December 1, 2012

 We finished planting the last of the garden beds today! Last weekend we went to Lowe's and purchased some additional cabbage plants. If they were going to make it, they had to go into the bed today!! With all of the preparation for the freezes that we had last week, last weekend was too busy to do any planting! Besides, I certainly didn't want to have newly planted cabbage plants in the ground immediately before 2 nights of freezing temperatures.

Last weekend we purchased another roll of frost blanket fabric, which we cut up and I sewed together to create tents for our citrus trees. Frames constructed of pvc provided the needed support. We also removed the hot banana pepper plant since there was no way we could cover it and the broccoli in the second bed. Using bent tomato cages, old bed sheets and clothes pins, we managed to cover the beds without the pvc hoops. Two nights of below freezing temperatures, but everything survived. The broccoli in the second bed has some burn marks on some of the leaves, but nothing serious.

 Before planting in a bed, we always add a mixture of compost, along with time release fertilizer. In the first shot, you can see that part of the strings have been removed. The soil in the lower left corner, which still contains radish and beet plants, is lighter than the rest of the bed. We didn't disturb those 2 squares, but side dressed them after getting the strings back into place.

Here you can see Dean putting the strings back across the bed. When he built these beds for me, we experimented with different ways to mark of the squares. After contending with a very exuberant black lab puppy bounding through our garden beds to play with the dowel rods we had used, I took Dean up on his suggestion of using roofing nails and string.

 When we supplement a bed with compost, we like to add several bags. It's more difficult to do with the strings in place, so we simply unattach them from one side, toss them onto the ground on the other side, and add our compost, which we mix in using either a small tiller or a shovel. Adding the compost a square at a time may work for some, but it's faster and easier to do it our way when you have 4' x 16' beds!

Since the string has some flexibility, it's a simple matter to stretch the string back across the bed, then wrap the loop back around the screw. Dean used flat-head roofing nails and only left it high enough for the string to go around it, so it's even comfortable enough for me to sit on the edge of the beds without it hurting, which I do often.

As you can see, this planting of cabbage takes up just over 1/2 of the 4' x 16' bed. Here I am creating a depression in the soil where each of the cabbage plants will go. This will help water to be directed to the roots of the plants. We plant them 24 inches apart. Last spring, when planting the first cabbage plants, we spaced them every 12 inches and regretted it. I felt like the cabbages were fighting for space, so I gave these plenty of room to grow!

I like using a bulb planter when planting my transplants. It takes out just the right amount of soil and can easily be done with one hand.

You can see in this photo how root-bound these cabbage plants were getting

 Here you see my 2 assistants- Belle, my son's black lab that I mentioned earlier, and Sheila, my father-in-law's puppy who isn't quite a year old. Bell is waiting for me to quit messing in that black stuff and throw the ball, already!!

Sheila isn't helping, she just thinks she is supposed to be the center of attention AT ALL TIMES!!! :-) Once she saw that I wasn't going to stop messing with this other stuff, she was off to play with Belle. Those 2 are really good company for each other and we've spent many evenings sitting in Mimi & Papa's back yard watching them play.

These are the three broccoli plants in the first bed, closest to the house. The one on the top left has the largest head of broccoli, with the smallest head on the plant in the center. The plant below is on the very end and has the medium-sized head, about as large as you palm.

 As you can see, these broccoli plants are also planted every 24 inches, and believe me, they take it! Maybe if we needed more room for other stuff I'd consider growing them every foot, but since we have the space, I'd rather have larger broccoli heads.

These are the three cabbage plants in the same bed. Interesting enough, when Leah was taking these pictures, she didn't even take a picture of the largest cabbage plant. It is on the right edge of the photo, just out of the range of the camera.

 One thing we've definitely noticed this year is the abundance of yellow jackets visiting our garden. They have discovered that cabbage leaves make great water fountains!!

Our Swiss Chard is finally starting to grow! I picked one piece today and took it in to Bugsy and she loved it. In the empty squares on the left side of this photo, I replanted some romaine lettuce today. I had planted it at the end of September, but it was too hot for it to even sprout, so we decided to try it again.

 I experimented this year with Arugula, which wasn't much of a success. Dean and I just really didn't care for the peppery green, so it was replaced today with another planting of spinach, at Dean's request. Last year we planted 4 squares with spinach and had a bumper crop, so we're hoping for the same this winter.

After experimenting with Rainbow carrots last year, we decided to stick with Scarlet Nantenes, which had a great color and very sweet flavor. Dean really enjoyed carrying them to work in his lunchbox. All in all, we have 8 squares of them in this garden.






At this point, every square in all 3 beds is either planted, or under a plant (in the case of the squares under all of those broccoli and cabbage plants!). Since we have two 4' x 16' beds and one 4' x 12' bed, that would be 176 squares of winter garden, all planted. Our next goal is to get the other 2 beds equipped with the hoops and frost blankets, along with the pvc clips.

Dean's trees are doing well- we picked one Meyer Lemon yesterday, but we think we're going to wait a while on all of the others. We were checking his Fruit Cocktail tree out yesterday and found several more fruits had set than he originally thought, so he'll be busy babying that tree all winter!

Fall Update

Haven't posted since the end of September, so I thought it was about time to do an update. Here are the latest photos of the garden.

November 3, 2012

This one was taken November, just after Dean set up the hoops to cover one of the beds. It is the bed closest to the house that has the lettuces in it, which is how our guinea pig, Bugsy, is getting her food, so it was outfitted for winter first. In the second bed, about 1 week before this, we took out the remaining 2 bell pepper plants. They still had small peppers on them and were full of blooms, but it was taking them too long to mature since the weather had turned cooler. One had 16 peppers, the other had 19 peppers (all of them smaller size peppers) when we cut off the pepper and pulled the plants up.

Whole Garden

 This is a photo of the entire garden, as viewed from the southwest corner. The third bed is difficult to see unless you click on the photo, as it is hidden by our banana pepper "tree". This is the first time we have ever tried to have a fall/winter garden, so this will definitely be a learning experience. At this point, we have about 5 varieties of lettuce, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, and collard greens. Note the pepper plants in the bottom right of the photo.





This series of shots is of the first bed, closest to the house. It has cabbage and broccoli down the center 2 squares, surrounded by carrots, lettuces, spinach & swiss chard.

Starting with the top left, there are 2 squares of spinach, then carrots in the 4 squares in the lower left. In the very center of the photo is arugula. On the right, top to bottom, are Beaded Simpson lettuce, cabbage, and  Romaine lettuce.







Again, there is Beaded Simpson lettuce across the top of the photo, cabbage in the middle, and, across the bottom of the photo, Romaine lettuce to the left and carrots and another type of Romaine to the right.

You really can't see the squares closest to the house here, since they are somewhat overshadowed by the broccoli! At the very end, to the far right, is the Swiss Chard. It's taking it a while to get started, but is growing better now. I think the heat was too much for it. Four empty squares run along the bottom of the bed, as it was too hot for the Romaine I had planted here to germinate. As you can see, April is on the lookout for my "Garden Friends", aka lizards!

 This is the side of the bed closest to the house, showing all of the lettuces. We haven't bought lettuce for Bugsy in about 3 weeks at this point. I hope this bed does well enough to keep her in lettuce for the entire winter.

Broccoli! By the time we had set up the beds last year, it was really too late to try to plant broccoli. We did manage to find cauliflower (we only got a small head off one plant) and cabbage (very successful for our first attempt- 3 3lb heads), but couldn't find broccoli to try. In order to get the cauliflower and cabbages last spring, we had to set up a shade frame to keep the temperatures down in order to get a harvest at all. I actually harvested them earlier than I wanted because, by the end of April, it was just too hot.

This head is about the size of a silver dollar at this point (photo taken 11/4), but has doubled in size in the 3 weeks since.








All of the cabbages are doing well, having all formed the inner head. We have 9 cabbage plants; 3 in the first bed and 6 in the third bed. The 3 in the first bed are slightly larger than those in the third bed.

 Ah, the infamous "Pepper Tree"! This is actually a Bonnie Banana Pepper plant that is actually larger than Dean's orange tree! If all plants in this world were as prolific, there would be no world hunger!! We finally removed it on November 18th, the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It was still full of blooms, but was taking forever for the peppers to get ripe because of the cooler weather. Not bad for a plant that was planted the first part of March!

 This is the broccoli in the second bed, just east of the pepper tree. The broccoli in the first bed is growing faster than that planted in the second bed, probably because we didn't add any compost in the second bed. We were worried about disturbing the roots of the pepper plants, so decided to just fortify the bed with bone and blood meal and let it go at that. Now that we have the pepper plants out, we'll side-dress these with the compost to give them a boost. At this point (11/23), there are small dime-sized or smaller heads on each of these.

 This is the third garden bed, which is the one farthest from the house. All four of the end squares contain carrots. Next to the carrots are 9 collard green plants, 8 of which are growing like gang-busters!

Papa and Mimi came down 2 days before Thanksgiving and harvested the lower leaves, just a couple of weeks after these photos were taken. They had a great lunch of greens and cornbread, according to Papa. The collards had a really good flavor and, the best part, were easy to clean!





 Here are the 6 cabbage plants in this bed. Notice the deformed cabbage farthest to the right, bottom row. Just after we planted it, I found a worm enjoying a cabbage buffet! He didn't survive too long after that. As a result, there are a lot of deformed outer leaves, but it has formed a good head, so we're leaving it alone.

 While Dean's fruit trees aren't in our garden area, they are in our backyard and get babied as much as my garden, so I thought it fitting to add some photos. This is his Fruit Cocktail tree, which contains branches of Meyer Lemon, Ruby Red Grapefruit, Navel Oranges, limes, and one or two other varieties which escape me at the moment. By far, the majority of the tree is Meyer Lemon. At this point, there are 6 lemons on the tree; the 4 shown in the top photo, which are in the process of turning yellow, the smaller green one shown in the second shot, and one brand new one, shown at the very bottom.




The lemon branches just bloomed last month, and was completely covered with blooms. Dean, who was scared that the branches would be overwhelmed should even a portion of those blooms become lemons, took the scissors to it and removed the dying blooms. He missed this one, however, so we now have a new lemon growing.

These photos were taken in October, when it was in full bloom. As you can see, this tree was VERY popular with our winged friends! These are two of Dean's favorite shots. These were taken by Leah to use in her photography class.

We're not real sure what this is- it looked like a hummingbird, but wasn't as colorful. The body stayed very still while the wings flapped.

Fall 2012

September 30, 2012

We began clearing out the garden about 2 weeks ago with the removal of the last of the zipper peas and the bell peppers that had overgrown their cages. We left 2 bell pepper plants (one yellow and one green) that still had room in their cages, along with the okra and hot banana pepper, which is still producing profusely! (If all plants produced like this one, there would be no world hunger!)

Our Prolific Pepper Plant

Our Yellow Bell Pepper

Okra cutting

By yesterday, we could see that the okra was winding down. Leaves were dropping like crazy and there were no longer any blooms; two of the plants had dropped all of their leaves and were just stalks. We've had a couple of nights in the 60's and one night in the 50's, and that's just not okra's cup of tea. So we cut off all visible okra, broke out our mini circular saw, and cut them down. We fried the last okra for dinner today and finished it off at supper tonight. After cutting the okra and dropping the strings (our grids), we added compost and 3 month fertilizer to the beds, then Dean tilled them up using the little tiller. We couldn't do the bed the farthest from the house because of the peppers, but we were able to amend the soil without the tilling, being careful of the roots of the pepper plants.

As the evening began cooling down, Papa and Sheila came down and we began planting all of our seeds. We're going to put the larger plants such as cabbage & broccoli down the center of the first bed (closest to the house), with the squares to the outside containing our lettuces, carrots and swiss chard. We've planted seeds for 2 types of carrots, 3 types of leaf lettuce, 2 types of romaine lettuce, and rainbow chard. Papa laughs at me as I plant- I have a special pencil that I use with 1" increments marked off so I know how deep to plant. He says he never did any of that- he just put the seeds down and covered them up.

Today we went to Lowe's and found broccoli, cabbage & collard transplants in 9 packs, beet, radish, parsley & cilantro seeds. What we didn't find was mustard greens! After we got home we planted everything, rearranging my garden plan as we went. We originally hadn't planned on 9 broccoli, cabbage & collard plants, but whatever we can't eat, someone else certainly can. The original plan was to plant only the bed closest to the house- it's amazing how that changes with a couple of trips to Lowe's!!

Our winter garden, almost all planted.

Spring & Summer 2012

The first weekend (February 20) that we had the beds closer to the house, I not only moved the 4 best looking lettuce from the old beds, but I also planted 4 squares of Bonnie's Best cabbage, 4 squares of White Cloud cauliflower, 8 squares of romaine lettuce, 4 squares of carrots (2 Scarlet Nantes & 2 Kaleidoscope) &  & 4 squares of Double Choice Hybrid spinach.

March was a very busy month for us. With our last frost date being March 15, everything for the summer garden had to start going in, even though we had so much of the spring plants still taking up over half of one of the 16 foot beds. 

Starting March 5th, we began our succession planting of Sugar Pearl Hybrid corn- 2 squares every week for 6 weeks. I planted 4 stalks per square and knew I would have to aid in the pollination when the time came.

March 11-12, we planted 4 hills of Burpee Burpless Beauty cucumbers, 4 squares of Single Italian Plain-Leafed parsley, 1 square of Ocimum Basilicum basil, 1 square of oregano, 3 hills of Butterstick Hybrid squash, 2 hills of zucchini, 16 squares Fordhook lima beans 2 yellow and 3 green bell peppers, 1 hot banana pepper, 2 hills of Hearts of Gold cantalope and 7 tomato plants (2 Heatmaster, a Parks Whopper, a Better Boy, Patio, Marion & Lemon). We harvested the first outer leaves of the romaine lettuce this weekend which, along with the leafy lettuce, provided us with a nice salad.

March 25: Harvested the smallest Romaine lettuce head today for a salad and pulled up the leafy lettuce. It was almost a foot tall and damaged by a hail storm yesterday. It had served us well through the winter, so no complaints here. Planted 19 squares of zipper peas, 9 plants per square Cantelope, zucchini, squash, lima beans, cucumbers & corn are all up; the cabbage, which only have 1 square foot, are taking up 1 1/2 x 2 foot each, crowding the cauliflower something fierce. They definitely need more room if they're going to get to the 7 pound heads promised!

March 30: The cauliflower plants are about 1 to 1 1/2 feet tall and the inner-most leaves are starting to curl inwards, so I suspect the heads will start forming soon. They still have until the end of April to grow, so there's plenty of time. What isn't waiting is the spinach! We've been picking it for the last several days, and I can hardly keep up with it!

April 1: Our garden is coming along nicely!
Bed 1 (on the left) is, front to back, spinach, zipper peas, romaine lettuce, then, in the back, cauliflower on the left and cabbage on the right. In Bed 2, tomatoes in the front, then peppers, lima beans, zucchini, squash, cantelope & cucumbers.

Zipper peas & spinach

Corn, cabbage (left) and cauliflower (right).

Squash, zucchini, cucumber & cantelope.

April 6: Well, we have nice cabbage heads visible! The largest is about the size of a baseball. By late afternoon, the temperature is so warm that the leaves are beginning to wilt. A trip to Lowe's for pvc, zip ties, and shade cloth to erect a large frame over the cauliflower and cabbage is in order! Unfortunately it's going to be too late for the romaine- it's just getting too warm and they're wanting to get too tall, so we decided to go ahead and harvest the last of them today before they bolt. Once that happens, they will turn bitter. The spinach is going crazy! We've been harvesting it pretty heavily the past week, and it's showing no signs of stopping!

Romaine

April 7: Planted 16 squares of cowhorn okra today. The soil temperature was in the mid 70's, which is warm enough for germination, so we thought we'd try it. It has been warm enough to get our lettuce ready to bolt, let's just hope it holds for this okra to take off!

April 22: We found the first cauliflower head yesterday!! They're still small, but present. Went ahead and tied up the outer leaves to protect the heads from the sun. The cantelope vines have made it to the trellis we've erected for them and the cucumbers. The cucumbers are about 1/3 of the way up already, with the first cucumbers visible, with a ton of blooms. Metal conduit in a u shape with the fine garden-string trellis isn't very expensive, but they say it will hold. The first blooms are starting to form! Had to trellis the lima beans- the long runners were wrapping around the pepper plants! By yesterday, all the okra except 4 squares were up. Yeah!!! The news on the parsley isn't so good. It is being overrun by the lima beans. I'm hoping it will recover since we've trellised the lima beans in the same fashion as the cucumbers.

Parks Whopper Tomatoes

Cantelope, cucumbers, zucchini & squash

April 23: Well, those last  4 squares of okra finally made it! I planted 12 more seed in 4 packs and put them on the front porch. I want to put them where the cabbages are once they are harvested, but I need to get them in some soil now. Not very happy with the squash- it's starting to look more like yellow zucchini than the crook-necked squash I'm used to.

April 25: Finally got the zipper pea seeds from High Springs and got them planted today- 9 per square.

April 30: Cut our first hot banana pepper today. Papa says they aren't hot, but I'll have to take his word for it!

May 1: Picked our first carrot today! Not very long, only 4-4 1/2", but it was a little smaller than the size of a quarter by the greens. Bugsy enjoyed the greens, we enjoyed the carrot- very sweet with no bitterness! Cut our 2 cauliflower heads because it was getting so hot. A little disappointed at the results- about 2/3 of a pound for both, but we really can't complain since we had no idea what we were doing and cauliflower is the most difficult of the cabbage family to grow, requiring ideal conditions. Picked the first squash today and I was right- it is much more similar to a yellow zucchini than a squash. It still tastes the same, though, so we'll live with it for now!

Patio & Marion tomatoes

May 3: Picked our first cabbage today! It was being crowded out by the rest, so we decided we'd go ahead and get it out. With the outer leaves in place, it weighed 5.1 pounds; after stripping it down to just the tight head, it was a little over 2 1/2 pounds. Not bad for our first cabbage! Got our first bell pepper yesterday, with another one ready to pick today! A couple more will be ready to go before the end of the week. Also picked our first zucchini today. 

May 4: I don't know how I missed this yesterday, but we picked our first cucumber today! The vines are full of blooms and there are several more that will be ready later in the week. The lima beans are simply loaded with blooms, but we're fighting aphids every step of the way! I've already sprayed 3 times, but it doesn't seem to slow them down. Picked the first cherry tomatoes today- very sweet, with the Park's Whopper starting to turn.

Patio tomatoes

Lima Beans & carrots

Kaleidescope Carrots

Our garden on May 13.

This is the end of my notes for our garden. At about this time of the school year, things just start going insane and I couldn't keep up with the notebook.  You'll notice there's not much about the tomatoes in these notes. They didn't do so well. Shortly after I brought home the lemon tomato, the leaves turned on it and it died. The other tomatoes started having the same problem- spotty leaves, dying from the bottom up, blossoms falling off. I tried copper spray, but to no avail. They were so weak that when the aphids made their way over, they just couldn't handle the strain. We got about 5 tomatoes, tops. We tried tomatoes again later in the summer, but too many bugs attacked them.

Squash vine borers got the zucchini and squash, and the cucumber beetles killed the cantelope and cucumbers (but not before the light-weight trellises broke on everything: cucumbers & cantelope, tomatoes & lima beans!

The zipper peas did pretty well, except for the aphids, which shortened their life considerably. We got a couple of messes off them. The second round of okra I put in our new bed, but it never got over 6', when the first planting was well over 7 1/2 ft. tall when we cut it down on September 29th. We actually froze about 30 quarts of cut okra. Lima beans were a success, we had a couple of meals off them. The oregano & parsley never did do much, but we froze a couple of bags of basil. At the time of this writing (September 30), we still have the hot banana pepper, 1 green bell pepper and 1 yellow pepper still in the garden and producing. Dean has to cut the hot pepper about 2 times per week, getting about 1/2 a gallon each time.