July 2012, New England

Camp, I'm totally envious of your baby eggplant. Mine are taking their sweet time along with the bell peppers!

Everyone's garden looks so lovely!! Here are some updated (July) photos of my garden:

My first golden zuchinni [below]



Our first tomatoes [below]



The broccolli and cauliflower happily growing now that thecabbage worms have been banished [below]



Ava, running an irigation system check [below]



Green beans growing strong and tall. The climbing ones are up front and the bush are right behind them. Lots of green beans to come, yummmy! [below]



So many happy tomatoes. Family will be happy. [below]

But moldeen you have SQUASH! I'm not going to have squash for a few weeks yet.

Psst, I'll tell you a secret about eggplants, they LOVE hot weather, the LOVE water and are HUNGRY plants. I topdressed the bed with compost and give them compost tea every once in a while. You will soon have lovely aubergine, Your plant look good!

Ok, I'm a little confused.... The fall crops or the tomatoes? I planted the fall seeds directly in the new 4x4 and covered with floating cloth.

As far as the tomatoes go.... The ones that are ripening came from Allen's across the river in Westminster, VT. I didn't buy really large seedlings either. My huge Roma is ripe and about 6 of the sweet 100 cherry tomatoes. According to my records I planted them on 5/13 and used a red water tent on the Roma and bagged the 2 topsy turvy sweet 100's when necessary for cold protection. The tiny tomatoes I was concerned about are now about 8 feet tall and still growing. They all have large green tomatoes on them. My pickling cukes and squash have been producing since the end of June as well.

I guess my risky early planting paid off this year. I saved a huge amount of milk jugs for cloches and can easily get more (we drink about 5 gallons of milk a week!)

camprn wrote:But moldeen you have SQUASH! I'm not going to have squash for a few weeks yet.

Psst, I'll tell you a secret about eggplants, they LOVE hot weather, the LOVE water and are HUNGRY plants. I topdressed the bed with compost and give them compost tea every once in a while. You will soon have lovely aubergine, Your plant look good!

And I totally love my squash!!! Woohoo!

That's awesome to hear about eggplant. I gave them some fertlizers last week. But I didn't know which they'd want so I gave them all five! Now it has been super hot, 100 degrees yesterday so hopefully they will get happy and make me some yummies!

I have worm castings, rock phosphate, cottonwood meal, blood meal, kelp and sea weed extracts, and now some bat guano too. Anything sound more eggplant friendly than the others?

Any advise is ALWAYS appreciated!

Compost and water

I have a question about a zucchini I picked yesterday. I think I read that we pick the zucchinis after the flowers fall off and before 8-10 inches (pls correct me if wrong). But this guy was 10 inches and still with flower - looks like the torch on the Statue of Liberty! Was it OK to pick it?



CC

All I can say is YUM!
I've been letting mine get around 10+ inches, but now that you mention it, I do think the flowers had dropped off. Could be because of the chipmunk traffic through there though.

Now for the question???
I know that root crops such as potatoes benefit from extra phosphate. Do other root crops such as carrots, beets, onions, radishes also benefit? Should I be sprinkling a little in these squares at planting time?

My first Tomatoes!! I wish I would have snapped my zuchinni too.

hruten wrote:All I can say is YUM!
I've been letting mine get around 10+ inches, but now that you mention it, I do think the flowers had dropped off. Could be because of the chipmunk traffic through there though.

Now for the question???
I know that root crops such as potatoes benefit from extra phosphate. Do other root crops such as carrots, beets, onions, radishes also benefit? Should I be sprinkling a little in these squares at planting time?

Phosphate? Huh? Maybe a light sprinkle of wood ash and bone meal.

But really, before adding any amendments it is wise to have a soil sample analyzed so you know what you are working with and if you actually even have to amend, if that is what you want to do.

http://www.umass.edu/soiltest/order.htm

http://www.growveg.com/growblogpost.aspx?id=217

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-grow-root-crops.html

If you are using good balanced homemade compost it is rare that amendments are needed.

Thanks Camprn, just more information I've gotten REALLY wrong. The list keeps growing!

Not necessarily wrong, sometimes fertilizing is necessary but it's not a bad thing to keep the basics of SFG in the front of the mind.

hruten, the little tails on your cucumbers, in the photo, are showing that your pollination is incomplete. If you get more bee visits (more pollen delivered), or hand pollinate, they will straighten right out. Deformed cukes that result from poor pollination grow slower and are apt to be tough, even sometimes bitter. Good pollination makes them grow quickly, making them crisp and tender.
Here's more on cucumber pollination: http://gardensouth.org/2011/07/21/why-are-my-cucumber-falling-off-or-becoming-deformed/

I hope my bees visit my cukes... they seem to like to fly off to other places. Fingers crossed for more bee visits for you hruten!

Pollinator wrote:...Good pollination makes them grow quickly, making them crisp and tender. Here's more on cucumber pollination: http://gardensouth.org/2011/07/21/why-are-my-cucumber-falling-off-or-becoming-deformed/

Thanks for the link; it's very informative.

I've got one cuke and one squash in my greenhouse. The cuke is getting pollinated by itself and doing great, but I've been struggling to hand pollinate the squash. I guess the bees in my neck of the woods don't like squash! Funny thing though, I've never seen any bees in the greenhouse.

boffer wrote:

Pollinator wrote:...Good pollination makes them grow quickly, making them crisp and tender. Here's more on cucumber pollination: http://gardensouth.org/2011/07/21/why-are-my-cucumber-falling-off-or-becoming-deformed/

Thanks for the link; it's very informative.

I've got one cuke and one squash in my greenhouse. The cuke is getting pollinated by itself and doing great, but I've been struggling to hand pollinate the squash. I guess the bees in my neck of the woods don't like squash! Funny thing though, I've never seen any bees in the greenhouse.

Do you have the doors open? I can't find the photo of your greenhouse.

It's not that cold here! A window on one end and a door on the other are open during the day. Plus, last week, I rolled one wall half way up AND put some sunshade on part of the roof!

A couple days ago, a hummer found his way in for a while, but he didn't like my squash either!

boffer wrote:It's not that cold here! A window on one end and a door on the other are open during the day. Plus, last week, I rolled one wall half way up AND put some sunshade on part of the roof!

A couple days ago, a hummer found his way in for a while, but he didn't like my squash either!

LOL your sig is funny,,, that's what I look like before coffee.

I like your sig Boffer, but I haven't had a spouse since 1982 when I divorced him. I did have a great boyfriend for 29 years after that and he had the greenest thumb I ever saw. He passed away in February 2011 at the ripe old age of 91, but I have great memories of him. (And he did most of the weeding, too.) I do have four blueberry bushes he transplanted from his garden to mine, and have harvested about a three lb butter tub off each bush so far this year.

I just noticed the signature this morning! Hubby is particular about seeing proof. On the other hand... He works VERY hard so I can homeschool, play in the garden, and doesn't complain about my garden startup acquisitions like row cover, hardware cloth, MM components, bat boxes, bird houses, and the like. What a man!
Oops, just realized the "spade and error" was for me Thanks for the encouragement!

Thank you for the heads up on the pollination. There are a lot of honey bees every day on my squash plants, but come to think of it, I don't see alot on my deck (cuke location) even though I have numerous flowers there. I've been hand pollinating the pumpkins and watermelons because I just can't stand to see a baby rot off, but I hadn't even thought about the cukes. I will start helping them daily too. After checking, there doesn't seem to be a lot of pollen in the male flowers?!? suggestions?

hruten wrote: After checking, there doesn't seem to be a lot of pollen in the male flowers?!? suggestions?

It's there, in the morning use a fine paintbrush for the task.

@hruten....What variety of tomato is that? I have plenty of green ones, but no red ones yet in zone 5a.

Hi 'Bea, The larger tomato is a Roma and the cherry tomatoes are sweet 100s. For some reason the Roma was a little pithy :scratch: , but the sweet 100s were divine!!

Finally got around to taking photos today, so this is current as of today. No real close-ups, but the only ripe veggies so far have been peas and green beans. I've had some issues, learned some lessons, but here are the pics:

Whole garden:



Squash, various assorted that I'm not even sure of (incl. eggplant, cabbage... ?), and tomatoes in back:



Peppers front, tomatoes behind:



Carrots and lettuce that never grew in front even tho replanted several times, peppers behind dwarfed by tomatoes in back row:



3 new beds that I'm readying for next year; composting directly in them. Put chicken coop shavings/manure in, and throwing my kitchen compost on that, also got a few 5 gal. buckets full of coffee grinds from DD in there, and some gifted sheep manure - will put soil ingreds in in the spring:



Strawberries planted this year that look beautiful:



Onion sets I picked up on whim from grocery store, 3 strawberry squares in front and one replanted squash or zucchini:



Something or other in the front (cabbage and I forget) next to potatoes, which are dwarfing some peppers behind, and then some tomatoes:



Potato tower in front, snap peas and pole beans behind:



Rear view of pole beans and peas, you can see the stems on the peas aren't looking so hot, either it's past time for them or the slugs have done them in, but there are peas and pole beans replanted in there too now that are starting to shoot up:



My 100,000 best girlfriends, unless they've swarmed, which is a possibility:



Back view of garden, fenced so chickens can't trample everything - they still get in and scratch my compost all out of those new boxes:



Okay, so while last year was the year of the hornworm for me, this year was the year of the slug. Slugs nearly devastated everything, resulting in several replantings of squash and cucumbers, but the cucumbers never did make it past leaf shoots and then zap, they disappeared, and one reason I suspect was my bright idea to "mulch" everything with straw, which turned out to be slug heaven. Another thing the mulch did I think was to reflect sun off the soil so that the soil did not get hot enough soon enough, and I believe that slowed down my growth. I put the straw in because I did the potato tower with straw (and consequently, the slugs have almost devastated many of the potato plants) and figured I'd just straw everything. Well, from now on, no more straw, ever, except in the fall maybe. So my 2 problems this year: slugs and straw. I think the straw also suffocated my lettuce and carrot plantings. I have some experimental carrots growing in an un-improved part of the yard and they've grown fine, so it's not the seeds, it's me/straw I think.

Phew, I'm exhausted now.

hruten wrote:Hi 'Bea, The larger tomato is a Roma and the cherry tomatoes are sweet 100s. For some reason the Roma was a little pithy :scratch: , but the sweet 100s were divine!!

Romas are like that, one reason they are for sauce and not table fruit.

@ NHG, looks good!...like your having more success than failures.

I, too, had slug issues, but when I left the falling pine needles on, the slugs pretty much stopped. *shrug* Not sure if one has anything to do with the other or not but from now on I leave the needles.

CC