This looks good, but I am wondering which is needed more: celebration, or critical thinking/planning? Also, I have asked if there will be any kind of kids’ space… And it’s kind of a rough time of year as it will be time for planting garlic, fava beans, and some strawberries.
I’ve had such a hard time keeping up with the strawberries that I’ve had to start picking in the morning. I think they’re better in the evening after all the water they soaked up has gotten processed (I could be wrong). Today I managed to pick the west side (about 3 baskets) in the evening and pass them over the fence. The neighbors were having a party. I can’t remember if they invited us in advance or not — I certainly didn’t put it on the calendar if they did! Yay for picking a whole side one one day (that’s around 60 plants, but I used to do both sides in 40 minutes). The pests are terrible.
Last night (Saturday) T and I planted about 30 row feet of snap peas. Yay! I need to plant more, but today we bought more greens seedlings and their new bed just needs a bit more water before I plant. On the subject of the greens, the bed I planted a few weeks ago has been dug in by the raccoons. Grr! We need to take the row cover off to see how many plants remain. I found one under there, a russian kale (those seem to really thrive here, which stinks since I don’t like them these days), that was really big and robust-looking!
We’ve been struggling to harvest stuff. Z got a bunch of things yesterday and made a salsa, a pasta sauce, a cucumber-dill-Sungold tomato-onion salad, and I don’t remember what else. Yum! I might try to make yellow crookneck squash chips since we have so many… baseball bats.
Tonight I picked 2 baskets of purple pole beans 🙂 Sadly, they were mostly pretty big. I’m glad to be getting a good amount, since so few plants have survived.
I literally have so little time for compost-making that we keep buying buckets. I’ve been trying out the idea of using weeds that I’ve pulled to cover up areas where gophers have dug. I like the idea of keeping the soil covered. I also like the idea of keeping organic matter in the garden. I’m not sure if it’s ok to provide potential habitat for pests such as voles.
The weather has been cool and foggy for much of the days – today I think the sun didn’t come out until around 1:30pm!
I have some really cute photos from over the weekend of T in the garden. He has been going out there every day. “Anything new in the garden?” he asks.
Today at preschool he even spent extra time in the garden — voluntarily! Wow.
I haven’t been able to pick my strawberries every night and they are getting so much pest damage. As far as I can tell, it’s mostly a new generation of sow bugs (those pill bugs) and tiny slugs. There are some other newer pests and I think there still might be some stink bugs around.
Today I finished putting out compost, perhaps too thickly, along with oyster shell lime, for another pea bed. Z set up drip on that bed tonight! I also put the oyster shell out on what I hope will be a new greens bed. Z put more compost out there with the tractor this weekend. I didn’t realize that it still needs a lot of smoothing out — and perhaps more compost. I really need to water the piles of purchased compost- that stuff is SO dusty!
I tried raking the recently-mowed grass out of the old garlic and onion bed today to see what would be left. There is still 4 hours’ worth of hoeing to do. There are healthy dock plants every 8 inches – they should be dug out, but I believe the ground is way too hard for that.
Z did a lot of mowing over the weekend- he did most of the broccoli bed, leaving the flowers (he ran the mower up at least a foot in the air :/) and the stuff at the head of the bed, which we actually ate from last night :). he mowed the 1/3 of the south side that had our cover crops and most of our pigweed, as well as the 5th bed of pumpkins. There’s still the one healthiest-looking plant there, but it’s not getting water anymore. And he also mowed the bed next to the strawberries, but the weeds are growing back very quickly.
Here are some photos I took at the National Heirloom Exposition today. Hopefully I will be able to write a report tomorrow.
To read: The Farmer’s Office. I really liked The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook, although I may have only read half of it. Needed to focus on the production side.
Yesterday I got a longer garden day than usual because my kid started going to an all-day preschool (he’ll go there 2 days per week). I fertilized! And then I removed bad weeds from the garden and put them in the green bin.
Today I didn’t get out there until after 5. I picked 3 baskets of strawberries from the west side, which is usually less productive than the other side. Note that I did not pick on Friday.
Then T came out with me and we planted some dill, bunching onion, and zinnia seeds (can zinnia grow this late in the season? September tends to be a hot month) in the greens bed. There are a lot of missing plants under that row cover. Maybe we can sow some seeds for those.
A buyers’ club that I belong to is downsizing and getting rid of fridges since she’s not going to do as much produce and things that need to be kept cold. Here’s one of them. We’re hoping to get another that is reportedly better. Is there any hope of that one being Energy Star rated (an appliance that uses minimal electricity)?
Yesterdayish, then tonight:
Today I put out 5 or 6 wagonloads of compost. Yesterday I put out 3ish loads of dirt at the head of the bed to try to even out the surface (I didn’t put dirt too close to the pumpkins, so you can see a mess in the bottom left of this photo). I’m trying to put the compost out much thinner than in the greens or pea beds. This looks like it covers half the 100′ long bed, but it’s really like 15 feet or something.
Speaking of the peas, there are like 3 plants in the whole 100 foot row, and no radishes (or carrots or lettuce). The raccoons are relentless. I think I made a newbie error and had fertilized the bed. If I had time, I’d hoe the old garlic bed right next to the pea bed and move the t-posts and trellis over there and only put out a very thin layer of compost and just plant more peas there. But maybe I should focus on getting greens into the middle of the above potentially three-bed section.
I have too much produce in my house- too much squash, too many strawberries, too many tomatoes (and way more in the field). Need to sell/distribute. My in-laws are no longer in town to bring stuff to my friend in Berkeley. I’m having trouble getting ahold of my neighbors (I think they have people visiting), and I wonder if their tenants have moved (that would break my heart, since they have kids around T’s age).
T was home sick this morning, but we did manage to get out there and pick some Armenian cucumbers, tomatoes, and zinnias. I really don’t want him to take the flowers, especially the buds that haven’t opened yet, but hey, this gets him into the garden. And who knows, maybe I’ll even sell some flowers next year. I hope to do a lot of reading about flowers this winter.
Alright! Tonight I transplanted 2 sixpacks of Gypsy Broccoli and a napa cabbage. Near the end I actually started discarding the seedlings that had black or light colored spots on them. Good for me.
I’m nervous about these plants’ survival, though, because I think the plants that were already in the ground got cooked under the row cover. The closest one to where I pulled back the fabric so I could plant tonight was pretty dried out. I think that the combination of compost that’s too young, the bed not having been watered for very many days between adding the fertilizer and transplanting, and the use of rowcover in warm weather may be too much heat for them. We’ll have to see. I meant to run the water at the end of my time out there, but T ran out of the house naked to find me and I had to go inside without even putting my tools away.
I noticed that there is space for about 3 beds between the tomatoes and the 4th row of pumpkins. The soil in the 2 that are farther from the pumpkins is pretty loose – at least near the surface. Maybe this means
I didn’t have time to pick strawberries tonight. Aside from bug damage, I think it will be ok. It’ll give the berries a chance to catch up- we have had a lot of foggy mornings! Our freezer is full, by the way, so I really need to be giving this food away or selling it. Those both require time. I did pick 3 of the yellow squashes that I’m growing, but I don’t know if I brought them in, left them out there, or asked Z to carry them into the house.
I’m running about a week behind last year, but hopefully these plants will do ok. I put in a 6-pack of Tuscan kale and a 6-pack of Red Russian kale today.
I found this interesting bug – a Harlequin bug – in the old broccoli today. Apparently it is yet another kind of stink bug: onions, potatoes, and corn that were harvested on 8/27 I have quite a few different kinds, mostly in the strawberries. Good thing I’m using row cover (so far) to keep the raccoons (and stink bugs?) out of the new greens bed.
Now I’m getting all depressed about all the bugs I’ve got. The garden looks nice, though, doesn’t it? Weeds, dill, calendula, (zinnias?), broccoli flowers, and all. You can see light purple cosmos in back 🙂
I took a bunch of other photos this week. I guess some are on flickr, which I believe shows in one of the side columns on this page.
Tonight I harvested nearly 3 baskets of strawberries; one basket of mostly San Marzanos (and a few other sauce tomatoes), a basket of Sungold cherry tomatoes, and I helped harvest nearly a gallon of tomatillos. The inlaws, Z, and T harvested potatoes, corn, and onions (from in the broccoli bed) while I took a nap!
I finally got the new greens bed finished. I put out some fertilizer (7-7-2? the one with the picture of broccoli on it) and oyster shell meal today, raked it in, put the drip tape back, and then had help from Z’s parents and T in putting row cover over it all. I wish we had pipes or something to hold the row cover off the ground. The reason I’m using it is in hopes of keeping animals from digging in the bed. They have been killing my peas and radishes (plus digging up whatever carrot and lettuce seed remain) every night.
Tonight I planted Green Arrow shelling peas. I had way too much seed so I did 2 approximately 20-foot sections. One side wasn’t along the trellis. The package clains that this variety grows to only 2′ tall, but I bet I can find a picture of 3 and a half-foot tall shelling peas from last year.
I found a Spiny Clotbur plant in flower and took a few photos. Here’s one:
The cucumber beetles are out of control in the 4th pumpkin bed! I put out one yellow sticky trap and 35 minutes later, there were 1 cucumber beetle, 1 potentially good bug, and a wasp on it (or, wait, was that a yellowjacket?). I swiped the wasp and it flew away. I thought I had bought cucumber beetle lure, but I didn’t see it with the traps. Will have to check again…
Ugh, what did I even get done this weekend? We went to 2 birthday parties!
I picked over a gallon of strawberries the last 2 nights (brought one half-gallon to a birthday party next door! What’s weird is that they didn’t put them out on the table for ppl to eat. What else? I keep pulling weeds in the 5th pumpkin bed to try to get some light on those plants, but if I had the time I probably should just pull them out and prep the bed for a cover crop and strawberries.
I did a bunch of weeding and pulling old leaves out of the peppers and tomatoes, and I put some extra oyster shell lime under the neediest-looking plants (until I ran out of what I had brought to the garden).
I planted some Tashkent (?) Marigolds tonight to see if they will grow this late. I have really awful luck with small seeds and it’s probably too late. I guess these are the variety ppl like for Day of the Dead.
My compost looks like ashes and straw, for the most part. I’ve turned it 4 times in 11 days, but I didn’t turn it soon enough after I started it so I think it got too hot too fast. It’s just warm now.
We’re still getting some broccoli – even some 2-inch side shoots from the big plants! I need to pull all of those and most of the kales and somehow chop them up and compost them. Maybe at the rate of a few plants per day.
We are getting (squash and?) cucumber beetle damage on the cucumbers. The Armenian cukes grow too fast and I can’t harvest them b4 they turn into baseball bats. The yellow crookneck squash has started to bear. The first peas have emerged. I wish I had planted the rest of the row – I was going to do shelling peas, which take longer to mature than snap peas. Hm.
farmingmum 