Assorted Update

Lots of things have happened in the last couple days. Here's the breakdown.

Tomato Bed:
The Hawaiian Currant made the transition back into dirt well and is beginning to put on some height. Given how miserable it looked when I picked it up, broken and wilted, off the ground a few weeks ago, I am shocked that it made such a recovery.

Hawaiian Currant looking good!

Green Zebra is still looking a little sad. I hacked it pretty good to remove a bunch of wilting leaves. The good news is that the brown wilt seems to be gone. The bad news is that there is only one growing tip left (until it grows a few suckers) and its leaves are somewhat curled, as if to protect itself or reserve water. I think it will be fine eventually, but it's not recovering easily.

Green Zebra...not looking good

The other tomatoes all have yellow flowers, and several are working on making tomatoes. Black Plum and Sun Gold both have lots of little green fruits. I'm curious to see who ripens first. Considering how well Black Plum did last year on neglect, and how well it's doing again this year, I suspect it will cement its position as favorite tomato.

Sun Gold tomatoes


Black Plum tomatoes

I put about 1 lb of E.B. Stone’s All-Purpose Fertilizer into the tomato bed. I also sprayed the bed with Neem Oil and sprinkled some Sluggo in the area. The tomato plants don’t seem too bug infested, but my poor pepper plants are just getting munched (except the Dulcettas, which somehow seem immune), I suspect by slugs & snails.

I bought a replacement Cayenne pepper to replace the one that got munched. It came in a 4-pack, so the others will probably go in pots. I also bought an Anaheim pepper. The one in the garden got so munched that I’m not sure it’ll make it, so I thought it best to have a plant on reserve just in case.

Anaheim Pepper might recover if the slugs stay away


Dulcetta Pepper looking awesome


Shallots (and one shallot that is probably not a shallot)


Garlic (Borage in upper left corner)

Legumes:
The pea plants look great. It’s going to break my heart when I have to pull them out in a couple more weeks. I’ve harvested about a dozen peas and there’s at least that many left on the vine for a salad or stir fry this week.

Very tall Pea plants


Peas

The fava beans are also doing well. There are several pods growing, and lots of flowers that should lead to bean pods soon.

Fava plants


Fava Beans

Leafy Greens:
Chard has taken over the garden. I really need to eat more chard. Lettuce looks fantastic. I think I’ll try to nurse it to the end of June for a BBQ on the 26^th, and then I’ll pull it out to give more room to the melon and strawberry plants. The Asian greens have also outgrown their welcome. I think they will become Chinese Chicken Salad this week. Mmmmm.

Red Chard


Asian Greens

Fruit:
A few of the melons have finally taken hold and appear to be growing. The ones closer to the back get much less sun, so they will take longer to get going, but I’m not sure having a delay between the plants will be a bad thing later this summer.

Charentais Melon

I finally got the 4 Chandler strawberry plants in the ground. Two of them already have strawberries trying to grow. Hopefully the others will get going soon.

Chandler Strawberry

Squash:
The zucchini plants are GIANT. I will have to hack it back a bit to get the corn in, but I doubt the plants would even notice. There are a couple zukes on it that will have to get eaten soon before they get huge. The other squash plants are doing well too. There are acorn squashes forming on one plant and the other squashes seem to have finally sunk their roots in and started growing.

Zuchinni growing


Acorn Squash

Other:
Radish seeds have sprouted out in the garden. Hopefully they’ll also be ready for salad for my BBQ in 3 weeks.

Radish sprout

The sunflowers have also grown quickly. I don't think I've mentioned them much in earlier posts, but the tallest is now taller than me.

Sunflower corner

My corn seeds have sprouted (all but one) in their little newspaper pots. When they reach ~6 inches tall, I’ll move them out to the garden.

Corn sprouts

More New Beginnings

I spent a chunk of my morning making small newspaper pots to start my corn seeds! Corn is always exciting to me because it was the flagship in my family's garden as a child. I will be planting corn along with beans between my already planted squash in a Three Sisters Garden. In this arrangement, the corn provides support for the beans, the beans provide nitrogen fixing for the heavy feeding corn and squash, and the squash grows around the base of the corn and beans providing shade (and therefore more moisture) for their roots and protecting them from animals with their prickly leaves and stems. This arrangement also allows for an efficient spacing of plants; I hope to have about 30 corn and bean plants planted by mid summer. The newspaper pots should provide a good nursery for my corn plants that will break down once I transplant the sprouts into the garden. The corn seeds are soaking as I right (and have been since this morning) and they'll go into their little pots this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

Other new beginnings are everywhere. My pea plants have just started to blossom, the fava beans have blossoms EVERYWHERE, almost every tomato plants has little yellow flowers, and even my boysenberries have a few white flowers to show off for summer. The carrot seeds I planted a few weeks back have finally started to sprout. The asian greens and mesclun I planted with them didn't fare so well, with only a half dozen or so mustard greens sprouting. But summer is fast approaching and the greens will get bitter with the heat, so it's not much loss. Perhaps I didn't water enough, or the seeds were too old (I bought them in 2009).

Plans for this week are to put in the pepper and strawberry plants I bought last week, seed the corn, seed more radishes and beets, and tie up the tomatoes and fava beans which have outgrown their last set training ties.

Leafy Greens, Ho!

Lettuce and Chard are in full production. On Tuesday I picked over half a pound of chard to bring to my Trainer and on Wednesday I picked not quite half a pound of lettuce for a delicious (and beautiful) salad. Unfortunately I wasn't home for dinner on Wednesday to enjoy it, but I had leftovers on Thursday along with some tuna and two pretty radishes (one red, one purple) that I picked that day. I can't believe the radishes are already a harvestable size! I will have to plant more radish seeds soon, since the radishes that are still out in the dirt won't be there for long...Mmmmmmm.

Recipe Therapy

I was out watering my garden today only to find that one of my beloved dogs snapped my Hawaiian Currant tomato plant right off its stem. In an attempt to calm myself down I came inside to look up recipes. I found this squash gnocci and spinach recipe and a fresh tomato soup recipe, both of which I must try later this year.

As for the Hawaiian Currant plant, I guess I'll be paying a visit to another one of Laurel's plant sales this weekend to see if I can locate a suitable replacement. I was REALLY excited about this plant considering I'd ordered one last year and didn't get one, but I suppose any red cherry type would be satisfactory. In the meantime, the dogs are seriously in the dog house.

On a somewhat more positive note, it appears the asian greens have started to sprout, the radishes have definitely sprouted, and I'm putting some chive and scallion seeds into my tomato bed today.

Seeds and Squash

Yesterday I managed to be fairly productive in the garden, planting carrots, lettuce, squash, and doing a little garden maintenance.

In my vegetable garden I planted eight 36" rows of carrots , Carnival Blend from Botanical Interests, alternating with Renee's Garden Asian Baby Leaf mesclun. Row spacing was 3" with seed spacing of 3" as well.

Next door to that patch I planted seven 36" rows of carrots (six more rows of the Carnival Blend and three of Little Finger - also Botanical Interests) alternating with Renee's Garden Cut and Come Again baby mesclun. Again, 3" spacing all around.

Between these two patches there was maybe a 3" gap where I transplanted two Butternut Squash seedlings. One of the transplants has two vines while the other has four. I think I will thin that second one down to only two vines once it has settled and I can decide which two are the strongest. The spacing between these two transplants was 15" with five radish seeds planted evenly between them.

Tranplants

Butternut Squash in the Ground

At the end of the second patch I transplanted two zucchini seedlings. Again, with 15" spacing and 5 radish seeds between them. Both these transplants already have flower buds on them, which I left because I'm not particularly fond of zucchini, but I do enjoy squash blossoms. Perhaps within a week or two we'll have our first taste!

Zucchini Squash

Zucchini with buds

At the L corner, just next to the rhubarb plants, I planted my Wyatt's Wonder (giant pumpkin) plant. It has two somewhat sickly looking vines (somewhat yellowed and dry) but there are some new green leaves emerging so hopefully it can recover. I also planted an Acorn squash transplant at the southwestern corner of the strawberry/flower bed. This is a bush type squash, so I'm hoping it won't grow all over the place.

I planted borage seeds as well yesterday. One on each end of my tomato bed, one at the Western corner of my vegetable bed near the chainlink fence and one (or two...I think I lost one) at the corner of the L between my rhubarb and Wyatt's Wonder. Borage is a fantastic bee attractant and has pretty little blue flowers that look lovely floating in punch bowls or as a garnish for appetizers or salads.

Rhubarb
I also planted three Durango marigolds, one at each end of my tomato bed and one in the very center. Armstrong was having a 2-day sale (79 cents/4inch marigold) so bought those and eight more that will find their way into the vegetable bed. Marigold roots excrete a pesticide that supposedly lasts for a couple years in the soil even after the marigold is gone. They are the go-to plant for companion planting....and they're pretty too!



Tomato Bed
Lastly, I watered down all the beds and pots with fish tank water, since our fish tank was badly in need of a water change. The nitrate rich water is a great, low dose fertilizer and with a 160+ gallon tank, there is plenty of it. Finally, I set up more bird netting over the vegetable bed so that the dogs (and other lesser pests) will hopefully stay out of it.




Fava Beans looking tall!

Plants in the Ground!

I spent several hours this afternoon finally putting plants in the ground instead of just digging the place up! Along the eastern wall of my garden there is now a row of ~27 fava beans (I forgot to count before some of them got buried) with 3-4 sweet pea seeds in between them.

Strawberry starts were placed in an intensive pattern with 12 inch spacing. On the south end of the bed there are 12 Ozark Beauty starts, on the north end are 12 Sequoia starts, and in between there are 12 Quinalt starts. Because these form a pretty diamond pattern due to their spacing I planted seeds between them. Inside each diamond there are now three beet seeds around two globe amaranth seeds with mesclun seeds sprinkled randomly throughout. In each front triangle along the wood partition there are lobelia seeds with poppy seeds at the top of each triangle. Towards the back, just in front of the fava/sweet pea row, there is a row of swiss chard planted between the strawberries sprinkled with dual colored caesar romaine and patches of three bachelor's button seeds just in front to fill out the triangle.

I expect to see favas and sweet peas pop up in only a few days since most of them were already sticking their little roots out and a few were working on their stems. It's so exciting to finally have something in the ground!