by A.J. Coltrane

2013 Cucumber and Zucchini recap here.

This summer, the cucumbers and zucchini boxes both blew/fell over. Nothing was damaged, but that’s the end of “it won’t happen to me” around here.

We went with the vining Tromboncino zucchini this year. We were rewarded with 20.5 pounds of fruit, up from 12 pounds of “regular zucchini” in 2013. Ultimately I’m not sure that we like zucchini enough to try to eat 20 pounds per year..

Forty-four pounds of Marketmore cucumbers in 2014. That’s down from 56 pounds in 2013, but still well more than we could ever eat. In both years the fruit quality really began to fall after about middle/late August. August 31 might represent a good date to just bag it, pull the plants, and start winter veg. (We got 10 pounds of mostly misshapen produce from September onward in 2014.)

When they’re going good though, they’re very good:

It’s my understanding the some commercial growers will do an early and late crop of cucumbers to help keep the fruit quality high. I don’t know how realistic that is with our setup, but it may be worth considering. My suspicion is that for us the net amount of “good” fruit would be very comparable, and that it might not be worth the effort.

Right now I’m leaning towards taking a year off of the zucchini in 2015, though that’s going to be dependent upon finding something we’d rather use the space for that isn’t totally redundant. The Marketmore 64 cucumbers have been very successful both years, though I’d dig it if we could find something with a longer “tail” — a variety that would continue to produce good fruit into September.

In any event, we’re not going to use Ultomato cages for the cucumbers next year. We may wind up using the big trellis for cucumbers in 2015 — that sort of makes sense.

by A.J. Coltrane

2013 Pepper recap here.

The final 2014 harvest:

The 2013 harvest came to 22.2 pounds of peppers from 11 plants — 2 pounds per plant. This year we bumped it up to 18 plants and got 31.0 pounds. That’s 1.7 pounds per plant — a 15% reduction in yield, though that’s close enough to call it the same. About half of the fruit ripened this year, which was a big impovement over last year’s ~20%. (The tomatoes ripened better as well. Not a coincidence I’d bet.)

The table:

Hot Variety	Count	Weight/per	Total Weight
Anaheim College 64	1	2.4	2.4
Hungarian Hot Wax	1	0.9	0.9
Jalapeno	1	2.8	2.8
Thai Hot	1	0.5	0.5
Sweet Variety	Count	Weight/per	Total Weight
Alma Paprika	1	0.4	0.4
Cute Stuff	1	1.6	1.6
Gourmet	2	1.1	2.2
Gypsy	2	2.8	4.7
Karma	1	1.6	1.6
King of the North	5	2	9.9
Pasilla Bajio	1	1.9	1.9
Tequila Sunrise	1	2.2	2.2

I’m thinking that somebody mis-labeled the Pasillas (the center front sheet tray pictured above). The Tilth description says that they get 8″-10″. We got little 1″-2″ fireballs that looked more like Thai Hot peppers. It could be that the Pasillas were actually Thai Hot peppers. The foliage was super similar, and completely tangled up.

We lost a few more sweet peppers than I would have liked to (I think) earwigs. The diatomaceous earth that was applied late in the year may or may not have slowed down the bugs.

Peppers are one of those plants that we can never grow too many. They’re attractive, low maintenance and always enjoyed at the table. Overall I was happy with the outcome.

—

I’m thinking maybe we increase it to two jalapeno plants in 2015.

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

Row covers:

Everything is arranged under the deck. The afternoon and evening sun hits the boxes — I *think* there’s adequate light.

The south end. These boxes get direct afternoon sun for a couple of hours, at least:

The bit of green visible through the row cover:

Pak Choi in the right-hand box, interplanted with spinach. The box on the left is a mono-spinach box.

One more overview:

The cold frame separates the two “banks” of boxes. There is another box with carrots inside the cold frame.

In theory the row covers will break the worst of the wind and rain. The microclimate should be vaguely warmer, calmer, and drier.

It may be that the “right answer” is to build cold frames to go over the row covers. Maybe next year.

—–

Row cover link. The 5′ width fits nicely over the 9 gauge wire frames. It cut easily to the length needed.

 

by A.J. Coltrane

I’m attempting to at loosely nail down the timing for starting winter vegetables, with the thought that we could harvest all winter and into the spring, rather than just waiting for the spring growth.

The idea is to select winter hardy plants and have them mostly full-grown by whenever the cold and lack of sunlight stops their development. It then becomes an issue of figuring out when that “growth stops” date is. It’s gotta be sometime in the next four weeks, right?

The table below is intended to take at least some of the “figuring” out of the equation. The “Days” is days to maturity.  The dates in bold along the top are potential “growth stops” dates. Most of the plants that we’ve selected are 30-50 days to maturity, with a few outliers running as much as 75 days or longer, so I’ve centered the table on 50 days:

Days	Sep-10	Sep-24	Oct-1	Oct-14	Oct-28	Nov-14
25	Aug-16	Aug-30	Sep-6	Sep-19	Oct-3	Oct-20
30	Aug-11	Aug-25	Sep-1	Sep-14	Sep-28	Oct-15
35	Aug-6	Aug-20	Aug-27	Sep-9	Sep-23	Oct-10
40	Aug-1	Aug-15	Aug-22	Sep-4	Sep-18	Oct-5
45	Jul-27	Aug-10	Aug-17	Aug-30	Sep-13	Sep-30
50	Jul-22	Aug-5	Aug-12	Aug-25	Sep-8	Sep-25
55	Jul-17	Jul-31	Aug-7	Aug-20	Sep-3	Sep-20
60	Jul-12	Jul-26	Aug-2	Aug-15	Aug-29	Sep-15
65	Jul-7	Jul-21	Jul-28	Aug-10	Aug-24	Sep-10
70	Jul-2	Jul-16	Jul-23	Aug-5	Aug-19	Sep-5
75	Jun-27	Jul-11	Jul-18	Jul-31	Aug-14	Aug-31

As an example, assuming a 50-day maturity, and targeting October 28 for “growth stop” gives September 8 as the date to sow the seed. Ideally the plant will be 90%+ developed whenever the brakes hit.

Of course, I could have just consulted this. (link)

The thing with the Territorial Seed Co. table is that the harvest dates are all over the place. That’s likely because they’re actually doing it “right”, or it’s how the majority of their customers choose to do it, but I’m hoping that “the other way” works too. We’ll see.

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

October 7, 2013 post here.

We still had summer vegetables growing at this time last year. They’re long gone by now this time around, replaced by winter vegetables:

I’m still figuring out when to start winter veg, and what varieties do best in cold/long storage conditions. As an example, small, fast, round radishes do best in the spring and are intended to be harvested promptly after they’re ready. Longer maturity “carrot-shaped” radishes tolerate being held in the ground much better. Actual carrots have 4 or 5 different broad types as well. This is all new to me — just like I assumed that *all* vegetables did well in the heat of summer, it never occurred to me that different varieties of certain vegetables prefer either fall/winter or spring.

It may be that the vegetables in the EarthBoxes have been direct-seeded too late in the year. In the future we may start them in pots a month or so earlier an then transplant when the summer veg has been cleared out of the way. As it is, the plants in the whisky-barrel containers are well ahead of the EarthBox plants. Pictured below are spinach and cilantro that were started about a month ago (I should have labeled the date next to the new sowing.) I left the dill in place that’s now around two months old.

They’re covered with bird netting because something — I think squirrels — had been digging in the newly exposed dirt. The carrots below are protected from flies with tulle:

That’s carrots in the foreground, bunch onions under plastic in the middle, and romaine/arugula in the whisky barrel. I’m guessing that the whisky barrels don’t drain well enough for the alliums, which led to the shallots rotting this spring.

Other recently planted boxes include mache/parsley (interplanted); mache/cilantro (interplanted); spinach; pak choi; more bunch onions; mache; dill; and leeks. This afternoon at least one of the tomato boxes is going to become shallots.

It seems everything is doing better in the cold frame, so the open boxes got plastic-covered hoop houses. More pictures next week. Hopefully there will be something to show.