PNW: July Updates

Am I the only one who likes our weather here? Remember I was raised in Alaska (too cold), then went to college in Arizona (too hot) before moving here (just right!). I was happy when I heard it raining last night - that meant a day off from hand watering. Plus, we have the best weather for rainbow hunting!

One of my favorite things is when it's sunny and raining at the same time. The raindrops just sparkle!

Before I forget, we had some lovely last posts in our June update thread - I hope you all saw happycamper's before and after pictures! And Lavender Debs has a lot going on getting ready to make room a new greenhouse. I see you're eyeing your sunny front lawn as potential garden space - hopefully TheGinPalace's front yard garden served as some inspiration in that regard. I was reminded of a post by Rowena who shared that she has a front yard "gleaning garden" for passers by to take from. This would be a lovely way to accomplish that. I'm hoping to inspire a neighbor across the street who has full sun in her front yard, and a side yard just like that that is currently unused except for a large lavender that is full of bees - perfect companion for a garden!

boffer, I'm loving your gardens as always. Can't wait to see your pics when we do have one of those above average summers again. I'm interested in yours and Rose's snap peas. Looks like they produce really well and also grow really tall, which would be fun for the kiddos. My Oregon sugar pods top out at about 3' I think. When did you plant those carrots?! Mine are only a couple of inches tall.

Okay, enough stalling - I admit I'm feeling a bit reluctant to post pictures of my tiny garden after all the beauties that have been shared. But here goes! Here's an overall shot. Lots more MM showing than I would have liked at this point in the year. Still trying to get cucumbers. Brandywine has been pruned so much it hardly shows up against the trellis. Four of the five carrots that got their tops munched down grew back, but overall still puny.

I see some of you have been harvesting your garlic - is there some sign I should be looking for to know when it's ready to harvest? You can see here how my lettuces are finally beginning to fill up their squares.

My poor pepper plants look like little trees with all their lower leaves missing. I figure when the weather warms up they'll fill in. But this pepper is hanging on and growing well!

Tiny broccoli's. Oh well. They can still be eaten.

I dug around this onion that bolted and it hadn't begun to bulb so I left it in to see what the flower would look like. It's really grown! I'm glad the others didn't bolt - they seem to be beginning to bulb out now. One in the corner got broken by the hose or something. I cut it down and we'll see if new greens will come out.

That's a really tiny broccoli plant behind that onion square. More shade there than I realized. That must change with the season, because the cauliflower I planted there last year grew fine. Anyway, there's my garden!

gwen your garden looks great

that sure is a tall onion.....are you going to save seeds?.....we have a green onion that we are going to try and save the seeds from...it has a nice flower ball at top...but im not sure what it does next and how to save the seeds....

our sugar snap peas are from ed humes were sown in march.....we grew them last year too...and love the sweet taste of them and they produce really well.....they are a hybrid so we cant save the seeds....we also tried an heirloom type of sugar snap this year....but they look more like a snow pea and even though they taste ok...they are not the same as our ed humes sugar snaps....not the same sweet taste....they were only to get to 4ft tall...but.... they went up and fell over our 5ft fence.... ...hope are neighbor likes peas...... .....they are hanging over our fence on top of our neighbors rose bushes......

hugs

rose

Boffer thanks for the advice.....and everything you said (((hugs)))

*hone your cool weather gardening strategies* YES....YES....YES

i have learned so much from everyone here in our PNW forum and feel blessed to have this forum to come to for help....we are excited to have our first true fall planting with our hoops thank you so much Boffer!!

hugs

rose

boffer wrote:A 2x2 box full of sunchokes. I'm afraid that I'm going to get one giant sunchoke that's 2x2!

Hey boffer, you had to google forking pranks, I had to google sunchokes! Posting my find in case anybody else was wondering:

They sound really yummy. I'm inviting myself to your place when you're ready to harvest so I can taste them and bring home some of the smaller ones to start my own patch.

gwennifer wrote:...Hey boffer, you had to google forking pranks, I had to google sunchokes! Posting my find in case anybody else was wondering:

Yeah, but forking pranks wasn't a Rookie Topic!

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t6834-friday-s-rookie-post-iiisunroots

Anybody is welcome to a few pounds this fall to get your own going. You can replant perpetually, and they grow good in 'dirt' too. This past spring I measured out 2lb, and they fit in a 'if it fits, it ships' old box that I had for $5.50. I went to the P.O. to get the boxes before I said anything on the forum, and they had discontinued that small size box.

Prices on the internet are all over the place. I've seen them for as much as $8 per pound, which is a rip-off in my opinion.

In my defense, I would have had to actually click on that topic to know that sunroots were the same thing as sunchokes...! (I've hardly read any of the Rookie Topics. Shameful, isn't it?) I found your harvest picture. Question: Did you grow these in MM? They seem very clean - no problems with the vermiculite sticking to them like it did your taters?

The skins are tougher than taters. I took a scrub brush to them. The skins are edible though. They sure are ugly looking things, eh?

gwennifer wrote:Am I the only one who likes our weather here? ...
I'm interested in yours and Rose's snap peas. Looks like they produce really well and also grow really tall, which would be fun for the kiddos. My Oregon sugar pods top out at about 3' I think. When did you plant those carrots?! Mine are only a couple of inches tall.

I like any temperature as long as the sky is blue. There'll be no Arizona winters for me in the future-my wife loves our weather too.

The peas in my picture are Super Sugar Snaps from TSC, planted on 3/17. They're only supposed to reach 5 feet, but mine are pushing 7. I made four carrot plantings in the box. The left corner was planted 3/7, and I've harvested some already. The right corner was planted for carrot week, but they're not ready yet.

With the variety you have in your box, it's much more interesting to look at than a box of carrots, or a box of beets. However, I chuckled at your leaf lettuce because that's how I grew them my first year too. Now, I plant at least 20 per square and snip at them pretty hard as they grow. I can get a lot more lettuce out of a square that way. It will be time to harvest your garlic when they turn partially brown. My spring broccoli heads have been small the last three years, and I've been getting big heads in the fall.

I forgot to mention that for the first time I'm getting baseball size Walla Wallas. They are incredibly sweet, and so much better than store bought. But my box of potato onions all turned out very small, and the red and white onions all bolted early. Go figure.

The summer greenhouse.


18 tomato plants; next year will be 30.


No blush yet.




More garbage can lid lettuce; I've got five of these scattered around.


I pruned a secondary vine off a plant, and stuck it in MM. It's not very healthy looking, but it's got two fruit coming.


All the fruit is on one branch, and I'm having trouble keeping it on the rope.


Only one spaghetti squash so far.


I'm losing the battle with aphids on my peppers, but this is the first time I've gotten jalapenos.


More sad looking peppers on the water barrels I'm trying to use for passive heating. Solar passive heating in the PNW? NOT! The tall cylinder in the back is my old water heater I replaced last month, full of water.

Looking GREAT Bof!

Great greenhouse growth Boffer!

GG

PS - Hubby would love your weather too. He likes those temps and gray skies.

Even by PNW standards I am way behind. No shortcake, but the corn is about knee high. There will be peas for dinner. The rest of you PNW'ers amaze me!

the weather is wonderful ......this weekend we transplanted two pepper plants into larger containers....glad we did because it looked as though they were starting to get a bit root bound they each have several green peppers on them.....we are thinking about keeping them out of the green house while we are in this heat wave......we are also wondering if its to hot in there for our brandywine tomato plant......today at 3:30pm it was 119*



our first green pepper






over the weekend we also started some more bean starts.....it might be a bit to late....should have thought about it sooner and had them ready for when we pulled our potatoes ...yes we dug up our taters a couple of days ago.....worried they may have blight...... but after researching more.......i dont think it was blight....i think they just got extra ugly this year the taters are more *new potato* size.....very yummy :drunken: we got over 20 lbs worth!





here is some of the harvest.....we already had two meals from them before taking the pic



our lettuce is waaay out of control and remember the cantalope starts we bought because i was so worried the seedlings we had were to small....well....they are just about the same size now

store bought cantalope starts



our cantalope from seed




our cucumbers, squash and pumpkins all have either flowered or have flower buds

pumpkin from saved seeds of last years



cucumbers



its amazing how much the garden grows with a bit of
sunshine

hugs
rose.....

Lavender Debs wrote:Even by PNW standards I am way behind. No shortcake, but the corn is about knee high. There will be peas for dinner. The rest of you PNW'ers amaze me!

Debs we think you are pretty amazing too!!

:drunken: sooooo jealous of your corn!! :drunken:

hugs
rose

boffer wrote:I planted these seeds 90 days ago. I swear the package said Iceberg Lettuce.

Hey boffer, I almost forgot... I took a picture of iceburg lettuce starts I saw at Home Depot:


They look like a match to me. Have you ever grown a head type lettuce before? When I saw Josh's pics from his Big Stuff thread, it looks like tons of loose leaves grow too. Are you gonna keep letting them grow to see if they form a head? I think there is a Rookie Topic on head lettuces in the works...

No, I haven't grown head lettuce before. I have the room, so I'll let them grow. I tasted some old and new leaves yesterday, and they're getting bitter. These are iceburg lettuce from a flat of starts that I picked up from the nursery that were on closeout. These started heading up when they were quite a bit smaller.


Maybe there's a trick to get them to head up. I look forward to reading the RT.

Impressive! So what is going into the ready bed?

broccoli, kohlrabi, broccoli, kohlrabi, broccoli, kohlrabi, broccoli, kohlrabi, broccoli, kohlrabi, broccoli, kohlrabi, broccoli, kohlrabi, broccoli, kohlrabi, broccoli, kohlrabi, broccoli, kohlrabi, ....

My spring kohlrabi did poorly, and I didn't get to put up much broccoli. My fall broccoli always does lots better.

Side-by-side with my spring broccoli, my cauliflower always does much, much better.

Do the plants I planted from seed look like iceburg to you?

boffer wrote:

Do the plants I planted from seed look like iceburg to you?

No they don't.

Okay boffer, you were holding out on me by having other mature iceburgs to compare with!

Nix my statement about the upcoming Rookie Topic on head lettuce... Looks like it was scheduled for last Friday and 'twas a no-show. Hey - we're all volunteers here, whaddya want!

BTW, I'm glad you got a chuckle out of my lettuce plant spacing. Yes, I did go by the book on those, 4 per square. I have six varieties total, three head/loose head types and three loose leaf. I did read here on the forums that most plant the loose leaf types more intensively but decided in the end to plant them the same so they all would match and I could compare how they grow. I can't help it!

gwennifer wrote:...Yes, I did go by the book on those, 4 per square...

I did too my first year, and recommend it.

gwennifer wrote:...[so] I could compare how they grow.

One of the most important things a gardener can do!

Rose, that is an incredible bell pepper! Don't you think that's such a nice one for your first? I have one growing well still, but it's kinda funky shaped. I got a laugh after checking out the remaining bell pepper plants at a few nurseries recently. They look just as pitiful as mine. It helped reassure me that it's not the soil or the care - it's the weather!

Newbie question here - I tasted several of my lettuces yesterday and *yuck!* they are bitter. They haven't bolted yet and none of the head lettuces ever started heading up yet. Do I just pull them all and try again for a fall crop?

These aren't SFG, but here's an odd harvest from some berries we purchased this year (and still haven't planted anywhere ).I just thought it was funny how they are the same size.

Thank you all for your lovely encouraging posts. I'm sorry for my tardy reply but I know you will all understand that the weather has been far too nice to be inside and I have been making the most of the beautiful evenings in the garden.

I did check out the competition as some of you suggested, sadly I do not qualify though. My beds are 12 inches tall. No matter though, I love the conversation my front garden generates - as the weather improves and more people are out and about they sometimes stop and ask questions. This year I gave 2 of my squares to a little girl a few houses away - we bought purple beans and Dora the Explorer gloves and she comes down every day with her Mum to water them. Her delight in watching them grow and tending them is so lovely to watch. Its so wonderful there has been such resurgence in growing ones own food - there are three or 4 gardeners at work too, it's the first thing we discuss in the morning!

On another note, I harvested 16 bulbs of softneck garlic last weekend and as I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, it was evident to me that they should have been harvested earlier. Some of them don't have much in the way of papery skins left on them. Never mind, I'm a bit of a garlic fiend so none of them will go to waste. I tried my hand at braiding them and it really is a woeful effort but at least they're curing...they're just not pretty while they do that



I'm keeping a very sharp on the hardnecks, have turned off the water to them and hope that I get it right this time!

Everyone has such lovely garden pictures - gardeners seem to be so resourceful and isn't it wonderful that there's always something new and exciting to learn from someone else?

~L~

GWEN did those berries taste yummy? ....not sure about an answer for your lettuce.....ours is doing the same thing....and they are growing like crazy....but...they are a bit bitter too...thinking we should pull them and replant....but not sure...

theginpalace.....your garlic looks great congrats!!.....how sweet of you to give a couple squares to your little neighbor ...its sure fun to gardening with the little ones....our children have and still are learning so much about life and how everything works together they also learn sometimes things dont go/grow the way you thought it would....and its ok.....

here is a few pics of whats growing....i love this time of year....our SFG is thick and full.....its amazing what a little bit of heat can do for your veggies :drunken:

our SFG area ...we have 2- 4x4 box's ....you can only see box #1 in this pic...box #2 is right next to.....and box #3 a 1-2x8 on the right side of this pic....we have wine barrels, self watering containers (the childrens) hanging plnts and other containers for our tomatoes all filled with MM.....


a differnt angle view of box number 1




box #1 scarlett runner ( racer is what my daughter calles them) beans in our SFG...they are now flowering and almost to the top of our 8ft trellis...



here is the view of our number 2 box in our SFG



our childrens wine barrels and #3 box in the background with our fava beans....their pumpkins are really taking off!..... amish pie heirloom



hugs
rose

Wow, FamilyGardening! Beautiful garden...design very attractive. Congratulations on a job well done! Nonna

FamilyGardening, I love the pumpkins in wine barrels! What a fabulous idea - I've never tried pumpkins because I thought I didn't have the space, but having seen your pictures I'll definitely try them next year. I agree about a little sun, just in the last week things have really taken off.

Beautiful pictures, thank you for sharing them.

~L~