June 1 - how are your New England gardens?

Most of my tomatoes are fabulous. Some of them that didn't get planted were pretty unhappy when I got back to the restaurant today (two days off this week-end! )

One of my squash has a blossom. My carrots and scallions are growing s l o w l y ...

My strawberries are phenomenal, and my blueberries are getting some color. (Okay, so they aren't planted in Mel's mix - but they will still taste good!)

oh, yeah, my radishes bolted....why do I have problems with radishes not growing quickly like they are supposed to do?

Our gardens here in NH are doing well. We've picked spinach and radishes so far.
Like you Martha our carrots, beets and onions are taking their time. I have NO patience.
My peas are growing fine, corn and beans are just pokin' their heads up.
I'm keeping an eye on all my transplants since I don't exactly have a green thumb!

My spinach is about to bolt so that's almost done. My carrots have been fickle so I reseeded those this past weekend. Currently harvesting Sugar snap peas, chard, beet greens, mustard greens, leaf lettuce. having a bit of a struggle with cabbage worm on the brussels sprouts & shell peas have hundreds of blooms. so far so good.

Ok, I'm jealous!! My oldest squares (the majority) were planted about a month ago, and the newest ones about 2 weeks ago. I've got lots of things sprouting, but my sprouts are teeny tiny. My largest plants are the peas -- the sprouts are about 2 inches high. Nothing is remotely close to harvestable yet.

I'm in Canada, near the Maine border in zone 5. I'm on the coast so we tend to be cool and damp. My SFG is on my rooftop in the city.

Any advice for me other than to be patient?

I forgot to add that I'm very impressed that I haven't had a single weed yet (unless i've mistaken one for a vegetable sprout!). My non-SFG flower garden is completely overrun, despite weed cloth and mulch.

I went to the community garden today to transplant 3 cantaloupe and 2 watermelon seedlings which I put under milk jugs. I am eager for fruit. I also transplanted tomatoes, 2 Belstar, 1 Moskovich, and 4 Black Cherry.
This comm garden is not SFG but I mounded the beds and use the same spaces as I do in my home garden.
The spinach seeds sown on May 5th are almost ready to harvest. Kale, chard, broccoli, cabbage, onion, carrots, sown from seed are all doing well.

In the home SFG I started earlier this year and have been eating fresh from its rows.
My strawberries planted last year are giving me red berries. I've had a few handsful already and they are just delish.
I've harvested spinach, lettuce, mesclun mix, All lettuce mix, radishes, Swiss chard, and both red and white radishes.
Some radishes take longer than others. My Cherry Belles are ready 20 days before the white Ping Pongs but I've already harvested both.
Its been a great year for my garden here in Maine.
I'm looking for more great food from the garden soon.

My home raised bed SFG.....and I LOVE it.

Dstubbs - I really can't stand that patient thing, can you?

I am sure you are right about no weeds for you on your rooftop. I am sure some birds will drop some in your boxes, but you won't get the general weeds-on-a-breeze that the rest of us do.

As a matter of fact, I bet if you grow tomatoes in a blight-heavy year, you will be a lot safer!

I'm also thinking that your rooftop might be a nice warm place that will help your little guys catch up.

I really enjoy looking at photos of everyone's gardens - thank you for posting!

We never plant until Memorial day because we've lost pepper plants to the "freaky late frost". But it feels like I got a really late start because the two weeks prior to Memorial Day were heartbreakinly beautiful, warm, sunny. And Darn it, I was no where near my garden! Matter of fact, I wasn't even allowed to go home for nearly two weeks. Instead I was staring out a window in the city cursing my missed opportunity. Okay, silently cursing. I did, however, have a chance to catch up on my reading (for those of you looking for a good summer book while you're row garden neighbor is weeding and your not weeding your SFG~I highly recommend Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen)

Now that my garden is planted (Thursday, 5/27/10) I have cucs, onions, radishes, lettuce, and my pepper plants, and my daughter's science fair bean plants all doing very well. The others need more time...but I can wait. Hubby says I have a whole summer to fawn over them. What does he know!

I do understand- I get panicky, because it feels like the gardening season must be almost over, because the weather was so nice so early. But we do still have time! Promise!

martha wrote:I do understand- I get panicky, because it feels like the gardening season must be almost over, because the weather was so nice so early. But we do still have time! Promise!

+1

This is me taking a calming, deep, breath. Martha promises that there is plenty of growing season left....Yep! That helped!

This is my second year with SFG and I've changed some of the plants around... It's still in the dog pen, Chezzie the dog is still with us, and so far so good. Trying leeks, spring onions, eggplant, pepper as well as the usual culprits - radishes, lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, basil, dill, carrots, etc.
I have found that the spinach seeds I bought as "slow to bolt" have bolted while the ones I got at the local plant farm are doing fine. Carrots are still the slowest (at least to me) crop known to man. However, mine stayed fine over the winter - used the last of them in March!

I feel your pain guys...we've had many days of 80+ degree weather since April or so it seems. That being said, I can't help but feel like I'm behind too. Adding to that is the fact that I hadn't found sfg till 2 weeks after I'd planted my very first row garden ever.

My husband is busy building my boxes and I'm busy mixing up MM and trying to get the planning and timing correct.

My garden grows 'meh' .
We started with a pair of 2x2's planted with onion and garlic. It's not very 'cause, well, they are only just starting to come up . We planted them last weekend. I should've started with something that would set the tone and start the summer off with a bang

My row garden is a wee bit pouty. Somewhat stunted due to the lack of soil preparation. Feeling the pressure to hurry up and plant with all the warm weather and not having to budget to properly amend the full RG area, we just planted and added a soaker hose. here I have 4 roma tomato plants none over the height of about 8", bell peppers, also about 6-8 inches tall and a few onions and garlic thrown in for good measure.

My container garden Pepper plants are also pouty but a wee bit larger than my row garden plants. They're all about 12 yo 16 inches tall with flowers. I think both the container and row gardens are lacking in additional nutrients due to deficient soil.

This week and ensuing weekend I will be converting my container and row gardens to a larger sfg table garden. I'm soo excited

It sounds like you are doing well getting ready for your garden. It doesn't matter if you started a little late. Next year you can start early and get both a spring and fall crop of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, etc in.
Radishes grow the fastest and give almost instant satisfaction.
Lettuce does well in the spring before it gets too hot. Til July, you can keep starting lettuce in a corner of your garden and transplanting them under broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini leaves where they'll get shade as they get older.
Enjoy your gardening experience.

I harvested close to 2 lbs. Sugar Ann snap peas from 4 sq. ft. 2 days ago.

Two pounds - sigh. Someday I will learn to plant enough to have a big fat useful harvest, instead of barely a serving here, barely a serving there. And my sister - who lives two towns away from me - is just getting flowers now, and my peas are done. Harrumph.

But I am happy for you - however, if you are still harvesting, I am sure I can break away from the restaurant to come for dinner!

LOL, I'm sorry Martha. My secret? I planted about 30 seeds per square, very intensive. I was planning on about an 80% germination rate, but it was closer to 96%. The vines seem to tolerate it quite well. The vines are putting out more growth and flowers. If it doesn't get too hot too quickly, I will get a few more snap peas. Today I harvested a few pounds of shell peas from 4 sq. ft. I am going to attempt uploading photos to the gallery tonight. I hope your restaurant is rockin' with the summer weather. I really like the menu!

Hi folks.

I pulled my first weed last week -- about 6 weeks into my SFG experiment. I'm very impressed with the lack of weed growth and I haven't seen any bugs yet! On the other hand, I'm not very impressed with the lack of vegetable growth. I have roughly 50 veggies and herbs planted and maybe 80% of those have spouted now, but nothing is really flourishing. My tallest plants are a strawberry plant that I planted as a seedling I bought (the rest are all grown from seed planted directly in the SFG, except the eggplant which I started from seed in a Jiffy pot indoors and transplanted outside a few days ago), and my peas, which are about 2 inches tall now -- not big enough to start trellissing. Most sprouts are well under an inch tall, even the oldest plantings (about 6 weeks old now).

I've noticed that my cucumber sprout and spring onion sprouts have disappeared and that there's a bit of moss growing in my lettuce square. Am I keeping it too wet, maybe? According to Mel's book it's hard to overwater, but maybe I have been? I've been watering about once a day, sometimes twice, but I live in an area that gets quite a bit of fog and rain, and some of my squares are in the shade until about noon. I'm supposedly in zone 5, but I think that's more because of our relatively mild winter as opposed to a warm summer. Maybe I'm just impatient, but I see everyone else's photos and it looks like you're all miles ahead of me. Am I doing something wrong? My SFG is on my rooftop and gets full sun from late morning until the end of the day. It is a bit windy compared to ground level, as it's 3 stories up.

Any suggestions?

In Mel's book he tells us 1 cup a week unless its very hot and then 2 cups a week. Personally, I water more than that.
I think watering every day where you have moisture and fog in the air may be a little too much for your plants.

The more experienced may have better info than me. I'm only into my 2nd year of SFG.....and loving it.
I keep the seed beds watered daily so they stay moist but then I cut back once they sprout to every 2 or 3 days and give them a sprinkle. Once established, I water less often but deeper, except for tomatoes which get more water once they start to blossom and cabbages which require more water in the hotter weather.

Thanks! Maybe I've been killing them with kindness. I'll try to hold off watering for a day or two and see what happens. Wish me luck! Nice sunny day today, so maybe that'll help, too.

Good morning!

My first SFG seems to be flourishing! I've got flowers on my tomatoes and my squash leaves seem to have doubled in size overnight. And I've already made pesto twice with my basil!

Question re beets... Again, remember i'm a first timer... I have three beet "clusters" that are getting quite large. My neighbor says I need to thin them, but I'm not sure how and when to do this. I guess I underestimated them (with three clusters in one square) Can I move some of them to a new square? What if they were to share a square with a pepper? Would Mel send the SFG police?

And finally, how do I know when to harvest the beets? The plants are probably 8 or 9 inched high and very bushy at this point. FYI they are called bull's Blood and I planted them as seedlings just about a month ago.

Thanks for any help you can send my way!

~Judy

as far as I know, you wiggle your fingers around the tops of the beets to see how big they are. You also want to keep an eye out to make sure they stay covered with soil, same as carrots.

Camprn, I will be sowing the 30 per for the rest of my fall sowings! Restaurant is good, garden is exciting - lots of little itty bitty green tomatoes and tons of flowers.