Garden Layout 2020 - Squash House (Bed C)

This year the Squash House is planted in cucumber and pole beans. Not a squash in sight! I guess I should change the name of this structure, but probably won't since the sign is on the front. ha!

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Okay, this may seem like a lot of seeds/plants, but most are small amounts of each one, so it's not too crazy. On the left side we have:

• Rozella Purple Tomato
• Prima Gold Tomato

• Ancho Poblano Pepper - mild, about 1,500 shu
• Fish Pepper - medium, about 30K shu

• Juane de Doubs Carrots 
• Dazzling Blue Kale - Baker Creek

• Marketmore Cucumber - Botanical Interests
• "K" Cucumber (I lost the packet, I know it started with the letter K, but have no idea the real name.)
• Boston Pickling Cucumber
• Biet Alpha Cucumber
• Japanese Long Cucumber
• Early Fortune Cucumber - Baker Creek
• Poinsett Cucumber 
• Muncher Cucumber

Then on the right side, I have:

• Shadow Boxing Tomato
• Dwarf Stone Tomato

• Mulato Pepper - Farmacie Isolde - mild, about 3K shu
• Peter Pepper - medium, about 10-20K

• Spanish Tolosano Beans
• Skunk Pole Beans
• Nona Agnes Bean
• Borlotto Lingua di Fucco Bean - Farmacie Isolde
• Fort Portal Bean
• Eye of the Goat Bean

• Miz America Mizuna - Park Seeds
• 605 Summer Mizuna - Baker Creek
• Chantenay Red Core Carrots

This past week in the garden .....February 1, 2020

Beginning to clear the fall/winter garden so it will be ready to plant in March. All the carrots are pulled, washed and frozen. Nice amount, about 4.5 pounds -- I wish I had planted more. We both love carrots!

Our plum trees have decided it's spring already and they're committing suicide. Arghhhh!!!! At least the bees have a nice tasty meal during the winter. I'd be VERY surprised if we don't have another hard freeze and lose all of these potential plums. Very sad.

The little pepper and tomato seedlings are up and growing. I'm busy every day transplanting these into little grow bags so they will continue to grow and get ready to go out into their permanent place in mid-March. 

 (Sweet pepper seedlings)

 (Baby tomatoes in grow bags)

I was gifted some garlic bulbils this fall and threw them into a pot on the greenhouse porch. They've sprouted!! This is a long project, it will be over a year before I'll see garlic bulbs from these, but it's fun to try.

Fall/Winter Garden 2019 - September 29 Two more garden beds done!

I've been working non-stop the past two days to get more of the fall/winter garden in. I've finished Bed C2 with kales, beets and some more onions/garlic. 

If it looks like I'm packing it in in these beds, that's because I am. I don't want to give weeds a chance to see daylight! Also, this may sound like a lot of kale, but there's only one foot of each variety. I have so many and I love kale, so why not!

Bed C2:

• Garlic - Bought at local farm stand, just one bulb's worth
• Troncuda Kale - Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
• Red Ursa Kale - Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
• Bear Necessitities Kale - Adaptive Seeds
• Casper Kale - Facebook Garden Group
• Yod Fah Kale - Facebook Garden Group
• Siberian Kale - The Seed Guy
• Russian Frills Kale - Adaptive Seeds
• Westlandse Kale - Facebook Garden Group
• Yaponskaya Rusalochka Kale - Nikitovka Seeds
• Red Russian Kale - Seedsnow.com
• Dazzling Blue/Curly Roja - Facebook Garden Group
• Thousandhead Kale - Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
• Badger Flame Beets - Row 7 Seeds
• Detroit Dark Red Beets - The Seed Guy
• Chioggia Beets - Seedsnow.com
• Fuer Kugel Beets - Facebook Garden Group
• Avalanche Beets - Facebook Garden Group
• Mixed Beets - Some of the leftover seeds I had
• Golden Beets - Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
• Sweet Spanish Onions - The Seed Guy
• Veselka Onions - Nikitovka Seeds
• Red Welsh Onions - Farmacie Isolde

Today I planted Bed C3:

Hong Tai Pak Choy - Facebook Garden Group
Yellow Heart Choy - Facebook Garden Group
Extra Dwarf Pak Choy - saved seeds
Ching Chang Bok Choy - Facebook Garden Group
Shanghai Choy - Facebook Garden Group
Red Venture Celery - Trade Winds Fruit
Tendercrisp Celery - Facebook Garden Group
Red Mountain Celtuce - Facebook Garden Group
Verona Red Chicory - Seedsnow.com
Rhubarb Swiss Chard - Burpee
Kohlrabi, Early White Vienna - Facebook Garden Group
Carrots, Red Rose - Nikitovka Seeds
Carrots, Dances on Fire - Nikitovka Seeds
Carrots, Shin Karoda - Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
Carrots, Krasnyv Velkan - Nikitovka Seeds
Blushing Bunching Onion - Burpee

Only one more bed, C4, to do later this coming week. Tomorrow I plan to finish the Squash House. The peas are already coming up!

Garden Log -- February 10, 2019

Today I froze about 7-1/2 pounds of carrots from the fall/winter garden.  They were just beautiful - the ones here on the left are Amarillo (yellow) and Cosmic Purple. And the picture on the right shows the beautiful Gniff carrots that originated in Switzerland.  I put 9 packs in the freezer! Whew! I think I know why a lot of people don't garden - that was a lot of work. It's so much easier to just buy a little package of carrots, all cleaned and peeled and ready to eat. But then, you wouldn't get all these gorgeous colors!

I got out to the greenhouse for the first time this weekend - it's such a muddy mess outside right now. I needed to check up on those little plants - and I was so happy to see a few more have shown up. I'll be transplanting more into Solo cups tomorrow.

This Butter Apple tomato is from Bunny Hop seeds - it's going to be a medium yellow.

 Then there's the Aussie - a large, fluted, red beefsteak tomato. Several of these came up! 

This is one of the hybrid tomatoes that I'm growing this year, Sweet Millions, which is supposed to be a high producing red cherry. Here's hoping!! 

 Several of the peppers that I'm excited about have sprouted! There's Aji Jobito (a small, rare, orange and mild pepper from Venezula), Ayvarski (a sweet red), and that Chinese space pepper, Total Eclipse HJ8 (which is a very mild, corkscrew red, less than1000shu)! 

 And finally, a few of the cole plants are up and going.  I'll wait until they get a bit bigger before I pot them up, but good germination so far!

Garden Log - February 8, 2019

Today I started planting pots of basil in the greenhouse - so far I have Globe basil, Purple Ruffles basil, Lettuce Leaf basil, and a pot of classic Italian basil.  The weather has turned so cold, I didn't spend much time outside, though!

The greenhouse is filling up fast!

The tomato seedlings are growing so fast - I'm really looking forward to some of these. This Faelan's First Snow is supposed to have variegated leaves, but so far I'm not seeing any sign of that. Maybe when it gets older?

Pink Stuffer is going to be a large pink, hollow tomato. I can already tell it's a potato leaf. 

Dances with Smurfs! Doesn't that sound cool? A blue cherry tomato.

Hoping for an early spring so these can go out before I have to pot them up again. Meanwhile, the heater is on in the greenhouse for the next night or two.

Yesterday and today I spent time starting the seed mats for the spring garden. I've done all the beets and celery, and started on the carrots.  At least I got to stay inside where it's warm.

John dug up and brought in the entire fall/winter crop of carrots! Have I mentioned how much I love him lately? Well, I do.  They are lovely, and I'll get them all processed and frozen this weekend.

I'm pulling all the kale and spinach tomorrow. Pretty soon it will be clear so that we can start getting the beds ready for planting! Spring is coming.....

Garden Log -- February 7, 2019

Goodness, I really need to catch up with this log -- I've been working hard to get the seedlings started, but haven't taken time to document. I really need to put this all down so I don't forget when all of these were started.

I've pretty much "potted up" all of the tomatoes that germinated and there's about 2 large trays of those. 

These pictures are a couple of weeks old now, so they've grown quite a bit from here.  I'm putting a fan on them in the greenhouse to strengthen their stems and they're coming along just great! Don't you love my new big white trays!? They're VERY sturdy and hard and so easy to pick up and move around compared to those flimsy black 1020 trays. I got two of them from Amazon, and I'll add a couple every year until I have all I need.

So.... my germination rate with the tomatoes was not that great, so I cleaned out the tray and planted a few more of some varieties that I really want to grow this year. After that I think I'll be done with the tomatoes. There's so many really interesting types and I just want to grow them all!

The peppers are just as slow to germinate as every other year, so I'm not terribly worried about them yet.  I'll probably just throw them in the corner like I do every year until they decide to show up just to prove me wrong. They're obstinate that way.

Next up is a tray of herbs of every type (but mostly basil, which I love, love, love!) I have some dills, sages, fennel, etc. Some are up now and I'll be transplanting them up to Solo cups as they do.

Then I planted a tray of morning glories, Dutchman's pipe vine, and some bluebonnets.  The morning glories are up and transplanted up to bigger pots, but only two bluebonnets are up so far, and nothing so far with the Dutchman's pipe vine.  I'm going to give them plenty of time -- not giving up yet.

Then a 12 pack of two different types of tomatillo - Gigante' Verde and Heirloom Green.  They've all come up and been transplanted up. This photo is a about 2 weeks old - they've huge now!

Meanwhile I'm starting the garden clean up which means I'm harvesting as much of the fall/winter garden as possible.  All of the cabbages are picked, including this gorgeous Scarlette (F1) Chinese cabbage.  This is the "crunchiest" cabbage I've ever grown, it's so full of water it snaps when you put any pressure on it.  It's pretty tasty, too! We had three of these.

Update on the fava beans - they've bloomed.  The Extra Precoce A Grano Violleto is in full bloom, while the Aqua Dulce is just starting. I'm hoping it's still cool enough for it to form pods, this plant really likes cold weather.

Next up is harvest for all of the carrots. I'm going to need John's help with these - there's digging involved! I've brought in just enough for a meal when I need them, but I really need to get them out of the way now.

Our fruit trees are all confused - they think it's spring.  We're expecting a frost tonight and tomorrow night, so I'm hoping the weatherman is wrong (he often is.) We'll just hope and pray - all of these trees are way too big to cover.  This is one of our two nectarine trees.  So pretty.

The plum trees have bloomed and are already dropping their blooms. Waiting to see what fruit shows up. It looks like snow under these trees with all of the blossoms - and the bees are all over these things.

I'll close this post out with a picture of the bluebonnets that are coming up near our front entrance.  John's been trying for years to get a stand of these going and we've had one or two come up every year, but this year I guess all the stars aligned and there's more then a dozen out there coming up! Yea! Can't wait to see the flowers!

Garden Log ---- Fall/Winter Garden 2018

I know I've been quiet on the blog for a few months, but I've been busy, I promise!  We took a little vacation (blog post to follow in a while) and in between I've been planning and planting the fall/winter garden.  John did all the hard work, of course, all the tilling and placing the automatic waterers back in place.
Over the next few days I'm going to play catch up here and document what I've planted, since I do use this journal as my memory!

Baby Spinach coming up!

Bed A1:   

• Early Wonder Tall Top Beets
• Geante Blanche Beets
• Golden Beets
• Chicory, Verona Red
• Chicory, Indent Leaf Catalan
• Endive, Broad Leaf
• Endive, Green Curled
• Sweet Red Cheese Peppers (hold over from Spring/Summer)

Bed A2:

• Corn Salad, French
• Corn Salad, Dutch
• Corn Salad, Verte a Couer Plein 2
• Spinach, Red Kitten
• Spinach, Regeant
• Spinach, America
• Spinach, Gigante di Inverno

Bed A3:

• Carrots, Pusa Asita
• Carrots, Little Finger
• Carrots, Cosmic Purple
• Carrots, Solar Yellow
• Carrots, Yellowstone
• Carrots, Shin Karoda
• Carrots, Chantenay Red Core
• Carrots, St. Valery
• Carrots, Mixed

All of these are germinating and most have started growing.  The rains we've been having have really helped. 

Sweet Red Cheese Peppers

I'll post more tomorrow!

Garden Log --- June 10, 2018

It's been an entire month since I've done a garden update. I guess I've been in the busy season right now, what with maintaining the garden, picking, and processing it all.

Right now the garden is looking pretty sad - despite watering daily, it's been so hot and the garden is showing it.  I'm still bringing in produce daily, but just staying out there very long is hard.

Let's see ... what's happening right now....starting with tomatoes! So far the tally is at 26 pounds. We've been eating lots fresh, and I'm freezing all the excess.  No jalapenos so far, so I'm not able to make any salsa yet.

The green beans are being picked about every 4 days - about 15 pounds so far. This is one of the reasons we garden -- just love these fresh beans straight from the garden. I've put a lot of these in the freezer. 

The peppers are finally getting going -- they like the heat. These are the Sweet Red Cheese peppers, so waiting for them to start turning red! There's one jalapeno on that plant, and I've spied a Habanada coming along. The hatch pepper plant has one pepper on it (I started that plant from a grocery store pepper!) and the Sugar Rush Peach plant is covered in small flowers but I'm not seeing an actual pepper on it yet.

The cucumbers are a bit disappointing this year - spotty and very few of them. The plants all seem to be struggling.  We've picked about 3 pounds of them, but not enough to do much with other then eating fresh. It's just not going to be a good cucumber year.

Carrots are looking great - these orange ones are the Shin Kuroda and the deep purple is called Black Nebula and they are all delicious!

I finished up all of the peaches that we got from the Rio Grande peach tree by drying them. Ooohhh....I've found a new favorite way to eat peaches. Just like little bits of sunshine. So good!

 I packaged these in 1.5 ounce packs and vacuum sealed them as treats. Delicious! That tree gave us almost 150 pounds of peaches. Just amazing.

 The watermelon plants are really starting to take off out in the field garden. 

The beets are maturing and I'm waiting to get enough to make some new pickled beets for 2018.  So far I have about 2.5 pounds and need about twice that to get going.  It won't be long. 

And finally, the key lime tree is starting to bloom! I'm excited to see how many of these buds actually form limes.

That's it for now -- more coming since the okra and corn is coming along.