Status report....notes 1/2 way through the season and thoughts for next year

Its roughly 1/2 way through the growing season here and I thought to take some notes.  Something I can go back to in the winter and early part of spring while I'm sitting down with graph paper laying out the garden (no I'm not kidding I really do use graph paper)

Few things to remember for next year.

I need to get the Japanese beetle traps up soon in early June.  Even if they are not bad yet the moment I see one its time to get them up.

I need more poles for my pole beans.  I spaced them too far apart this year and haven't gotten NEARLY enough beans from them.  I know part of its from the beetles I'm battling but there's still unused space and its frustrating when I weed it just to weed it.  Remember to inoculate the beans too.

Maybe we'll do some bush beans....still trying to decide if I want to give them a go or not.

Plant less zucchini and squash.  I've got 6 of each and I'm collecting way more than I can eat.  I could do 3 of each and still have more than I need.  They taste great but Holy Moses I've got a lot to eat.

Plant less potatoes.  Yes they taste good but I used them to suck up space in the garden since I got all sorts of crazy looks when I told people how many tomatoes I planted.

Plant more tomatoes.  We are going through them, no reason not plant more.  Speaking of planting tomatoes, Im going to go ahead and plant some black krims next year.  If nothing else they should make great soup or sauce.  That's what I keep hearing so Ill give them a try.

Plant more cucumbers.  We're eating them.  I could use about 2 more slicers and 2 more picking.  So 6 and 6 instead of 4 and 4.  That would be great.  Eventually I'd like to trellis them but right now its just not going to happen.

Plant another type of watermelon in addition to the Sugar Babies.  Its always a toss up where we are if we'll get a watermelon crop but a couple of bigger watermelons wouldn't hurt to try.

Maybe not do pumpkins next year.  They are an invasive pain in my arse.  Yes it will be good to have the kids all come over to pick them, to carve them they are a pain to have to keep moving/redirecting vines and are taking up space for things I could be eating or canning to eat later.  Maybe Ill grow one or 2 for my daughter and that's it.  Maybe I won't even do that, I don't know.

Grow some herbs.  Dill for sure and bay leaf I think.

Pass on growing onion, and garlic.  Don't eat enough of them to take up the space on them.

Maybe plant a yellow cherry tomato next to the regular cherry tomato plant we had this year.

Maybe plant ground cherries.

Look into plum tomatoes.

That's the list so far........

From the most humble beginnings...

Before....looking east to west across the garden.  This picture was taken in April.

And taken just a few days ago at the end of July.  This was taken from the N.E. corner

The work has begun to pay off, and I'm so grateful I have this resource available to me and my family.  Its work but when I look at the cost of food these days and all the nonsense going on about the global economy I appreciate it even more.

Especially when you get great things like

Of course I remembered to take a picture AFTER we already ate the other cucumber and ate 2 other tomatoes that would have been part of this picture.  Its been a nice slow build on production so far.  Soon though its going to be canning time with lots of Romas and peppers to make salsa and tomato sauce.

A just a little preview of what's to come

I can't wait!

Thanks for looking

Thought Id take the camera along to water and weed

And took these shots to share

First stop was to check on my yellow squash and there it is

and another one growing right along near it.  They are doing very well.  Half of this row is yellow squash the other half is zucchini.  The zucchini are trying to catch up.  They lost all their blossoms with the last thunderstorms we had come through so even though the plants themselves look good, no zucchini yet.

Saw my red skin potatoes were starting to bloom.

WATERMELON BLOSSOMS!!!!  These little buggers appear and disappear so fast I have a hard time remembering which plant flowered.  I'm really excited about getting watermelons.  I don't care for the watermelons you buy in the store, I think they lack flavor and sweetness.  To me its like biting into a damp sponge.  No thank you.  Maybe I'm a watermelon snob I don't know but I do know what I don't like.  My wife and daughter eat the store bought melon without complaint and think they taste fine but I just don't care for them.  So I'm hoping to get a few this year and show them what a REAL watermelon tastes like.

Oh Pickles!  Well maybe I should be more specific...they are picking cucumbers that are going to be made into pickles.  If half of the blossoms I have produce cucumbers, then I'm going to be in a pickle with what to do with all them.  They are really doing well for me.

Giant pumpkin picture.    

Its got 2 blooms on it and hopefully producing pumpkins anytime now  The growth on this thing is amazing.  I swear I could check on it after breakfast and by dinner time its grown that much more.  Its really impressive.

Sweet pepper.  Bunch of these are coming in, and more to follow. 

I put this picture up of my Green Zebra tomato plant.  I thought it was wild that you can already see the "zebra" pattern.  I've never had one but when I saw the flavor description as "zippy" I figured why not.  Plus the price was right.

And one of my day lilies.  

I thought this would be a good note to end on.  

Just checking in

So I figured I go check on things in the garden.  I had to water my big pumpkin anyway so I took the camera with me in case anything caught my eye.

Well it sure did.

Early Girl Tomatoes

These are the first tomatoes I've found so far.  There are plenty more blooms along the plants too.

My Jalapenos....bring on the salsa!

First blooms I found too on my pickling cucumbers.  I'm anxious to try out the pickle recipes I found.  I look forward to crunching on some of these at deer camp this fall.

Romas

I was a little worried about these guys because they didn't like the cool ground temperatures we had a week or so ago, but they came back just fine.  You can see the other blooms in the picture too and I look forward to lots of sauce this season.

So far so good, its shaping up to be a good season so far.  Zucchini and my yellow crooked neck squash are blooming to beat the band like they always do. 

I had some pictures of my pumpkin blossoms but they didn't come out so I didn't put them up.  My big pumpkin is starting to vine and its got blossoms on it too.  I'm SUPER excited to see how big it will grow.  First year for me and the whole giant pumpkin thing but it looks really good.  My daughter is the reason I decided to grow a big pumpkin this year.  I bought the seeds with the hope of having one big enough to carve and put her inside with the lid closed.  She's 3, and old enough to really understand the difference between the normal Jack-O-Lanterns (which I also have) and a real big pumpkin.  

Its amazing when I stop and think about all the things she inspires in me.  I hear people saying how being a Dad is rewarding but until you get to experience it, there really is nothing like it.

They say the first step

is admitting you have a problem.  Well....I have a problem.  A tomato problem.  First it started with wanting romas in addition to the slicing tomatoes.  Then I found a few Lemon Boys that I found at a good price and had the room for (mentioned in an earlier post) and then it got even worse when I found 2 very well developed Green Zebra tomatoes for 25 cents a piece!  They were in 3" pots and I just couldn't say no.  Did I need them?  Absolutely not, but a deal like that?  How could I pass that up?!

I somehow managed to avoid the black tomato craziness, but I did look pretty hard at the Cherokee purples that I found next to them for the same price.  Given that they are prone to cracking, and the description of their flavor it didn't really appeal to me like the Green Zebras did.  So now I've got yellow beefsteaks, green zebras, and lots of slicing and roma tomatoes.  I needed another tomato plant like I needed a hole in the head, but whats done is done.

And the maintance begins

Was out in the garden the other day and the pole beans are poking through and already taking off at a breakneck pace.  I'm really impressed with how fast they grow.  Reminds me of Morning Glory how fast these things just seem to explode out of the ground.  In 48hrs they are already close to climbing.  Which was really encouraging.  I'm anxious to get them going, so the teepees don't look so bare.

I already had to hill some of the potatoes.  I bought them pretty early out of a fear I wouldn't get any.  Well they all had sprouts easily 4" long and that was in a closed bag in the laundry room!  Was a little weird to see them with already with growth.  Like they were undead potatoes trying to climb out of the bag to get us.  They were pretty pale, but they were there.  So I opened the bags, let the sun hit them to help encourage growth, and got them in the ground.  Well the leaves have started to open up on quite a few of them and I went out and rehilled them.  It was just dirt that was handy I hadn't expected to have to hill them yet.  We got a good soaking rain last night, so the ground settled and left a good amount of the stems exposed. 

I had wanted to hill them with compost but I happened to be there and it was all I had available.  Now that I know they are trying to do this, Ill have the compost ready for next time.  I figured I had a few weeks.  Apparently not, but thats ok cause I hope it will lead to more potatoes.  It was mostly the red skins which were quite aggressive.  A few of the russets had just started to sprout a few leaves too and the Adirondack blues have too.  But their sprouts were thick and much more compact.  They were in a mesh bag instead of a brown paper grocery bag so I don't know the occasional light had something to do with it or not.

I have to say though, the leaves that the purple potatoes put up?  GORGEOUS!  They remind me of Coleus with these beautiful bi-colored leaves.  The russets are actually the slowest starting of the 3 kinds which surprised me.  I thought for sure the Adirondack blues (aka the purple potatoes) would be the slow growers being they are a special bred potato.

Anyway I gotta get out and weed.  Maybe Friday Ill do that.  Its looking kind of ragged out there, and with it being so close to the driveway, I can't hide my lack of work on it.

Well its planted

Finally got it all done.  The garden was turned over completely on the Sunday before Memorial day, and I started planting it on that Wednesday.  It was hot, and tough out there by myself.  My wife had things she had to get done, so I was flying solo out there.  After a marathon planting session I got most of it in the ground.  Everything was already up and waiting to go in except for the pole beans.  They are in, and I'm patiently waiting for them to show themselves.

Came back to it on Friday to dig the trenches for the potatoes and got those in.  I got all those in plus my blue potatoes which only took up maybe 10ft.  So that left me with a row in the middle of my garden that was just open.  Sooooo......I created what I call my Misfit's row.  Its filled it with my left over orange sweet peppers, and a few big boy tomatoes I had as extras.

So off to TSC I went to go get tomato cages.  And what do I find?  Lemon Boy tomatoes on sale.  Knowing I still had room left over, I picked up 2 of them.  I wasn't going to plant anything that wasn't "normal" but I just couldn't help myself especially after the yellow tomato discussion at Flower day.  These were large, well developed plants.  So into the Misfits row they went.  And I picked up another jalapeno plant and I called it good.  Maters are caged and I'm in pretty good shape.

Now if we can just get some rain.

Patience is a virtue

I try to keep reminding myself of this, but its really being tested these last few weeks.  The frustration of letting my garden slowly fill with weeds as I wait for the weather to break long enough to get the tractor in there is frustrating to say the least.

I had thought about planting 2 weeks ago but that seemed early as we usually get one more good frost after Mothers Day so I waited.  Now with all the rain we've gotten (lets not forget the mosquitos) its been just too soft to safely get any equipment out there.  So I'm stuck in a holding pattern, like many of my fellow midwestern gardeners.  We're all just waiting idle.  Reading about the folks in California and the Carolinas are not helping anything when they talk about how they've already pulled out their canners.  Then I remind myself the Carolinas have things like fire ants, and the ability to start canning in May is SOO not worth fire ants.  And California?  Do I need to say more?

The good new is my one giant pumpkin that I wasn't sure was going to pull through given the very damaged first 2 leaves it put up is showing hints of a 3rd!  I figured it was going to slowly die given its lack of any new growth, but this 3rd leaf has given me hope.  I only started 2 giant pumpkins this year anyway I didn't want to be saturated with giant pumpkins, but the thought of going into this summer with only 1 was making me a bit nervous.  Note for the future plant at least a 3rd one so I'm not so concerned about it.  I've got at least 6 or 7 carving pumpkins too so we should have a nice little patch to pull from come Halloween for  all the kids in the family.

The giant pumpkins and my Adirondack Blue potatoes are the only oddities that I planted this year.  No purple sweet peppers, or chocolate varieties.  I really wanted to do some different tomato varieties but I didnt get a trellis built due to my garden running north and south this year to give me more room for more different types of plants.  I may go east/west next season after taking stock of our production and make changes.  If thats the case then Ill put in a trellis and grow some indeterminate tomatoes.  So no black, pink, yellows, or green tomatoes either.  Its a pretty standard year for us with Early girls and Better boys with a row of Romas too.

I saw some Yellow Brandywine tomato tomatoes at Flower Day that were started by the Hometown Harvest Organics folks calling to me pretty intensely but the lack of a trellis kept me from picking them up. I got their card and will be contacting them about next season to some different tomatoes to try.  Id rather buy a bunch of different transplants and put those in to decide what we like so I'm not giving up a lot of space to tomatoes that to us are so-so in flavor or are really difficult to get good maters from.  I love to garden but its also about production for us.

In any event with the weather supposedly pretty nice this weekend I hope we can knuckle down and get things started.  They are all busting out of their pots and ready to go.  Everything but the beans, but I've got faith those will do fine once they hit the soil.

Whoop there it is

Yep that's it....

Here's my latest hope for this spring and summer.  I know it looks like a big brown spot of blah....but the potential that it holds just waiting to be unleashed has yet to be measured.  And by the end of this summer I hope it exceeds all my expectations with all the research hours and man hours I've put into it already.

That's my garden.  All 2,000 square feet of it.  Seeds are here and will be started in the next couple of days.  I openly admit I've spent too many hours planning and scheming to put everything in place just right to get the most out of it.

I wish I was kidding.  I planned it all out on paper, and have redone the numbers a few more times just to be sure I've got it right.  I rerun the numbers just to make sure I haven't over estimated or not accounted for something.  The worst of it is until till its planted I won't stop thinking about it.  Because once its planted at that point its done.  Then I can move and actually respond to it, rather than deal with issues I can think up instead of what's being really going on.  I feel like an invading general with my legions of vegetables ready to conquer and hold the territory, as I make arrangements to strategically place them. 

I've already put down 12 wheelbarrow loads of manure in it to help ammend the clay that I'm working with, which I know will make a difference to.  I don't know but I know somethings better than nothing.

So down will go my jack-o-lanterns, my sugar baby watermellons.  The early girls, the better boys, the romas and a few cherries.  The cucumbers, the yellow squash, and zucchini.  Red skins, russets, and a couple of purple potatoes (for the kids at Thanksgiving dinner) and 4 colors of sweet peppers, red, orange, yellow and green.  I do plan on a couple of hot peppers to make salsa with too.  I have the materials for my pole bean teepees, but they won't go up till I plant everything else.

So that's the plans so far.  I will stagger the peppers and tomatoes so we'll constantly be in tomatoes.  I plan on doing 1/2 of the early girls, better boys, and romas in one planting then a few weeks later start the second planting of the other 1/2.  The germination times between the two should have us blooming in tomatoes from the time the first ones come up through the summer.  But we all know about the best laid plans....

So armed with my peat pots and trays working the miracle we call sprouting I will continue to keep this updated as things progress.  BRING ON THE SUNSHINE AND FRESH EATS!!!!