July 2013 New England

Brussels sprouts are incredibly long growing, 5 or more months. Garlic is the same, long growing. Maybe you need a dedicated garlic bed, because typically in New England we don't harvest garlic until the first of July, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, but not by much.

Good going on trying to keep ahead of the BLIGHT. Don't forget to wash your hands well (gloves if you used them) and disinfect the clippers before using again in the garden.

Thanks Guys.

My older dog Caleb, in the pic I posted and his little brother Mason, also a golden, like to help out in the garden since they both usually get a few snacks if they hang around long enough. They're both fond of peas, beans, and anything else I throw their way.

Has anyone tried growing peanuts in NH/New England? I've got a few plants that are being over run by my squash, but the peanuts for the most part aren't getting to be very big plants. Even the few I planted outside my raised beds in more of a sandy soil seem to be on the small side.

-Matt

OK, so how do you like me now???
This is the first tom on one of 2 Beefsteaks.  The other toms on this plant don't appear to have BER but they are still tiny yet, so I may leave it alone for a bit.   Can't imagine with all those shells and such that there's a cal deficiency in my compost.  

Anywhosey, I believe that the only thing I'm missing left to haunt my garden this year is the hornworm...and a hurricane.  

NHG, you're smart to stay away this week, but what about watering?

  to the forum, ksyrium!  Cute dog! No peanuts in my SFG, but would sure love to try.  Let us know how it goes.  And post some pics of your garden if you can...we love pics!

Nice onions, QB! What size are they?

Late garden, Camp...but with your green thumb I have no doubt you'll speed right by the rest of us in no time.  Can't wait to see photos later.

CC

CC, it happens in my garden that practically each tomato plant puts out first fruit with symptoms like this, but then rarely do I have continuing problems.

Good news camprn, I hope that ends CC's issue.

CC, I'm crossing my fingers, forecast says 50% thunderstorms tonight, 40% chance of heavy rain tomorrow. I just don't want to water when it's been so terribly rainy this summer. Well okay, I just don't want to water because I don't want to water, too. Bleh. But at this stage, I'm thinking they can send roots down pretty deep and probably tap into my high water table, not like when they were vulnerable little seedlings with tiny roots systems. Right?

NHGardener wrote:Good news camprn, I hope that ends CC's issue.

CC, I'm crossing my fingers, forecast says 50% thunderstorms tonight, 40% chance of heavy rain tomorrow. I just don't want to water when it's been so terribly rainy this summer. Well okay, I just don't want to water because I don't want to water, too. Bleh. But at this stage, I'm thinking they can send roots down pretty deep and probably tap into my high water table, not like when they were vulnerable little seedlings with tiny roots systems. Right?

That is not a bad theory, regarding plants seeking water...... The other consideration is MM drying out, which is not ideal...... after the sun goes down, it's bearable to be outside.

CampRN, I misspoke: I have four boxes (that I called squares), each with 16 square feet. Is that what you mean by a "bed"?  If I plant one of those boxes with garlic cloves at 3 inches apart, I'd need 256 cloves to plant.  I think that would be about two one-half packages of garlic.  The question is what types of garlic to pick given the growing season.

If I planted a whole box with garlic, aren't I leaving the garlic open to disease that can spread through them?  I planted my four boxes with a crazy quilt approach, following Mel's advice to separate vegetables so that a whole row of beans, for example, didn't get eaten all at once by slugs or some such.  The crazy quilt approach taught me that one-foot-per-square plants fight for airspace, so I'll have to review that technique.

I planted the Brussels sprouts and the kale in one box already, and they've survived the serious chomping from some marauder (a hare, I think).  I looked out one morning and saw all the Brussels sprouts tops gone.  The varmint hadn't gotten any true leaves, so the plants kept going, but under netting.  My other long-term growers are a stand of leeks.

I heeded the advice to disinfect the pruners and my hands while cutting off the blighted leaves and branches from the tomato plants.  I hope it was enough, because now that I pruned the masses of leaves, the tomatoes saw the light and started turning red.  Fingers crossed, as they say.

The raspberry was really too weird to save; I pulled it up.  I'll spend the $50 UMass fee on new plants in the spring. 

I found a very useful picture in the diseases sub-forum, that showed the particular discoloration and its possible cause.  I think you're right about deficiencies in the Mel's mix, but I'll have to figure out how to fix it (I saw something about this here).  I think my mixing helpers may have made mistakes in the proportions, and we couldn't find all the composts.

If I sent UMass Mel's Mix for analysis, what would I do when they say to use ingredients that aren't compost?

So what would you garlic lovers advise I buy for spicy flavor and tight clove skins?


Thanks.

camprn wrote:
after the sun goes down, it's bearable to be outside.

 If the rain doesn't materialize by tomorrow, then yup. However, it is SO humid and muggy. Surely that goes a long way.

Found a Hornworm this morning  

lyndeeloo wrote:Found a Hornworm this morning  

   already? guess I'd better start checking then.

Yes, I'm not sure who was more surprised, it or me. It's in Hornworm heaven now.

NHGardener wrote:

lyndeeloo wrote:Found a Hornworm this morning  

   already? guess I'd better start checking then.

Point, you probably want to plant hardneck garlic. Hardneck garlic is more cold hardy and stores longer, plus it produces scapes as a bonus. And some hardneck varieties are very spicy, e.g. Georgia Fire if you can find it. You need to find a supplier and read some descriptions and pick what sounds good.

I bought my Chesnok Red and German Extra Hardy at Green Mountain Garlic, but they are already sold out for the year. Territorial Seed, Hood River Garlic, High Mowing Seeds, and Southern Seed Exchange still have garlic available. Territorial claims its garlic is virus free so bulbs grow twice the size (who knew about garlic viruses). Fedco does have Georgian Fire, a hot one.

dvelten wrote:Hardneck garlic is more cold hardy and stores longer...

I do not mean to be quite so contrary this evening, but my understanding of storing garlic is the opposite. As I understand it, hardnecks store for upwards of 6 months while softneck garlic will store in dry, room temperature conditions for 12 months or more. Of course there are always exceptions.
http://www.hoodrivergarlic.com/faqs.htm

Capitulated and watered this morning, even tho at 8 a.m. it was already in the 80s... phew.

One more day of mid 90s tomorrow and then it breaks. I read somewhere that this summer has been 10 degrees above average.

My tin can pool water was 88F yesterday. Don't get me wrong, I love baths.

camprn wrote:

dvelten wrote:Hardneck garlic is more cold hardy and stores longer...

I do not mean to be quite so contrary this evening, but my understanding of storing garlic is the opposite. As I understand it, hardnecks store for upwards of 6 months while softneck garlic will store in dry, room temperature conditions for 12 months or more. Of course there are always exceptions.
http://www.hoodrivergarlic.com/faqs.htm

I think it might be helpful to differentiate between how well a garlic type grows and how well it stores. Hardnecks might grow better in the North while softnecks might store better over-all.

I had hoped to put this theory to the test by planting both softnecks & hardnecks, and note their hardiness & storage-ability but the softnecks ended up getting pulled out due to fungal issues, as I've already posted elsewhere. The hardnecks seemed to withstand the "cooties" better, but who knows why. All I know is that more hardnecks made it through than softnecks. I have yet to find out how well they will store. I'll know that by next Spring.

Your garlic will last till spring?!

I'll be lucky if mine makes it a month.

As it is, the strawberries that we were drowning in are now getting depleted from the freezer as I have them on Cheerios every morning.

Everything seems to go so quickly, hardly have to worry about storage.

I am still using last years garlic. The softnecks keep a while.  

2 things: First, NOAA says it is supposed to be 100F tomorrow. Yikes. I sure hope the garden doesn't go pfffttyy.

The other thing is that I was looking at my cukes on the trellis today - one sneaky vine wasn't on the trellis but running through the peas, and I remembered that the cuke vines make new roots as they run around, and I'm thinking - they can't make roots on a trellis. Does that matter? Maybe they would produce more if they were ground bound.

(BTW, had the first 2 cukes yesterday - yum)

NHGardener wrote:
(BTW, had the first 2 cukes yesterday - yum)

du-huh???  How'd you do that?  Mine 3 cucs are an inch long and I'm not even sure they were pollinated and will make it.

Well, good for you, I say!  What else you eating over there?

(notice how I'm completely ignoring the 100 degree stmt)

CC

Temperature
97.4 °F
Feels Like 109 °F

BLARGH!

Thermometer here reads 104 out of the sun and just for fun we put one in the sun on the patio and it reads 120. Yup, its hot, watered everything this morning and will probably water again when the sun starts to set. Can't wait to see the water bill for this summer.
May need to take out a loan to pay it!

The good thing about the heat is all of the seeds I put in last week for my second planting have sprouted beautifully!

lyndeeloo wrote:Thermometer here reads 104 out of the sun and just for fun we put one in the sun on the patio and it reads 120. Yup, its hot, watered everything this morning and will probably water again when the sun starts to set. Can't wait to see the water bill for this summer.
May need to take out a loan to pay it!

If you are on municipal water, contact the water department and see if you can meter the outside water. We can do that in our town as our water bill is mostly for sewer services, but it is based on water usage.

Water bill and electric bill. I hate a/c, but the window unit is running right now....

CC, huh. I started my vine plants indoors as seedlings and transplanted, I wonder if that may have been the help. Last summer my cuke seedlings kept disappearing before they were strong enough to survive, so this year I outsmarted those bugs and grew them indoors until they were too big for (probably cutworm, maybe slug) issues. I have 8 cuke plants, 2 per square. 

First thing that came in here were the strawberries and we ate those till they were coming out our ears. Next came the peas and we had those every night, often in salad with lettuce & spinach. Now the cukes are producing and we'll be eating those every day. Oh, the raspberries were producing up until maybe yesterday, I think the heat did them in. When the green beans come in, those will be every day meals, and then the tomatoes should start ripening and we'll eat those all the time. Seems we're eating in categories this year. Everything seems to ripen at a different time. After tomatoes are through we'll probably eat meals of potatoes.

Thanks Camprn, looked into that, $500 for the outgoing meter. It would take quite a while to recoup the savings. Its usually only a little higher in the summer since we supplement with a rain barrel but that's been empty for some time now! Since we rarely water the lawn or wash the car at home, it is mostly for the gardens. Our gardens are worth it I figure.