43 pound harvest

Our harvest this morning didn't quite reach the heft of my 7 year old, but narrowly surpassed the weight of my five year old. This was primarily an onion harvest. 18 pounds of red onions started from seed back in mid winter, and 21 pounds of yellows started from sets. I also harvested 4 pounds of carrots from the sun garden. This is our biggest harvest yet and we are over 160 pounds for the year.

90 days till first frost

It is hard to believe given the relatively cool summer we have had, but we are only 90 days away from October 20th - the date known as our average first frost date. Our first hard frost date is scheduled for October 31st. This morning I did some fall/winter seed planning and a little planting. With 90 days to go until the first frost, any of the long season veggies that I hope to harvest need to get in the ground soon. Cabbage, beets, and carrots come to mind. If these have the time to reach full size they can be harvested even after the first frost. Carrots can be harvested well into the winter - and I have heard that their taste sweetens after frost. Peas, and beans have a slightly shorter days to maturity - along with some of the chinese cabbages and kales. The shortest days to maturity veggies are the spinaches, and lettuces.

This morning I worked a couple empty spots in the chimney garden. The three spots I worked had previously held garlic, lettuce, and spring snow peas. In that order, I planted early wonder beets, spinach, and green arrow peas. I also tossed in 3 random red cabbage seeds in a little corner of the spinach bed. Before planting, I composted heavily. This section of garden doesn't get a ton of light, so I am skeptical about the beets, but I think the peas and spinach will do just fine. The beets are also suceptible to the ground hog, so there is another strike against them. But my beet crop has been so crummy this year that I just felt I needed to give it one more crack. The spinach I planted inside a fenced area, so they should do fine. The groundhog hasn't eaten my peas yet.

Our harvest weight now exceeds 120 lbs and tomatoes are being harvested daily. One of my co-workers has a father who is a big gardener. She has been bringing zukes, cukes, peppers and cabbage in to share with us. Funny but I have harvested exactly zero zukes (groundhog), 3 cukes (groundhog), zero peppers (late start from seed), zero cabbage (still kind of small - waiting till fall), so these veggies actually are quite a welcome addition. I picked our first corn, and it was a dissapointment. It was from the earliest sun garden planting (golden bantam). Either it wasn't ready yet or this is a strange variety. We used it and a bunch of other random veggies to make some veggie stock.

The work I did last week on the rain barrels seems to be holding up. Instead of securing the spigots with silicone caulk as I had done previously - this time I used that foam insulating sealant called "Great Stuff". So far so good. The barrels are all full and holding their water with no visible leaks. Some of the barrels fill much faster than others, which I can't quite figure. I guess it has more to do with the roof and downspout placement than it does with the barrels, but I does always surprise me how slowly some fill (including my double-stack).

First TOMATO post

7/17/09 was a big day in the Stacy garden as we harvested our very first red, ripe tomato. Checking last year's notebook I see that we harvested our first red one last year on 7/28. Considering how cool the weather has been this summer - I am sort of surprised we beat last year's mark. The tomato we harvested was from a RH Shumway seed called "early bird garden" and started indoors on 3/9 and planted outside on 4/24. So that makes 4 months and a week from seed to tomato and slightly less than 3 months from planting to tomato.

We paired our first tomato with our third cucumber, and our first red onion and Sarah made a nice salad.

We have other tomatoes ready to pick any day now, so the harvesting of the salad tomatoes has begun in force. The black plum romas (that we use for canning) are still quite green with no sign of being ready for at least a week.

Our annual harvest weight just crossed 100 pounds. That is pretty exciting. I bet we'll get almost another 100 pounds just in tomatoes. It could wind up being quite a season!

We finally got rain last night after a nearly two week dry spell. The ground was just rock hard and the corn was showing the wear and tear of the weather.

35 pound harvest

Today's harvest was unlike anything we have seen before in the Stacy garden. We pulled out 3 lbs of beats, 5 lbs of carrots, 3 lbs of green beans, 2 lbs of shallots, two pounds of salad fixings (lettuce, peas, brocoli), and 20 lbs of potatoes. Sarah and the kids had been away for the better part of the last two weeks, so we had a little backlog of harvestable stuff in the garden. We ended up preserving a lot of our harvest. We canned 5 pints of green beans, 3 pints of carrots, and two pints of beets. We also braided and dried the shallots - see photo. We had a delicious hungarian green bean and potatoe soup yesterday for dinner. I also made two big containers of vegetable stock using all the chopped off parts of the veggies - including a few stolen lower cabbage leaves. The stock had a nice reddish brown color to it and will be a fine base for some of our winter soups.

All this harvesting freed up quite a bit of garden space today. You should see some planting posts coming soon. Our harvest weight is now over 89 pounds.

Harvest post

Our daily harvests are getting much heftier and tastier. Gone are the days of early spring where lettuce, spinach and radishes were our only produce. Now we are regularly pulling broccoli, potatoes, beets, carrots, peas, lettuce, green onions, green beans, raspberries and spices from the garden. These new veggies are coming in in nice quantity and are adding significant weight to our daily harvest. Our harvest weight is now up to 50 pounds for the year. Some details:

• Broccoli: We have already harvested all of the main shoots. Many of these weighed almost a pound on their own. The side shoots are not quite what I imagined. They are about 1/3 the size of the main shoot and they don't grow as tight. They also go to flower faster. The first three broccoli that we harvested look almost completely spent at this point. I have approx 18 broccoli seedlings temporarily planted in the cold frame ready to move to the main garden in a couple weeks for a fall crop.
• Potatoes: These have been a wonderful surprise. Despite never flowering and despite heavy shade from the adjacent corn row, the potato harvest has been a big success. Each plant yields approx 8-10 potatoes and approx 1.5 pounds of harvest. The look and taste of the spuds are fantastic, and they are really fun to harvest. There is nothing like digging your hands through the beautiful soil mining for little red bombs of starch!
• Peas: Raise your hand if your pea harvest always disappoints. Excuse my spelling as I type the rest of this post one handed. My peas are falling over due to my lazy staking and much too tight planting. The pods are really really hard to find in the mess of vines and leaves. Then I never seem to get as many as I think. They taste good however, and the kids love to eat them directly from the garden, so I can't complain too much. I may however try to a variety that doesn't climb next year - as I have done with the beans.
• Beans: Speaking of beans - what a nice little crop I have going. At the end of the corn row, I planted bush beans called fin de bagnol - planted 5/9. These came from seed saver and are really, really nice looking. They get long and thin and are oh so tasty. My harvest this morning yielded about 30 beans from this very small planting. The other two bean varieties that I planted on 5/22 early bird garden, and 6/7 slenderette are not yielding yet. The early bird garden beans look wonderful. The slenderettes basically look crummy. They were hit by bugs right from the start and look just plain anemic - weird. Note: Order a ton of fin de bagnols next year. Also planted some pole beans from seeds that we had saved in prior years. I put these in the tepee area. Planted them approx 6/15. They are about 12 inches high right now and are beginning to find ways to climb the tepee. It is early yet, but I definately am liking bush beans better.
• Raspberries: We bought two red raspberry bushes from Musser and planted them about a week ago. Yesterday I picked 15 ripe and wonderful berries. They are so tasty. I hope they do well.
• Strawberries: I almost forgot - We didn't get a ton of strawberries this year- only enough for little garden snacks. But we did go strawberry picking. From our loot we made two nice strawberry rhubarb pies and preserved 8 pints and 12 1/2 pints of jam.
  

Brussel Sprouts

My favorite vegetables are in the ground. I planted 10 brussel sprouts in the sun garden and 2 in the sq foot gardens. I transplanted a couple zukes and cukes to fill in blank spots in the sq foot gardens. I also harvested a 7.5 inch carrot, 20 strawberries, and 10 peas. Two of the peas were from the first planting in the sq. foot garden. We now have two succession plantings of peas that are producing. We have had about 5 days of straight rain and it is cool, so today was a good day to plant and harvest.

Harvest weight is at 22.5 pounds after 35 harvests. The green onions are finally looking tall and strong like good green onions should.

Pea blossoms

The weather has been wonderful and we have been busy planting, expanding and harvesting.

Planting:

• Started 10 musk mellon seeds and 10 pumpkin seeds indoors
• succession planting of 5 small spinach rows in the high wall garden- between romas (more on spinach below)
• succession planting of approx 10 seed saver lettuce seedlings in low wall garden (between romas)
• transplanting of various lettuce from sq foot garden to sun garden to get away from the critter that has been feasting on them

Expanding:

• We created a large new flower border - approx 25 X 4 ft, and expanded another. These plots border our back yard walls and had previously held a smattering of bulbs and annuals at the base of the wall. We like flowers more than grass, so we expanded. We filled these new plots with various perennials that we transplanted from our other perennial gardens. We planted bamboo, hosta, rhodadendron, black eyed susan, daisy, mountain blewett, calencho, sweet woodruff, mini irises, large irises, ferns, lillies, and mums. We also bordered these plots with impatien seedlings that we started indoors. This new garden gets very little sun.
  

Harvesting:

• Spinach - We did our second large spinach harvest of the season. We now have over 2 pounds (3 one gallon freezer bags) of spinach in the freezer just waiting for our winter soups and pizzas. While I am excited about the quantity of spinach that we have harvested so far, I am concerned about the remaining crop. It might have a blight. Many of the leaves are turning a whitish color and drooping. The harvest yesterday took just about all the large leaves, so we'll know for sure in a week or two if this little blight is going to take the rest of our crop. I planted 4 new rows of spinach in a totally different garden plot this morning in an effort to keep us in some spinach even if the current crop doesn't make it. The beet leaves are suffering from a similar problem.
  
• Asparagus - still coming in at a rate of about 3-5 stalks a day. I have been roasting it in the oven with Emerril's Essense for a nice late night snack while I watch the Penguins - Yummy!
• Harvest weight is @14 lbs and 26 harvests
  

Other:

• I did something goofy to the compost piles today. I had some 4 inch black drain pipe laying around. I drilled a bunch of holes in it and buried one 4 foot section (standing tall) in the center of each pile. All I have read says that proper pile aeration is one of the keys to quick compost. Most recommend frequent turning (which I do), but I have seen the smokestack approach recommended a few times as well. The idea here is that this pipe allows the gasses to escape from the pile and introduces fresh air allowing the various bacteria to do their thing.
  
• The other photo is a mid-May update of our main sun garden.
• Note: We saw our first pea blossoms last year on 5/26. So we are 12 days earlier this year. I planted an "early bird garden" short pea this year on 2/28. Very few actually germinated, so I filled in with snow peas a couple weeks later. I also had this section covered with a mini-cold frame through the late winter. Anyway - It was a lot of work for 12 days of extra pea harvest, but I bet we'll be enjoying the fruits of that labor very soon. We have also been harvesting pea leaves for salads and spring rolls for a couple of weeks.
  

cold frame work

I planted all the remaining pepper seedlings in the cold frame today. They are still pretty skimpy. I'm hoping a little nice soil and cold frame love will get them going. It will likely be another couple weeks to a month before I plant them in their permanent location in the sun garden.

22 harvests and 11.75 pounds cumulative ytd. Today's harvest included 3 carrots and one beet. The carrots were respectable at about 5 inches each. The beet was still a little young - although all tasted great roasted with asparagus and thrown on top of a salad. The beets and carrots were planted indoors in January in large pots.

heavy planting day

According to my PA master gardener guide, May 10th is the last day of average frost in Pittsburgh. I checked the 5 day forecast and the predicted low next week is 38 degrees. So I figured what the heck - lets get the remaining stuff in the ground this weekend.

This morning I planted...

1. 3 squares of pickling cucumbers. These replaced some of my earliest cabbage and brocoli plantings which were killed by the critter.
2. 2 squares of zucchini. These replaced a leek, which never took and seed saver lettuce, which also never took.
3. 1 square of butternut squash - replaced a nibbled broccoli.
4. 1 square of replacement carrots. The original 16 seeds had only germinated 6 carrots, so I added replacement seeds. I planted these replacements pretty thick, thinking I'll thin later. The single seed approach for carrots has certainly not worked well, as germination is a real issue.
5. I finished the sun garden raised bed pea planting. I put in about 50 innoculated goliath edible podded snow peas.
6. Like the carrots, the golden bantam corn has not germinated well so far. I planted the rest of these seeds with many of them filling in blank spots in my original planting. I bet the germination rate on this 4/13 planting was less than 20%. I'm hoping the cold had something to do with that and today's planting comes in nice and thick. I ran out of seeds and was only able to plant about 2/3 of this raised bed in corn.
   
7. In the remaining space of the corn bed, I planted approx 17 Fin de Bagnol bush beans. These were from a seed savers seed exchange. Beans and Corn are supposed to do well together. I interplanted pole beans with my corn last year and it was really cute.
   
8. I also tossed in three mini rows of green onions
9. I completed the root crop raised bed. I put in 4 rows of beets. 2 rows of cylindra and two rows of early wonders. I didn't bother with the deep trench and screened compost approach that I used for the first two plantings. I just decided to plant traditional rows with pretty tight spacing for future thinning. It will be a nice experiment to see if the additional effort of the first two plantings results in better beets. I also reseeded some carrots due to the bad germination rate of prior plantings.

I found a couple interesting volunteers this morning. One I believe was an avocado core, which had sprouted in the sq foot garden. The other was a stick from a tree, which was growing and new tree. The kids were excited about the tree, so I replanted it in a pot.

Yesterday I removed the green manure from the high wall garden and added it to the green compost. I also added 5 large buckets of black gold compost to this garden and used my 8 inch fork to till it in. This will be a roma tomato garden. The tomatoes are hardening off outside now. I am becoming a big fan of green manure. The rye was about 3 feet tall when I tore it out. It was a fall planting that wintered over. The clover had formed a lush, 6 inch green carpet. This was a spring planting. They added about 10 inches of good nitrogen to the compost. It felt like I was completing the cycle as I would run alternating trips of green compost and black gold to and from this garden.

I also hilled up potatoes for the third time yesterday. They are just darn huge. I am basically out of available dirt to keep hilling them up.

The harvest is up to 9.25 pounds for the season. I also started tracking the number of harvests (basically trying to count our home grown veggie meals). We are up to 18 harvests for the year. We are grabbing lettuce, spinach, beet leaves, and onion and shallot tops multiple times a day now. The asparagus gives us 5 stalks a day as well. The Pok Choi is being harvested, but is disappointing as it flowered very quickly and it's leaves are sparse and small.

Braccias, eggplants and peppers

Well - our baby was finally harvested this weekend, so we welcome a new gardener to the family.

In the days leading up to the birth, we kept active in the garden a little bit. Yesterday I transplanted 5 eggplant, and 6 peppers into the cold frame. These were started as seeds in a six packs on or around 3/11. They had gotten to be about 4 inches high and I was afraid that their roots were going to get too bunched up in those six packs if I kept them confined much longer. I don't plan to plant them unprotected in the garden until June, so that is still a long time to wait. I prepared a small section in the cold frame and covered them with one layer of plastic. I plan to keep these covered in the evenings and on cloudy days. On sunny days I will open it up for ventilation.

I also did some various transplanting this weekend. I moved the cabbage and broccoli out of the cold frame and into their permanent homes in the sun garden. For the most part these seedlings have done quite well. Throughout the early spring I noticed that a few broccoli leaves had begun to be eaten by critters. I very liberally plucked these seedlings and tossed them in the compost pile. So the remaining seedlings (both broc and cabbage) are very healthy and big. I'd say they are between 6 and 8 inches high. There are 14 total (6 cabbage and 8 broccoli). I spaced them approx 12 inches apart. I composted the bottom of the planting hole and also side-dressed the seedlings with compost. This sun garden plot also has some spinach and green onions growing in between the braccias. The groundhog has not found the sun garden yet, so I am hoping that these veggies are safe. He ate all the braccias in the sq foot garden.

I weeded, respaced, and composted the cold frame lettuce and spinach. I could not be happier with the health and vibrancy of these. Not a bug hole in site, and big thick spinach leaves. These are much, much better than any spinach I have ever grown before. The romaine lettuce is also top notch. Some of those heads are approaching 1/2 size. One head now will give us a full family salad.

I dropped a few radish seeds in the corn row of the sun garden in order to keep the succession planting moving along. My radishes took a hit from the groundhog last week.

I hilled up the potatoes for the first time. They look wonderful and seem to grow 6 inches a day.

I planted some foxglove, delphinium, and rhubarb inside in homemade seed starter mix. I had previously started all these seeds inside in January and it is looking like that was way too early. The seedlings started strong and were ready to transplant long before the outside temps were ready. Then they just got weak and leggy inside. I doubt any of the transplants that we tried will survive. So we are trying again.

The harvest is up to 6.5 pounds for the season. Asapargus, spinach, lettuce and onion tops are being harvested daily. As you can see in the photo, we are also harvesting cut flowers including iris, lilac, azelea, and bleading heart

How many rain barrels does one garden need?

How about 7 - holding 300 gallons of water. Does that sound like enough? We'll see.

I added two more rain barrels to my collection yesterday. The boys and I went for a romp through the Allegheny river flood plain hoping to identify another barrel or two, and we had much fun and success. As an ancillary benefit - I learned about the history of this area (from my sons) which evidently includes a ghost train and thousands of hoofed aliens. Every piece of litter we passed along the way (and there was plenty) was an artifact which helped us reconstruct the truth.

We found the mother load of rain barrels along plum creek, a small tributary feeding into the Allegheny. Altogether we found 6 barrels of various shapes and sizes and took two of them home. We took home one nice looking grey 60 gallon barrel. The only thing missing was a lid for this nice little barrel. But I liked it enough to add it to our collection. I fashioned a lid out of the plastic bottom to a pot. I didn't drill a spigot hole in this one because without a lid - it will be perfect for dunking the watering can, which fills it much faster. The other rain barrel I saved was a small 30 gallon clear one called the "cube". It has very thick walls and a handle on top. I think it was used for ice in it's past life. I drilled the spigot hole right at the very bottom of the barrel and set it up on blocks burried behind the privite along the stairs leading up to the house. This barrel and another 35 gallon one will water my roma tomatoes and corn in the two lower wall gardens. With my two new barrels in operation - I reorganized. I now have a 120 gallon double stack right beside the sun garden. Right on cue - not twenty minutes after completing and reorganizing my barrels - it started to rain.

My mom came to visit yesterday, and I showed her around the garden. We had asparagus for dinner, which was delicious. There isn't much left to harvest at this point, but we'll do the best we can. I think I can squeeze another meal of asparagus and at least three salads out of our current crop during her visit. The harvest isn't so important. What I really need the compost pile to do well during her visit. This blog and my mom's Ellensburg friends have turned my compost pile into the stuff of internet legend. I need that pile to heat up and turn to the finest peat by the time she leaves or else my reputation will be ruined. I plan to secretly bring compost into the house in the morning before my mom's arrival. One yard in the dryer and another in the oven should get the pile sufficiently heated up. I hope my wife won't mind.

3 more small harvests (asparagus- twice, lettuce, spinach, radishes, beat leaves, shallot leaves, onion leaves) since the last harvest update. Estimated total 2009 harvest now sits at 3 pounds.

Easter chores

These photos are of the strawberry wall (see previous post). Yuck - I hate this section. The strawberries are on the low side of the hill, very top of the wall. In the plastic I planted pumpkins and mellons last year. I have the same plans this year. Like I said yesterday - a wonderful permanent solution awaits. I just haven't been inspired yet.

I planted some corn today. One of the sun garden rows is dedicated to corn. I have a variety called Golden Bantam. This variety is supposed to stay about 3-4 ft tall. I didn't want the 9 ft variety I planted last year in the sun garden rotation plan because it would likely shade another row or two, but I am hoping the golden bantam plays nice with the neighbors. I planted about 1/4 of the row (the east section - gets the most sun). I planted corn in the sun garden last year on 4/20 and it did well. It came up fast, so I needed to cover it a few chilly nights, but for the most part it was a nice garden success story. Not entirely sure I have enough goldam bantam seed to fill this row.

I planted three herbs that came in the mail from Shumway. I think they are chives and taragon. These are for Sarah's herb garden, but they had been sitting around the house for a couple of days, so I just stuck them in the ground in a temp location.

I potted up some tomatoes yesterday. I started these in flats a while back, and I have them scheduled for either pots or cold frames soon. I potted them in soil/compost mix to give them some nutrients and a little more room to grow. Their roots had pretty much filled out the six packs.

1. Early bird garden - started 2/27 - 3 seelings - final destination is likely in large pots
2. Shebyogan - started 3/9 - 5 seedlings - this variety is said to do well in hanging baskets, so I might try that
3. Silver fir - started 3/7 - 5 seedlings - These may get a row in the sun garden along with the cherry tomatoes that I have going. I may move them to the cold frame next.
   

The pepper seeds are now doing much better. 17 have emerged and one flat is still pretty fresh, so I expect at least that many more. I will have enough.

I did another 1/4 lb kale, beet leaf harvest for Easter dinner. We had a side dish of carrots, kale, beet leaves mixed with balsmic vinegar. Total 2009 havest to date 1 3/4 lbs.

I rowed on the water this morning. While we were rowing I noticed a rain barrel washed up on the shore. After the row I nabbed it and made another one. This now gives me five working barrels. I still need one more for myself, and a few more for friends who have put in orders.

Scales and Strawberries

I read another garden blog the other day. This blogger is weighing her harvest this year. I kind of like that idea. I am a numbers guy. I believe in goals and accountability. Sure - let's weigh the harvest. We have a baby scale just collecting dust in the basement, which should work just fine. This morning I harvested 1/2 pound of kale and asparagus. I'll estimate the other 4 harvests at 1/4 pound each. So lets say so far I have 1 1/2 pounds of produce. Fine start for early April. Since I haven't weighed my food since Thanksgiving 1997, I have no idea what kind of poundage to estimate for our year's harvest, so I'll refrain.

Just as a the sun rose this morning, I headed out in the yard to work in the strawberry patch. This patch has been a real struggle for me. It occupies one of our few very sunny spots of yard, but it is on a steep hill, hidden behind a thick hedge of private. It is also on top of a 30 foot wall with no fence or handrail to keep me from plummeting to my death, should I tug a weed a little to hard. Are you getting the idea why this section of yard has been tough for us to figure out? Before we moved in this section of yard was just a weed festival. The previous owner mowed it about once a month with a weed whacker. I did that the first year myself. But as our only truly sunny spot, I just refuse to waste this yard. It is also visible from the street, so allowing weeds to fester is just plain bad for neighbor relations. Last year I ordered about 150 strawberry roots from two different nurseries. It was a fiasco. They were crappy to begin with, then I couldn't get them in the ground right away, so I lost a ton of them. When I finally got around to planting them, it was a struggle. The weeds just overtook the tiny little plants so quickly. Anyway - no crying over rotted strawberries. This is the first time I have looked at the berries this spring. About 50 remain alive. I composted them, consolidated them and spread hardwood mulch around them. The ones that lived look just fine. I expect we'll get some berries this year. But I still don't think this is the permanent final solution for this section of yard. I'm sure we'll struggle with this for years.

Picked up a 1/2 yard of hardwood mulch today and spread it in various spots including the Koi pond, strawberry patch and shed wall.

I cut a river barrel in half today. It had a strong odor of oil, and I wasn't able to clean it out well enough to make it into a rain barrel. So I cut it in half and made a big garden basket out of one half of it. It holds about 10 five gallon buckets of mulch, compost, brush - you name it. It works pretty well, but can get to be very heavy filled with mulch.