Garden Journal

[Steph S]

Well it seems I did myself some kind of injury, the day after my last post, while putting potatoes in at Dad's old garden which hasn't been planted for a decade.  There weren't a lot of raspberries invading that end of the bed since Mom had someone  to cut it down last year.  But I only had my pick and an old, not so sharp shovel to make the trenches and boy was it hard to break that ground without a machine.  It was too hot of a day to boot, and by the time I had one bed made (of three intended) my whole body had swollen up, I was a mess.  And not over it yet either.  Sore back and neck today, but I had to get the winter tires into storage before it rains for a week, so I did that and tidied the shed.  In the process I found another tool - an 'edger' with a broad blade you can put your foot on.  Took it out and tested and yes, it cut through that voluptuous sod.  So that will surely help with the remaining potatoes. 
The soil down there is fantastic.  The land was farmed for about 400 years, one of the first places opened up, deep and a high organic matter content, and nothing like the poor conditions at my own place which is totally from scratch.  So it would really be great to rescue that from the weeds, but I am face on my own physical limitations.  If I can open up trenches in that deep sod the potatoes will do the work, but what a job to get trenches alone.
The wind on our weekend storm must've been locally much more violent than the report from the airport station where they only gusted around 70 kph.  One of the tall pea trellises I'd been working on to shore it up against the gales came down again, so I did repairs and strengthened that hopefully enough yesterday when the rain stopped.  At Mom's her heavy chairs and benches had been totally tossed, so I straightened those up today too.  I had meant to build a tall trellis at her place as well but I've really lost confidence in that project.  It's not something you throw together here, I have nothing standing that wasn't anchored to a tree stump.  I just need to select some shorter peas in the breeding and grow short peas until I have shorter versions of those admired tall ones.
The sugar beet X chard F1 group has been moved outdoors, they are all bolting but some are much slower than others, which may be interesting for the production of diverse colors in the seed.  Full red being one of the latest to bolt. 
Fava seeds don't seem to last long - I have 100% germination on the ones I bought this year and most are up, the ones from last year sprouted but aren't up yet, the ones from two years ago went moldy instead of sprout...

[William Schlegel]

Planted out the remnants in the greenhouse today. Black Beauty Eggplant, Lofthouse sweet peppers, a single purple tomatillo from Sandhill, and a single Amarillo tomatillo. Four currant tomatoes I transplanted with my son. A few watermelons he planted. Now the greenhouse is empty except for the tomatoes planted in the ground in there. The largest of the three Solanum chilense has just about grown up to the greenhouse bench and I am trying to train it to come out behind it. I really hope it sets some good viable seed this year. It is going so much better than the last time I tried to grow it.

I planted some tiger teddy sunflower seeds my wife said needed planted. Then I weeded around some squash and weeded and hoed around some tomatoes.

[Greenie DeS]

Finally got my tiller arrived and set up on the weekend. I've never had a rear-tine before and it is magical! I tilled the upper field in something like 5 hours (the pigs did great taking the sod off it, and it's lovely ground below except for the one sandy spot) and plan to do the back field tomorrow. My corn is soaking, half of it is in the ground. I've settled on 24 types, of which 4 are different sources of Painted Mountain (one of which contains extra fancy seeds I picked through a bag for). I decided to start half my maxima grex inside and half direct-seeded and the potted ones have their first leaves. I'm interplanting my corn heavily with all kinds of things. I've started soaking my bush beans.

The tomatoes are still out on the deck waiting to be planted out -- last year they got out June 10 -- and they're looking much happier now that we're getting a bunch of heat. Even the dwarfs I planted super late are looking big enough to plant out.

I lost one tray of dahlias to spider mites (!) but the other is thriving, and my peppers are struggling with spider mites a bit but recovering as they spend more time outside.

I planted my fava grex into three beds; two I covered and one I left open. Perhaps unsurprisingly the crows picked the sprouts off the uncovered favas, though they couldn't quite pull them out, and killed most of them. I'm covering my corn with row cover until it's a couple inches tall; luckily I have a bunch of row cover. I probably need more than I have, though, I think crows can be hard on squashes too.

Apple blossoms have just opened - it's a weird apple year, a lot of the trees around have very few blossoms -- and my haskaps have finished flowering. I need to till between the fruiting shrubs and cover the ground with cardboard; thistles are becoming a big problem around that spot.

Today I'm most excited about my ethiopian kale but that changes moment to moment. This is by far the biggest garden I've done, and I'm able to put so many things in it! Thursday we're supposed to get a good solid rain, then I'll need to run waterlines after that.

[William Schlegel]

Bush beans, runner beans, scarlet runners, teparies, cowpeas, turnips, tartarian buckwheat, sorghum, carrots all germinated.

Maybe a few germinates on okra and salsify.

Looks like things are ok after the work week. I need to weed. However, it is going to rain all weekend. Might not be constant but definitely an inpediment.

[Randy Simmons]

William,  what kind of okra did you end up planting?

[Randy Simmons]

Attempting landrace of okra.

I planted one area with Cajun Jewel seeds saved from last year.  In the other half I planted Motherland, Ultracross, Alice Elliott, Go Big, Baby Bubba, Jing, Kandahar Pendhi, Dwarf Long Pod, Choppee, Pot Belly, Cowhorn, Yalova Akkoy, Green, Zambian Landrace II, and Clemson Spineless.  All were planted on May 8.  Kandahar Pendhi, Choppee, and Jing never germinated.  Those spots were replanted with Green and Cowhorn since those two germinated the earliest of all the okra.  One Cajun Jewel seems much larger than the rest and was unaffected by the 33 degree morning we had.  Baby Bubba and Motherland were the two new varieties with the largest plants so far.  Motherland is the largest plant of both areas by a bit and showed no signs of distress after the 33 degree morning, with 3/4 of the okra showing some damage.

May main goals for this project are ability to grow  when weather is below 60 degrees at night, and productivity.  So far we have had most nights in the 40's and 50's and the winners so far are Motherland, Cajun Jewel (one plant), and Baby Bubba.

[William Schlegel]

I planted a packet of Mike's Okra Landrace from a seed trade with him a few years back (so older seed) and a packet of packed for 2021 Clemson Spineless that was in a free box at a garden store near my parent's place out in Washington state near Seattle. I thought I saw one germinate last night but it was dim out due to cloudiness and late in the day.

Mike's page about his though it is out of stock:
https://www.diablovalleyfarm.com/product-page/okra-landrace

[Randy Simmons]

Thank you.  I'll have to keep an eye on it and see if I can get some for next year. 

[William Schlegel]

I'm not sure how active Mike is with seed growing nowadays.

[William Schlegel]

I rototilled (cultivated), wheel hoed, hoed, and hand weeded today. Tried to focus on the three patches of corn but the rototilling sort of took me away from the corn for a while. I think one patch of corn is weeded, another has good progress, and the third has slight progress. Also got some work done around the four squash patches. Rototilled on both sides of the turnips, Tartary buckwheat, and sorghum. Sorghum is much smaller than corn seedlings so far. I've never grown sorghum before, the packets have been waiting around a few years.

I don't think that the tines on the Troybuilt horse (approximately 84 or 85 model my parents bought new) are doing a good job. My mom has said for some years that it needs new bolo tines and I think she is right. I have a lot of perennial weeds Cirsium arvense aka Canada thistle (why we in the U.S. attach Canada's name to this European thistle I have no idea- but I like to think it got the name when it took over a goodly portion of Canada just like it has my garden) and Cardaria draba aka white top and they don't cut off easily nor die easily. Not sure how to order or install new bolo tines though- debating about searching through parts catalogues online myself or asking the repair guys to do it. My blue rototiller isn't working yet this year, probably needs to go in- I think the red Troybuilt horse should go in also. It runs fine but the fuel valve is leaking and then there is this bolo tine question- probably wouldn't hurt to get it an annual service too.

[William Schlegel]

Mowed today. Set some sprinklers for the first time in awhile. I think the rainy times are over and time for July and August dry. At least in my climate.

[William Schlegel]

Fertilized today with some OMRI listed Whitney Farms and Miracle grow of the mostly water soluble sort. I don't think I used enough based on the directions. Oh well. Also apparently I could do so again in a week. Hmm.

[Steph S]

Watering has been the  name of the game since the hot weather kicked in mid June.  It's too bad a high humidex does nothing to wet the ground.  Full morning's work to water everything now - garlic, wheats, peas, tomatoes, odds and ends.  Garlic scapes are early, a lot of things are coming on early.   I have a bed where I sowed dwarf peas and barley at six inch rows to see how self supporting that would be.  Seems to be working for the peas, but the barley is suffering.
Buckwheat, radishes, mustard and field peas are up in my old veg garden - could not believe how hard and rocky it was when I went to turn it, but surprisingly moist below thanks to the high proportion of clay.  I brought a hose over to water just after planting but had to poach it back for the peas and garlic at the bottom of the garden.  Other than that it's not being watered and is the only bed I planted and didn't give any protection at all, decided just to sow heavily and hope the rabbits only nibble.
There seem to be three rabbits basically living in my garden.  I see them just about every day.  They've stayed out of the beds that are minimally protected with row cover or chicken wire, but I have one more bed to finish planting and build a trellis for peas already in there, and they now have the habit of jumping through there, so I'll have to do some dramatic tidying up ha ha. To make an impression.

[Greenie DeS]

Oooof. Garden is planted, and then replanted after the crows emptied out 2/3 or so of the corn beds completely.

Favas are flowering. Tomatoes are flowering. My dry beans (especially the beefy grex, which I'm most excited about) are poking along. I got a nice mix of dry beans from sweet rock farm that's pretty but didn't emerge evenly.

Last year I got my first tomato mid-July, this year will be later.

Tomato volunteers are coming up and growing fast, but sadly they're not where my last year's tomatoes were grown so they're likely supermarket seeds from the pigs.

I got a nice squash grex in the ground, lots of different types in there. I wish I'd recorded the types seperately because one had cotyledons almost as big as my palm and I'm curious about it. It's starting to take off. I'm hoping to get viable seed from several fruits this year. Honestly this was a lot of new bought seed and just a little from my two saved individuals from last year. One set of the squash is planted in a good block, I'll probably mulch it once things start drying out a little.

My melon grex had some trouble with transplanting but there are lots of plants that survived, they're about as far along as the squash and in the sandiest, sunniest spot. That grex contains a melon someone from just east of me was working on for a number of years (he gave up, tried greenhousing a couple years, and has now decided to go for hardy fruit bushes instead) plus the Lofthouse Oliverson melon, the Farthest North mix from adaptive etc. Very curious how this goes down.

My tallest corn plant from the cascade ruby gold bed is knee-high, not bad for being planted June 8 (though it was pre-soaked). Even with just the few varieties left it's neat to see how much variation there is from variety to variety.

Of particular interest in the brassica family is "karate cabbage" or "ethiopian kale" or brassica carinata. It's supposed to have a unique taste. A lot of my early greens got wiped out because they were interplanted with the corn and I needed to move soil to hill up the corn and keep crows out. Luckily it's just about time for the summer plant of diakon and napa cabbage, and I've been eating off my volunteer lamb's quarters comfortably in the meantime. Second early lettuce has a couple weeks to go.

I have a trial of soup peas I planted down in an as-yet-unweeded bed among the haskaps, it's a little shady down there. I also have a nice bed of my favourite soup pea, bouchard, which is very dwarf and I suspect will do great planted among barley and corn. This is my second year of seed increase and I'm looking forward to having enough to eat too.

I'm still fascinated by the differences in my different fields: the wood field is sandy and deep, the far field is organic and shallow over clay and also pretty gravelly, my first garden is manufactured with peat and compost so it's deep and dark, last year's tomato field is deep rich dark well-maintained clay. What I did not do, but wish I had, is plant a couple of genetically uniform indicator plants in many different spots to compare them.

Peppers are staying potted this year, for the most part. Enough time to worry about that when they're happily flowering.

We keep having big rains just as I feel I need to start seriously watering. May that pattern continue. The plants love it, as they love these >20C daytimes we've been having so reliably. I think we've even been above 10C one or two nights now! If this keeps up things will ripen no problem.

[Steph S]

Cloudy and some fog this morning so I took advantage of the "cool" to trench the three beds of potatoes before breakfast.  Two hours, counting the ten minute driving there and back.   
One bed, in the upper garden, is full of goutweed.  The lower garden, to my surprise, was full of 'mile-a-minute' - something I've been shown and warned of as a 'terrible weed'.  There was no sign of it when I put the spuds in, but there's lots of it now.    I have no idea how these new-to-me weeds will play ball with the old plan of feeding weeds to the potatoes.
Either way, I think my old fashioned potato growing days are done.  I just can't face the trenching in hot july weather.  Caplin were rolling somewhere in the area last week, which would have sent me to the beach at 6 am in the old days, every day until I got some to pile on the potatoes.  I didn't even want to see a fish, it was so hot.  I couldn't even imagine cleaning and cooking fish in my hot kitchen, let alone flipping them out in the field surrounded by a cloud of blackflies and then piling dirt on top...