Giving Thanks for the Harvest

So, it's been a very long time since my last post.  Honestly, with work and friends and pets and life-things, I've been very busy!  (But in a good way.)  The garden has required very little work in the last few weeks.  I've kept an eye out for problems - and caught a few - but other than watering, little has been necessary.

I've gotten to watch the vines continue to grow out of control.  Some of the gourd vines have grown up and then back down the five-foot tall tepee, and one of the gourds is getting its final color, which is a surprise, since I planted a mixed pack of seeds!  I also picked my first asparagus bean, which I'm estimating at a foot and a half in length!

 

The bees absolutely love the cantaloupe flowers, so I'm hoping to get a couple of healthy fruits off of them this year (it would be a first for me in melons - fingers crossed!)  The itty bitty cucumbers are present in spades, and even the squash plants near the potatoes are producing.  Speaking of potatoes, I dug up the Red Pontiacs a couple of weeks ago.  Not a bumper crop, but still enough for dinner!  They were delicious.  I also took a stab at making kale chips, which were a success!

I can now see the tops of the onions above the dirt, and the carrots are probably ready to pull.  I should keep more careful track of harvest dates, but with less sun, I feel that everything in my garden takes a little longer to ripen than generally prescribed.  

Garden Gone Wild

While I was away in Birmingham last week, my garden went absolutely wild.  I returned to a trellis covered in bean and gourd vines, runaway tomatoes, and delightfully chaotic cantaloupe.  I spent today snapping the tomatoes into supports, applying semi-weekly fertilizer, re-stocking the beer supply in the slug traps, and generally assessing everything.  I also put tin foil around the base of all of the vines, a long-overdue protection against vine borers.  

I've already spotted tell-tale holes in two vines, and I hope that the vine borers haven't infested everything.  The pests destroyed most of my squash vines last year, and they're notoriously hard to fight.  Once the flying, adult insect lays its eggs on the vine, the larva hatches and bores into the vine itself, depriving the plant of water until it dies.  There is virtually no treatment after the vine has been infected except to slice open the stem, remove the borer, and bury the stem, hoping that it will re-root.  I let it go too far last year before realizing and trying to correct the problem, and the majority of my squash plants died.  I read this year that wrapping the first

couple of inches of the vines in tin foil will prevent the larva from boring into the vine; I should have wrapped them in late May or early June, so now I can only wait and see which ones have already been affected.  Thanks to the tin foil, my garden now looks like it's ready for an alien invasion.

Another delightful surprise was the furry rodent trapped in the bird netting that I had draped over the blueberry bush.  Thankfully I didn't have to get rid of it myself, but evidently the birds aren't the only ones responsible for the lack of ripe blueberries every year.

I'm tickled that everything has done so well in my absence, especially after my reduced expectations after the lack of sunlight became apparent.  I do have a few more things to contend with: my fig tree leaves are yellowing, there are weird spots on the potato leaves, and my squash and zucchini plants are flowering, but not producing much.  Nevertheless, I'm excited to see how things progress!

Birmingham Botanical Gardens

 One of my reservations when I think about life on a farm is the fact that you are tied to it.  Planting, tending, and harvesting keep you busy in the fields or garden, and if you have animals, they are a daily commitment - twice daily, if they need milking.  One day, I'd love to have a few chickens and maybe goats, but I also love to travel.  Finding someone to take care of my cat while I'm away is probably a lot easier than finding someone to take care of my livestock.  
This past week I've taken advantage of the fact that I have caretakers for my cat and my garden and took several days to visit my sister and her husband in the Magic City - Birmingham, Alabama.  One of our tourist stops was the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, which I'd never visited.  This is a garden (or gardens, actually) to make any plant-lover jealous.  From manicured lawns and rose beds to pleasantly shaded woods and bogs, the Botanical Gardens was a beautiful way to spend an afternoon.  

The woods were an especially welcome part of the walk in the summer heat, with sections of wildflowers, carnivorous plants, and a stream.  Swings and gazebos were scattered in the gardens and along the pathways, making it easy to find a place to stop and rest.

Of course, I had to stop and see the vegetable garden.  A muscadine vine-draped arbor led to a brick stairwell flanked by beds of herbs, and then a garden of raised beds and pathways.  Peas, beans, tomatoes, squash, peppers, and eggplants were present in plenty, as well as half a dozen mature fig trees and a blueberry bush.  We arrived as the sprinklers were running and enjoyed a refreshing break from the heat as we bent to read the tags and identify the veggies.  The rebar tomato supports and straw bale planting were familiar sights from the many gardening books I've perused.  The giant rabbit statue, however, was a new one to me.

The Japanese garden gave us a chance to wander through a bamboo stand of which I was immediately envious, as the tall, sturdy poles make great supports but are expensive and difficult to find commercially.

Dozens of beautiful examples of what a garden can be, the Birmingham Botanical Gardens is worth more than one repeat visit, and wonderfully enough, it's free.  My sister enjoyed seeing the different plants in bloom compared to those she'd seen in the spring, and she was already planning a picnic for next time before we left.  

The Beginning of the End

Now that June is here, planting is drawing to a close (unless you're doing succession planting of tomatoes, beans, etc.), but I'm having trouble letting go of planting season.  Just waiting for things to grow is not nearly as entertaining!  The side bed that I put in a week or so ago has greened up beautifully, and the squash and cantaloupe vines in the main bed are showing some growth at last (though they're still quite small for the amount of time they've been planted).  

I've also moved my Red Kuri squash from their germination pots into the front flower bed, five little plants in all.  They'll get more sun there than in the back.  The asparagus beans next to the teepee trellis are finally climbing with gusto, twining round and round the supports and tangling with one another and the gourd plants.  


My potato plants' flowers have come and gone, and I'm tempted to dig for potatoes again.  The last time I tried I found nothing but thin, white roots, like any vegetable plant.  The yellowing at the bottom of the stalks is also worrisome; a quick internet search turned up the possibility of fusarium or verticillium wilt, among other causes.  Verticillium wilt took out my tomato plants early last summer, and I do not want to have another case of it on my hands.  Finding out you have no recourse but to discard the plant is heartbreaking!

In better news, I had been wanting to purchase a fig tree, but I hadn't found a really pretty Brown Turkey variety plant until just recently.  Brown Turkey is both suited to the climate here and recommended for container growing.  I was delighted to purchase one that is roughly three feet tall; I plan to re-pot it when I find just the right pot (or when the fruiting season is finished.)  I'm keeping a sharp eye out for buds and potential fruit. 

I am getting a strawberry on occasion (when the birds don't get them first) and a snap pea or two (which I eat right in the garden), but production has been low, thus far.  Maintenance has recently been on the low side, as well, with the explosion of spring weeds under control, and there's nothing like a little spare time to send a gardener searching far more space to plant! 

(Thanks for the info, http://homeguides.sfgate.com/mean-potato-plants-turn-yellow-59326.html!)

Of Pine Straw and Pesticides

Sitting outside on a balmy June night with a glass of wine, the sky not quite dark even at 9:00 pm, makes me love summer all over again as an adult.  It's nice to know that some things are always wonderful.

I helped a friend with her yard sale this morning, so I didn't get to my gardening tasks until afternoon - it was an overcast, sticky day, but the clouds made it perfect weather for applying the pesticide that I bought.  My favorite downtown Matthews hardware store has a limited supply of organic fertilizers and pesticides, but its selection still far exceeds a chain hardware store.  At first I was convinced that mixing my own insecticide would be far superior (and safer) than buying one already bottled, but The Garden Primer urged buying.  So, pleased with the ease of this option, I picked up a bottle of Earth-tone Insecticidal Soap and doused my plants in it.  

My sweet potatoes, especially, are being eaten up.  Though they are low to the ground and could be falling victim to slugs (despite my regularly-baited and successful beer traps), something else is clearly eating the tomatillo plants - they have teeny tiny holes even in the upper leaves, and I saw a white fly today.  I would have expected a swarm based on the damage.  I have no idea how effective this method will be, so I'll simply have to wait and see if the munching tapers off.  I might revert to making my own if I need to apply it regularly so that it won't be cost-prohibitive.  A $10 bottle is half-gone after my first application!

While at Renfrow's Hardware, I asked an opinion about my poor yellow zucchini plants, and I received an answer I hadn't expected: chelated iron.  Of course, I googled it.  This website gives a great explanation of iron chlorosis: http://homeguides.sfgate.com/iron-chelate-yellow-leaves-26730.html.  Apparently iron chlorosis is often found in alkaline soils.  Bingo!  Though the chelated iron that the store had in stock was not, in fact, organic, I was quickly able to find an organic version online and place an order.  I'm hoping that next week will find my plants back on their way to a deep, delicious green!

I also found out this weekend that the trunk of my Ford Taurus will hold exactly four bales of pine straw, which enabled me to mulch the new back bed in front of the potatoes and still have enough left over to freshen up the rose bed and the area behind the garden.  I was going to add a bit about mulch selection here, but my selection came down to what is not chemically treated (dyed mulches) and what is readily available, which is likely the case for many suburban gardeners, so I'll leave it at that.  

Lastly, the cherry tomato plants and basil that I've been growing for my sister made it to Alabama with my parents this weekend.  Their "baby picture" is on the left - they are several feet tall and have little green tomatoes on them now!  My sister said they she is going to let me start her garden every year from now on, and that's a vote of confidence, if I ever heard one!

Garden Envy

I've come down with two terrible things this week.  The first is a nasty head cold.  The second is an acute case of garden envy.  Across the fence, my next door neighbor also keeps a garden, as well as several contraband chickens.  (Contraband because we live within the city limits, and because the HOC is not so happy about them.)  His garden is beautiful.  Lush vines climbing a bamboo trellis, giant squash-like plants flourishing next to the chicken coop.  I want to know his secrets.  (Chicken manure is probably one of them.)  I never actually SEE him fertilize.  He has a compost pile of leaves in the back corner of his lot, but I never see him turn it or spread it.  I am both mystified and wildly jealous.

My other neighbor put in a couple of raised beds next to her house, and the tomato plants and zucchini are growing healthy and strong.  She did plant in compost, but she doesn't fertilize, either, and her beds get the same amount of sun as mine!

I zeroed in on the difference in color between the neighbor's zucchini plants (on the right) and my own (below).  There was obviously a deficiency that I hadn't addressed; I turned to my many gardening books, and then, the internet.

The Ortho Home Gardener's Problem Solver is my longest-standing resource, filled with common problems and pictures of what the pests and problems look like.  The only downside is that the solutions offered aren't organic, so it's better for identifying a problem than solving it.

One of the potential problems is nitrogen deficiency: "the bottom leaves, including the veins, turn light green to pale yellow and may die or drop."  This sounds like the plants' symptoms, but I did apply nitrogen-rich blood meal earlier this spring, and the fish emulsion I apply every two weeks does include nitrogen, though at a low ratio.  Just in case, I applied more blood meal and fish emulsion today.  

The picture of "Slow growth from too acidic soil" also looked familiar, and my garden certainly isn't experiencing any runaway growth.  My soil is too alkaline (about 7.0 to 7.5, according to a home soil test), but the problem is identified as "incorrect pH," so its reasonable that alkalinity could also be a problem.  The blueberry bush directly behind the garden (a lover of acidic soil), is still producing, however, though its growth is slow.  And even though I found out recently that peat moss can be neutral to acidic, I put in quite a bit of peat moss this spring.

The website www.savvygardener.com offers a great chart for correcting soil pH.  Barbara Damrosch's The Garden Primer also has helpful things to say on the subject, including the suggestion to use pelleted sulfur.  Lastly, the section on fertilizers in The Ortho Home Gardener's Problem Solver is extensive, covering the symptoms for deficiencies of boron, iron, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, and potassium.  Magnesium and manganese deficiencies both sound possible, but The Garden Primer makes a point of saying that deficiencies in minerals that aren't primary is unlikely to be a problem in soil with a lot of organic matter.  

So, what did I learn?  Try a little bit of everything seems to be my current method!  I'll see what the additional fertilizer does, and I may buy some sulfur to add, as well - perhaps aluminum sulfate, as the Savvy Gardener says that it works more rapidly.  

A Productive Day

Do you ever have one of those days where you feel like you've done nothing?  Not the good kind of doing nothing that follows spring exams or a hard week at work, but an unjustified day of nothing that you end in a slump.  Well, today was one of those days.

Thankfully, a garden is productive even on days when I'm not.  It's one of the reasons that doing laundry is my favorite chore - throw in the clothes, and you're being productive for a whole hour, even if you don't do anything else!  

I did make the effort of spreading out the pine straw that had washed due to yesterday's torrential rain (and even a little hail), checked and moved the mole trap (nothing to report), and weeded some of the raised beds.  I was delighted to discover that none of

the plants washed away, and even the sweet potatoes planted below the raised bed weren't boggy.  Equally as exciting is the evidence that I may soon be able to enjoy more of the produce of my garden.  Little squashes showed up several days ago, and today I discovered that the Lincoln peas have started to produce little flat pods!  The potato plants have flowered, too, which I read means that they have potatoes to unearth!  So at least something had a productive day :)

The Mole Hole

I went out to do a garden check-up today and a little weeding.  I've been weeding all week, as dozens of tiny weeds have sprung up all over the soft soil in my raised beds.  But more about that later. 

Weeds, I can deal with.  The newest residents in my garden are far more destructive, and I started noticing signs of them earlier this week: A couple of pea vines chewed off at the roots.  Loose soil.  Starting today, however, I found my garden riddled with holes, and tunnels squished wherever I stepped; half the carrots were no longer firmly rooted.  Moles.  

I started looking passively into the reviews of mole traps online, but after this morning, I knew it was time to take the leap.  Sonic repellants had gotten poor reviews, and organic gardening ruled out poison.  A book on companion gardening, Louis Riotte's Carrots Love Tomatoes, recommended castor bean plants, but the warning about their extreme toxicity were not comforting, especially since I have pets.  

The trap reviews seemed frankly bloodthirsty - one gave a detailed chronology of each and every mole killed.  I opted for the only one at Home Depot.  Thankfully it was not one of the tube-shaped options which requires inserting directly into the mole tunnel.  It was super-easy to set, and I hope it is equally easy to take care of my mole problem.  I never thought that I'd be someone to kill an animal so complacently, so we'll see how I feel if I actually catch one.  I'll certainly feel better if I don't have to see the holes in my garden anymore, however!

May

I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to take a break from the tedious chronological format that I've taken up and jump right to the present day.  There's still a lot that I want to cover from April and early May, including my grow light, the construction of the tipsy pots, and transplanting the seedlings - but everything is always more exciting as it is happening!  I marvel at authors who can conjure up the emotions of events long-past with the freshness of today (I'm thinking of you, Kristin Kimball, of The Dirty Life).  But I believe that these posts will be much more interesting if I write them as they occur and take short side trips into the garden set-up.

Today was fertilizer day.  I've read that supplying good soil nutrients is even more important when the amount of sunlight a plant receives is limited, so I'm reassured of my original plan to fertilize every two weeks.  Neptune's Harvest fish fertilizer had been recommended in one of the books that I'd read, and it was available at my local hardware store.  Next time I'll opt for the formula that includes seaweed, but so far I'm pleased.  It's also a low nitrogen fertilizer; if overused, nitrogen will encourage leaf and stem growth, but not fruit bearing.  Since I added blood meal (high in nitrogen) at the beginning of the season, this fertilizer is perfect.  My mom's worry that it would make the herbs taste like fish, especially with foliar feeding, turned out to be groundless.  Of course, I do have to make sure not to get the fertilizer/water mixture on my clothes or skin if I'm going anywhere - it does make them smell like fish! 

It's amazing how much everything has grown.  When I get frustrated by how slowly things seem to be progressing, the pictures I've taken bring everything back into perspective.  The potatoes, especially, have taken off in the past six weeks!

The potatoes on the left are Yukon Gold, and the ones on the right are Red Pontiac - I've since discovered that the reds, at least, are fairly heat tolerant.  Thank goodness, since we've had a crazily hot spring!  They are planted in a mixture of peat moss and compost, and the containers are chicken wire on top of a weed prevention fabric.  

I can't wait to share more pictures of how the plants are growing.  I'm still battling a lack of sun, slugs, a million tiny weeds, and a mole digging mazes in my peas, but I love every minute that I spend in my garden.  

Dig In

I had decided to try a raised bed this year.  Our yard is a hill with the garden plot at the bottom - the top gets more sun and has better drainage, but to turn it into a garden plot would mean uprooting my dad's beloved lawn.  So, I work with what I have - the natural area at the back corner of the lot.  The spring rain in 2013 completely flooded our garden, and what didn't drown, the happy slugs devoured.  So, a raised bed it was, both for drainage and to keep pests out.  Thankfully, we rarely have to deal with anything bigger than insects.  

Maximizing the small space that we had became my priority.  And, it had to be aesthetically pleasing - something my mother insisted on.  We found fence pieces at Lowe's inexpensively in six foot lengths, and the Octogarden was born.  I started by digging up the soil, shovel by shovel, and turning it over.  Double-digging is suggested to aerate the soil, especially for crops like asparagus.  But I didn't approach it in textbook fashion with three trenches.  I have a bad habit of simply taking the general idea of something and being too impatient to analyze it closely.  I just want to get started!

I was happy to have the planks laid out in a rough octagonal shape and staked as they were.  My mom, however, ever the planner, measured angles and lengths until it was a much more respectable semblance of a regular octagon.  Thanks, Mom!

To the left of the initial shape above you can see the Tipsy Pots that we later moved to the center of the bed.  I'll cover their construction in a later post.  

The Trouble with Seedlings

I was pleased that the majority of my seedlings had germinated a little over a week after they were planted, firmly within their germination period.  I was still waiting on the lavender, with an unbelievable germination period of 15-20 days.  I've since noticed that flowers and herbs, on average, have a much longer germination period than vegetables, which doesn't jive well with my lack of patience!

By early April, I felt that the 3 inch tall cucumber seedlings were ready to transplant.  Hardening off is suggested for seedlings that have been started indoors - placing the seedlings outside for increasing amounts of time each day so that they adjust to harsher outdoor conditions; this limits the possibility of transplant shock.  I started putting the seedlings outside for a little while on sunny days, but certainly not with the organized progression of time that I should have.

Some of the other seedlings were showing sign of legginess, growing tall and thin instead of sturdy, which I attributed to poor light.  At this point I started pondering the possibility of getting a grow light to supplement their growth, but grow lights are very expensive, and I was making an effort at not going crazy with extras for my new obsession.

The radish seedlings were also showing signs of damping off, falling over at soil level, likely a result of my own over-watering and my choice of top soil for the planting medium.  Top soil has too many nutrients and bacteria for a sensitive seedling, and I have since moved to a mixture of peat moss, compost, and perlite.  Vermiculite, or worm castings, is also suggested, but it's so darn expensive that I haven't used it.

While the seedlings were struggling along, my mom and I were also doing the work of preparing the raised bed in the backyard for eventual planting.

Photo: Amazon.com

Get Growing

Where to start?

In mid-March, with spring just around the corner in the southeast and warm weather on my mind due to an upcoming Caribbean vacation, I decided to plant a garden.

People that know me well would take a deep breath at this point, as I'm known to dive into my latest obsession quickly and with endless enthusiasm.  Since my college graduation four years ago, I've spent a year in Greece, fostered kittens, delved into baking, and tried my hand at refinishing furniture.  Each new passion flared and then fizzled within a year, leaving me with new skills but nothing to occupy my time.  This inevitability, however, does nothing to keep me from jumping headfirst into my next new project.  So I jumped.

I usually limit my planting to plants purchased from Wal-Mart and the local hardware store, Renfrow's.  But in March, I couldn't wait.  And I wanted to be more specific about what I planted - the varieties I could get already sprouted wouldn't do.  Inspired by a book I'd found at the library (where else, as a new librarian?), I decided to purchase seeds and sprout them myself.  From Vertical Vegetables & Fruits: Creative Gardening Techniques for Growing Up in Small Spaces, I selected the varieties I wanted to grow: Patio Baby Eggplants, French Orange Hybrid Melons, National Pickling Cucumbers, Lincoln Peas, Blue Lake Beans, and Waltham Butternut Squash.  I also sprung for strawberry plants so that I could have the Mara des Bois variety, a hybrid developed in France.  Then, I waited anxiously for their arrival.

Just days before I was leaving town, the seeds arrived.  I looked through the envelope giddily, reading seed packages and opening them to inspect the seeds.  I had just enough time to plant the seeds in their individual peat pots and drop them off with my grandfather to "babysit" for the week that I was away.  I supplemented with seed packets that I'd picked up while waiting: Sugar Snap peas, Early Scarlet Globe radishes, Purple Coneflowers, Red Cored Chantenay carrots, True Lavender, and a Lettuce blend.

I chose peat pots for easy transplanting (plus they looked very garden-y) and used bagged top soil, estimating with my fingers the proper planting depths provided on the seed envelopes.  With instructions to keep them well-watered, they were left in the kitchen window, and I set out for a warmer climate.

Photo: Amazon.com