PNW: August 2014

Haven't seen any August updates from our friends in the PNW....wonder if everyone is busy, busy, busy......picking, freezing and canning beans!!   

is this another bean season or what?.....is it bad of me to want to sneak out in the middle of the night to rip down our pole bean vines    and blame it on the rats!

well that wont happen.....hubby said *beans might be the only veggie we eat this winter*  as the rats sure have been helping them selves to other veggies this year!....

but....pssst.....hubby wrapped around our 6x8 corn bed with garden fabric....think of a thick pvc pipe at each corner about 4 feet tall and then he used the garden fabric and wrapped it around all four corners....and so far NO rat damage   they haven't been able to get in! ya!

I have some pictures I want to up load soon from the gardens....things are doing very well really....lots of cucumbers....the tomatoes, pumpkins, squash are all coming along nicely, and the corn should be ready any day now....really looking for to that.....its been a hot summer but it looks and feels like its starting to cool down a bit.....

fall crops that were direct sown are all coming up and we were able to get a few Dino kale & Collard greens starts in a empty bed in the back garden....the rest of the cole crops are growing nicely in the shade on a shelf out back.....

how is every one else doing?...how are your fall plans coming along?...now is the time to start sowing for fall if you haven't already

happy gardening
rose

  I'm late to the party!  Today is supposed to be our hottest day of the year, so I'm being a wuss and hanging out indoors.

It's been a good summer for gardeners in the PNW, eh?  I still have a few meals of peas left on the vine because I got a late start on my peas and beans; I had to re-plant some boxes 2 and 3 times.  I couldn't find any wildlife damage, so I don't know what happened.  The seeds I germinated in my greenhouse did just fine.

I've had a two week lull with pest problems.    The aphids, leaf miners, and cabbage worms have disappeared.  I'm still seeing cabbage moths, but so far they're not laying eggs on my fall transplants.

We've been eating corn everyday for about a week.  I planted two types, and stagger planted, so for the first time, we might get a staggered harvest lasting over a month.    Despite the railing at 4 feet high, a weird wind blew over the stalks in two boxes from right to left.  They didn't get uprooted, but I had to put in a temporary grid on the railings so they could stand up to get fertilized.



My wife used up the rest of our spring cabbage making cole slaw for an extended family picnic.  She started out with two bowls like this:



Then she decided the bowls weren't big enough, so she disinfected a deep sink, and finished tossing the ingredients in there!



In early February, I had some left over spuds starting to sprout  so I stuck them in a small pile of woodchips.   What you see in the picture is the most sun they get; I've watered once.   I've gotten a couple meals from them, but you can see that they're still getting flowers.  I planted other taters from the same bunch in a sunny spot, and we ate them months ago.  


These are volunteer squashes growing out of  a small compost pile comprised only of chicken litter and veggie scraps and plants.  Last year I threw out all my saved squash seeds and bought new, because they had crossed so badly.  Spaghetti squash seems to dominate everything.  Last year my acorn squashes were yellow skinned with strings inside!  There's no telling what kind of squash I'll end up with out of here.


Squashes on an eight foot trellis.  This is a sweetmeat that's 16 inches long.  The other fruit on the vine are round, like they're supposed to be.  I don't know what happened to this guy.


I couldn't turn down the free  carport that came my way, and convert it into a greenhouse.  I had to fabricate a couple missing pieces, but I guess that's why it was free.  Knowing what I know now, if I were starting from scratch, I'd forgo the hoop houses, and grow most things in a greenhouse.


I've got one last flat of broccoli and cauliflower seedlings that are ready to get transplanted, but I think I'll wait for cooler day.  It may already be too late for them, but who knows?!

Howdy everyone. Good garden day today, because I only watered half of it! What a relief. Temps dropping from the 100's into the 90's is a huge blessing. I can water less now, and when I do, it's not so dang uncomfortable. I'm letting one area get watered only every other day without worrying it will keel over.

Which almost happened to my beans after a single day. Buncha burnt and withered tops after a single missed day -- and some more after no missed days. It's just too hot here in July, especially if you don't have great soil. One of the places I garden in belongs to a neighbor with poor soil. I love the space, and appreciate the generosity of letting me use it, but it can be hard to grow anything there. Most everything there this year has been a bust, usually stunted and often severely lacking in nitrogen.

I did taste my first dragon tongue beans, though, and now I see what everybody is raving about. They're very tender and have a gentler flavor than, say, the Kentucky Wonders I've grown. They only ever produced a dozen beans in total, from dozens of plants, before getting burnt and withered, but I'm hoping they spring back now that the blessed cooling trend has begun. Lots of blossom drop. The DT's are the earliest planted, but the only one of my five bush bean types that has produced a bean so far.

Beans back home in pots, in better soil, are looking nice. Quick growers -- but I'm starting to see cucumber beetles on them. They were a huge problem last year, destroying almost every cucumber plant of dozens.

Building a big compost pile in a corner of a neighbor's property, for use in his beds next year. I have lots of iris and water lily plants and plant trash in it. When moving it around today, I saw new blooms had popped up even under two feet of horse poop! Ye Gods, those irises are tough.

Planted perhaps a dozen square feet of broccoli raab in good soil elsewhere. They're just starting to come up. I'm not sure if I should put shade cloth over them or not, but since I planted them a bit early, I know I have to keep them moist.

Pineapple tomatillos: bees love 'em, but not a single lantern filled out after months of waiting. Two green tomatillos: one has given me dozens of golf-ball and smaller sized fruits, with many more on the vine, and one has far fewer but really big fruits that are finally starting to ripen.

I'm so relieved that you like the DTs after all our hype!    And, congrats on the green tomatilloes. With this small dip in temperatures, I've got 6 nice ones. Many rotten before filling out the husks.

I get empty husks sometimes, but never rotten fruit inside the husks. What do you think caused that problem for you?

On another note, woo hoo! my first female squash blossom! It's about time! It seems to take so many male blossoms before a female one comes along.

The bees are all on a hawthorne, I think it is, tree by the garden, though. I used to see them pretty thick on the rocks in a bowl full of water I left out for them. Now I hardly see any, but the sound of buzzing is pretty loud by the tree. Glad they love those flowers, but hope they bother with my squashes and beans.

The squash on my compost pile, despite having quite limited sun, is still doing the best by far. I'm going to be hard-pressed to ever use that pile now!

Malabar spinach is perking up, but looks nothing like the pics I've seen here and elsewhere around the net. There's hardly any vine to speak of, and on the one that's most developed, the leaves are extremely tightly spaced, like a fat pile of green pancakes. This is new MM they're in, and I wonder if it might be a little too rich for them or something. But it's a very strange growth habit by comparison to the pics I've seen elsewhere.

As far as the rotten tomatilloes, I'm going to go with the idea that they were incomplete fertilization, and therefore, doomed to fail. I don't know if I will get many more fertilized flowers from here on as the syrphid flies have disappeared.

It's August and you are getting the first female? Is that characteristic of your region?

I doubt the MM for the new Malabar is too rich if it's made with the same compost as the volunteer squash is growing.

It's not. The MM in the pots that the malabar is in is true, well-mixed MM with many types of compost, including earthworm castings. The compost pile is all sorts of things, including leaves and newspaper and cardboard and veggie scraps and coffee grounds and chicken poop, but mostly horse poop in various stages of decomposition.

Re getting my first female squash flower so late, last year I got a few very early on, in one butternut squash only, but for all the rest of my squash, only males until sometime in August again. It was very frustrating and made for an actual useful fruiting season that was very short.

Last year was a freak year, with our huge forest fires blanketing out the sun for weeks and strewing ash and probably disease organisms everywhere. It generally doesn't rain all summer here, though, and we can get three months in the 90's, sometimes bracketing one in the middle that's 100 and 100+ all month. Doesn't seem like a lot compared to some of your temps, but it does cause many of our tomatoes to produce no fruit and our squash to produce no female blossoms. So this year and last both had pretty much the same thing going on as far as blossom drop and male-only flowers going on.

Anyway it seems that's what does it, because as it starts to cool down sometime in August, many more tomatoes set, and many set their very first fruits, and female squash flowers appear. Some of my tomatoes that were stunted are even starting to grow and reach a couple or few feet high.

A worker at the garden department at the local grange is a master gardener, and she told me she planted more than 100 tomato plants, and is experiencing very poor production this year. She pins it on the heat too, saying some tomato plants grow only small fruit when it's this hot for this long. My tomatoes are all quite small this year too, in every location and type of soil I've put them in, including really good stuff in some places.

I notice sometimes the green growth of some fruiting plants keeps on going during prolonged intense hot periods, but they give up setting fruit. For me, anyway. I will say that a friend of mine growing in the same spot but with heavily amended soil and red plastic mulch has had much better fruit set and results overall in that location than I have.

our familygardens are getting much needed rain today   I just hope this doesn't mean that our summer is over   

what a grand gardening summer it has been!...so very thankful.....even with the up's and downs of thieves (rats) having their feast of summer goodies in our familygardens   and our German Shepard who loves her chickens so much that she cant stand that they have to be cooped up in their chicken yard a 16x16 yard for 6 chickens.....





Our mans best friend who is also a chickens best friend has figured out how to open the gate and let the girls OUT!   they had a party in our fall crop beds   thank goodness though our cole crop seedlings haven't been planted yet as they are still on a rack in the shade waiting for the weather to cool down...we lost the 3 3x5 beds with the carrots, onions, leeks, turnips, beets, Dino kale and collard greens.....not sure if its worth trying to re-sow or not.......on the + side our homemade compost that we used in those beds looked like it was growing a bunch of weeds too....so....maybe the girls did us a favor.....  

here is a bit of the harvesting we have been having......

yesterdays harvest....beans more then we know what to do with, zuk, tomatoes (cherry, paste, slicers and indigo rose the purple colored ones) cucumbers-(straight and lemon) and banana peppers

 

a few days ago...Painted mountain corn, Celeberty tomato, cucumber, wax beans



what a great tomato sandwich this matter made!



and......drum roll please.......we were able to share and have our first sweet corn with friends on Monday night!!!.....the rats are staying out of the corn bed!!...wrapping it with garden fabric cloth worked!

happy gardening
rose

Boffer .....so happy to hear you are going to be eating your beloved corn for over a month!....that is so exciting!.....our corn always falls over ever year....so this year hubby used twine and wrapped around each corn to help hold them up.....and so far its worked really well.......your wife's cole slaw looks yummy!....... keep us posted on how those potatoes do in the woodchips!......hope the pests stay away from your garden!

Marc.....glad to hear you like the dragon tongue beans.....we too loved the new beans we tried this year...the rattle snake beans   so tender and sweet....I hope you are able to get some squash!

happy gardening
rose

FamilyGardening wrote:
Our mans best friend who is also a chickens best friend has figured out how to open the gate and let the girls OUT!   
happy gardening
rose

That is too funny!    (too bad they raided the starts)

Rose, does your dog try to herd the chickens? One of our dogs is a natural, and he's training in herding now. Haven't heard of chicken-loving dogs -- except for the killer kind! -- until now.

Also, it can't be too late to replant winter crops like kale, I don't think. Unless you don't want them in that bed come spring, maybe? Otherwise, they'll either grow enough to eat before and during winter, or be there early on for you to eat in spring. Sorry you lost those three big beds!

Nice spread you've got there! Good to see someone having a great summer. As bad as mine was last year, this one is worse, so far.

We too have had two nice rains today -- our first day of real rain, not just a wishy-washy spritz, since early spring. The plants must be loving it! So glad to see it. I'm noticing the sun setting earlier now. Summer and hot weather are far from over, but what I at least consider the worst of it is over. I was actually reasonably comfortable today and part of yesterday. Before, getting out under the sun was like taking punches.

oh Marc Im so sorry to hear this years gardening is not going well   I know you have been dealing with a lot of high temps and that does take a toll on you and your garden....

our German shepherd sure does LOVE to herd the chickens   she has ever since the girls were baby chicks....she treats them as her babies....that's why she is always so desperate to be with them....

the chickens took over half of the dog kennel we have for our dogs....so that at night when the girls are up in bed we can open the gate and the dogs have free roam around their coop to keep out predators like raccoons and such.....but during the day time when we let the girls out in the chicken part of the kennel....we shut the gate so that the girls stay and poop and dig and such on their side..... the dogs use the dog side for potty and sleeping in their dog house at night..... during the day time they are out in our big back yard......it really is working out nicely....once fall comes the girls will be able to be out for supervised  free roam a bit in the back yard once again.....during the summer time we have only let them out a couple of times right before a mowing as we really don't want the back yard full of chicken poo, because of our kids playing out back.....I think its working out pretty good so far....the girls get lots of stuff from mowing and the garden....so I don't feel to bad they are in a chicken yard....but their chicken best friend thinks other wise LOL

the picture below was back in June   the girls were digging thru an old rotten wooden stump and Ace was loving ever minute of it!

 

happy gardening
rose

oh for got to ask Marc.....tell me more about your dogs classes you are going to   

happy gardening
rose

Marc, Your dogs are Aussies, correct?

I like Ace's face!  He looks like a cool fellow.

The herding classes are with sheep.  It's a considerable drive away, and it's my mother doing it, not me.

We have four Aussies -- Buddy, a brown tri-colored male(daddy); Maile, a blue merle female (mommy); Feather, another blue merle female (daughter); and Brio, a new four month old black tri-colored puppy (not related).



The dogs were all taken down to the herding trainer to see if they had an instinct for it.  Our neighbor came too, who brought along Monty, son of Buddy and Maile and brother of Feather.

The first part of training is to see if they care about anything besides eating sheep poop.  Most dogs do not.  Well, everybody ate sheep poop, but some of ours stopped and wanted to do something else.  That was good!  Maile did not want to do anything else.  She's no herder; she'll always be more interested in their poop than in the sheep.  

Feather ate a little poop, but then showed no interest in the sheep whatever.  She explored the large wooden-fenced enclosure the sheep were in, then came back to the people and lied down for a nap.  That left Buddy and Monty, who were both interested in the sheep and started snuffling at them and following them this way and that as they moved about.  Soon each in their turn were funneling the sheep, who of course merely wanted to stay away from them, this way and that.  No lessons needed-- born herders!  But now they need training on how to do it on command.

So my mother and her friend Nora took turns being instructed on commands, body positioning, and how to use a long thin stick, much like the one you see used to train horses to run circles around a ring, to guide Buddy and Monty which way to go in response to which commands.  Both dogs and ladies are getting a huge kick out of it, and the dogs are having a great time, they say.  Which is not surprising; they get to be active and be the center of attention and praise.  

The trainer says they're doing very well.  She says our Buddy is "so kind to the sheep."  He doesn't nip them or frighten them, just guides them and maintains a very relaxed doggy dominance.  That's exactly how he is in the rest of life.  The most amazing father and stepfather and uncle to puppies ... he lets them clamp their teeth on his fur and tug, anywhere, and never makes a fuss or snaps at them.  We don't guide him in his behavior with them, because we feel it's fair that he "defend" himself from getting his hair pulled out or just being made too uncomfortable all the time if he needs or just wants to.  But we don't have to.  He's not just extremely tolerant with them, he's interested in them, comes over to check on and nuzzle them, and is gentle with them.  They all seem to wind up sooner or later sleeping on him, sometimes snuggling in to spoon with their backs against his belly.  He's competitive as heck when racing the adult dogs for a thrown toy, and will occasionally put a dog who crashes clumsily into him in his or her place, but nobody ever gets hurt or too scared to come back running just as hard and being just as competitive next time.  He's just an awesome, gentlemanly dog.  He's my role model.  I wish I could be that even-tempered and nice to everybody.

My mother spent weeks afraid of the sheep.  "What do you think they're going to do to you?," I asked her.  She worried they would trample her.  So for the first few weeks she let Nora train both Monty and Buddy while she watched.  But now she finally gained the courage to brave -- and we actually did sometimes try not to laugh at this -- sheep, and is in the corral happily training Buddy these days.  She and Nora are both working toward getting good enough to enter Buddy and Monty into herding competitions.

Marc, I enjoyed reading about your dogs. That Buddy sounds awesome.

Thanks.  I finally figured out how to post a pic, so I put one up.  This site looks very different in Firefox than IE.

Here he is being Super Stepdad ...

And here's the baby Brio getting into herding...





Terrifying, isn't she?

Here's daddy doing it...



More fun'n'games ...

Are you serious??? This is so cute I can hardly stand it!  Look at Buddy & Brio doing there sheep thing.  Amazing!  Little Brio reminds me of the RCA dog in the first photo with his head tilted like that.

What a beautiful bunch. 

I want to take them all home...altho Miss Lilly would have a lot to say about it, I'm sure, and not all nice.   

CC

Thanks!  They are a lovable bunch.  Brio is a girl, by the way.  Very confident.  One of the reasons my mother picked her is because she wants to train her in agility, and for that you want a dog that isn't too shy and retiring.  Though the quiet, bashful ones may make lovely pets and be very happy personalities, they are much harder to train to be active go-getters and work under pressure.  Brio, as you can see, is more of a brash little devil ...




Her big sister, Feather,


is confident and full of spunk at home, but in shows she just crawls along so slowly it's plain she's just not into it.

My family really enjoyed reading about your lovely dogs!.....how fun for your mom and her friend!.....its pretty cool Marc   our son is in love with the little one and I love Feathers beautiful face   

our Ace is a she also   her full name is Acelina ....she is named after Batmans dog.....

happy gardening
rose

Ah, so Ace is Acelina! I never even knew Batman had a dog, and I used to read all that stuff like crazy. I remember Superman had a dog -- Superdog, of course! Everybody said that was silly, but I've always been such a dog lover that I loved it.

Thanks for the compliment about our beautiful Feather.

Glad your son and family enjoyed all the dog talk. Little Brio sure is a character, all about fun and showing everyone proudly what toy she has and is the boss of, and dogs and boys are the original match made in heaven.

My own childhood was much richer for having had pets, and I'm sure it made me a better and more compassionate and responsible person.

Oh, man, are they cute! Yea! Marc posted photos!   

  Now I can finally post some garden photos.

Here are some from behind the house, in the dog kennel, along the fence tops, and in the small area between the retaining wall and the wild hill behind the house.


Dog kennel beans:




Back by the hill, more beans, mint, & small etc's:





A fence-top planter with Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce and a set of three I got with lettuce and red giant mustards just starting to peep out ...






Compost pile squash plant ...




I have an extra large glove size and very long arm, but so does this leaf...




Garden helper in charge of smearing lens with nose:

So good to see your photos. Huge squash leaf! Now I can visualize your garden areas and the terrain to which you have to deal.