weekly update - July 28

taken 7/26/14

The rain has stopped.  In fact this past week we had to stop by and water the garden several different days as it has not rained at all.  We also finally had several warm nights so that the Tomatoes which were on the vine staying green and orange finally turned that robust red you want them to be.  The zinnias are in bloom, the sunflowers are almost ready to bloom and the herbs are growing so quickly I could harvest them everyday.

Zinnias

Green peppers

This material coupled with zucchini, broccoli rabe, cucumbers, beans, peas and peppers and a wonderful selection of herbs all coming ripe made the garden a place of bounty this week.

Although we have harvested previously, this was the first time we filled that basket while at the garden. Here is a view in the basket.

I spread everything out on a table so you could see all that we retrieved on our water and harvest run on Saturday.

The purple basil to the left has been turned into herbal vinegar (check out this post if you want to make an herb flavored vinegar yourself.) The lemon balm (above photo, top left) was bundled and hung up to dry.  The genovese basil (front left) became a caprese sandwich with ham, mozzarella cheese, fresh tomatoes and a drizzle of olive oil on toasted bread.  It was marvelous!

There were enough beans to fill a pint basket (the square wood basket you see at the farmers market) which means we have at least a pound and can make a full recipe of a green bean dish.  Now to decide which one.  I will post the recipe once we decide what to make.

The broccoli rabe (just above the tomatoes in the above photo) is the sweetest broccoli I have ever tasted and as a result it rarely makes it to be cooked.  I eat it raw as a snack during the day.

orange thyme with needle-like leaves

The peppers have been coming in 1 or 2 a week for a month so each generally ends up in a salad, but this week I think we will make kabobs.  I have a great recipe for a Greek yogurt dip for kabobs that will be tasty!

I also cut orange thyme (far right by the peas.)  This is being left to dry in  a paper bag like the thyme I have harvested before (see July ___)   I generally cut only one thyme per day so I can remember which one I cut and keep them from getting mixed together in the harvesting basket.

Lemon balm before harvesting

Cucumbers - you have too look for the fruit, it is hidden under the large leaves.
You think you have none, then pull back and leaf and find more than one.

We grew a burpless cucumber which is very thin with few seeds.  We are going to turn this week's cucumber into a cucumber salsa and serve it over chicken and fish.

We harvested the bush beans today and have been debating harvesting the pole beans, but I know that both pole and bush beans will continue to produce until the vines die int he fall, so I think I will harvest the pole beans and save a later collection for drying to use in the winter.

From Bounty to Problems

Most of the issues this week are simple and not too upsetting or difficult to overcome.  The tomatoes still have the dark spot and the blossom end rot I have mentioned before.  This is due to the cooler wet weather.

You can see the black spot on this non-ripe tomato

And the peas have already started to dry so this will be the only harvest we get from them.  I will remove the plants and sow another row of peas for fall harvest.

peas turning brown 

Weekly update - July 20

Now you can really see a difference in the garden from last month to this month. The beans are growing up the trellis, the cucumbers have covered their  trellis and the herbs have doubled in size even with harvesting.  the nice neat patch of greens has turned into a tall unruly collection that shades the remaining lower growing greens protecting them from summer heat and giving me a longer harvest. And the tomato plants have filled in their cages and are starting to produce fruit.

JUNE

JULY

This week I focused on watering the garden as needed and weeding the herb garden.  Herbs compete well against weeds, so I tend to weed them last, plus I can enjoy the scents and fragrance while weeding so it is my favorite part of the task.  I always weed the rest of the garden first as a result.

I started with the raised bed of thyme.  Weeding thyme is a chose, as the thick mat of branches and leaves on the plants hid weeds well and reaching in to removed the plants at the base can be difficult.  As a result i weed the thyme bed every time I visit the garden.  It takes about 2 minutes to putt the dozen or so plants that stick up in and around the thyme, but it keeps them from taking root and becoming harder to pull later.

You can see how they plants are spreading into one another which is my favorite look.  You notice the variation in leaf shape along with flower and stem color more when they are closer together.

Progress

The zinnias are now blooming.  I took way to many pictures of this.

The lemon basil has started producing
seed heads which are hard to contain
on this smaller leaf basil plant.

You have to clip off the seed heads on
basil as soon as you see them.  Once
they put energy into seed production
the flavor and quality of the leaves
deteriorates.

As a result I now carry the scissors and
snip off the tops of all the basil plants during
each visit to the garden. It gives me a fist full
of leaves I can use in tonight's salad or main dish.




Overall we are in waiting mode.  The plants are just about ready to begin producing items we can harvest in larger abundance.  Just one more week and I will start getting more than one tomato at a time and a handful of beans.

weekly update - July 14 - Tying Tomatoes

On July 13 I was selling my wares (see www.backyardpatch.blogspot.com) so I went out the garden on Monday and Tuesday instead.  There was a lot of rain this past week.  So much so that I did not need to water and the weeds did grow a bit from my lack of need to go to the garden.

taken 7-15-14

Everything is looking very green and really beginning to show growth.  The lettuces are going to seed and some will need to be removed soon.  The beans are climbing the trellis nicely and cucumbers and squash are blooming and beginning to produce.

acorn squash bearing fruit

Nice crop of beans

peas growing well - dwarf variety still getting rather tall

first zucchini

Tasks this week

The big task this week was to tie up the tomato plants that are not in cages.  We caged the better boy and the heirloom tomatoes just after planting back in May, but the smaller grape and cherry tomatoes I waited to see  what they would need.  We salvaged wood from a dumpster for this.  I could not believe our luck but the art museum must have been cleaning out a store room as they tossed 2 x 4s and thinner 1 x 2 that looked almost new and were 6 to 8 feet long.  We were able to create stakes 3 feet long for each of the tomato plants.

Chas did all the lumber cutting and placement of the stakes.  My job was to go back through and tie everything up.  I use a cotton twine for this.  the same twine I used for marking seed rows and creating trellis for peas and beans.

I quadrupled the twine and twisted the strands together to create a wide enough material that it would not cut into the branches of the plants. I tied each plant with at least two ties.  One near the base and one just above halfway up.  If the plants get taller, I have room for one more set of ties.

Now the tomatoes are upright, you can clearly see the basil and all the weeds we missed.

I removed the arugula and the butter crunch lettuce that we had not harvested.  The arugula was a target for pests and all the leaves were perforated with holes so I never harvested it in any great amount.  Once it started to go to seed i removed it to the compost bin.  The butter crunch went to seed when the weather turned hot after all that rain.  There was only one head of it left so I removed that to compost as well.  the mustard i am letting go to seed for the seed.  the micro green are still able to be harvest and the sorrel will be good for another month or more of harvesting.

In place of the lettuces removed we planted some Kohlrabi that was given to us by a friend.  I used the same planting technique as before, digging a hole twice as wide as the root ball, filling it with water and letting that soak in before placing the plant in and firming the soil.  They will be rather late in the year before we can harvest these, but we will see how they do.

Issues to address

The tomatoes plants are definitely dying back along the bottom.  I would have said this was due tot lack of sun, but I think it is something else as this garden gets more sun than any I have ever planted in.

There are some who say the soil suffers from a lack of calcium which is easily fixed.  The large amounts of rain we have had are going to cause a few other problems too I expect, like blossom end rot and black spot.

Weekly update - July 6

The holiday weekend arrived and we decided to go away ,so we stopped by the garden on the morning of July 2 and watered it very well.  Then we did not come back until July 6.  I think the garden fared very well, don't you?

Several early plants are producing seed now. I will allow them to go to seed either to use or save the seeds.  First seed is Dill.  You can see the seed heads are nicely formed.  We will see if the birds leave them alone.

Dill going into flower

Several of the greens are finished producing as the heat has made them bolt.  Arugula and mustard are being allowed to go to seed so I can save the seed for next year and use the seed to make my own mustard respectively.

The Broccoli Rabe is starting to produce.  In some ways they look exactly like regular broccoli, but the heads are not as compact or as large.  To harvest you just break the stem and leaves of near the central  stalk,  the stems are softer and more edible than traditional broccoli so you can eat and stir fry and such with it.  I find the taste to be slightly sweeter than regular broccoli.

The dwarf peas have gone into flower and I hope will produce peas soon.  I don't eat them so this is strictly for the husband.

There are just the starts of acorn squash too.  I can see that this garden is finally going to be a producer of many vegetables.  The slow start to the season was really beginning to make me doubt we would enjoy any fruits of our labor, but not we are getting into the full swing.

The beans are budding too so I hope to get a nice crop of both fresh beans and dried beans.  The climbers are beans that I want to dry the bush I hope to make into many dishes.

Problems Noticed

We are growing our vegetables with no chemicals.  I cannot say we are organic, because I know that some of the gardeners around us are using pesticides and such, but we are not.  As a result, however, we are getting some bug damage to the plants.  We are hoping that once our companion plants begin to flower, some of the pests will be repelled.

For now we noticed damage to the tomatoes.

There is also this wilting that is occurring on the bottom branches of the tomatoes.  I removed a number of the lowest branches in the hope that if this wilt was something in the soil (I had been warned about it) it would be helped by removing the branches.  and although it took my plants longer to develop it than those gardening around me, I still have it.  It does not seem to be effecting the growth of tomatoes as you can see by these romas producing nicely.







This plant looks like it is dead, but it is not, however, you can see the blossom end rot on the upper tomato.  I decided to removed the wilted branches giving the healthy branches better sun light.  So far the plant is not dead.

We have still gotten good rain and the sun in this patch is perfect, so if the evenings willjust warm up I think we will have a nice crop of Tomatoes from all the various bushes.  Peppers are slow to get going, but I still hold out hope.