July 2013 New England

camprn,

Thanks for the ID, have no experience with Gilbertie yet. And I would like to say that sucker had its growing tip pinched already, but it is actually large enough to poke me in the eye when I walk by.

CC,

The label is from a purchased plant from last year. This year I grew all of these myself from seed. RE: your cucumber question, pollination depends on cucumber variety. Some are gynoecious (all-female flowers) and  parthenocarpic (grow fruits without pollination). You need to check the description of your particular varieties.

Dvelten, great tip.

The heat & humidity of the past 4 vacation days just about did me in.  I feel exhausted but haven't really done anything.  This morning I bucket watered the SFG's deeply & covered the greens boxes with burlap to get them out of the heat.  They were limp but are now doing fine.  Maybe we'll see some rain over the next few days to cool things down a bit.

Oh, guess what?  I have itsy bitsy beans on the bush & wax plants.  So so tiny.  No flowers on the foot hi pole beans yet.  

Also, some of my tomato plants are about bursting with little toms.  I took a photo of one (Supersonic F2) and later, after uploading it & looking at it on the puter, counted 14 other toms.  Guess I should put on my glasses when I'm out there now.  They range from pea to golf ball size.  The only Roma is loaded but seems to have stopped it's daily growth probably due to heat.  

There's also a few more baby zucchini that I'll need to hand pollinate once the flowers open since the squash beds are covered with tulle.  And one of my pepper flowers opened today...finally.

I also planted more pole & bush beans, & thinned my newest cuc sprouts.  The older cuc plants have trellis grabbage & lots of male flowers.   I'm so excited about that!

I haven't harvested the hard neck garlic yet coz when I stuck my finger down there they didn't feel ready to me.  I can wait.  

Still harvesting Grand Rapids lettuce daily for salads.  I stopped pulling up the whole plants and will do cut & come again until the Bijou are big enough to eat.

Everything keeps on growing!  It's such a joy to watch even if I can't do much in the heat.

What's everyone elses garden up to?

CC

CapeC....I saw on our local news last nite that the Cape was on water restrictions and couldn't water outdoors.  I'm assuming they meant hoses.  Luckily you use buckets.
The temps here dropped into the mid- to high 80s so I took down my shadecloth around the tomatoes.  I want sunshine when I can get it.

Anyone growing Indigo Rose tomatoes?  Here's one of mine.  I have 2 bearing dark blue and green fruits.  They say when the green turns red it can be harvested.  I hear the flavor isn't great, but I think just having the different range of colors is a healthy thing.

I picked a few of these New Girls today.  They are one of the plants started in plastic.  

This New Girl plant is one that was transplanted the regular time but started very early indoors so it was quite large when it went out.  There are so many tomatoes on it, its amazing.
My potted plants are all doing great, including squash, cukes, peppers and the determinate tomatoes.
The cool-weather crops are done for the most part, except for my Brussels sprouts and my cabbages which are doing well.
I sowed more lettuce seeds in some squares and have both Bibb and Red Cherokee rigth now which I will cut and come again.

Here's the Bibb lettuce.
The pole beans are sprouting among the corn stalks and the super sugar snap peas keep giving me a pint of peas every day from both the early and the later plantings together.  Remember Super Sugar Snaps in your future.
So far I've not had problems with insects.  Have I just jinxed myself?  Probably.
Ooops, its getting a bit cloudy right now.  We might get that 30 percent chance of rain they mentioned earlier.  Then I won't have to water my corn patch and blueberry bushes.

ACK! Sticky! Dewpoint is 72*, humidity 62%, temp 88*F. blargh! I wish I was in a sauna so I could escape to the cool outdoors.

http://weatherspark.com/#!dashboard;a=USA/NH/Keene

The wife and I ventured to Tower Hill botanical Gardens in West Boylston, MA, today. The heat radiating off the asphalt pavement in the parking lot almost boiled the skin off of us before we made it to the relative coolness of the lawn. My interest was the demo kitchen garden behind the farmhouse. Lots of interesting veggie varieties. For QB, here's an Indigo Rose fully colored. I think the blue coloring means lots of anthocyanin pigment that is supposed to be very healthy. The parts of the fruit exposed to UV turn blue.



Here are a few more veggies that blew me away. First, Marshall Romaine lettuce. Fedco carries this one.



And Azur Star kohlrabi, an heirloom variety from Europe. These puppies ranged from softball size to small cantaloupe size.

So the tomatoes have grown quite well in the past week and I have to figure out a trellis.


Looks like we have a Florida weave started.


the garlic harvest has begun with a few of the puny  ones that never quite took off.


All hatches are battened down for the next storm system.

Starting to make progress! Cleared out some space and made a big ol' 2'x'16' box on the northern side of my plot.



I'll get some vine-y things put down this afternoon if the weather cooperates. Have any of you guys done pumpkins vertically? I figure I'll try to do some mini ones, as well as some tomatoes, cukes, and pole beans. And perhaps a whole bunch of peppers in the front row. Any other suggestions for this late in the season?

Now the battle is getting rid of about a 2 foot strip of weeds a day. I'll post more pictures as time goes along.

tbergeron.....I like that long trellis area for vining plants.  Good for you.  I imagine in you plant fast-maturing plants, you'll do fine. Sorry, never grew large melons or pumpkins on trellises.

In between rains I went out to pick a few things.  I noticed a couple of my cukes are finally blossoming and the blossoms on the squashes and zukes all fell off but the plants are lookin' good.  No bug damage.

Above I have 5 New Girl tomatoes, Freckles lettuce (the last of it) and super sugar snap peas.  You can't see the half dozen Sun Sugar toms I also harvested.

You'll notice the New Girl toms have a small teardrop point at their bottoms.  The Sun Sugars taste good, but a bit on the tart side.  I like 'em.
By the way, 3 New Girls were from the plant put in at normal time but started a couple weeks earlier than usual and 2 were from the early-in-plastic plant.
Lots of green tomtoes out there and some peppers have little peeps starting and the eggplants may be producing soon.

No rain for us yet but we had fog all day today. I've been watering the SFG every Wed & Sun, but some things get watered more often as needed - like seeds, seedlings & flowering plants.

QB, the only toms I'm eating are Sungold cherries right now. Some surprise Super Sweet 100's should be ready by this weekend if we get some sun. I'm definitely getting a New Girl next year. I can't believe how well they are doing for you! Will you save some New Girl seeds for me even if they are hybrid purdy please? I should have some of that FL Bijou lettuce seed to swap by then. It's done real well out there in full sun and 90's...no limpness at all. Amazing.

The beets are finally starting to form after using Mels suggested borax on them. The onions are beginning to fall over but they don't look ready to me. I'm still waiting for the hardneck garlic leaves to die back a bit more.

The chard has finally decided to grow huge, guess it needed that sun and heat, so we're harvesting half the chard one night, half the kale the next, half the collards the next, then start all over again. Greens every night sauteed with SFG garlic & SFG scallions or whatever! I'm VERY happy about that.

The basil is growing fast as are the oregano, thyme & sage, the coriander has gone to flower.

The cucs, watermelon & squash have so many flowers that I uncovered the squash beds. Lots of tiny squashes now too. I may have one little problem tho...here's a photo of a baby spaghetti squash not pollinated yet:
Does is look more like a butternut, which means I mixed up the seeds on about 20 plants, or is it too early to tell?

CC

Hi, all!

I've been out of town since June 30th and just got back yesterday, so tonight I've been catching up on posts & thought I'd update you on what's going on in my neck of the woods (other than RAIN). 

Here's a pic I took this evening of one end of my garden:



And one of the other end, which is mostly fallow & covered in black plastic against the weeds:



It's really hard to tell but the last bed on the left has a cattle panel arch attached to the farther end.  I've got some baby watermelon, ananas melon & spaghetti squash planted along one edge with the intent of growing them up the arch.  I had also planted some delicata squash, but they mysteriously disappeared without a trace while I was away.   

The other beds have an assortment of beans, corn, toms, squash, peppers, peas, lettuce, onions, carrots, kohlrabi, garlic, broccoli, garlic, radishes & brussels sprouts with random herbs & companion plants thrown in.  I have some eggplants, determinate toms & a couple of tomatillo plants in containers.

Most of the nightshades have flowers/small fruits on them.  If only we could get some sunshine, I'm sure they'd take off.  It feels like the end of the growing season is just around the corner & my poor babies are so far behind.


CC: that "spaghetti" squashling does look a bit suspicious.  Can you check the leaf shape against plants that you're sure are one or the other variety?

Wow Molly, those are all looking great! And exactly what I'd like to build once I can afford a house like a big kid  . How many boxes do you have total?

Completely envious of your many, beautiful boxes. Sigh.

mollyhespra wrote:
CC: that "spaghetti" squashling does look a bit suspicious.  Can you check the leaf shape against plants that you're sure are one or the other variety?

I wish...but I either planted about 20 of one or the other. I thought I was planting spag because I could eat those every night, and that I'd thrown out the butternut seeds coz I'm not a big fan. Uh boy...

Beautiful garden you have there, molly! So much space!

We got 1/3" of rain today - woohoo! Hopefully it ain't over yet and we'll get rained on for 2 more days at least.

CC

Our downtown flooded yesterday and the day before. Thankfully it didn't rain again today. If this keeps up Boffer will have to make me an honorary member of PNWet.

Ahhh, relief from the unrelenting 3 weeks of humidity unsettled weather and rain. Dew point 55*F and the sun is shining. Perfection.  

Thanks to my clover-instead-of-grass lawn I have lots of bees of all kinds, but mostly bumble. So dang cute. They are buzzing in and out of all the veggie flowers doing their thang.  

Camp, it's so weird how your weather is completely opposite to ours. We're humid to the point of fog and expecting rain through Sunday. Of course, that doesn't mean we'll get any.  But I've got the DE shaker & bkg soda bottle at the ready for as soon as we get some dry weather.

CC

Gosh, my apt is so damp that my salt shaker had beads of water on the top of it with salt blocking the holes, and the sugar is a solid block.  We need to dry out.
Nice day here today so hope that works its magic.
CapeC.....I've made myself a note to send you some New Girl seeds.  Its a Hybrid with strong wilt resistance which is why I bought the seeds. I think its a child of Early Girl but is better for taste and resistance.  I had too much wilt last year.  So far, so good.  
I tasted the New Girl tomatoes and they are great.  Mmmm good for flavor.  And so round and even.  I picked more this morning.
Watched a video by the TomatoLady of Arizona and she claims that she always picks her tomatoes when they first get a bit of blush on them, long before reddening.  It saves them from pecking birds who love the color red, and it makes room for more young fruits when picked off.  She also makes sure she picks them before it gets too hot and gets stunted by heat.  She just sets them on her kitchen counter to ripen.  She claims they don't get any more flavor by waiting.  I think I might try her idea.  So far I've only picked ripe or nearly ripe ones.

I made a video of my garden today.  Its nearly 13 mins long.  I would ask you to overlook the weeds in the pathways between the beds.  With all the rain we've had, I've not had a chance to weed the paths yet.  Neither did I get to the farm store for straw to lay layers between the beds to stop the weeds from growing.
I didn't show or mention everything or it would be much too long but I hit on the most important factors.

Thanks for the compliments, all!   

tbergeron wrote:Wow Molly, those are all looking great! And exactly what I'd like to build once I can afford a house like a big kid  . How many boxes do you have total?

There's six boxes in all, three being 4 x 16, two 4 x 12, and one 4 x 14.  I also have 5-gal buckets with determinate toms along the North-ish side. 

The fallow boxes are such because we only got around to filling them with MM about a month ago.  I did plant a few things along the sunniest end but I'm not going to plan on anything more this season.  Things are so far behind as it is.

QB, well done on the vid!  It's adorable!  So much going on in your garden.  I can't believe those cabbages!  Mine never look like that.  Couple questions...are those white cucs the White Wonders that Ray sent out?  None of mine sprouted.  Also, on one of your toms (or was it a pepper) you said that you had blossoms indoors, but then I couldn't tell if you said you either offed them or left them on when you planted out...?

My heirlooms are healthy but only one has a tom.  The other 4 don't even have flowers yet.  The cherry toms (& peppers) are tall and spindly but putting out flowers & fruit.  The Supersonics (F2) are the stars of the toms...thick trunks, deep green huge leaves and tons of fruits.  I'm thinking of thinning the leaves for air flow as they are all over each other.  It's like a jungle.

I accidentally pulled off some little corn leaves this morning thinking they were grass weeds.  I forgot they were there.  The roots and stems are still down there.  Anyone know if they will continue to grow?

Also, bad photo but my bush beans are dying one by one and when I pull them up I find these little white spots, like eggs maybe?:
Anyone know what they might be?

CC

CC, do your bean roots look like this?  You could have nematodes.

And the corn might keep growing.  Tough little plants, I've found.  When I went to thin earlier this year, and I purposely snipped them below the ground, a few actually kept on going, throwing out a new stalk, kinda like an onion will do.  Just leave them be & see what happens.

those nodes on the bean plant roots are the nitrogen fixing apparatus.

camprn wrote:those nodes on the bean plant roots are the nitrogen fixing apparatus.

Ooooohhhhh...no kidding. That's a good thing, right?  

CC

CC,

I have never seen a problem like that. If you google "bean root rot" you will find photos of lots of root rot diseases caused by soil-borne fungus. If it is one of them, not much you can do except not plant beans there for a few years. camprn is right about the white nitrogen-fixing nodules, that's normal and good. Black roots and stem are not normal. That's too bad, it has been a tough year for everyone with this weather.