New England, May 2015

Wow, CC! That's one helluva good-lookin' SFG!!!

I have a question about your Asparagus: when you bought yours did you get one or two year crowns, do you remember? And was it last or year before that you put those in? I ask because now that DH is telling me that he changed his mind and that he actually *does* like asparagus I need to put more in, but I don't want to get the ones I've gotten before from Walmart because they take too long to produce. I'd like to get some nice healthy crowns from a reputable nursery. Any ideas? Anyone?

Molly - my 2 favorites sources, Johnnys is sold out, and Fedco the asparagus order is over for the year. How about a nursery near you tho? I remember seeing crowns at the local Blue Seal feed store a year or so back, local farm stores may have them. Organic farms near you that sell seedlings? CSA types? Or any number of places you can order online, I see even ebay and amazon is carrying asparagus crowns. You could probably find some more established crowns if you google, or if you want organic crowns, maybe thru searching online you could find suppliers.

CapeCoddess wrote:It's amazing how fast everything grows and how energetic I feel eating it again.  No more winter lethargy!

Yummy salads with onions and radishes:

Baby collard & kale for smoothies:



No asparagus for me this year...but next year :


Tomatoes, basil, ground cherries and peppers awaiting warmer nights:
 

Mowed my lawn for the first time yesterday and we got drizzled on during the night.

CC

 Your baby collard and kale look amazing. I completely agree that they are just perfect for preparing organic smoothies. Springtime is the best moment for green smoothie detox and here are my favourite recipes for purifying and revitalizing the body https://medium.com/@remembermeagain/get-in-shape-with-spring-smoothie-detox-popsicles-9abcdfa22e74 . Healthy and delicious!

Molly, I saw some nice looking asparagus at Agway last weekend.

I keep enlarging my asparagus bed every year. I thought this year, being year #3, they would be producing more than they are, they tend to be thin this year, but they had a rough first year because the chickens kept digging them up, so actually I think they're a year behind, and next year will be the big year. But some of them are female and they produce seeds, so every year I'm planting those seeds too. "How much asparagus is enough?" "Just a little more." I read online that too shallow of soil (asparagus tend to rise upwards) and not enough water/nutrients can also stunt their thickness. At the end of my driveway is one solitary asparagus plant that grows - don't know how it got there. Last winter, the snow plow covered that area with stones that the town had put by the side of the roads. But up from those stones this spring there stands a beautiful stalk of asparagus. So it can't be all that fragile.   Honestly, we should start campaigns to drop asparagus seeds in empty public places, because it's hardy, lasts decades, looks nice, and is a food source. Why not start planting edibles along our routes?

It makes me nervous to eat a dandelion from my yard. They say the entire dandelion is edible, from flower to root! I need to try to find a young plant and eat a few leaves and see what happens. They're even growing in my garden (they do attract pollinators...) maybe it will seem safer if I eat one that grew wild in my garden. 

By the way, beekeepers love dandelions. They're next month's honey. Now that's a delicious way to serve dandelions.

NHGardener wrote:So it can't be all that fragile.   Honestly, we should start campaigns to drop asparagus seeds in empty public places, because it's hardy, lasts decades, looks nice, and is a food source. Why not start planting edibles along our routes?

It makes me nervous to eat a dandelion from my yard.

I love that idea.  When I was overseas...?somewhere?...I remember walking down the street and being able to pick oranges off the trees that lined the street.  How smart!

Sooooo...does your dog pee on the dandelions ...or what's the problem?

I'm not having many bees yet...and the strawberries are in bloom. Saw one lone bumble in the bed and he was flying right on by the flowers.

My spinach is trying to bolt already and we haven't even made it above 70 yet.  I wonder if watering with sun warmed water is the cause...?

Wow CC - you haven't been above 70 yet? We've been 85 twice I believe. Reminded me of how uncomfortable hot can be! I haven't planted spinach yet - don't know if I'll get to it this year.

It could be that your strawberries, even tho flowering, aren't quite producing pollen yet. Maybe it takes a day or 2 to kick in. I noticed the dandelions at first weren't getting any attention here.

It was chilly and gusty today. I brought my seedling friends indoors last night (afraid they would blow over) and they will stay tucked in until at least tomorrow. Tonight the NOAA forecast says 36F!!!! If it frosts and my nurtured buckwheat kicks it, I will be weeping. Weather underground says 41F for tonight tho. I'm heading to Home Depot to get a sprinkler and will turn it on the dry buckwheat sprouts towards dusk. (It's ridiculous to try to water that with a hose) They say that wet soil is only 1/4 as likely to frost as dry soil, the moisture retains heat.

Edit: Even tho weather underground says 41F, it also says: scattered frost possible. So if you hear someone screaming early in the morning tomorrow, that will be me. My microclimate welcomes frost with open arms.

Edit edit: NOAA says patchy frost after 5 a.m. I think I'm doomed. I'll go out there at 5 a.m. and hurl my body over it.

I hear you on the cold front expected.  We, too, are going to drop to the low 30s tonite.  Me, I put off transplanting out my tomatoes til tomorrow and will bring in the trays of those hardening off.  I can wait a little longer.  Its early in the season for me anyway.  Used to be May 30th for last frost, now they tell us May 15th.  I just watch the weather forecasts and hope for the best.

Here's my asparagus bed/berm before I harvested enough for dinner tonite....or tomorrow.  I'm checking with the family to find out when they want it served with lemon vinaigrette.
I'm leaving last fall's leaves between the beds to help keep down weeds. 

And here's my trays of tomatoes and peppers hardening off.  I leave them out now but tonite, due to cold, will bring indoors my trays just to be safe.
The peppers are too small yet and won't be transplanted out for another couple weeks when it gets warmer in the evenings.

QB, I think it may be too cold out for tomatoes tomorrow night, too. 

My peppers are still small, too...and some are headless.  
Did you start your peppers the same time you started your maters?  That's what I did.

CapeC......I started my tomato seeds on 3/27 (most of them) and my peppers on 4/6.  I always transplant my peppers later when the nites warm up a bit more than for tomatoes.
Tonite local forecaster says tomorrow nite will only drop to about 40F.  Its going to be a nice sunny day tomorrow, but I might wait an extra day.  I have some errands to run tomorrow and may be too tired to transplant anything.

Both my white bleeding heart (forefront and outside my kitchen door) and my pink one (in rear on Hosta Hill) are starting to blossom quite nicely.  The hostas are just producing their leaves now.
That's a thyme plant in the brown hanging basket.
And Mr and Mrs Hummer are both back from the south and are feeding at the two feeders I've got out for them.  I usually only have the one pair and then their fledglings a little later in the summer.  I'm thinking they may be the same pair year after year.

Well, we had a pretty good (bad) frost last night up my way. I think it went down into the high 20s being as it was still only 32 when I got up at 6 AM and the sun had already been shining. I covered some things last night, not others. We'll see after it all melts away what got hit/what didn't of what I left uncovered.

Did anyone else get a frost?

When I went outside at 6:30 a.m., there were patches of frost on the grass, so we did get a light frost. I looked at the buckwheat fields, and it's hard to tell. I'm crossing my fingers. I got almost all of them with the sprinkler last night, hoping that may have pulled them thru. I don't know if I'd see damage yet, or if they'll fall over later. They're only about an inch tall.

One of the peach trees I planted last spring has 2 blossoms open, so I threw an old tablecloth over that tree, and took it off this morning, and the blossoms are still there. 

Hopefully that's the last close encounter with frost.

Tonight will be chilly , so my transplant date is tomorrow. After I get things transplanted I'll post photos. The cheapo greenhouse on the deck has really done well for the plants. I've never seen my seedlings so green and lush and large, and they're still in the 6 pack cells....

Time to plant bean seeds too - bush and pole. The peas are about 2" tall.

I also got this really neat "orchard companion collection" from Fedco - yarrow, hyssop, sweet cicely, comfrey, and tansy. That has to go out today, it's been sitting here since I think Saturday - yikes. We'll see how that works. Have to dig up the grass between 2 fruit trees. If it looks like something helpful, I may try to propagate the plants next year.

I hope your buckwheat field made it through OK.

Have you read up on the plants in your companion set? I think I remember reading where sweet cicely, tansy and comfrey can get quite aggressive/invasive when they like their surroundings.

Maybe if they're being sold together the idea is that they'll keep each other in check?

I had heard comfrey can get a little hard to control, but I hadn't heard about the others. But that's not a real negative for me, because I'd like to divide all these around all my trees. They do say comfrey is a "chop and drop" for mulch - just keep chopping the leaves off. Maybe that keeps it in check.

Do any of you suffer from spring allergies? This is the 2nd May in a row my eyelids are all itchy and one is starting to swell. I never thought I was susceptible to allergies.

Molly and NHG, sorry to hear about the frost you got.  We had a freeze warning here in NY, so I covered everything I could last night.  There was a light frost on everything when I woke up, but thankfully it looks like everything pulled through. 

NHG, I don't get spring allergies.  Thank goodness, because the pollen has been ridiculous this year.  My white porch is yellow!  But I do get summer and fall allergies.  I don't know what's different about the seasons.  Maybe I'm more allergic to grass pollen or something.  I wonder if your allergies are bad these last two springs because the pollen has been so thick?

NHGardener wrote:
Do any of you suffer from spring allergies? This is the 2nd May in a row my eyelids are all itchy and one is starting to swell. I never thought I was susceptible to allergies.

Everything changes in your 50's.    My lifetime allergies/hayfever all but disappeared.  Just a little watering eyes and nose sometimes.  

yarrow - had it a few times but it rarely comes back.
sweet cicely - have it in total shade.  Easy to control and so pretty.
comfrey - One can only hope - had 4 stalks of it, now down to one.

But the only invasives that seem to survive in my garden are the ones I don't want...well, except for strawberries.  Can't even get bee balm to come back.


QB, beautiful round bleeding heart shrubs. Are they in full sun?

CapeC.....My Bleeding hearts get shade all morning and then get the sun in the afternoon since they are on the west side of the house.  They grow amazingly well.

Here I am again.  I show up with the best intentions every Spring and then....

So the husband has built me two more boxes making a total of four and I've converted a friend.  I've also learned from the forum that sometimes I can plant more than Mel's book recommends.

So can I plant more than
16 carrots
4 lettuce
9 spinach
1 rosemary
 and 4 thyme
in each square foot?

Thanks

Sounds exciting, Deborah C! "How big is your garden?" "Not big enough."  

I'd be a little cautious about planting too many things in one square, only because it might compromise the size of the others. Would more than 16 fully grown carrots fit in one square foot? Hmm. Maybe.

You just need more boxes.  Tell him not to put the tools away just yet.

back, Deborah!

I grow lettuce 3, 4 or 5 to a sq.  But sometimes I sprinkle seeds in a sq or 2 so they grow all clumped together.  I've also clumped spinach and other leafy greens.  I can either thin later or cut directly from the bunch.  They probably wouldn't grow very large this way but I prefer baby greens anyway.  I think I usually do 24 carrots/sq but only because they don't all germinate.  I don't grow the others in my SFG so can't help ya there.

Spinach in bottom 2 sqs at about 24/sq and needs thinning.  Lettuce sprinkled in top 2 sqs that will either be thinned and transplanted or cut from a clump to regrow.

On to a problem I'm having.  Here and there I have kale & collards that seem to be melting.  It's not all in one area, just random ones in amongst very healthy ones.  
Here's a melted kale next to the date at the bottom with it's healthy bed mates surrounding it:

Another one just beginning to melt at the opposite end of the 5 ft bed:

This is new for me.  I pulled up the roots and they are full and pretty and the moisture level seems fine.  Any ideas?

CC

Could it be the evil cutworms chomping through a vital artery? 

I always lose some. Maybe it's just par for the course that some of them aren't going to make it. I'd think either an assassin, or heat/moisture issues, but if they're all watered the same, then moisture wouldn't be it.

Maybe it was the fall guy, and the rest will be healthy.

My buckwheat seemed to have come through okay! So relieved. Tonight it's going to be 38F and there's no forecast of frost, but I'm not taking any chances, I dragged the sprinkler around and got most of the buckwheat watered again.

BTW, I couldn't take my itchy, swollen eyelids anymore and dropped by the walk-in today. The dr. said this is the worst tree pollen year e-v-e-r. He said it was the winter that ended too late, I guess jump starting everything at the same time. I figure the lack of rain probably doesn't help.

CC, my first thought was root knot nematodes--but then I remembered that I'm not in Florida anymore--and anyway you said that the roots looked fine.

So what about grubs? That would explain the patchy nature of the damage. I'd try digging that most recent plant out dirt and all and see if you can find grubs.

If you do, beneficial nematodes are your friends!

mollyhespra wrote:CC, my first thought was root knot nematodes--but then I remembered that I'm not in Florida anymore--and anyway you said that the roots looked fine.

So what about grubs?  That would explain the patchy nature of the damage.  I'd try digging that most recent plant out dirt and all and see if you can find grubs.

If you do, beneficial nematodes are your friends!

I thought grubs and beneficial nematodes also, Molly. My only problem is the beneficials need to be spread on moist medium and it's been so dry lately. I can water with the hose and the beneficials will have to deal with the chlorine. Unless you or someone can think of another way?
Either way, today's the day to do it. Supposed to cloud over later and maybe even rain tomorrow. Haha.

Today I'm planting out tomatoes and basil, and probably putting in some cucumber and squash seeds under clam packs. Anyone else planting out today?

The gnats outside are driving me crazy...

CapeC.....I'm thinking of transplanting out today but have so many errands to do away from home.  I might be too tired to work in my garden when I get home.  I have to play it by ear day to day here. 
Brought in my tomatoes and peppers last nite against the expected 30s cold.  I'll be bringing in my peppers every nite anyway until the temps get up into the 50s very regularly at nite.  They just can't take the cold.  It seems to stunt their growth.
If I'm lucky I'll at least get my tomatoes out to the covered greenhouse bed where I zipper it up tight for the nights so they stay pretty tolerably warm.  I'm so eager to get started with my hot weather crops.

I was going to transplant today. But it's cloudy and the tree pollen is still bothering me. I dug around in the garden beds, pulling some weeds and looking at the shape of the soil and what's growing out there. I heavily mulched in the fall with a lot of leaves and some seaweed. If it were raining more, it would be breaking down, but as dry as it's been, it's really holding the soil temperature down. I don't really want to remove it, so I'm just going to wait a little longer until the soil temperature isn't so chilly, and water it more to try to get it decomposing. Mid-May, we still have time.

Besides holding the temperature down, the mulch is also keeping the moisture content high even tho the tops of the beds are dry. I'm not watering the garlic anymore for fear it might rot under there. But the strawberries have shallow roots, I'll probably be generous with water there.

The first strawberry blossoms are appearing!

I see a high of 61F for Monday. Sunday looks beautiful tho! Let's see if tomorrow's rain materializes.