Category: Garden

  • Garden update 5/16

    After a nice week, the rain arrived again just in time for the weekend, and looks like it’ll stick around for most of this week. Good thing, because those few days of 70s and sun really had me starting to miss the cold and wet.

    I didn’t get as much done this weekend as I would have liked, partially due to the weather, and partially due to having an eight-month old that didn’t want to take any naps. I did, however, get all of my beans planted, though I wanted to do the squash too. I used an inoculant powder with the beans this year – I’ve never done it, but it’s supposed to be good for legumes. Anybody have any experience with this? I’m also doing a much wider variety of beans than normal – usually I just plant green snap and yellow wax, and I have those, but I’m also going to try several varieties of dry beans. I have Brockton Horticultural, Good Mother Stallard, Speckled Cranberry, and Kenearly Yellow Eye (see SSE for details). I’ve read that dry beans may not be worth the time and effort, since yields can be fairly low and dry beans in the store are cheap. But as with everything else, I need to see for myself. And I don’t really see much in the stores beyond black and white beans, so I definitely wanted to try something different.

    In other news, seedlings are doing well, and I hope to be able to transplant over Memorial Day weekend. I started some lettuce inside last week, and it germinated much better than the lettuce I had planted outside, so I’ll try to transplant that in the next couple weeks.

    Happy Monday!

  • Garden update 5/9

    Finally had a nice weekend, probably the first since about last September. “Surely he jests,” you’re thinking, but no. And looking at the forecast, we may have four straight days without precipitation. Four days? In a row? I think we had maybe four days without rain the entire month of April.

    On a more serious note, the sun and relative warmth have been good for most of my growing things. Fruit is all looking pretty good, though I think I need to lower the pH some more for the blueberries. Spinach, carrots, beets, and onions are all up and doing well. Lettuce is up but is still pretty shrimpy – I’m doing staggered plantings every two weeks, but have directly sown everything, and I’m not sure how the lettuce is liking that. I think for the next round, I may start the lettuce inside and transplant it after it germinates. Peas are also coming on strong, and I really need to get my trellises up. As far as trellises go, I was going to build a basic 4′ x 4′ x 4′ (approx.) frame, and attach some nylon netting. However, I was going to build these out of galvanized steel pipe, but I’d need about 20 them, with three pieces of pipe per trellis, and at $10 a pop for each 4 foot section of pipe, that adds up pretty quickly, to, oh, about… $600, which is a little more than I was budgeting for trellises. (I knew that math major would come in handy someday – thanks mom and dad!) So now I’m leaning towards 1″ or 1 1/2″ PVC, which is not as strong but cheaper, and it probably doesn’t need to be super strong for peas and beans. For the heavier stuff like squash, I’m definitely going to go steel, but I’m going to try to make do with the PVC for now.

    I’m also thinking about planting some more things this weekend, probably beans, maybe a couple zucchini? We’re getting pretty close to the last frost date, and you know how four nice days tend to mess with your mind when you’re itching to plant.

    Two questions today: What kind of trellis do you use (if you use anything) for climbing plants? Permanent, semi-permanent? And, have you planted anything besides the typical cool-weather crops?

  • The new gardens

    When we moved, I had my mind pretty much set on doing mostly raised beds. In the past, I’ve always done the traditional row gardening, and while it worked, I wanted to try something different. Since it rains for much of the spring in Ohio, using a raised bed would more or less eliminate the worry about things getting too swampy. Also, I’ve read several places (and I agree) that it’s a more efficient way of gardening. I’m not a large-scale farmer with acres to plant, so planting 15 rows of vegetables, with 2′ between every row, didn’t seem like the best use of the space I had. And of course, my soil is pretty much solid clay, which does not make for the best carrots, so by raising them up, I can create a much better growth medium.

    In March, I built six 4′ x 8′ beds out of cedar, which I chose for its natural rot-resistance. I was going to start with two or four beds this year, but since I don’t really ease into anything, I did six. I filled each with equal amounts peat moss, vermiculite, and compost, and voila, we’re ready to plant. Easy as that. I do have some chicken wire around the perimeter to keep some critters out, but this will be replaced by something more permanent eventually, once I expand. Think white picket fence style.

    In addition to the vegetable beds, we also have a side yard, maybe 100′ by 60′, that’s more or less been entirely converted to fruit production. I put in a few raised beds for raspberries and strawberries, and planted a bunch of grapes, blueberries, cherries, peaches, apples, currants, an apricot, and a pear tree. No partridge in said pear tree though. I could have waited on all this stuff too, but my thinking was that it’s going to be several years before most of it yields anything, so why wait to plant it and lose another year? That and I tend to try to do everything at once, if you haven’t gotten that yet.

    I have several more areas that could be used for future expansion if it comes to that, but I think I’m sticking with what I’ve got for this year. Needless to say, I’m excited to see how the vegetables produce this year, and I’m looking forward to someday picking ripe peaches off the tree on a late July afternoon…

    Any of you have any advice, recommendations, or stories about starting your gardens?

  • Tomatoes 2011

    Ahh, the long-awaited tomato post. Both to enlighten my many readers and help me keep track of these things in future years, I’m going to list all the varieties that I’m going to grow, or try to. Some I’ve grown before, many are new. As I’ve mentioned before, I love colorful food, so I’m covering most of my bases as far as tomato colors go. It definitely adds an extra element when you have a beautiful dish, and you know that much of it was grown right outside. Anyways, the list.

    Green Grape – Unique olive yellow 1″ cherry tomatoes on very productive plants. Addictive spicy sweet flavor.
    New one for me, but I like cherries, and I’m intrigued by the flavor – I’ve done the Green Zebra tomatoes in the past and they’re almost… tangy?
    Mexico Midget – Hundreds of ½-¾” dark red cherry tomatoes on each plant. Huge tomato flavor for such small fruits.
    This one takes the award for Politically Incorrect Tomato of 2011.
    Blondkopfchen – Small golden yellow 1″ fruits borne in giant clusters, excellent sweet taste.
    A good German tomato.
    Sungold – One of the premier varieties of cherry tomatoes. The Sungold ripens to a golden orange, with a very sweet flavor.
    I’ve heard good things about this one as being very sweet. I like some tomato flavor with my sweetness, so we’ll see how the balance works out.
    Giant Syrian – Heavy yields of heart-shaped pink fruits with green shoulders that rarely crack. Meaty fruits often exceed one pound in weight. Excellent flavor.
    I wanted a larger variety, and this one sounded interesting.
    Japanese Black Trifele – High yields of blemish-free fruits that rarely crack. Rich full flavor, great for canning.
    Again, interested in the flavor – I’ve heard that black tomatoes taste a little earthy?
    Moonglow – Uniform bright orange globes with solid flesh, few seeds, and mild sweetness.
    This one’s mostly for the color – an orange slicer. But the taste had better be good too if it wants a repeat performance.
    Opalka – Phenomenal set of 3″ by 6″ red paste tomatoes on vigorous wispy vines. Excellent flavor and very few seeds make this a perfect processing tomato.
    One of two past tomatoes – this one got good accolades.
    San Marzano – Compact and prolific producer of bright-red, slim, 2-3 inch, plum-type, fruit over a long season.
    THE paste tomato, according to many people. I’m excited to see how it performs here.
    Redfield Beauty – Flattened pink 3-4″ fruits with excellent full flavor.
    An average size, red slicing tomato.
    Principe Borghese – Prolifically yield big clusters of 1-2 oz. red, plum shaped, crack-resistant paste tomatoes… prized for drying because they retain more flavor than most other drying varieties.
    I got these because of word-of-mouth. I’d like to dry my own tomatoes for the long, long Northeast Ohio winters.
    Costoluto Genovese – Large, juicy Italian heirloom tomato with an acidic-tart full-tomato flavor well suited for slicing and serving fresh or cooking.
    I’ve also grown these before, and they taste good, but I really like the appearance too – on the flatter side and very lobed/ruffled.

    So there’s the current list. As usual, I’ve started too many from seed, but that’s par for the course. As  you can see (okay, maybe not – I wouldn’t know most of them either), I definitely like to go the heirloom route. I like the tradition and history of the many different varieties (and not just limited to tomatoes), like knowing that this particular one was grown by Thomas Jefferson. And I especially love the multitude of shapes, colors, sizes, and flavors that you can get.

    Anybody have any suggestions that aren’t on this list? What’s your favorite tomato?

  • Potatoes and other goodies

    I prepped and seeded the ground around the septic tanks on Saturday, which took a lot of hours for a relatively small area. The ‘prep’ part of that equation is the vast majority of the effort – since our land was pretty well wooded until we built last year, there’s still lots and lots of roots and other random detritus that I need to rake out before I can do anything with the yard. To up the enjoyment factor, there were swarms of gnats out late Saturday afternoon, and my legs still itch this morning. But it did get done, so now the last remaining area to be tackled is the leach field. Can’t wait.

    Yesterday I was able to get my potatoes and chard planted, to go along with the peas, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, and onions that I planted about a month ago (most of which are coming along very nicely). I always do a standard Bright Lights chard, because I think half the fun of cooking is making your food look nice, and having a garden from which you can pick a rainbow of colors makes it that much easier.

    On the potato front, this year I’m going to try German Butterball – “First place winner in Rodale’s Organic Gardening Taste Off. A good choice for roasting, frying, and especially for mashed potatoes. Russeted skin and buttery yellow flesh. Always one of our favorite all-purpose potatoes. Excellent for long-term storage. Very good yields. 100-120 days.” (from SSE). Anything I can fry, roast, and mash is a winner in my book, and it’s a tribute to my German heritage (if it actually originated in Germany…). Maybe a bit of a long season for my neck of the woods, but we’ll see how it goes. I also threw in a couple of redskins from the store that had sprouted. Now I just hope things don’t get so wet that they start to rot – forecast for the next week or so consists of, you guessed it, rain (with one partly cloudy day thrown in so things don’t get too monotonous).

    However, since I was starting everything from scratch at the new house, I put in raised beds (in part to mitigate the excessive springtime raininess), and so far they’ve been a charm – in prior gardens I wouldn’t have even been able to walk without sinking, and I’ve had stuff planted for a month! Speaking of that, at some point this week, I’ll have a post or two detailing the current layout of all the gardens and orchard, so everyone can share in my excitement 🙂 Stay tuned!