunteer dino kale in pumpkin bed
I am officially declaring our cover crops failed. I think the problem is the old posts and tubes on the sprinklers. Maybe the removal of the topsoil due to the tractor is also to blame. Note pile of soil and straw at back left:
broccoli that got a bit ahead of me and will flower by Monday, I’d guess
Ack, I missed the broccoli this week (the 3rd harvest). I found some bigger heads than I usually see. Also some nasty diseased heads (possibly cauliflower?) in a different part of the bed. The dill is looking great :). Sadly, I never got around to planting anymore brassicas. Oh, if I don’t pick the cabbage tomorrow morning, I’ll be screwed!
Harvest also included 2+ baskets of strawberries and 2/3 of a gallon of Trilogy beans (green, yellow, and purple). I only picked one side of the bed. Oh, and this morning I picked a small tupperware’s worth (a pint?) of blackberries- that’s all I had time for!
I’ve been working hard on trying to catch up with the weeds in the newer pumpkin and pinto bean beds. That’s coming along. We have lost 1 or 2 more potato plants (as of yesterday afternoon) and I haven’t had a chance to dig and check for ‘tates.
Nasturtiums at the head of the broccoli bed. 1 is from T’s school. Dill and lots of weeds are also visible.
One is from T’s school, I think (depends on which germinated or if he actually had put a seed into the pot!).
In the mornings I’ve been doing some hoeing/weed work and moving about 3 wagon loads per day of compost to a wide spot between rows on the south side. Wish I could get this done faster. I am wondering if some of the weeds from the bean or pumpkin bed are spiny clotbur. One of my friends only sees pigweed.
The weed I’m wondering about is in the bottom left corner- the dark one. I mostly see bindweed, and some purslane and larger pigweed. But those long, narrow leaves have me worried.
I cut down a big portion of the huge borage, since it had fallen on so many strawberry plants. Now I need to chop a lot of another one.
This morning I found a potato plant that had no roots (meaning that the gophers have found the potato bed). I couldn’t find any potatoes down below where the plant had been. 😦
The aboveground portion of a potato plant that has been eaten by gophers
I’m getting confused looking at my local gardening book and trying to figure out if i can still plant certain things. I put in a packet of long (pole) beans today, and planted some pinto beans in with the kakai pumpkins and gourds.
farmingmum 