PNW: July Updates

Welcome to July! Does it feel like summer yet?


I had mixed success with my spring garden. Couldn't grow a radish to save my life. My sugar pod peas did fantastically, and are beginning to wind down. My garlic, onions and carrots are still in the ground. I'm just beginning to get broccoli. My lettuces have begun growing well and a few plants are now big enough to begin harvesting outer leaves from. I need to try them! Most of the spinach and arugula bolted before ever amounting to anything and I never got to try any of it.

There's not much to my summer garden (which is by design - I prefer peas and broccoli to squash and tomatoes). I am trying my first heirloom tomato - a Brandywine, which is growing well but so far all the blossoms fall off without making fruit. I'm also growing some pole beans for the first time and they are fun to watch - most have climbed four to five feet by now and flowers are beginning to form. I did really want to grow cucumbers up my trellis and have been sowing them since the 1st of May, only to repeatedly see the newly emerged sprouts destroyed by bugs or hail. I have a couple of half-eaten survivors in there right now, but they still only have their cotelydons.

I learned last year that this month is when I need to start planting my fall garden.
Here's a planting chart from Mother Earth News:

Well, hello all...

I've just stumbled upon this forum and have spent a lovely few hours browsing posts and pictures.

I've been a SF Gardener for a few years now. Mine is in my front yard (as I don't have any sun in the back) and while initially it gave the HOA heartburn, it has come to be a definite conversation piece in the neighborhood, especially as the weather gets warmer and more people are outside.

My garden gives me much joy as well as food. I have 64sf of growing space and thats enough to keep the two of us and several neighbors in salads for quite a few months. I grow lots of leafy greens, beans, peas, carrots, beets, radishes, garlic, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers and some flowers mixed in too. Today I harvested 5 pounds of various leafy greens and garlic scapes with which I made some pesto.

Anyway, it's nice to find a forum where others can commiserate on the vagaries of gardening in the PNW...rain and slugs being my big issues right now.

I've attached a few pics for anyone interested.

Happy gardening!

Garlic Scape Pesto made today:



Harvest today:



My little garden (The clover is not mine!!!):

Welcome to the forum. That is a very neat and tidy set of beds.
Kay

Theginpalace, Welcome! Glad to have you aboard! I will be looking for your posts, as my son/daughter-in-law also live in Maple Valley. So far, their only attempts at gardening have been some plants I've taken to them: mint and other herbs, and some strawberries and a tomato. Hope to at least get the grandkids interested, as they ate us out of carrots last July when they visited! Nonna

Hi there TheGinPalace and to the forum! So glad you found our little corner of the official SFG forum and hope you'll continue to check in with us - it can get a little lonely here sometimes.

Your front yard garden is so lovely! Wow! Did you know the foundation is doing a front yard garden contest? You could win some money - check it out here: http://www.melbartholomew.com/sfg-contests/ There is still time to enter!

I'm so glad you posted those pictures. Tell me, you say you gave your HOA a bit of heartburn - did it turn out there really was no specific rule against it or are you officially in violation of something?

Theginplace your garden looks so lovely and neat - I'm surprised the HOA caused any issues! Look at your harvest - 5 lbs of salad - that is awesome!

We finally got to moving around the tomatoes - hope they do well in their new homes. Although I knew tomatoes were categorized as determinates and indeterminates I hadn't done an in-depth study of what the difference was. Well mine were indeterminates and when you sow them in 1 SF without ever pruning them...you can imagine what happened! So it was not only hard to move them around, it broke my heart to prune so many branches that had gazillions of flowers (ok a little bit of exaggeration here!) We're crossing our fingers that we didn't damage anything.

Summer squash and zucchini are one of the nicest plants around in our garden - we've got around 5-6 zucchini/summer squash total. Onions seem to be doing well too.

BTW does anybody know how/when to harvest fenugreek leaves? We've a lot of those plants growing up but I'm not sure if we're supposed to pull it from the roots (and when?) or cut the leaves off like spinach?

TheGinPalace wrote:

My little garden (The clover is not mine!!!):

A LOVELY garden, and the clover will benefit you because it brings the bees.

Great looking garden!

I'm wondering if HOAs have the most issues with the off-season veggie garden look?

Oh good suggestion on the front yard contest, those are so perfect looking!

Welcome to the site TGP .... That's a snazzy sfg set up , it looks great .

I bet the HOA were looking & howling like buldogs chewing wasps when you started putting it together and had nothing much to showcase.

Are any others in your street likely to follow suit and stick the middle finger up by doing SFG's ?

boffer wrote:Great looking garden!

I'm wondering if HOAs have the most issues with the off-season veggie garden look?

Beat em silly ....have plastic and silk flower substitures on stand by

plantoid wrote:

boffer wrote:Great looking garden!
I'm wondering if HOAs have the most issues with the off-season veggie garden look?

Beat em silly ....have plastic and silk flower substitures on stand by

PERFECT!

But I'd skip the plastic pink flamingo!

boffer wrote:...I'd skip the plastic pink flamingo!

What a coincidence... Just this morning I was giving a friend some inspiration for escalating their late night forking pranks (this is not my house, nor my doing BTW):

I found out you can buy a whole flock at HomeDepot.com. Seems like a perfect initiation prank for anyone who volunteers on an HOA committee.

I've been threatening my wife for years about doing that! Maybe it's time!


(I admit I had to google 'forking pranks'. That's a new one on me; I like it!)

C'mon summer!

Some cauliflower I put up; my spring cauliflower always puts my spring broccoli to shame.


My wimpiest artichoke is still going to make flowers for the bumble bees. My chokes never get too big so I always let them flower.


8 squashes in 8 square feet


March 17 planting of snap peas; we're planning on harvesting this coming weekend.


Cabbages protected from moths and the prying eyes of somebody who's interested in 'big stuff'!


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


Outside Early Girls.


Our biggest disappoint so far this year: a whole box of beets suffering from leaf miners. Hopefully the fall planting will be better.


Our corn is going to be knee high by the Fourth of July, and so are the weeds! You can see where I started to weed one day, and then said the heck with it!


I can always count on my carrots for a good showing.


One of three squares of celery direct planted from seed.


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


Part of the cool garden waiting for fall planting.




More to come: Inside the greenhouse.

I am SO jealous of your ability to grow cauliflower and artichokes. I didn't even bother with cauliflower this year, and my one artichoke plant gave up the ghost.
Nice job on the corn

So, with those little individual shower caps on the cabbages, does that really work?

Yeppers. The shower caps are shade cloth cut to size. No worms in my cabbage, and Josh can't see how big they are!

I had gotten two heads damaged, so I inspected these real close before I covered them. We've eaten four clean heads already.

My only complaint is that the hearts weren't very tight. Anybody know how to prevent that?

Hi, I posted an introduction on the main board and someone pointed out that there was a PNW forum. Glad to be here.

I live in Corvallis, but I lived for a number of years in the South Kitsap area and raised a garden while we lived there so I'm familiar with the climate around Puget Sound. We get more summer heat here so tomatoes and other solanaceae are easier to grow. (but still not easy)

I have garlic just about ready to harvest, 150 plants of various varieties (my wife thinks I overdid it?). I'm hoping we don't get any more significant rain before it's time to dig it up.

We got a later than normal start on some things this year because we were on vacation for a good part of April. Well late potatoes store better than early.

Here's what we have in the ground right now. Tomatoes, costata romanesco zucchini, tromboncino squash, potatoes, lettuce, eggplant, english peas (grow better in Washington than here), basil, pole beans, cukes, peppers, parsips, magenta spreen lambsquarter. I know I'm forgetting something.

We try to grow high value crops that are expensive in the organic produce section. We also like to grow a few unusual crops, this month we will plant salsify and long black spanish radish for our winter garden. We'll also start red russian kale, upland cress and a fall crop of kweik lettuce.

Six blueberry bushes a patch of raspberries a big old gravenstein apple tree and a partridge in a pear tree. Rabid gardners like most of you.

Bill - I'll post a few pictures soon, thanks

to the forum plainolebil!......look forward to viewing some pictures!

Boffer your garden looks wonderful and congrats on the nice cauliflower harvest!!...if you dont eat your artichokes....i would love to see what they look like when they bloom your 8 squashes ...well....they are HUGE what kind are you growing?....your corn looks to be twice as tall as ours....our oldest corn plants might just hit the knee of our 12 year old daughter.....

gwen....thats so funny about the flamingos.....my best friend had that happen to her and no it was not by me.....though i think it would be fun to do that.....hmmm...

theginpalace....your front yard SFG is wonderful!!....congrats on such a lush garden growing..... its a fine example of growing in SFG box's!

smriti.....i am going to google fenugreek...dont know what that is ....hope your toms recover from the move and give you lots of fruit!....i know how hard it is to prune....i tell my tom's its for their own good

hugs

rose

well i went out sunday feeling sorry for my self .....to find my self cheering up when i took a close look at whats growing even with the lack of sunshine

this is what i found.......

sweet strawberries we are eating at least this much daily



our sugar snap peas are over the top.....the vines are loaded and so sweet!...they are loving this weather!



fava beans are doing well....and very yummy....we couldnt wait and picked them to soon.....some of the beans inside were small.....thats ok...we are learning still and the kids had fun taking them out of the pods!...we ate them in a pasta dish....



our first scapes havent picked them yet....kids call them dragon tails



not sure if you can see them thru the tellie....these are bok choi seed pods we are going to save these seeds.....we have TON's! of pods



our blueberries are turning blue



our re-seeded spinach is coming up...hoping to get some spinach this time....going to move that pot around to shade it....



beans that we may have planted to close together



my daughters flowers



cilantro flowers



so lesson learned.....the garden is alive :drunken:

hugs

rose

Rose, how lovely!!!

FamilyGardening wrote:well i went out sunday feeling sorry for my self .....to find my self cheering up when i took a close look at whats growing even with the lack of sunshine

As I recall, you said in another thread that this is your third year of gardening? If so, I wanted to say that you have an unknown wonderful experience waiting for you when we finally have another warmer than usual summer.

2009 was about 25% warmer than usual, and I could do no wrong! I direct seeded everything except tomatoes, and I had harvests coming out my ears. My wife overplanted an area, and we had tomatoes, cukes, squashes, and beans climbing all over each other creating a jungle that made it difficult to find the veggies to harvest. The jungle got hit by the yard sprinklers everyday, and ventilation had to be poor, but everything thrived with no disease issues. I was able to grow and put up enough corn to last nearly a year. I'm getting goose bumps thinking about how great it was!

Then we got hit with 2010 and 11 which were cooler than average, and I hardly had any warm season crops to can. It was devastating to me. So I started concentrating on cool crops and experimenting with hoop houses, and finally, this year, making a greenhouse so I could have some warm season crops regardless of the weather. This spring, as I was building my greenhouse, I was secretly hoping that just because I had a greenhouse, the joke would be on me, and I wouldn't need it. It hasn't turned out that way unfortunately.

Anyhow, hone your cool weather gardening strategies, and sooner or later, we're going to have a 'good weather for gardening' season that will blow you away!

Bof, how do you attach the shower caps to the cabbages?

They're just laying on top with the corners tucked under a leaf. Haven't lost one to the wind yet. I'll try to get a close up pic later today.

When it comes to work, I'm a minimalist!

boffer wrote:When it comes to work, I'm a minimalist!