Vegetable Garden 2007

End of the Season

We harvested our carrots and potatoes, and got some strange results... Many of the carrots were horribly twisted and deformed. I don't know if this was due to rocky soil or nymatods, a pest that feeds on carrots. We discarded the worst of the carrots, ate some, and put the rest away for storage. They weren't the tastiest carrots, unfortunately. Many next year we'll harvest them earlier in the season and see if the taste is any better.

The potatoes had some unusal shapes as well, but they still tasted delicious! We ended up with a great bounty of potatoes, and will definitely grow those again next year!

One final note on the tomatoes and zucchini – next year, we'll do fewer plants, and space them farther apart. The zucchini took up so much room it completely blocked our walkways. And the tomatoes outgrew their cages and were falling all over the place the last two months. We were still picking well into October though, so we're thankful for that!

You can see some of the deformed carrots among the
normal ones

Our small onion harvest – growing these was not worth
the effort

It was like a treasure-hunt finding the potatoes from
their underground homes

The final harvest – this lasted us until December. I'd plant more next year if they didn't take up so much room.

The overgrown tomatoes

Zucchini overtaking the whole garden

Thursday, September 6

The artichokes have become gargantuan!

We can't wait to pull up the onions!

This is what happens when you don't pick broccoli

We found a surprise among the swiss chard – a beet! We didn't plant it, so it must have been a stowaway.

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Wednesday, August 8

The garden is producing beyond our capacity to eat it all! Note to self: Next year, plant fewer crops. Two people can only eat so much and force so much on innocent neighbors and family.

That's where blanching comes in. This is a technique I just learned... prior to that I'd been freezing vegetables without cooking them first. I guess they won't taste very good. Anyway, now I spend a lot of time picking, washing, cutting, blanching, and freezing. Nate helps out by making large batches of zucchini bread. He likes doing things in bulk.

Some general observations... the beetles have been a pest lately. They're only eating the pole beans, but every day I'll go out and pick them off one by one (or two by two, as the case may be) and let them take a swim in my special blend of soapy water. But there's dozens more by the next day. However, other than the beetles, we haven't seen any problems with bugs. The deer, rabbits and groundhogs haven't caused any damage in the past month. The plants have grown so big that many of them have sprawled out into the walkways, so it's a little tricky getting around now. This is the time that we've been waiting for since spring, but to be honest, a little part of me is actually ready for fall.

The onions are bulging out of the ground

The peppers finally bulked up and are producing fruit

The tomatoes have sprawled all over

Lettuce is still growing despite the heat

Beetle damage to pole beans

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Monday, July 9

When I looked at the photos posted here from mid-June, I was shocked! Everything is so much bigger now; it's hard to believe its the same garden. God has been good to our garden, there's no doubt about that.

We're getting a consistent harvest now – lettuce is still going strong, and we've also been picking string beans and peas several times a week. The peas are very cute...when you pull open the pod, they're all lined up in a row. I think we'll soon be getting grape tomatoes and zucchini as well.

We've had some animal invasions over the past few weeks, and that motivated us to make some improvements to the electric fence. We found a rabbit in the garden one day, although he seemed too scared to actually eat anything, and finally dove out under the fence, probably incurring a shock on the way. Then a few weeks later our neighbor told us he saw two rabbits in the garden together, and one of them was actually standing up on the fence with his front paws. That clued us in that the electric wasn't working. It turns out that grass will actually short-out the electric connection if too much of it touches the wire. After cutting the grass under it, the fence was back to pumping electric.

We also had a deer in the garden one night. His hove prints gave it away. Unfortunately he ate quite a few carrot tops, three of the cucumber plants, and the tops of some of the bean plants. (Frankly, I was surprised it didn't eat more, since deer are known to be very destructive.) It's hove prints squashed some of our fledgling onions, but otherwise there was no further damage. We decided to add what is called a butterfly fence to the electric fence, which consists of a single wire running about a foot above the current one. It's made out of aluminum, which gives a more powerful shock than the stainless steel the other fence is made with. So far the deer has not come back, and we haven't seen evidence of any other animals in there either.

Thank you Andrew for giving us your extra pepper plants.
All of the peppers still look small and puny, so maybe there's
a problem with our soil. We'll use our soil tester to see if there's enough nutrients in that spot.

The potatoes look huge now, and they have pretty white flowers blooming on top. My gardening book suggested piling up dirt or straw up against them when they got to be a certain height. Looks like I might need to do it again.

Some of the tomatoes are 4ft high and flowering

The artichoke blooms are bright purple!

The onions are finally big enough to be visible

The amazing asparagus ferns

The bush bean plants are producing delicious string beans

A hidden treasure – zucchini under layers of leaves

The peas have been growing bulging pea pods

I love how the peas are all lined up inside!

An assortment of herbs – catnip, rosemary, thyme, oregano, parsley and basil. I tried summer savory but it died.

This is the butterfly wire that accompanies our electric fence. It's higher to protect against deer invasions.

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Friday, June 15

The garden continues to amaze! Most of the plants are getting bigger and stronger. The broccoli had some holes in the leaves, so I inspected them closely and found the culprit: green cabbage moths, still in the larvae stage. I pulled off the little green worms one by one, maybe about 8 total, and fed them to the chickens. Nothing else seems bothered by pests right now. Last night we fertilized with liquid fish emulsion and seaweed, so that should provide some extra nutrients to the soil.

The only plants I'm really discouraged with are the peppers. They look yellow and weak, and I haven't noticed any signs of growth at all in the past few weeks. I know they like hot temperatures, so maybe the weather has been too cold for them. We'll see if they survive...

Potato tops are getting bushy.

Tomatoes in front, peas in back

Beans are doing well; zucchini on the left is growing fast.

We now have more lettuce than we can eat.

The broccoli were being eaten by an easy-to-see pest.

The artichoke plant now has five artichoke buds on it.

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Wednesday, June 6

After this weekend's rain, it seemed like the garden burst with new growth. The lettuce is big enough to pick now, and will probably grace our salad bowls tonight. The tomatoes and broccoli are much stronger, and the peas are starting to climb up the trellis Nate built. Zucchini and cucumbers sprouts are visible, and so are the pumpkins and melons in the back garden. I think we'll even have a few ripe strawberries to pick this week!

It's starting to look like a garden now

The arugula that Jen transplanted made a comeback! Guess it wasn't dead after all.

The potato buds are getting bigger. I wish I could see what was happening under the soil.

Juicy lettuce ready to be eaten! The next round has been planted in between the rows and is already sprouting.

Zucchini came up strong

The peas attaching themselves to our trellis

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Wednesday, May 30

The warm weather has transformed the garden! It's amazing the difference the sun and heat makes. We just replanted some beans that had struggled with survival before, and they are already much bigger than their predecessors! The other triumph is that the aphids seem to be long gone from the artichoke plant, and it is now sporting three small artichokes!

The strawberries are also showing amazing progress. We planted them not even two months ago, and they are already covered with reddening berries. They have more berries than leaves. What little troopers!

It's worth saying that having a garden is truly a fascinating experience. It shows off God's brilliant creation, and we just thank Him for all that He has given us.

Artichoke flowers (edible and delicious!)

Asparagus ferns

A real carrot top

Peppers are perky

Potato bud just peeking out of the ground

These beans are already bigger than the ones we planted a month ago (and they are only a week old!)

Friday, May 25

It's starting to look a little more like a garden, albeit a pathetic garden. Some of the plants are laying prostrate on the ground. Those that are strong enough to stand up don't look very impressive. But a lot of stuff just made the transition from bathtub to garden, with a week of hardening in between, so we should cut it some slack.

Looking on the bright side, the asparagus is going crazy. The tender spears that poked through the soil two weeks ago are now bushy plants. They are probably our favorite thing in the garden this year.

The peas are the other winners in terms of growth and strength. The lettuce is still growing slowly, and when Jen transplanted some arugula it pretty much expired. Never fear, we planted more! Maybe the second batch will do better.

One thing about the aphids...we read that putting particular kinds of plants in the garden will attract beneficial insects like lady beetles, and that can help knock out our artichoke-feasting aphids (who actually seem to be dead now – maybe the soapy water did the trick?). So we planted marigolds, sage, rosemary and thyme near the artichokes. There's a whole list in our gardening book of plants and the pests they ward off, but basically anything with a strong scent will confuse pests and attract good bugs. Herbs work well, and so do heavily-scented flowers. (The bonus is that the flowers look pretty in the garden and the herbs taste good in your food!) If any pests make it to the artichoke now, I'll congratulate them before I squash them.

Strawberries!

It finally looks like lettuce.

Sage and marigolds among the old and new artichokes.

Tomatoes in front, peas in back.

Asparagus becoming a bush.

The broccoli can't stand up yet.

Monday, May 14

The pests have found us... and are eating the beans and artichoke plants. After some research into organic methods of dealing with pests, we decided to try soapy water and covering the plants before we bought some expensive product. If that doesn't work, we will get some organic insecticide at Gardens Alive called Pyola Insect Spray. It's made from chrysanthemum flowers, amazingly.

On the bright side, the asparagus has started coming up! It only took two weeks to start growing! I wish our lettuce was growing that fast, but it's growing at a snails pace. For an interesting read on a table salad garden, you can take a look at this recent NY Times article.

This week I'm going to start hardening the tomato and broccoli plants. I'll leave them outside for an hour the first day, then a few hours longer each day until the end of the week when we'll leave them out all night. This prepares them to be planted outdoors. I think I might also plant the potatoes. Planting them now will give us a summer harvest. If I plant another crop in a few months, that will give us a fall harvest to store over winter. I'm not sure if we'll have the room for that, unless we build the table salad garden and create more room in the garden!

Asparagus! This will become a perennial bush.

The lettuce... barely visible after three weeks.

The beans. The top row was eaten and aren't even visible.

The peas, doing very well!

The fan we installed on the indoor garden.

The garden during kubota weekend.

Monday, May 7

Floppy Plant 101... I started researching my floppy seedling syndrome, and found that there are a couple of problems with they way we grew our plants. First, the light source should only be 4" above the plants, and raised as they grow taller. Ours is much higher than that, and it's stationary, so we decided to raise the plants up to meet it by putting stuff underneath their pots. The second problem is that they need air circulation, which I was suspicious of already. So we bought a small fan at Walmart to keep on near the plants.

There were other suggestions, including "pinching" the plants to promote stockier growth. It said to wait until the plant develops the first set of leaves, then pinch or cut the growth above that. I'm nervous about doing that, though, so I'll probably pass on that advice. The final suggestion was to repot the plant and cover the elongated stem with soil up to an inch or so below the first set of leaves. I did that last week, so now all I can do is hope and pray they aren't too weak when it comes time to plant them outside in a few weeks.

Friday, May 4

We decided to stake the broccoli and tomato plants, even though they are only about 6-8 inches tall. But they are so droopy there seemed no other alternative. We've also been exposing them to outdoor air and wind a little at a time to harden them. We noticed at a nursery greenhouse last weekend how they have fans running all over the greenhouse, and we thought that might imitate outdoor wind and make the plants hardier. Maybe that's why ours' are so weak, because the air is too still in our bathtub.

We also planted our asparagus crowns, after applying lime to make the soil more alkaline (it tested at 6.5, asparagus prefers 7-7.5). We probably should have waited until fall to plant them, but decided to just put them in and see what happened. You dig trenches for them, and as the plants grow, slowly fill in the trench with soil.

The beans and peas finally made an appearance with little green sprouts this week. We had noticed the lettuces were up last weekend, arugula first, and then the carrots started popping up. It's been a lot of fun to go out each day and see the new shoots and the older ones grow bigger one little burst at a time. God's creation is so amazing!

Below, you can see the asparagus trenches on the left, and the strawberry patch on the right. The strawberry plants are getting white flowers, which I'm told means they'll produce fruit this year. That would be really awesome!

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Things are really taking shape now! Our beds are finished, the electric fence is up and "buzzing," and the first seeds are in the ground. Our indoor plants are doing okay, although they are getting a little floppy. We're not sure what that's about...could be too wet or too much light. We're trying different solutions.

Back to the outdoor garden...Nate built the gate, and it works really well (no electricity runs through the wood – hopefully the animals won't realize that). One problem we're not sure how to handle is cutting the grass. We can't take down the fence every time we mow, so that means weed-wacking inside or letting the grass grow high. Or filling in the grass with wood chips. We haven't decided yet, but right now it looks really nice with the grass in between!

A friend at church has a big strawberry patch, and gave us 20 plants to start our own patch. Apparently they send out shoots every year and create up to six new plants for every one plant. They may produce a small crop of strawberries this year, so we're excited for that!

We're going to have six raised beds this year, with the possibility of expanding in years to come. We bought the seeds & plants from Heirloom Acres Seeds, which is an organic farm run by Christians. Our garden will contain the following fruits and vegetables:

• Potatoes
• Onions
• Sweet Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Garlic
• String Beans
• Peas
• Carrots
• Lettuces, including swiss chard, green leaf, red leaf, chicory and arugula

• Artichokes
• Asparagus
• Broccoli
• Melons (miniature cantaloupe)
• Strawberries
• Celery
• Cucumbers
• Squash
• Gourds (birdhouse)
• Pumpkins (miniature)