Here's what's good, and bad, in the garden so far this year.
Radishes, but that's not unusual. The radishes I started 4/5 fed us well May 12th through early June. Unfortunately I didn't start anymore until 5/16 and those almost universally bolted/didn't bulb. I ate the greens, but note to self to make time to succession plant weekly in the early spring...those days slip by so fast. Also the purple radish seed I got from a friend didn't bulb even in the early sowing. Skip next year. (Can't 100% separate good from bad)
Lettuce. I had to start most of it indoors for the good stuff (leaf lettuce did okay in pots but I don't really like it) - I think my soil has real drainage problems, even in the raised beds, and the little seeds wash to one side, get drowned or dry out. Though I do alright with carrots ...anyway, post coming soon with the delicious meals we've been building around our beautiful Little Gem and Red Speckled Romaine (been saving the seeds several years, don't remember if there was a more specific name but that's what I call it)
Poppies! Several years ago I started starting poppies inside, against common wisdom, and it's gone great. This year I added a new variety, Pandora, to my Lady Birds and Blue Hungarian Bread Seed and they are all SO BEAUTIFUL.
Drip irrigation. I set up my first drip irrigation hoses on the South side of the house. Half of those beds get 0 water ever because the eaves are so deep they block all rain, so that's been a contributing factor to plant death with my sloppy watering habits. Those beds are really long so I needed several soaker hoses which then meant a lot of bother snapping and unsnapping and watering in stages.
The drip system covers the whole length of the house at once, and I put in a shut off to the half of the bed that gets some rain so I can water the dryer half more often. This website was super helpful in figuring out what I needed, if a bit of overkill in hindsight, since my system is SUPER low tech. But I didn't know that until I knew it. Super nice of this guy to create such a comprehensive resource and give it away.
Haskap berries. Deceptively called honeyberries. One of the first edibles I planted at our house 7 years ago while I figure out raised beds for the back. They are in our shady front yard, and I think I haven't picked them to their full capacity in past years because I was caught off guard by their bitterness. But we're having a pretty good haul this year so finally I just put some in vodka, and my daughter mashed others with sugar to raw.
Tomatoes. Tomatoes are NEVER on the bad list. So sad. As mentioned in an earlier post, COVID-19 and rampant violent racism sort of messed with my rhythms for getting the garden going this year. I'm finally realizing it's not the tomatoes per se that were the worst hit but all the South side beds, which really confirms that it's the soil, and the fact that I didn't get my load of compost and manure from Kerns, that made the biggest difference, not my various other rushed errors. Yesterday, June 27th, I pulled all the compost I could out of our pile and put it on the tomatoes. Over half of them I actually dug up, amended the area, and replanted. The others I just piled on top. I've kept "careful" track of which were which in a cryptic text to myself (top, dig, dig, top, digx3...) so hopefully that will prove useable information later when I see how they do. A couple Olpakas are so small I can barely see them above the mulch :(
Good:
Ladybugs, domestic, really breeding. They seem to have thinned out now, probably after thinning out the aphid supply, thank you, (and before I grabbed a good picture) but I've never seen so many or noticed them in all their stages before
Ladybugs, domestic, really breeding. They seem to have thinned out now, probably after thinning out the aphid supply, thank you, (and before I grabbed a good picture) but I've never seen so many or noticed them in all their stages before
ladybug larva
ladybug pupa
Radishes, but that's not unusual. The radishes I started 4/5 fed us well May 12th through early June. Unfortunately I didn't start anymore until 5/16 and those almost universally bolted/didn't bulb. I ate the greens, but note to self to make time to succession plant weekly in the early spring...those days slip by so fast. Also the purple radish seed I got from a friend didn't bulb even in the early sowing. Skip next year. (Can't 100% separate good from bad)
Lettuce. I had to start most of it indoors for the good stuff (leaf lettuce did okay in pots but I don't really like it) - I think my soil has real drainage problems, even in the raised beds, and the little seeds wash to one side, get drowned or dry out. Though I do alright with carrots ...anyway, post coming soon with the delicious meals we've been building around our beautiful Little Gem and Red Speckled Romaine (been saving the seeds several years, don't remember if there was a more specific name but that's what I call it)
Self-seeders. My earliest seedings of cilantro didn't take off AT ALL but luckily there were copious selfies scattered through a couple beds that have fed us till late June. Now they are bolting, and some later direct seeded plants are filling in (but will probably bolt soon too). The selfed dill is too early for pickles (I have more starting in the basement now for that) but ESSENTIAL for swallowtails. I wasn't going to plant potatoes this year since a construction project may cut short our season at the community plot where I grow them. But a bunch selfed from last year so I'll see what I get with no hilling and potentially little time. And we're eating lots of black raspberries straight from the hand and expecting a good fresh eating crop of blackberries - both from neighboring bushes that spread into our yard. TRY: seeding a bunch of cilantro, dill, rapini and mustard in the fall where I actually want it for the spring. And maybe someday potatoes too, though I don't think I'll have access to the community plot for a year or so.
Poppies! Several years ago I started starting poppies inside, against common wisdom, and it's gone great. This year I added a new variety, Pandora, to my Lady Birds and Blue Hungarian Bread Seed and they are all SO BEAUTIFUL.
Note to self to start more next year, especially the blue hungarians which should be clumped more than I did, they grew pretty straight up. Also plant those ones to the back of the bed, they are too tall for where I put them, and I finally have a better watering set up that should make the back of the bed safe. Which leads me to...
The drip system covers the whole length of the house at once, and I put in a shut off to the half of the bed that gets some rain so I can water the dryer half more often. This website was super helpful in figuring out what I needed, if a bit of overkill in hindsight, since my system is SUPER low tech. But I didn't know that until I knew it. Super nice of this guy to create such a comprehensive resource and give it away.
Not so hot/lessons:
Asparagus. Immediately I want to put this up in the good column, we so enjoy the asparagus we get. It's just sparse. Only two remain of the 10 or so plants I put in from bare roots four or five years ago. I wedged them into a tiny space on the South side of our garage which I had to clear of daylillies. Sometimes I forget to mulch them. It gets overrun with weeds but the two plants that remain look really good. I need to restart the bed, hopefully this year or next, with more soil amendments and a living path to suppress weed growth. Thanks to Seed to Fork I plan to try starting from seed over the winter. But now there's a new problem, ASPARAGUS BEETLE. Arggh. I didn't have the bandwith to get very aggressive with them this year, just hand picked and sprayed with some organic solution a couple times.
Beets are also a good/bad. I'd planned to give up on beets because they never grow for me, just get weird and leggy. But I can rarely let go of things so I seeded 10 or so 3/7 and put them out under a tunnel 4/5, and I do have beets! But they're super small and some didn't really bulb. It might have been a little too early/cold or it might just be the soil quality, b/c I didn't do a big amendment of organic matter this year, and overall I need to do more of that anyway. So, learning, and hope, a few beets and some good beet greens.
Raspberries. I cut back the raspberries this spring after I forgot to do so last year and they fell over half the yard. But the middle third of the plot just didn't come up, so maybe they didn't like that. I don't really care, I strongly considered just cutting the whole things down and skipping a year or two in a last ditch attempt to escape the spotted wing drosophilia that ruin most of our fall crop each year (first summer crop do OK). But it's just another thing to deal with, and looks kind of weird and messy in one of the spots I usually don't have to think about.
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| tiny Olpalka past mater 1 MONTH after transplant. unfreakin believable |
Royal Corona/Gigande beans. I love these beans and they cost $7/lb plus shipping (meaning I have to buy a ton at a time to be worth it) so I really want to grow them. But two rounds rotted. 100%. Maybe it's the "seed" (taken from a Rancho Gordo bag, since I couldn't find dedicated seed anywhere). Or maybe it's me. The first round I soaked because they're so big, and then I read that's a bad thing. Those rotted in pots in the basement. The second round I direct seeded around May 15th when I did the rest of the beans. They all did fine and not a single Corona came up (ironic, this year of all years). I posted to Heirloom Bean Addicts on FB and at least one person has had success planting from Rancho Gordo, and also had had a "bad" batch from them, so maybe I'll try again.
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