Between Planting and Harvest

This is the time of the year that is devoted to weeds (and, this year, snails). Most of the garden is planted, although I have collards, kale, pak choi and arugula seedlings in the cold frame. The big vegetables are not yet ready for harvest - tomatoes have green fruit but probably three weeks before any picking, peppers just have blossoms, pole beans are now beginning to flower (after having been repeatedly pruned by the groundhogs), the potatoes are in flower, and the garlic leaves are just beginning to dry.

We have been picking blueberries for about a week and the bushes are heavy with berries. For the first time we notice that some of the birds are interested in pecking at the berries. We continue to harvest Swiss chard and other greens. With a daily surveillance of the snails there is less loss to them.

I have planted broccoli from my seedlings and surrounded them with cut worm collars (I cut the cardboard backs of note pads into about one inch wide pieces and staple each one to form a circle). With no groundhogs these may grow. I hope so, this is the 4th planting.

One thing I have become much better about is the amount of seed I use when starting plants indoors. I became aware of this when I was growing milkweed seedlings and wanted to compare the germination rates of seeds that were cold stratified with those that weren't. To do that I planted three seeds in each cell in the six-packs. I was amazed at the germination rates (92% for those that were cold stratefied) and the result was that most cells had three seedlings in them. With the last broccoli I only had a few seeds left in the package and so I planted one to a cell. I had 17 seeds to plant and just set out 16 little seedlings from them.

In past years there have been times (admittedly rare) when I was current with weeding. Then we go away for a week - or life intervenes and I don't get to the garden for a week - and the weeds have taken over and I never catch up again. Do my vegetables grow that quickly? Of course not. I think I can weed an area one day and three days later it needs to be done again. I have been pleased with the clover that I planted among some crops. It discourages (but does not totally eliminate) weeds. The clover can best be used with larger plants - about the size of broccoli and kale - that will be taller than the clover.

This year I have grown a couple of new vegetables and I should have researched them more. I planted arugula (mostly because I wanted to see what it looked like). It grew very well but I didn't know when or how to harvest it. By the time I really noticed it, it had begun to flower. One website says once it flowers pull it out because it will be too bitter. I will be able to answer that soon because I did pull it out yesterday but saved some of the leaves in the process. Some of them will go into a salad today and then I will know if they are still worth eating. I have started more arugula but since it is a spring (cold weather) green it may not do well - unless summer continues to elude us.
Another new vegetable is red malabar spinach. Having read that it is like New Zealand spinach I treated it as such. But apparently the similarity is that it is a warm weather plant that is sort of like spinach. The New Zealand spinach plants I grew last year spread out in a bush form but I just learned that the red malabar spinach is a vine that will grow 6 to 8 feet tall. I need to create a trellis for it.

If anyone has grown arugula or red malabar spinach I would appreciate any suggestions on when to pick the leaves. I assume that I could start now with the spinach.

Although it has not been very hot yet I see that my pepper plants are beginning to grow well. So all is well right now.

Am I In Control Again?

I learned this past weekend that other gardeners have the same problems that I have had. Slugs and snails seem to be having a banner year most everywhere and groundhogs are a problem for many.

In my garden the little groundhog was finally caught and removed. My pole beans are now growing. I had just surrounded most of the pole bean areas with fencing held down with tent stakes to keep out the groundhog. I have left them there just in case the family had other members living nearby. I transplanted some new little lettuce plants and maybe we will actually be able to eat some. The last lettuce we had for a salad came from the Regional Market this Saturday.

Snails (we have far more snails than slugs) still abound but I scout for them two or three times a day, dropping them into soapy water. This was the suggestion of another gardener and I prefer it to squashing them. I don't have anything under row covers right now so the snails cannot operate freely. I don't have anything to report yet on whether surrounding Chinese cabbage with bran meal and/or egg shells cuts down on the snail damage.

In general, the vegetables are beginning to show good growth. Tomatoes are forming. Greens (like Swiss chard, pak choi and zen) are providing part of our meals. I grew some snow peas that have done well but are tasteless. Back to sugar snaps next year. Summer squash have flowered and are beginning to develop. Cucumbers (I went with lemon cucumbers this year) had been nipped back by the groundhog but are now beginning to show growth and flowers. The potatoes have certainly grown quite well, at least above the ground. [Hard to know what's going on below the surface.] The fava beans my son brought back (as seeds) from Oregon are impressive and the soy beans, initially nipped off, have been replanted and are growing. Peppers and basil are not having their best year, but it is early. Garlic and leeks are doing nicely. Our blueberries are covered with berries and are beginning to ripen. My goal of weighing what we get from the garden fails with blueberries - they usually don't make it into the house. The raspberry plants are growing well. Japanese beetles have been found on the roses outside the fence but I haven't seen any on the raspberries yet. About fifteen years ago they were a major raspberry problem for several years. When I find them they will also be candidates for soapy water. We have some blackberries growing along the fence and we should get more of those than we did last year when the canes weren't supported.

Most of the planting is done. I still have collards, more kale, broccoli, pak choi, arugula, and Swiss chard starting in the cold frame. All in all the garden is doing well despite the early set-backs.

Always Room for Learning

Maybe because I am retired and have more time to observe I am learning more this year than I recall in the past. Some of what I learn I would rather not know. For example, if you remove a groundhog it doesn't mean you will have no more groundhog damage. As soon as the groundhog that was wiping out the broccoli was removed neighbors told me that it wasn't the only one. And, sure enough, a day or two later my wife saw another groundhog in the garden area. This one seems clever enough to avoid traps. When we returned from a short trip to Pennsylvania the trap was empty but the third planting of broccoli was gone. Along with the Italian dandelions, virtually all of the lettuce including what was inside a hardware cloth cage - the ground hog just pushed it aside and clipped the lettuce - and some of the scallions. I haven't seen damage this week but perhaps that is because my son set up his tent in the back yard and has been sleeping there most nights. But he won't be there for the rest of the growing season.

While at the native plant conference in Millersville, PA, I attended a workshop on composting. We have been composting for years but the thrill of seeing steam rising from the compost pile ended some years ago when we stopped adding our next door neighbor's lush grass to the compost. (It was to avoid adding pesticides but these days most people mulch their grass, especially those who do not have chemical treatment for their lawn, so the supply has ended. We have virtually no lawn and so cannot supply our own grass.) I thought the lack of grass was the reason my compost no longer heated up but apparently it was really lack of moisture. Most of what has gone into the composter dries out very quickly and then sits there breaking down very, very slowly. I have never added water. So over the past two days I rebuilt the compost piles. I have a composter that consists of three 3 ft by 3 ft sections. They were all full of material. First I emptied out one section. Then I put some large stuff (pieces of branches mostly) into the bottom of the empty compost section and transferred material from the second section into that section, with the hose dripping water into it as I did. Then I put a large plastic bag that is full of straw that I gathered from the garden beds earlier on top of the compost pile to retain the moisture. Then I transferred the material from the third section into the second section after adding some large stuff at the bottom (to allow oxygen to reach the composting material). During the recent three inch rainfall I ran out and pulled the bags off the top of the two sections so that the rain would provide more moisture to the piles. I remember how quickly the piles used to sink when I was adding layers of new, lush green grass to the piles. I hope to report soon that when I turn the piles over - that is, move one pile into the empty section - steam rises.
Although I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about compost, it seems I lacked a few basic essentials.

I have also learned that solving one pest problem may create another. I have been unsuccessful with Chinese cabbage in the past because flea beetles (I think) eat the leaves so much that the little cabbages are unable to grow. This year I put the Chinese cabbage and pak choi under row covers. That prevented the flea beetles from attacking the little plants. They grew very nicely but when we began to harvest the Chinese cabbage we found that they were covered with snails. The snails were protected from any predators by the row covers. I probably picked a hundred snails (and a couple slugs) from the plants. Most of the leaves had so many holes that they were unusable (well, at least unpalatable). I have removed the row covers and spread bran meal around the area (something I read said that they eat the bran meal and die) and kept picking off whatever slugs and snails I could find. The centers of the plants are now doing pretty well. I harvested one yesterday and after removing a couple of layers of the outer leaves the rest didn't look too bad and there were relatively few snails or slugs on them. The snails and slugs seem to come off in the water when the cabbages are washed. We generally wash these things three times to eliminate the undesired protein.
Since I have started some more pak choi under a row cover I better get out there tomorrow with my bran meal to surround the plants. If this works I will have the procedure for next year - row covers with bran meal. And inspect them from time to time.

Not all is dealing with pests. Potatoes appear to be growing well. (In the previous post I was wondering where they were.) They have gotten to the point where I have no more soil to hill them up with. The tomatoes are beginning to take off (which means I need to stake them soon). The peppers are holding their own and should take off as the weather warms. Even the dead looking asparagus crowns which I thought I had buried far deeper than they could deal with have come up. I can count 22 little shoots from what I think were 25 crowns. Something has cut off a couple of them (cutworms?) but the first of those has sent up another shoot so I expect they will be okay. The peas are forming pods, the fava beans look good, dill is every where, the summer squash are growing well (I took one out from under the row cover), parsley and basil, which had started very slowly, seem to be established, the kale and Swiss chard have been good, the spinach is finished although I have also planted a New Zealand type spinach and the ground cherries look good. Both the pole beans and the soybeans are troubled by something that snips off some of the growing tips - groundhog for the pole beans I suspect because the cuts are 4 to 6 inches above the ground. Weeds are developing nicely also. But that seems to be true even in bad years.

Some Things Are Discouraging

Maybe I am impatient. I planted potatoes on May 4th (two weeks ago) and don't see any sign of potato sprouts yet. The pieces of potato that I planted seemed in good condition and those several that I didn't cut into pieces should not have rotted if that is was happened to the others. I planted asparagus crowns April 29th (two and a half weeks ago) and don't see any sign of asparagus shoots. Admittedly the asparagus crowns really looked in bad shape - more like dry strings - but I know that 20+ years ago when I planted our current asparagus they didn't look like they had potential either. But I can't imagine that these asparagus crowns have the strength to send anything through six inches of soil. I looked at an article on asparagus several days ago and the advice of that article would have been to not buy asparagus crowns that looked like the ones I received.

For several weeks I have been disappointed in the growth of all the lettuce that I have planted. It just seemed to be very slow. And a few were disappearing. In fact, one group of six or eight seedlings that I planted in one spot were all gone several days later. I blamed slugs. Then, on Friday I discovered that almost all of my broccoli plants that were in three different locations had been chewed almost to the ground. My immediate thought was groundhog. But a few minutes later seven year old Julia next door called over that they had seen a deer jumping the fence from our yard into their yard that morning. So then I thought "deer". Saturday I went to the Regional Market to buy more broccoli and friends there didn't think that deer would eat broccoli. Sounded more like groundhog to them.
This morning every one of the twelve new broccoli plants was eaten to the ground. And the lettuce looks more chewed than stunted so I think those plants have been trimmed back by the groundhog also. And the parsley that I planted out recently has been cut back.
We used to have a ground hog living under our shed until I put hardware cloth around the base of the shed and down into the ground. No problem for a number of years. Last year there seemed to be one episode of severe damage to the brussels sprouts. I was also told that there was a ground hog living a couple of houses away under a shed. This year the damage seems to be daily. I am pretty sure that fencing will not work unless it is fairly high and set about a foot into the ground. The fence that I have around part of the garden to discourage rabbits certainly hasn't and won't stop a determined ground hog.
Now I am afraid to plant out the warm weather vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers) for fear that some (or all) of them will be delightful treats for the ground hog.

Some Early Mistakes

The gardening year is young but I have already discovered a few things I do that need to be changed:
(1) In early March (the 14th to be exact) I seeded the area within a wooden frame that has a glass cover with various kinds of lettuce, some Swiss chard, and some other greens. While they all germinated germination and growth was very slow. I did much better with seed that I started indoors and transplanted outside later. Having this frame in one of my beds also interfered with my ability to follow my garden plan because lettuce wasn't scheduled for that space. When I did remove the frame it fell apart so that will help not repeat this mistake.
(2) I still have a habit of using more seed than I need to. For example I may put four or five tomato seeds in a little pot. Generally they all germinate and I am loath to thin them out. But I only use as many pots as I want plants, so two seeds would be enough. But I am learning to snip off extra seedlings (or, at least, some of them). Outside I also tend to overseed. This all goes back to Jim Crockett saying something to the effect that if you are stingy with your pea seeds your peas will be stingy with you. Maybe that is true for peas in the early Spring but it doesn't seem to be necessary for all vegetables.
(3) I still set out seedlings too soon. Nice weather just doesn't mean that the soil is warm enough for little seedlings to flourish. And often I have not hardened them off long enough. So I am putting seedlings that are too small and not properly prepared into the garden before the soil (and sometimes the air) is warm enough. While they try hard to please me they would do better if I waited a couple of weeks more.

So that I don't feel totally full of mistakes, I am happy to say that I have actually begun using the row cover material that I bought last year. That year I put it over an area where I had just planted pak choi and Chinese cabbages seeds. (Flea beetles seem to love these plants.) But with the row cover there I did not water the seeds and germination was poor or many of the emerging seedlings dried up, but the number of plants was very small. And, they also had flea beetles anyway. This year I started the plants indoors and put the row cover over them immediately after planting, making sure that it was pretty well secured around the edges. They seem to be doing very well and we may be eating some of them in the next few days. So that looks like one success.

May there be more.

It's Hard To Wait

Okay, so the cold weather vegetables have been planted and are growing nicely - especially with yesterday's gentle rain - and we aren't yet at "the average last frost date", but I can't wait to plant the warm weather vegetables. After all the 10th of May is only a few days away and with the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the weather is warmer and the newspaper doesn't show any cold nights in the immediate future, so why not get a jump? I planted my pole beans two days ago. I thought about planting the tomato seedlings but I have been "stung" before by planting tomatoes early only to have a frost seriously set them back. Anyway they are not actually big enough and haven't been hardened off enough. Not to mention that the spinach that occupies the bed where the tomatoes are supposed to go aren't even close to picking size. I guess I can wait until the 25th or the 30th.

Not that there hasn't been enough to do in the garden recently. Taking care of the seedlings indoor takes a certain amount of time especially because I started about 250 milkweed seedlings for a local nature center's fund raising plant sale. Boy will I be happy to deliver those. They have been ready to go for about three weeks and I have visions of them drying up for lack of space in their little containers.

I had this great garden plan all mapped out. Then we decided that the flower garden that was going to become part of the vegetable garden should remain in flowers. Since I then didn't have the place to transplant the pak choi and Chinese cabbages I just put them in a different bed. But that was where the new asparagus was supposed to go. And the little seedlings in the glass covered frame really didn't grow as quickly as I expected so that space remained tied up. [The seeds started indoors later that thos ein the frame have done much better.] I decided to scatter the cucmbers around the garden instead of putting them all in one place where pests could easily find them. Today I went out to see what I had put where and where I had empty spaces. Then I sat down and rewrote the plan around what I had already done. Somehow everything still fits. Part of the reason is that I cut way back on the number of tomato plants because Janet isn't supposed to eat tomatoes.

Right now the swiss chard, lettuce, spinach, zen (a green), new asparagus, peas, broccoli, garlic (some from October, some planted in April), new raspberries (and the dry little sticks are beginning to send out shoots), fava beans, scallions, potatoes, fennel, kale and leeks are in the garden. Plus a few nasturtiums as companion plants.

We ordered a number of new fruit plants - two cherry trees, two concord grapes, two more rhubarb, a currant, and a cranberry. The directions were to plant them within 8 hours. It took a little longer than that but they were all in the ground within 24 hours.

One thing I have done this year is cover some of the empty garden beds with compost. Then I can just plant seedlings through the compost. Will this keep down the weeds? Or will they grow even better with the compost. Another thing I have done is grow red clover among some of the larger plants - broccoli and kale and around the new raspberry - as a cover crop. I did scatter a little too much seed so they might crowd each other out.

I think this year I succeeded in using a row cover over the pak choi and Chinese cabbage. I started them indoors and then transplanted them and immediately covered them with the row cover material. They seem to be growing beautifully and not being eaten by little black bugs. Maybe I will try the same with the summer squash. I also started those indoors and they should be ready soon after the 15th of the month. Will that keep the squash vine borer off of them - at least until they flower and the cover needs to be removed?

I have been much better at record keeping this year. That also takes time. My planting schedule has been very helpful in keeping me doing what needs to be done. In the past there were always some things that didn't get planted because I didn't have a written schedule of what to plant when.

Nice Weather Again

We have had a string of cold or rainy days where it is too unpleasant to be in the garden. Today it was sunny and warmed up some.
It is still basically cleaning up and preparing time. I did get the cold frame out of the shed so that some of the seedlings can spend a little time beginning to harden off. They are otherwise ready to plant out. I did plant six little broccoli seedlings today and put small tables over them to keep the sun off until they get established. If they don't survive it would be no tragedy as I have more than enough to replace them. I usually use as many little pots as I want plants but put a number of seeds in each and end up with two to three times as many plants as I need.

For several years we have had the water level in the pond drop faster than it used to. We thought this was related to the amount of vegetation which has become established and which is transpiring water vapor into the air. But this year the loss of water was noticeable from the time we started the pump (March 27th) and could not have been because of the vegetation. The loss seemed to be more than last year so we began the search to find the problem. Clearly it wasn't in the pond itself because when the pump was off the water level there remained steady. The obvious first place to look was the "bog", which is a small area below the first falls where we arranged for some water to go off to the side and form a wet area, but still within the liner. Robins like that spot to gather mud for their nests. I looked around that area and didn't see any problem. I don't recall whether the pond pump was running at the time or not. But later events show that my search must not have been thorough. Next was to check where the pipe from the pump connected to the skimmer and to the bio-falls. It was easy to see that there was no problem at the skimmer end but the pipe to the bio-falls was a foot and a half below the surface so that took some digging. No problem there. Next was to uncover the entire length of the pipe. That also took some digging at the bio-falls end but not far from there the pipe was only a couple of inches below the surface. When we made the pond the pipe was laid on the surface of the ground and covered with some sod that we removed to make the pond and stream. There was no visible leak along the pipe. That left the stream that started at the bio-falls and went to the pond. I covered this with two large pieces of plastic so that the water (mostly) would run over the plastic and not the stream. My intention was to remove the lower piece of plastic later in order to see if the leak was in the upper part or the lower part. The problem was that having the water run over the plastic didn't seem to significantly reduce the loss of water. It was at about that time that Janet took a careful look at the bog and noticed that water seemed to be oozing over the liner along one edge of the bog. Turns out that was the problem. It has been three or four days since I pulled the liner higher and the water level is not dropping. Now why didn't I notice that when I looked at the bog? Would have saved a lot of work. Embarrassing.

So far what is actually in the garden are the lettuces and greens that I planted in the glass covered frame. With the exception of one row of lettuce everything there is coming along nicely. I planted spinach and peas and the spinach is coming up but no sign of the peas yet. It has been a while since I grew peas so I don't know how long it takes them to germinate. I did see one seed that was on the surface of the soil and was just beginning to germinate. I have been freezing some of last year's garlic and some of them had begun to sprout so I have planted those in the garden. They won't grow very large (the ones planted in October are growing quite nicely) and I have scattered them around the garden partly to help repel pests. I need to make a note to freeze the garlic a little earlier than April. Then today I set out the six broccoli. Most of the rest of the beds are covered with straw. I am working on sifting some compost out of my compost pile and dig in small amounts of that just before I plant.

Inside, the tomatoes are just beginning to germinate. Chinese cabbage and pak choi (both of which I have had trouble growing by starting in the garden) are up and growing under the lights. A lot of my indoor space is currently occupied with milkweed seedlings being grown for Monarch butterfly gardens.

The three rain barrels in the garden area are set up and full and with the pond not needing so much water this year I should not lack for water for the garden.