Garden Summary

The weather for June and July was a bit disappointing. Nothing grew in my garden except lettuce and beans. The basil, tomatoes, and peppers were stunted. The cucumbers and squash were doing tolerably well, but what a difference compared to last year.

August rolled around and we are finally having some hot weather. It's been in the mid to upper 80s for a few weeks with no end in sight. OK, we're having some 70s for a couple of days, but then it returns to hot, hot, hot. The nights are a bit cool, though. I think that actually helps tomatoes to ripen. It's been upper 50s at night.

Squash: my cavilli, zucchini, and summer squash have been going bananas (really I think that term should be going zucchini) for at least a month now. I can't keep up! We have been eating vegan zucchini brownies (incredibly good), spiralized zucchini noodles, and zucchini in just about anything I can think of: salsa, soup, lasagna, pizza, etc.

The winter squashes are fairing well. I have four baseball spaghetti squash, several sugar pumpkins, lots of jack o'lanterns, and ONE large pumpkin trying to grow (they keep rotting off at the size of a peach).

Basil, Tomatoes, and Peppers: the basil is finally taking off. It simply wasn't growing. The tomatoes are loaded with green fruits, but so far only five or six have ripened. To compare, last year, I was picking them in early July. The peppers are finally setting en masse. For the longest time, there was just one. I should mention that there are volunteer tomatoes all over my garden, and they are doing nearly as well as the ones I started in the greenhouse.

Finally! A tomato is ripening.

Next year, I will start them on heat pad in the sunroom. I will try my mom's bucket method with a light. I will NOT put any tomatoes in the hanging baskets of the tomato cloche. One last note in this category: I have an eggplant! But the slugs have eaten two huge holes in it. I am hoping two more develop from blossoms, and that the first one will be the sacrifice eggplant. Sigh.

My first eggplant ever has become a slug delicacy.

The tomatoes in pots have great flavor but the plants don't get very big nor do the fruits. 

Onions: they are doing poorly. My friend and I shared starts, and I gave her red onion starts that I grew from seed. Hers are baseball size. Mine are, at best, golf balls.

Beans: these are doing well. Yeah! John and I became vegans in May, so I wanted to grow as many shelling beans as I could. I have them all over the yard and garden. They are profuse.

The beans happily climb the old wooden ladder I used for support. You would never guess there was a ladder inside all that greenery!

Today, I made a dehydrator out of tongue and groove wainscoting. I was going to stack the layers on top of each other with the tongue and groove part, but that didn't end up being necessary. Instead, I fastened little squares of 2 x 2" blocks to each corner and then layered some hardware cloth (mesh screen) over the top. I made three layers today until it got too sunny and hot in my work area. I will finish this afternoon or tomorrow morning. I hope to have six layers in all. I will use a box fan (DIY hyrdrator courtesy of same onion-sharing friend) to dehydrate the beans laid out on the five lower layers. My friend dried hers on the vine and then laid them out (shelled) on newspaper for three days. I will leave mine on the plant as long as I can, but I know that there will come a time when they will start to get moldy, and then I'll use the dehydrator.

Potatoes: doing fine.

Figs: not as good as last year's 132. but so far I have 74. I am hoping to get to 100. All but three of those came from the main tree, but the new Olympia fig gave me a few. They weren't very good (dry and no flavor).

The smaller ones higher on the branch will not likely reach maturity before the weather turns.

Cucumbers: doing OK. Could be better. I may have to consider a fourth bed for them out front (see below).

The cucumbers are mostly easy to spot growing up the trellis, and it gives the cabbage a shady spot.

Changes for next year: this fall, I will need to move everything out of the greenhouse and put in a black-stained concrete floor. I will also need to build at least three 4 x 10 beds in the front yard so that I can move tomatoes, onions, peppers, and basil to a sunnier location. The saddest thing to report is that my garden is no longer getting full sun from 10:00 to 4:00. It's more like 12:00 to 3:00 at best. The trees in our yard have just gotten that much taller. Cutting the beautiful trees is NOT an option. That means I will have to take apart my tomato cloche and move it to the front. Good thing I built it with screws. On that note, the tomato bed will have to be 5 by 10 to accommodate the cloche.

As for the flower pots, I will buy some plants for the pots on the deck. If I get some six-packs from Home Depot, I should be able to keep the cost down. I will also be putting baby diapers in my coconut lined baskets. They just didn't hold water. I am going to collect the seeds from the yellow nasturtium (below) for baskets again next year. I like its compact, curly growth.

The water just runs right out of these baskets, and some of the plants on the edges died. Better luck next year with the addition of diapers.

Instructables: I have been doing some canning and Instructables has a contest for pickling and canning. I entered two how-tos: bread and butter pickles http://www.instructables.com/id/Nitty-Gritty-Gardeners-Bread-and-Butter-Pickles/ and fig jam http://www.instructables.com/id/Fig-Jam/. I hope to win a prize for having a good instructable. If you want to vote, click on the Vote icon on the top right on the instructable.

Next up will be my dehydrator in action!

~NGG

Catching Up

Since my last post, I have been busy! We have had great weather much of April, especially the last two weekends. I've transplanted sunflowers, nasturtiums, lettuce, spinach, beets, leeks, kale, chard, cabbage, broccoli, peas, cilantro, and celery into the raised beds in my garden.

Kale and shallots have a shady spot beneath the kiwi. 

Cabbage, beets, and carrots grow on the left, while onions, leeks, lettuce, spinach, and radishes flourish on the right.

Peas begin their climb up the trellis while celery and broccoli take hopeful root at the end of the bed.

I have also planted corn (twice), delphiniums, collards, and more sunflowers.

My collard greens are growing fast.

The beans are thriving, from bush to runner to pole varieties.

The corn has popped up, while just beyond, the watermelon seeds I saved from a local mini melon sprouted behind the pumpkins.

Meanwhile, we had a busy weekend with an excavator we rented, which we used to place rocks onto a pond liner for a water feature on our patio, as well as place our pizza oven. The latter was a bit scary but after careful thought and much prep work, we finally have the oven in place.

The pizza oven is ready for curing fires. Just behind is the waterfall we placed rocks for as well.

A close up of the water feature shows the rocks the water will cascade over.

You can see the excavator from this vantage,

Additionally, I bought eight strawberry plants and put them in my new flower/vegetable combo beds.

This patio bed contains potatoes, nasturtiums, strawberries, gladiola, and columbine.

The bed has tulips, strawberries, spinach, and allum.

My tomatoes are woefully disappointing, (only six inches tall), so I bought four plants today. They are my usual from Soil Sisters out of Monroe. I also bought two pepper plants (not much to choose from) as they are only an inch high in my greenhouse. I will stop at the Carnation Farmer's Market on Tuesday to see if Soil Sisters will be selling their plants there as they have in years past. 

These are my pitifully short tomato plants.

The ones I bought from Soil Sisters are 12-24 inches tall.

The oxalis is the pride of my greenhouse. 

My basil is looking good, too!

I planted cilantro with the pepper plants. I only have two so far.

Next weekend I will be planting beans and getting the tomato and pepper cloches ready. We will be building a frame that is six feet high in back and eight in front. The roof will be clear plastic rigid roofing, and then there will be either a piece of mylar coated insulation as a back wall to reflect light, or we will use some wafer board that came as part of the pizza oven secure packaging and paint it white.

I have lots of figs coming already. They are looking great!

Each branch is loaded with little figs, around five on each. I expect over 100 figs.

All for now.

NG Gardener

Beets, leeks, chard, cabbage, nasturtiums, and lettuce

Yesterday, two weeks after planting, the beets, leeks, chard, cabbage, lettuce and nasturtiums (one week for them) are up. Almost all the artichokes and cosmos are up. The seedlings are so tiny that I didn't bother to take photos. I will wait until things are a little bigger.

The weather continues to be sunny and mild during the day, though we've had frost most nights. Since the sunshine is to continue for the next two weeks, I decided to plant tomatoes, peppers, basil and impatiens yesterday. As planned, I mixed 10 percent worm castings in with my potting soil and sprinkled some lime over the top and worked it in. I planted more peppers today from seeds my mom and I had saved from eastern Washington (Lincoln). I also planted a bunch of flower seeds she had saved but didn't label. The seeds are probably pretty old, so I am not sure what to expect.

Meanwhile, I found a source for coleus, petunia, balsam, browallia and oxalis seeds: Rare Seeds/Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company: http://www.rareseeds.com/store/flowers/.

They have a great assortment of heirloom vegetable seeds, so I have signed up to get their catalogue next year.

I brought an old oscillating fan out to my greenhouse to help with the humidity, but it doesn't work. I have ordered a new one from Amazon along with a humidity sensor. Meanwhile, in an effort to encourage the tomatoes to sprout, I have the heater on to 50 degrees F at night. I also covered the seed flats with a thin white cloth that covered (for shipping) a leather bench I bought. I hope this will help keep the soil moist the seeds can sprout.

Hopefully, I'll have pictures to share next weekend and happy news of newly sprouted seeds.

NG Gardener