May 2013 New England

First harvest of 6 oz. baby bok choi. Yum for supper!

Camprn....Lucky you. I haven't even transplanted my pak choi yet. Only two, but they sure look nice and healthy. I'll get them out tomorrow.
I picked more asparagus for tonite's supper of chicken and noodles.

Eleven Shallots on the left, mizuna on the right. I had a spare shallot so just stuck it in on the left.

Oh dear, I think I stuck one extra shallot in the box in the event one failed. They be looking gooooood!

I have 3 other squares with shallots elsewhere. They all look good, even the ones that were dug out by my corgi one day. This is the first time I'm growing them. Tried some before that I bought from the store and they never 'took' but these are doing good.
When does one harvest shallots?

quiltbea wrote:I have 3 other squares with shallots elsewhere. They all look good, even the ones that were dug out by my corgi one day. This is the first time I'm growing them. Tried some before that I bought from the store and they never 'took' but these are doing good.
When does one harvest shallots?

Late June, usually before garlic. You will see all the daughter bulbs bulge slowly out of the ground (over the course of weeks) and sort of lay on top. I harvest when the foliage starts failing and the bulbs easily released from the ground. If I put a little traction on the foliage and the roots are still holding on, they are not quite ready.

I'm beginning to know how much I don't know. A lot has happened in the garden in the past two weeks. The beans are slowly coming up and I have little tiny feathers of carrot tops. They are kinda cute.

Meanwhile, the peas are doing really well and are ready to be thinned. If I understand correctly, I need to snip off the extra plants with scissors. Then I need to put poles next to each of the nine pea plants and they'll climb up the poles with no help from me. Somebody tell me if I'm doing it wrong. I'll probably get out there and take care of it Friday.

Deborah, before you thin the peas, post a pic, you may not actually need to thin them at all. I plant about 18 per sq foot no problem. They would do better on a trellis string netting rather than poles.

camprn wrote:Deborah, before you thin the peas, post a pic, you may not actually need to thin them at all. I plant about 18 per sq foot no problem. They would do better on a trellis string netting rather than poles.

Thank you Camprn. I'll post a picture if it isn't raining tomorrow. I planted two seeds right next to each other which is what I think the book said to do.

As for the trellis -- should I do one for each row?

Here is how I have managed mine in the past.

18 peas per s.f.????? And I've been planting 8?????

NHGardener wrote:18 peas per s.f.????? And I've been planting 8?????

With good quality compost, it works. Now mind you, pea plants frequently fail so all 18 per square don't usually make it to maturity. Another reason I plant extra.

Funny you should say that, I was just looking at my 8 peas per square this afternoon thinking - where did some of them go? When you say fall, I assume you mean they die. Hmm. Maybe I'll throw some more peas in there.

Edit: OH - you said fail. Duh. Squinting here. They all seem to start so well, I'm surprised they don't survive better. Nothing grew as well and as quickly as my indoor peas, when they got to be about a foot tall. I put new transplants out, about 3" tall, and there they still sit, maybe 4" tall now.

SLUG SIGHTING!!!

Arm the artillery!

Yeah, I've got slug damage, too. And with the occasional rain spurts we're getting I don't bother with the DE.

Pretty much all my carrot sprouts are now gone. Don't know what's eating them but they're in the middle squares of the bed and nothing else is affected. Birds maybe? I sprinkled some more seed yesterday before the rain and will throw some netting over them.

Strawberries and unplanted toms & tomatillos are flowering. Got the beds ready to put the unplanteds in but will wait til after the next bout of cold nights coming up.

I'm a little surprised by how long the radishes are taking this year compared to last, but they are in a first year bed so maybe that's why. Everything else is doing great. I'm eating greens & onions almost daily.

Here's a photo from this morning:

What's everyone else's garden up to?

CC

Look at all that green! I'm green with envy!

I have the darnedest time with carrots. I don't know if it's the SFG soil makeup or what, but last year they didn't come up. The ones I sprinkled in another part of the yard DID tho, only that soil was real compacted so they were stunted, but it was just an experiment. This year I sprinkled a ton of carrot seeds in the SFG, sprinkled a thin layer of potting soil on top, and so far, nothing.

I pulled 15 slugs from my fledgling asparagus stalks yesterday and this morning, and about 5 from around the area.

And I'm wondering why my sparkle strawberries aren't flowering yet... They're very green, flourishing, so we'll see...

Looks like cold nights are possible thru Tuesday, so I'm planning on transplanting on Wednesday.

Garlic looks great, onions don't look like they made it (I think the transplants were too small - next year I'm starting seeds in like November), peas are still there. And had 6 chicks hatch.

NHGardener....Congrats of the new feather babies.
My Sequoia and Quinault strawberries haven't any berries yet either. They are just recently popping up from being under a blanket of leaves and snow all winter.
My chives came back very nice and healthy. I just left it in the square all winter as I did the year before.
You need to get out the tuna cans and fill them with yeasty sugar water or beer to lead those slugs to their drowning.
I haven't checked my veggie garden yet today since we got a nice light rain last nite. I hope all is well.
We're expecting a couple nites close to frost this week, too. Its keeping me from putting in so many seedlings that have hardened off nicely.

NHG, I didn't know you had chickens. How wonderful is that!?! You sure have a lot going on - chickens, bees, SFG - do you have kids, too? Please please please put up a photo of your new babies? Pretty please???

I don't wanna play 'spinach' anymore. They are starting to flower already and they don't look anything like the Bloomsdale package photo yet. I'm so mad I could eat bricks!

I just don't understand it...we've seen temps in the low 60's only a coupla times. Other than that, 40's & 50's still. Do I pinch them? Will that stop the bolting?

CC

Yeah, grr. What is it with the spinach, lettuce, & carrots? I'm starting to think maybe growing lettuce in containers that can be brought in and out of the house, maybe spinach works that way too. I know a farm nearby that grows beautiful heads of lettuce in a greenhouse, almost all winter, they sell them at farmers markets. I'm just hoping I get a leaf bigger than 1/2" x 1/2", half wilted.

I have good lettuce. Buttercrunch, romaine (both pictured below) & Grand Rapids work the best for me here. Any of the red ones aren't doing squat.


By the way, see the 2 spinach plants, row 3, sq 2? That's from seed planted last fall. THEY aren't bolting, and are bigger than any of the others. And I've been eating off them taboot. I think that's the way to grow it here...plant in fall for spring crop. But we'll have to plant a lot of seed. I think I planted about 9 in this square and these are the only 2 that came up.

CC

CC, pinch off the flower stalks going up from the spinach. Spinach has a very short window and pinching the flower buds will prolong the harvest, but only by a little bit. May want to sow more in a semi shaded spot or a spot that only gets a few hours of strong sun each day. Spinach doesn't like it warm.

So do spinach and lettuce both do well in shaded spots? Because maybe my garden is too sunny and I should look somewhere else for a shaded spot.

I think I'll throw some spinach seed this fall and see what happens. If you let your spinach bolt, will that do the same thing?

I really love spinach. I could eat it every day. I planted so much, but when I transplanted, it just didn't take, I'm not sure why.

Mine didn't either, until the last several days of off and on rain hit. Now the transplanted spinach seems to have bounced back. I'm thinking that during all the dry weather, even though I watered 2 days out of every 3, and a few times more than once the same day, the watering was very short lived each time (poured around plants from measuring cup) and I now think most of the water must have drained off. The Mel's Mix may hold water, but if it's just in the top couple inches I think it also has tended to get used up pretty quickly. The fact that everything in my garden seems to be loving this off and on daily rain says to me that gradual but more steady watering is much better in the Mel's Mix. I may want to look into drip irrigation next year.

-Ed

I'm hoping my spinach will improve with this rain too, altho the lettuce is gone now, but I did sprinkle more seeds on both about a week ago, so maybe they will sprout.

I believe they are shallow rooted, maybe it's just too hard for them to get enough water in that top layer.

Here is an interesting tid bit about mid May New England weather from the Vermont Fairbanks Museum Observatory and the Eye on the Sky.
http://www.fairbanksmuseum.org/forecasts


This weekend features two things....a soaking rain and Mother's Day - fortunately the soaking rain is tonight into Saturday, then partly sunny and cooler for Sunday, Mother's Day.

Even colder weather arrives Monday and Tuesday, with a possibility of front, mainly in the colder locations. This fits in with an old weather adage from western Europe.

May 11th, St. Mamertus' Day, May 12th, St. Pancras' Day, and May 13th, St. Gervais' Day, are called the "Ice Saints". It was said that the Ice Saints would not pass without leaving some frost. Curiously, the weather records at the Fairbanks Museum, extending back to 1894, show a slight dip in the average low temperature from the 11th to the 14th, indicating the persistence of cooler weather near those days.

-Mark
Happy Mother's Day.

Oh yeah, one more thing.... black flies suck!

camprn wrote:Curiously, the weather records at the Fairbanks Museum, extending back to 1894, show a slight dip in the average low temperature from the 11th to the 14th, indicating the persistence of cooler weather near those days.

-Mark
Happy Mother's Day.

Oh yeah, one more thing.... black flies suck!

The whole thing was wicked interesting but the part about the weather in particular. Oh, and we don't have black flies here but I've sure been in them when traveling.

So, I pinched the spinach flowers yesterday in the rain. As I was looking at the plants I thought, hey, these look like those expensive organic baby spinach you buy at the store! Not what I was after but I picked a bunch anyway, stuck them in the blender with some chickpeas and spices, and had yummy hummus last night. Lemons into lemonade.

Can't believe I fell into thinking that the garden should go exactly the way I planned. Like I'm Mother Nature or something. I'm turning into my mother the controller.. I just have to remember that there's always so much beauty and good in the garden, why bother going negative.

Anyway, the lilacs & honesuckle are in bloom. Time to plant the summer veggies... ...right after this cold spell. Looks like Memorial day is the end of it...can't fight tradition I guess, heh heh.

CC