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.