Garden Log

[cmonkey]

Any sort of light feeder would do fine. Heavy feeders need constant moisture and fertilizer. It can be done but its not much fun to come out one day and find your tomato all droopy.

We had a deck garden this year and some things that did well for us include chard, carrots (deeper pot), beans, potatos (12 in pot minimum), all herbs, peas, tomatoes (watered everyday ; fertilized weekly (they still aren't as good as garden grown))

Here's a good guide to feeding levels.

Low-demand Vegetables
Arugula, beans, beets, carrots, chicory, collard greens, endive, escarole, fava beans, herbs (most kinds), kale, parsnip, peas, Swiss chard

Medium-demand Vegetables
Artichoke, basil, cilantro, sweet corn, cucumbers, eggplant, garlic, lettuce, okra, peppers (small-fruited), potatoes, pumpkin, radish, rutabaga, scallions, squash, tomatoes, watermelon, zucchini

High-demand Vegetables
Asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cantaloupe/honeydew, cauliflower, celery/celeriac, kohlrabi, leeks, onions, peppers (large-fruited), spinach, turnips

[vexed87]

My first proper harvest today, 2x baby carrots, 200g of spinach and 5 x spring onions. Making vegetable ragu with them

My courgette plants have exploded since last week and there's already 4 little fruits. Exciting stuff

I'm scaling up to at least 4 patches next spring, I completely underestimated the space required for the bigger plants. Courgette plants have overshadowed my spring onions...

Slugs have devastated all but one of my iceberg lettuce plants. Fingers crossed and hoping for the best that it survives. Planning on keeping them away with plenty of diatomaceous earth.

[George the original one]

3 more gallons of blueberries! We really dug into the bushes and nearly stripped them. There might be a gallon left that will ripen over the next few weeks, so, apart from the elliot variety which are in their mid-season, we're effectively done.

[vexed87]

Courgette plants have grown even more, had to intervene and cut them back because they are getting greedy with space!

Here's today's harvest, sadly nothing left of my iceberg lettuce, the slugs got them all. I'll plant way more next year. I'm pretty chuffed with this for a beginner.

[llorona]

What eats tomatoes at night? Several of our low-hanging, almost ripe tomatoes have bites taken out of them. The creature that's eating them is short and has a lot of teeth. Suspects: racoons, possums, squirrels, feral human child.

Aside from that, our tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers are still going strong but the rest of the summer garden is slowly winding down.

Even though it's ninety degrees outside, I've started planning the next phase: tatsoi, bok choy, kale, collard greens, spinach, onions, garlic, potatoes, snap peas, regular peas, and Parisian carrots.

[llorona]

@Vexed: Your harvest looks great! Is that spinach? The leaves are huge! Yum.

@GTOO: I'm truly envious. Know how many blueberries we got this year? Eight. Berries, not gallons. What are you doing with your haul?

[vexed87]

@llorona, yes spinach, honestly the easiest thing to grow ever.

[7Wannabe5]

I did some random planting this spring, so I was surprised this month to see some perfectly round, tennis ball sized, bright yellow fruits on a vine. My best guess, based on memory of my large box of seed packets, was that they were lemon cucumbers. So, I ate some raw and wasn't thrilled with the texture. But, then I determined that they were actually lemon squash. They really do have a strong lemon flavor, so I threw just a couple in a large crockpot full of olive oil, jalapenos, onion, green beans, tomatoes and a bunch of freshly dried basil and let it all stew. Ended up tasting very much like something that would be served in a big bowl at a Vietnamese restaurant after I salted it to taste and topped with fresh cilantro. One of the best things about having a garden, IMO, is that you can grow, cook and eat such totally novel recipes.

[George the original one]

Sweet corn! Our first sweet corn on the coast!

Growing corn on the Oregon coast is a challenge because it doesn't stay warm enough and the marine layer can limit sunlight. So I tried a variety that normally matures in 70 days. These plants took 100 days, but they are finally maturing. And this has been a warm summer, so if I want to grow sweet corn on a regular basis, I'll probably have to start them under a plastic tunnel for a month.

[George the original one]

Had the last ears of corn tonight. It was good to successfully grow some this year... neighbor says he's never been able to grow sweet corn here on the coast.

[jennypenny]

Here's the results of our first attempt at sweet potatoes.



Overall, this was our worst year gardening since we moved to Stepford. It started off well, but then it got very, very dry. I don't like to water the garden because I don't like dumping drinking water in the yard. In years past, we've gotten by with rain and rainwater we've gathered, but not this year. I think I'll have to give in and water from now on.

We lost two more fruit trees. That's 3 out of the initial 15.

We have to replace our sewer line, which means removing a large tree in the front yard. If we remove the tree, the front yard will be very sunny. I'm considering approaching the township about bending their rules about what can be planted in front yards. I'd like to grow food of some sort out there.

[cmonkey]

That is a nice haul of sweet potatoes. We grew them for the second year and we got much better results than last year, similar looking to yours. I think we got about 40 lbs...

Not sure if you know or not, but sweet potatoes need to sit for about 3-6 weeks before they become 'edible' (worthy of eating). Before that they are very bland.

Number one recommendation with those - don't plant them in the ground! They are so hard to get out of the ground without damaging them. We tried planting some in straw bales (hollow out holes in the bales, put in dirt and plant) and they worked wonderfully. All you have to do is tear apart the bale and presto! We get bales from Lowes when they sell them out for $1 a piece.

[jennypenny]

@cmonkey--I didn't think to weigh the potatoes. Maybe I can get one of my boys to do it. I did read that the sweet potatoes had to rest for a few weeks. I'm hoping they'll be ready to cook for Thanksgiving. What I read said to leave them out in the sun for the day (which we did) and then put them away without washing them.

I planted the sweet potatoes in a part of a bed that went unused because some seedlings failed. I didn't give much thought to the conditions and never looked at them again all summer. I pretty happy with the haul considering how neglected they were. We're going to try more next year, so I'll look into growing them in bales. I've seen them grown in cardboard boxes that can be ripped apart at the seems for easier harvesting.

I forgot to mention our onions were a complete fail. I'm not sure what happened. We've never had a problem with them (another plant and neglect crop), so I'm bummed since they're a staple around here.

[cmonkey]

I forgot to mention our onions were a complete fail. I'm not sure what happened.

If they developed white/slimy roots, it might have been onion white rot. That's a nasty one, it stays in the soil for long time (15+ years).

Our onion crop was pretty variable but that was due to how I started the seeds. Half of them I tried starting by over packing them in large 4 inch pots, maybe 50 to a pot. They were super cramped and so ultimately never grew larger than a pencil. The rest seemed to do pretty well probably due to the large amount of rain we got.

[7Wannabe5]

Global climate change and El Nino working in my favor this year. Just missed a killing frost around 10 days ago, and now above freezing temperatures predicted at least through November 8th! Of course, this is Michigan, so I've got to take the standard inaccuracy of weather prediction and multiply it by about 20. However, when I was a kid, it was pretty much a given that you were going to have to wear your winter jacket under your Halloween costume, so everybody looked like Eskimo Princess or Eskimo Cowboy or Eskimo Witch while they were running for the candy. So, I might even still be harvesting some very slowly growing eggplant next month and my tomatoes just keep coming. Of course, being in the city gives me maybe about half a zone more heat than even the surrounding suburban areas. I'm not sure if the river is big enough to be contributing or the lakes are close enough?

In addition to my super-cool mini-earth-ship-sunken-greenhouse structure build, I am trying to get a lot of very basic sheet mulching done before winter. Mostly just soggy cardboard on top of the grass/weeds and then topped with leaves I am shredding with my battery operated whacker in a big, sturdy plastic garbage can. The fact that we haven't even had that much of a leave fall here yet is also really weird. I also have a couple big boxes full of bulbs (daffodils, onions, garlic- not to be planted in the same area !!!) and a few more perennials to get in the ground (butterfly bush, non-stinging nettle, goji berry), and I want to can some green tomato chutney for Xmas presents, so I was happy to learn that I have a bit more leeway with the weather. Although I would rate the likelihood that my structure will actually rate as human-survival quality as fairly dubious, it should at least serve as some kind of greenhouse protection. What I would really like to be able to use it for, although I haven't quite thought through the science/botany of this, is a place where I can start some perennials from seed off-season. I will probably just try placing a variety of species in there this winter (goldfish, earthworms, asparagus, citrus, camellia, miniature pit-bull (jk)) and see what survives.

[TheFrugalFox]

Have made a shade net "green house" - birds and the heat have been problematic - but the green house has sorted that out. Had cabbage moths but a chilli/garlic solution sorted that out - so all good. still spring here, but veggies are coming on. Have been harvesting bucket loads of spinch, kale and cabbage leaves - generally for stir fries . But have been making some killer spinach quiches - use the blender to get air into the filling and it sort of becomes a soufle. Very nice, my favorite way of eat a veg I am not a fan of, but grows well! Some pics

[jennypenny]

@TheFrugalFox -- very nice!

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Do you any of you use grey water for irrigation?

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An interesting article: Build a Zero-Waste Homestead

[heyhey]

Here's the results of our first attempt at sweet potatoes.



Overall, this was our worst year gardening since we moved to Stepford. It started off well, but then it got very, very dry. I don't like to water the garden because I don't like dumping drinking water in the yard. In years past, we've gotten by with rain and rainwater we've gathered, but not this year. I think I'll have to give in and water from now on.

We lost two more fruit trees. That's 3 out of the initial 15.

We have to replace our sewer line, which means removing a large tree in the front yard. If we remove the tree, the front yard will be very sunny. I'm considering approaching the township about bending their rules about what can be planted in front yards. I'd like to grow food of some sort out there.

Jenny, are those purple sweet potatoes? They look it, but I know it might just be the light. I would love to be able to grow those.

Cannot believe you guys have rules about what can be grown in front yards. An Englishman's home is his castle even if he is not a man. What was the independence you fought for LOL

[jennypenny]

@heyhey--Those are just regular sweet potatoes that haven't been washed.


Here's an article about the garden at Colonial Williamsburg. I thought this bit was interesting ...

"Greene, the author of Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg Way, disabuses me of one "Ye Olde" conception: that each family grew all its food. He estimates that only 50 percent of the houses in Williamsburg had gardens. Why?

"It's a lot easier to raise a hog than a cauliflower," he says. Turns out these forefathers weren't getting their five-servings-a-day any more than we are now. Less than 10 percent of a Williamsburg resident's diet was vegetables. Meat and corn, as grain, were the foundation of their food pyramid. Growing your own was too hard; success too uncertain to rely on for sustenance."

[llorona]

The weather is mild enough out here that we can maintain a winter garden. Most of our greens (spinach, tatsoi, bok choy, lettuce) are doing well, and we've got garlic and potatoes sprouting in the ground. Everything else is a bit of a disappointment...

The peas that I planted were a flop thanks to a gang of slugs. I tried to save the pea seedlings by sprinkling ground egg shells around them and covering them with cloches made out of bottles, but it was too late. RIP.

The kale and collard green seedlings appeared to be doing well under their tunnel of garden fabric, but when I took a closer look, I saw that cabbage loopers had gotten under there and had a veritable feast. I'm doing a daily sweep to see if the seedlings can be salvaged.

I may have killed our one year-old dwarf clementine tree by letting it fruit. As they say, don't let your babies have babies. Trying to revive it by giving it special citrus fertilizer.

Ah, live and learn.