New England June 2014

Pretty soon we're going to have an official SFG night time gardening uniform: bathrobe, slippers, head lamp, holster for a squirt bottle...   

sanderson wrote:Must. Have.   

Too Funny Sanderson! 

I'll let you know how it works for June Bug hunting tonight. Don't tell anyone but I'm kinda looking forward to it. Shhhh they'll think I'm nuts!  

boffer wrote:Pretty soon we're going to have an official SFG night time gardening uniform: bathrobe, slippers, head lamp, holster for a squirt bottle...   

Love it! Maybe we should design a hat with insignia patch, built in headlamp, and reserve tank for squirt bottle. You know like those stadium hats for beer. And a decoder ring with compass and calculator for figuring Mel's Mix ratios for volume and quantities of peat, vermiculite and compost.

Anyone brave enough to put all this together and take a photo? Post in Only a Square Foot Gardener Would . . .

Us oldtimers will remember Acara, the FL vampire gardener.  If I remember rightly, he had an allergy or sensitivity to sunlight.  He taught a lot of us how to prune tomatoes.  Miss his wit.

Kay

lyndeeloo wrote:

boffer wrote:Pretty soon we're going to have an official SFG night time gardening uniform: bathrobe, slippers, head lamp, holster for a squirt bottle...   

Love it! Maybe we should design a hat with insignia patch, built in headlamp, and reserve tank for squirt bottle. You know like those stadium hats for beer. And a decoder ring with compass and calculator for figuring Mel's Mix ratios for volume and quantities of peat, vermiculite and compost.

And don't forget a support group!  We have to cheer each other on!  Even if the neighbors ARE laughing and shaking their heads at us...  (We know our neighbors talk about us anyway.) 

And at least I'm not out mowing my grass at 11pm on a weeknight in my undies like a couple of them!)

Could I use my crocs for slippers?  I think I have everything else... 

Crocs and a raincoat would certainly be approved substitutions in the PNW!

Does anyone in NE plant soft neck garlic?  I just learned there is a variety called Early Italian Purple which matures 5 - 10 days earlier than other varieties.  Since I only have the one SFG box, getting the garlic out of the box a week earlier is really appealing.

But the kicker is that I thought those of us living in NE were purported to do better with hard neck.

I still haven't learned how to post pix from my new computer.  I know how to do it here, but my Win8.1 isn't cooperating with me.

Anyway, I have such lovely flowers now, both Peonies and Iris blooming and the lilacs are doing nicely. 

Today I sowed my Sugar Pot watermelon seeds in the veggie garden and also my cukes and another row of Cherry Belle radishes.  I even transplant a Mountain Gold tomato at the end of the asparagus bed.  My spinach and lettuces are covered with cheese cloth.  Our temps were in the low 70sF today and sunny.  Beautiful day but rain expected for Wed and Thurs.  That gives me a chance to do some laundry and inside house cleaning.  The only thing I really have left to do is put a few things in large pots to grow in the flower bed and weeding my strawberry bed.

Oh, that poor bed.  The weeds are taller than the plants and I know I saw white flowers out there a week ago.

sanderson wrote:

Anyone brave enough to put all this together and take a photo?  Post in Only a Square Foot Gardener Would . . .

I need a new avatar for this month.......hmmmmm.

Sanderson,   The headlamp works great and I didn't even have the high beams on!

Yay again, rain. Trying to wind the garden hose around boxes and raised rows makes it hard to water my garden at this point.

Getting a little overwhelmed right now because there is so much to learn. One of the things I'm stuck on is: What does one actually do with garlic chives? Being a perennial I'm really interested in the concept, but I've never even heard of them before.

I need to get out there in the drizzle and transplant the vine seedlings today. Really should find room for all these spare large and wilting tomato plants, no sense letting them go to waste. Asparagus seedlings are about 4-6" high, it might be time to transplant them, they don't seem to be growing much at this point.

Some transplants in the garden are doing great and some have kind of disappeared. The kale and kohlrabi all gave up the ghost, some of the broccoli, and the celery. The peppers are measley and I'm hoping to find more at the library plant sale on Saturday, otherwise I'm hitting the nurseries for pepper plants. Celery is so nice to have in the garden, and it's one of those pesticide-laden veggies at the grocery store. You can use grocery store celery to grow new celery by leaving the stump in water and letting roots grow and then transplanting (everyone probably knows that) but I'd like to start from organic. So there are still several plants I want to pick up at a nursery.

Lesson from this season: double the number of seedlings you'll need, because you can't tell which ones you'll need to re-sow. And start earlier on many seedlings: peppers, celery, etc., so that they're big and strong enough by transplant time.

Some of my tomato plants have blossoms.

Need to get to Lowes for more SFG box material and get second stories on some of these beds, particularly the potatoes, which are doing great. I attribute that to Fedco seed potatoes, these things are really healthy looking.

Great seeing everyone's posts! And pictures!

Oh, anyone growing dried beans? I think they need a long season, I wonder if it's too late to plant those.

NHGardener.....Chives......Cut off the stems and chop them up.  Serve in soups, on mashed taters, on goat cheese, over asparagus, on eggs, and in all kinds of salads from green to crab.  They add a mild touch of garlic to the dish.  Wherever you want a mild garlic touch, add chopped chives.

Its raining lightly here so no outdoor garden work for me.  It might clear up later this afternoon when I can finish transplanting into the last of my pots and also sow or transplant spare plants or seeds in the last berm that only houses my cold frame.  There's room there.

NHG, what kind of chives do you have?  Are the stems round & hollow with purple flowers or flat with white flowers?  The purple-flowered ones are onion chives and the white-flowered/flat leaved variety are garlic chives. 

Either way, QB put it best: chop 'em up and enjoy!  Both varieties lose their flavor when heated, so best to add them last to any dish. 

Oh, and tip of the onion chilves: the flowers are edible, and once they're almost done flowering and start looking ragged, cut them down to about an inch off the ground and they'll spring back for another burst of  growth & maybe even flowers later in the season.   The garlic chives bloom later than the onion chives.

Thanks QB - if they're that easy and almost garlic substitutes, I may slightly switch over to them and not plant so many garlic bulbs.

Molly - I don't have any yet, but I see them mentioned here. So they lose flavor when they're cooked? hmm.

I loved scapes last year, and looking forward to more this year. I imagine scapes would be somewhere between chives & garlic bulbs on the scale?

lyndeeloo wrote:
I'll let you know how it works for June Bug hunting tonight.

Eww...won't they fly into your face???  ACK!  I can hear them beating up against my bedroom screen when I'm reading in bed at night.  I'm not joining that Nite Patrol group...too many cayotes here.  But I DO go out in my jammies, etc, in the morning to garden. All the walkers know me by my magenta housecoat.

Cindy, I have mostly softneck garlic.

NHG, I put chopped garlic chives in a salad yesterday.  YUM!  Tater topper, sandwiches, pastas, pizza...all kinds of great ways.  Taste one and then you'll know what to do with it.  Mine are very mild.

Just gotta show you guys this potted Roma in the lower right corner.  It was the earliest one put outside, is the healthiest, but it's in the back yard which is so much warmer than the SFG side:
The other pots are 1 Honey Crisp apple seed & flowers.  Some flowers are to be left in a pot & some transplanted to the perennial gardens. Also note the brown lawn due to lack of rain.  Fortunately the clover is starting so will cover all that brown.

Perfect day for planting out summer veggies since it's supposed to be cloudy today and tomorrow.  So this morning out went the peppers - Red Bull's Horn & Banana: 

I hope peppers & cukes play well with onions because they are all in this box with the lettuce & daikon:

Then I planted these and some other basils in with the yellowing garlic:

Then I planted the ground cherries across the back the old school SFG with some extra tomato plants & pole beans.  In the front beds are potatoes covered in wood chips that keep breaking thru, radishes for pods, bush beans & more left over tomatoes & strawberries:

I planted some melon seeds to go in my potted squash/melon row on a sunnier warmer side of the house where I'm hoping SVB doesn't find them.  Once everything is up I'll be covering with tulle & self pollinating regardless:


Meanwhile, the peas are looking good but no flowers yet:

I had to sprinkle with DE the other day because the kale and collards are lacy. Stupid slugs. The new growth looks fine. 

The kitchen garden is in full swing with seed making...so pretty:

And no more salad buying at the grocery store for a few months.   
That's all I got, kids. 

CC

NHG, other's opinions may vary, but I personally wouldn't forego growing garlic for garlic chives.  Garlic can keep/store over the winter so you can enjoy it year-round, whereas I don't think chives can keep very well; I've tried freezing them and they get all limp and texturally I don't like to eat them like that, so into the omelette they go, which makes them lose some flavor.  I've not tried drying chives, maybe that would work better...but I'd still grow garlic. 

As to scapes being half-way between garlic chives and garlic, I can only offer my personal experience.  I *like* scapes because they have a bite to them.  I've found that cooking also lessens that bite, so I only lightly saute them as a last ingredient.  Garlic chives *taste* garlicky but...it's not garlic.  And I've also found some real garlic to be rather mild...so I guess it varies.

Try growing a little of each and see what your preference is.

HTH!

CapeC....I love what you do in your garden.

Thanks Molly - that's really helpful!

And CC, you might want to try the garlic spray against your slugs. (I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds hopeful.)

Which reminds me, in this wet weather, it's a good time to go out slug hunting. I have my Maxwell House canister of soapy water out there from a few days ago.

We could do night raids on those too. LOL. In our pajamas. And boots. Tell me that doesn't sound like fun...

A note on growing chives: they can be a "garden thug" taking over at the least chance.  To avoid clumps where you don't want them, be sure to cut off the flowers before they set seed.  Nonna speaks from experience!  My favorite clump of chives is in a very large decorative pot that sits just 5 steps from the kitchen door.  It warms up early in Spring, and produces tasty chives all summer for our delight.  Also remember, if your bulb garlic sends up a scape that you fail to harvest soon enough, the mature "baby" garlics (bulbils) at the top of the scape can be thickly planted in a square to sprout in Spring when they can be cut for a delicious "true" garlic chive taste treat.  Nonna (who will be adding some of the potted chives to sour cream to top the potatoes I'm serving for dinner.  Mmmmm!)

Our first strawberries! Oh they are so good!

I wish my strawberries had not died.

I wish I had room to plant strawberries!

Lyndeeloo, they look great!

Camp - Long shot, but you might try Lowe's.  I got "end of the season clearance" strawbs for $1/pkg of 10.  For $4 I got 43 plants.  Now, whether they grow or not... THAT is the question...

Sorry Camprn. Will you try again? They do take up a lot of space and not really getting anything out of the first year is tough. But right now I'm feeling it is worth it!  

Wow Lyndeeloo! I was just thinking tonight it would probably be about 10 days or so till our strawberries were ready. I have lots of white flowers out there.

camprn - try again! They're worth it. I don't know why yours died, you might want to try ordering from Johnnys, at least in the spring, or even get runners now from someone and plant them. They multiply like rabbits - like I said, mine in the boxes are sparse, I assume it's vermin but maybe it was the seaweed I put on top of the beds last fall, but in between the boxes is where they're a jungle.