Some Big and Little Growth Spurts 2020

First off, the Broccoli and Cauliflower were outgrowing their hoop covers as shown in earlier posts. So we created a tent with PVC and were able to wrap the cover around them to keep the vicious cabbage moths away. Those critters will ravage the small plants in a matter of days. When the plants are larger, we will take the tent down. I'm betting neighbors are wondering what on earth we are growing in there.  But I want to keep these plants protected because with all the rain, there is nothing "natural" that I can treat them with, without the treatment being washed away in the rain. I refuse to use crop pesticides. Won't do it.  I didn't want to cut all the PVC down, so that top support piece, is 10 ft long.  The plants outside of the tent are my bush beans that are finally looking a bit better.  They were quite yellow and shriveled a little over a week ago. Used Blood Meal the first week, and then 10-10-10 this week, brought their coloring and new growth back in line.

Tent to protect broccoli & cauliflower

Other side of tent

Next, the lettuce plants in the buckets in the greenhouse are, absolutely, to die for.  I've been using the special liquid 10-10-10 on them, as well. I honestly have never had my lettuce looking this wonderful.  That's one seed, yes one plant per five gallon bucket! The cilantro is also doing very well this spring.

Buttercrunch Lettuce	Salad Leaf Lettuce
Two Red Sails	Cilantro

Struggling still with the squash and the cucumber plants.  I planted more in the cloth pots in the green house, while also planting some in small pots in the new "mini" growtent that we got on sale. The special light is helping to start our plants indoors MUCH better. As you can see from the green house pots, only the squash in one (of two) buckets came up, and there are two cucumbers, one in each bucket that came up. And let's just say I OVER planted the seeds in there this time.  Part of the issue is the inconsistant temps, too hot, too cold and not enough sunlight.  Then, compare them to the seed I started in the growtent, and Santa Vaca, what a difference.  Today, I planted some dill, basil and lavender seeds in an egg carton. Will see how long that takes for them to sprout and then I can put them out into the garden soon.

Greenhouse Acorn Squash	Greenhouse Cucumber Start
Growtent Cukes & Squash Starts	Just plantes Dill, Lavender & Basil

Potatoes are starting to bloom, so that's an indication that they are almost done.  The Strawberries are starting to get ripe.  I think we will actually get some this year.  I had to put petroleum jelly on the bottom lip of the buckets to keep the ants out.  So far, so good.  Again, used the special organic liquid 10-10-10 on these berry plants, and we should have some nice sized berries this year.

Potatoes are Blooming

Berries are turning red!!!!

Final Week August 2019

The chicks are a month old now, and are all getting quite large.  Poor lazy confused birds.  I threw an ear of fresh corn in the pen and they just stood there and looked at it.  We patiently waited for them to figure out that it was food, but alas, that never happened.  They laid on it, instead.  Now, when we throw an ear of corn in with the hens, one will grab it and run, trying to keep it for herself. Today, they each got their own ear, and there was no chasing necessary by the others because they truly cannot grab two ears at the same time.  :) 

1 month old Cornish cross

A lazy afternoon

As we head into our fall planting season, we are wrapping up the harvest of beans, corn, and dill. I pick a hand full of Sungold cherry tomatoes every day and this is going to be a long harvest through September. The German tomatoes are massive. Too heavy for the plant to stand on its own. Had to put the bucket into a tub and place a cinder block next to hold it up. We are getting about one ripe Purple Cherokee Tomato per week. They are not as large as the German but there are a couple that are fairly large. 

Large Gold German	Bucket in the Tub
Purple Cherokee Tomatoes	SunGold Tomatoes

The cucumber plants (at least the older ones) are starting to die back so that was a fairly short season, but we did get a bunch of cucumbers.  I am hopeful to get three more here at the end of the season that I can pickle. 

Older Cucumber Plant going Yellow

Crazy Carrot - I kept watching this one carrot in the center of the others that never seemed to mature - no orange top that popped up through the soil. But today, Noticed that the of the leaves was thick and very spinney looking, like a wild carrot would look.  So I pulled it up, and to my surprise, it WAS a wild carrot! Crazy. 

Wild Carrot in Garden The Lettuce and the Broccoli are in a battle with Slugs and Beetles.  On the Broccoli, I think the tiny holes are from flea beetles, while the large chewed away sections are from slugs.  For the past few nights, I have been sprinkling a layer of diatomaceous earth (DE) around the broccoli starts and I think it is helping.  As for the lettuce, I wrapped Copper tape around the pots. But it only works until a leaf falls over the side and the slugs reach out and pull over over the copper! Smart Slugs!  Poor damaged broccoli sprouts Baby Romaine We pulled 18 ears of corn today.  I blanched 15 of them for frozen corn packets. That will give us five meals of corn. I found another ear with conjoined baby ears. This one actually had two baby ears attached. Some seriously weird corn this year. We also picked a bunch of green beans.  I had tried to freeze some green beans earlier this month, using an unblanched recipe, and we were not too impressed.  So today, I chopped the beans in half and blanched them for three minutes before putting them into individual serving (sandwich) bags for the freezer. We will get three meals from what we picked today.  When they are totally frozen, I will put the bags into large freezer bags to avoid them getting freezer burn... if they last that long. So we are heading into our final week of August.

Mid August 2019 Garden Update

While August has been cooler than the past few years, it is certainly not the coolest August ever. On the other hand, it is already the wettest.  Thunder clouds and lightning moved in just before the the weekend, then a downpour of rain. Lightning struck near our place on Friday night, August 10, and when the wireless router started smoking, I knew we were in trouble. Even though we use a local Internet provider (based on our region) there are no stores nearby. The two closest stores are both over a four hour drive away... one to the southwest on the coast, and the other to the east, each over 230 miles away; just to pick up a replacement would have meant an 9 hour drive round trip. So, the replacement was sent out Monday afternoon and arrived this afternoon. Thank you, UPS! Then, the tech support needed to reset the FiOS box (I don't know what they called it). While on the phone, I had to find the FiOS box, unplug it from the power, they did something to cause a "reset" and then I plugged it back in. So, let's just say that even when electronics are plugged into surge protectors, that's not always a guarantee that a huge bolt of electricity won't end up frying the electronics.

On the plant front, the cooler temps and rain over the weekend switched over to 80+ temps on Monday with lots of sunshine, which resulted in a lot of plants ripening up right quick.  The corn is on the edge of ripe. Most of the carrots are done, and I planted spinach seeds in that area of the garden. I replanted lettuce for the next round. I harvested the thyme before the rains hit. I picked six nice sized cucumbers and forgot to take a pix before they were all gone. Radishes are mostly done. Beans are still producing like crazy so we are eating fresh green beans every other night. Real sized Tomatoes are finally starting to ripen.  The Sungold cherry tomato plant is so heavy with fruit, it keeps falling over.  We cut a lot of the tops off to help it from being to top heavy.  Threw away about 25 green cherry tomatoes because, in truth, there are just way too many.

Trying to stay ahead of the garden so that we don't end up having to throw away too much.

Purple Cherokee almost ripe	Nice Sized Purple Cherokee
Blurry Purple Cherokee Tomato	Huge German Tomato
Almost the last of the radishes	Almost the last of the carrots and the start of the corn

UPDATE - August 15

The bumble bee in the dill was an nice thing to see this morning.  Also, took some updates on the cucumbers. There is one bee that seems to have adopted the task of pollinating for me on the cucumbers, so that's a nice bee to be thankful for.

Remember the corn tillers (suckers) that I left on. Well, it turns out there are a bit hermaphrodite-ish on the tassels.  Although many of the tillers have tassels now, and several have ears of corn on them, a few of the tassels on the tillers also have two or more kernels on them. None of the main stalks' tassels have kernels of corn (and silk). Just a few of the ones that are are tillers are that way.

A little more reading from corn experts, this is known as Tassel Ears and sometimes a whole ear of corn forms on the tassel which typically occur on the tillers.  They nothing more than "bird food" so to speak and if they occur on the main stalk, it is because of damage to the stalks, or field.

11 weeks after planting, we have ripe corn and we pulled three tonight for dinner. Sweet corn on the cob!

Square garden beans did much better this year, than last.  So I will need to freeze beans to keep from wasting them. Carrots also did much better this year.  Despite the crazy summer weather, the plants seem to be working through it. In about a month, mid September, I should have cilantro and spinach. My favorite fall plants.

BumbleBee in the Dill	BumbleBee different angle
Baby Cuke	Pickle sized Cuke
Salad Cuke	And All Three Sizes Together
Square Garden Growing	Green - String Beans
A handful of ripe Sungolds	Corn Mostly Ready
A few Kernels on Tassels	Tassels, kernels with silk

Final Spurt before August 2019

Some of these sections will be linked back to earlier posts. For example, I planted the broccoli on July 24 and they have sprouted.  I needed to move them around, because watering had moved the seeds to all the weirdest locations possible. But I had 13 come up and hopefully, now that I have moved them back to where I wanted them, they will grow.

Tiny Broccoli Sprout #1 of 13

Tiny Broccoli Sprout #2 of 13

Remember when I talked about the best way to pollinate a cucumber plant when there are not a lot of bees around? On July 20, I took pix of two female cucumber blossoms. These are the two from that post.

One of Two Cukes Pollinated on July 20	Other cuke pollinated that day
Cucumber Sprawl off deck and over grass

Square raised garden bed continues to thrive. The basil are doing well. The thyme is becoming more like bushes but not very tall. The dill continues to get taller. The carrots and radishes are getting ready to pull. I pulled four mature carrots today (no photos of them). The beans are quite long, and I tied them back against the wire fence to keep them up out of the dirt. July 20 I took photos of the beans when they were about 1 inch long

Row of 4 Basil	Row of Radishes
B-F Beans, Dill, Basil, (Thyme is hidden) and Carrots
Green Beans Growing	More Green Beans

Bell Peppers are now growing fast.  On July 11, I took photos of the scraggly looking peppers that had started to bloom. Now look at them!

Nice Sized Pepper in Orange bucket plant

Two Peppers on another plant.

No link backs on this one. The German plant has eight tomatoes as of today. Slow to grow and ripen. This plant was topped at about four feet because it will try to grow to eight feet tall.  To help encourage fruit growth a bit faster, we topped it and pruned it.  The Sungold is full of cherry tomatoes.  No way to truly count. The photos, while out of focus, allow you to see up through the plant at dozens of little tomatoes. The photos were actually taken in two different locations even though they look similar. The Chocolate Cherry tomatoes are more spread out and not as many on the vines. Then the Purple Cherokee also has a lot of full sized tomatoes. It was so heavy that we pruned it back as previously mentioned and tied up a lot of the lower heavy branches.

Heirloom German + 8
Sungold Thick	More Sungold
Chocolate Cherry
Find the Purple Cherokee Tomatoes Yellow Arrows	Purple Cherokee Tied Up