What's growing on....

I know I know... its like I fell off the face of the planet during the height of the growing season. Well this summer I moved  around my work schedule so that I could stay home with the kids... now I spend my days driving them to swim lessons, gymnastics, more swim lessons and dance camp.  (Yes we can cross off  "learn to swim" off our summer bucket list :) ) So blogging moves even further down my to do list. I have so many ideas for posts yet at the end of the day I feel like this.....

So I'm going to try and give a quick update... and sorry I don't have a lot of pictures. 

Trixy.... there has been such a huge learning curve when it comes to Trixy. I guess that is to be expected since she is my first dog. All and all though I don't think we're doing to bad. Really its a lot like have a child... you need to be consistent. She is no longer eating up my garden plants. She will come in and poke around when I am gardening but she doesn't destroy my garden. She insists on eating any weeds I pull up or chewing on anything I prune but thats fine with me. My husband is her alpha and I am her beta. Right now the big thing I am working on with her is Recall training. In the house I have no problems with recall, however outside is a different story. Especially when her dog friends are around. A friend gave me a great tip to keep a highly desirably treat in my pocket when I am outside and so far that is working really well. She has yet to see a deer though and I just have to hope that my husband is around when that happens. 

Alliums Bed (i.e. onions, garlic, leeks, etc)
This year I grew one square foot garden (4ft x4ft) dedicated to my alliums. The garlic and onions are done and have been harvested.  The big learning point here was the onions. I finally figured out how to grow onions from seed. Basically densely sow onion seed in large trays (not single cell trays). Onion transplants are pretty hardy... you can pull and tug on the roots and stick them in the soil and they still grow. I am still on the look out for a good red onion seed, the redwing variety I tried this year did not do all to great. I recently ordered music garlic and so I am excited to add this to my garlic bed this coming fall. This bed will be home to my nightshades next year so I am taking advantage of the extra time to start building up the bed with leaf compost, egg shells (for extra calcium) and I may even try some pea shoots in the fall.

Nightshade bed
I have one square foot garden (4ft x4ft) dedicated to nightshades... it contains 2 tomatoes, 4 eggplants and 4 chillis. I think next year I will leave the tomatoes out of the square foot garden and grow more chillis and eggplant. Tomatoes are just unruly. Casper eggplant so far is really working out well. It is easy to grow from seed and is the first to fruit. For chillis I am growing 6 varieties this year: cayenne, greek peppericino (spelling?), ancho, jalepeno, thai, and bhut. The cayenne and thai really have taken off but really all the chilli plants are doing fine.

Tomatoes
So I have four that are producing ripe tomatoes....

• Sungold Cherry- good old reliable :) love this tomato... I eat 1-2 handfuls of these daily.
• Black Cherry- First year growing this and definitely a keeper. Prolific, tastes great and my daughter likes it. You really can't ask for more.
• Tasty grape hybrid- This year the deer discovered how good this one tastes... so I now have to spray deer repellent around the plant when I see some of these ripening.
• Supertasty Hybrid- I am so excited to have a ripe large tomato this early in the season. The fruit have no cracking and look beautiful. I will be cutting into one tomorrow lets hope it tastes good. 

Watermelon

I grew two small fruited watermelon (sugar baby and blacktail mountain). They were doing really great till they got shaded by the monster tomatoes (rookie mistake), so I will have to try these again next year in a better location. 

Cucumbers

Cucumbers are chugging along... my new cucumber, the mexican sour gherkin is an absolute hit ... kids love them. Definitely a keeper and I will grow at least two of these plants next year. 

Cabbage and cauliflower

These were doing great but until the beginning of July... now the cabbage are riddled with insect holes (arguably I can still eat them) and the cauliflower ... well they are shriveled and bitter. I didn't tie up the cauliflower as I was supposed to.... still not sure its worth all the effort though. I think I may give up on the cauliflower. 

What's Growing On....

This years grow season was interupted by this little cutey.  He is a 9 week old German Shepard and by most accounts is a pretty mellow puppy (anyone who knows my husband knows she's probably following his lead). I had all these great visions of hanging out in the garden while the dog wanders about doing his business. Well this guy is obsessed with eating the dirt from my garden and since he can't seem to discriminate from my onion transplants from the fresh compost, my poor red onions are really taking a beating. So I will be trying to find new ways to get through to this dog that no he can't eat dirt from my garden.  Any advice or tips I am all ears!!!

Seedlings... I tried to grow almost everything from seed this year. Everything has pretty much been started and I am now in hardening off mode.  My general plan this year was to start new seedlings the first week of each month, according to this schedule: 1) January: Onions and Basil 2) February: Eggplant and Peppers 3) March: Tomatoes  4) April:  Cucumbers, melons (watermelon and cantaloupe), sugar pumpkin, peas, and cilantro.  This tent has been great for hardening off my seedling. I have no patience for carrying plants in and out of the house. So this has worked out great. April and May can be very windy here so I have had to weigh it down and tie it to the deck to prevent it from flying off

 I decided not to grow okra this year... last year I just didn't pick it in time, they were always too big and fibrous. The kids ate the small ones. Just not a great use of space. I am trying a few more things this year maybe I will come back to okra next year.                                                                       . 

I planted out my first tomato last week and another two tomatoes this weekend (it would have been more but the kids had birthday parties this weekend). I hope to have the last five planted out by mothers day. I am not going to be planting to many large heirloom tomatoes this year, and will try to stick to small varieties or hybrids. I decided that I will try growing one large heirloom and will keep it pruned to a single stem.  I have two large pine trees which put out bags and bags of these pine needles and after watching this video I decided to try mulching with it as well. 

Overwintered plants.....This rosemary plant was my star this winter. My lemongrass stalks, turmeric and curry leaf plant are doing fine, not as healthy and stellar as this rosemary though.  My lime, ginger, and two chillis died (I didn't have a good plant stand till the end of the winter and so they weren't getting sun).  I have decided to give up on trying to grow a lime tree for a while. I just seem to keep killing them over winter. I am bummed about that but maybe I just need to take a break from them for a bit (either that or convince my husband to let me build a permanent green house :) )

Garlics are going strong. I thought for sure they were going to be goners because the deer trampled through my raised beds this winter (for what I don't know they don't eat the garlic). So this spring I filled up the deer tracks with fresh compost, gave them some blood meal and they are taking off. This bed is completely dedicated to my alliums so you can see my onions transplants which are still settling in. The square in the front left corner of the bed is the one my puppy keeps eating out of.

I tried growing cauliflower and cabbage from seed and didn't have any  luck. So this year I bought some transplants from Home Depots spring Black Friday sale ($2 for a 6 pack you can't go wrong). Not sure whether it is just that the weather gets to hot too quickly for cauliflower. We'll see.

I have very little patience when it comes to hardening off plants, for these peas I decided to see what would happen if I just planted them straight out.... well they are still here and still growing. No signs of sun or wind damage so I consider this a success. I'd never do this to my tomatoes or other warm weather crops (I've learned that the hard way).









Anyway well thats about it for now. Hopefully the warm weather is hear to stay so I can plant out more things.

Let the 2015 Grow Season Begin

When people think of snow they usually think of snow shovels, charging batteries, emergency groceries, etc.. me... I think of starting seedlings.

This year my goal is to start one tray of peat pellets a month (actually I am using coconut coir pellets) from July through April then up that to one tray every 2 weeks through the end of July. Lets see how it goes.  One tray holds 25 pellets, not sure if I'll have room to start all 25 pellets in a tray but we'll see.

So we are starting off January with onions and basil... I know they look a little dense... but let see how it goes. I was inspired by this video from the Rusted Garden where he grows onions very dense. So I am going to give it a go, last year I purchased transplants from Dixondale Farms. Those worked out great and are my back up plan this year in case the seedlings don't work.  It is much more economical to grow onion transplants from seed... I spent less on four different onion/leeks seed packs than I did on one bunch of onion transplants from Dixondale. These are the onions/leeks I am trying out this year, are all varieties are from Johnny's Select Seed:

•  Red onion variety this year: REDWING (F1)
• Storage onion variety this year: PONTIAC (F1)
• Leek variety this year: KING RICHARD
• WALLA WALLA SWEET OG (I had such a great success with this last year I had to try this one from seed).

The front row is basil.... I was rummaging through Agways after season seed racks and found a packet of Franchi Sementi brand basil seeds which are a mix of 12 different basil varieties including cinnamon, limone, thai siam, classico and red rubin. (only online link I could find is this one from New Zealand, is it the GLBA13/15 seeds).  I will probably be planting these up only once to 16 oz cups. In my experience Basil really won't "grow" till you get summer heat, so I will just be keeping these going with dilute fertilizer. I am hoping that the large lettuce leaf basil makes it from these seedlings... I'd love to be able to do a basil salad. I am interested to see how these tolerate being grown so densely and not thinned out, given the nature of the seed packet (a large mix) it seems as though these seeds are intended for just broadcasting them out and no thinning.

Allium Update...

Garlic

So I've started harvesting my garlic... for those of you that are not familiar with growing garlic. In my climate (USDA Zone 6b/7a) you plant garlic in the fall, around Columbus day. They set their roots (and for me most of them will send up shoots and leaves) and then go dormant over the winter. Then one spring comes around they take off.  Usually they are ready for harvest early-mid summer.

This year I grew: German Red, Inchelium Red, Chinese Pink, Spanish Roja, and Russian Inferno.  I tried Kettle river giants but they really did not grow (I got the seed garlic on sale very late in the season maybe this is why they didn't do well).

Some things I learned about garlic...
1) Patience: I grew one variety this year, russian inferno that did not send up a shoot until spring, I thought for sure they had all died over the very cold winter but they didn't.

2) Keep the beds weeded (and mulched)

3) Deer absolutely HATE garlic- this winter was pretty brutal... there was absolutely no green in my backyard except the garlic greens and the deer didn't even touch them

4) They are not easy to overwinter Indoors (all my indoor garlic died)

 

 

Onions

This year was soo much better than last year!!!

This year I grew Red river, copra and walla walla onions all from TRANSPLANTS. Never again will I use sets. I figured out what the problem was last year... onions that you grow from sets are second year onion, so the plant is more inclined to go to flower and seed and as a result you get a smaller bulb.  I planted these in the picture below from transplants in April and kept them under a row cover (because the weather is so unpredictable here).

 Leeks

I am trying these for the first time this year. I grew Lancelot Leeks. Instead of hilling them up I found a useful tip online to use a pencil or stick and create a deep hole and bury it down.. When I planted the leek shown in the picture below only about an 1 inch was peaking above the soil. So far so good lets see how things go.

SOURCE: 

Garlic
wegrowgarlic.com: russian inferno, spanish roja, chinese pink
Burpee: inchelium red, german red (and kettle river giant)

Onion transplants
Dixondale Farms: red river and copra
Bonnie Plants purchased from Home depot: walla walla (on sale for $2 ... I've gotten so much out of that $2!!!)

Leek transplants
Dixondale Farms: lancelot leeks