Garden Journal

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Brocolli and Strawberry harvest


This is about 1/3 - 1/2 of the brocolli harvest from the "premium crop" brocolli

One days strawberry harvest. I am going to make some jam out of this


Friday, May 26, 2006

More Garden Pics: End of May 2006


South side of the house with some blacked-eyed-pea plant just starting off. I built this a little web of sapplings to climb on

The onion bulbs are starting to expand as the weather turns warmer


My brother Seaton and his fiance Janet

Beets are almost ready

Just put the sweet potatoes plants in last weekend.


Better Sweat Pea harvest this year. I fertilized with the juice that comes out of the worm bin.

Early summer sqaush. This variety seems to have good resistance to the squash bug, the cucumber beetle, and the squash vine bore. No signs of serious damage yet.

Corn is just coming up. I need to thin it out.


Chives going to seed

Elephant garlic plant.

Romaine Red type lettuce. Not bitter yet even though we are getting a lot of hot weather.

Tomatillo flower. The plant have flea beetle damage. I am using organic soap bug deterent and garlic, and killing the bugs I find on the plant each morning. They are really destroying the eggplant right now.

Good cauliflower heads. I am going to try some purple varieties next year.

Might be the MVP of the spring crop. "Premium Crop" broccolli is putting up awesome main heads. I am freezing a lot of it for later eating.

One of the bigger main heads. After the main head is picked, this variety will produce side shoots.

Kale is still going good. I am going to try a mix or varieties next year. I want to try the dino lactiferous type and a red type.

Squash plants looking strong. Minimal bug damage















Turnips are great roasted. The crops is ready to eat.




















Fava bean pods maturing on thier sturdy vine.















More strawberries on the vine.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Garden pics



Not really related to the garden, but our cat is cute so he is the opener.

Elana in the garlic

Elana
It smelled like garlic when I was laying there. Elana killed me.
The peppers and the tomatoes up front are small. I just put them in the ground a week before this. I was a little late b/c of med school finals and rain. But they will do fine.
Weeks harvest. Left to right: spinach, mustard, red chard, blue leaf kale. I froze almost all of this b/c we have so much lettuce we need to eat right now.

Berries are coming! The first ones are always the biggest and the best tasting. But they are still kinda sparse. The big harvest will be in the 1st -2nd week in june (if the weather doesn't get really cold and cloudy)
Lots of spinach. This is about the 6th or 7th time we have filled that basket. We have eaten a lot of it fresh.
The greens harvest before I dumped the spinach on.
This is the experimental crop area. About 300 sq ft. I have lentil (which you can't see here), wheat (front of the pic, in this orientation it is to your left), then quinoa, then amarath. The border is Jeruselum Artichokes. It is a tuber you can eat all winter long. It stores in the ground, so you just go dig it up whenever you are making a soup or want to bake some.
I just planted two sweet corn plots today. This is actually in my neighbor's yard. Corn takes a lot of room for a relatively small yield and it needs LOTs of sun, so I had to expand into a high sun area. And less mowing for my neighbors, so they don't care.
This is PacMan broccolli. It is a hybrid that produces small "side shoot" heads that have tender stems (though not quite the "tender stem variety" which is actually a cross between Chinese Kale and the standard American broccoli). Anyways, they produce early and continuously, but their main head is not that impressive. I don't know if I will grow this variety again next year.
Garlic. Lots of garlic. I think will last us at least 7 months after the harvest. Probably over 200 bulbs (with a mix of hardnecks, softnecks, and giants)
Fava beans. Cool weather bean. Every flower you see is a pod of beans (if the pollinators do their part). That is a lot of beans for a pretty small space. I am pretty happy with this variety so far. We will let them dry and have chilli beans for the winter.
Worm composting. Timmy, hector and his minions are loving their new worm motel. Can't wait to show it to you.

Red cabbage. Does not split in hot weather (at least until late july). Tasty.
Red chard. Love it. Mixed in with leaks. They seems to like eachother.
The spinach rows. We have already havested the leaves off these plants 5 or 6 times.
This is the "premium crop" broccoli. This the is the main head developing. It will get huge, and the plant will make side shoots. It is overall my favorite variety, but it is nice to have the PacMan in the garden b/c we have had a steady (but smaller) supply of broccoli since late april. These "premium crop" plants won't be ready for another week at least.
Cauliflower. My first shot are growing it. I unwraped the leaves to get this pic. Usually I have the leaves tied around the developing head to "blanch" it.
This is the best lettuce this year. The "allstar groumet mix" from the community garden association. Not bitter.
Other types of lettuce.
Our berry plants. The earlist berrys are the ones by the edges b/c they get the most sun there and ripen faster.
Gardening = fun
Garlic on my right, potatoes on my left. The yukon gold potatoes are looking very healthy. No "early blight" yet. I am fertilizing with worm casings. I heard that the bacteria in the worm poop would eat up the mold of the blight. Hope that works.


This is the main plot. About 2500 sq ft. now. I expanded on the edges. I got two small plots in the front yard now and about 750 sq ft. in my neighbors yard.