by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

I’m saving the tomatillos and tomatoes for the last 2013 recap. As a group, the following plants could have done better had they been planted earlier. With the exception of the basil, most everything else likes cool weather. The end of April/early May was too late to get started. It never occurred to me that some vegetables and herbs wouldn’t dig themselves some nice, hot, sun…

Basil – 6.3 pounds.  As mentioned in a previous post, basil is the reason that two EarthBoxes became twelve. We’d had great success with no effort on a fresh herb that we love. The QFC price in September was .66 oz for $2.79. That’s $4.22 per ounce – 6.3 pounds would cost $425. If you’re thinking about doing EarthBoxes, do basil. Just make sure it gets lots of sun, remember to water, and prune it when it wants to flower. That’s it.

Bok Choi — 0.7 pounds.  A cool weather vegetable that was started too late in the spring (April 20), then got buried under the brussels sprouts, then went to seed when it got warmish. What we thought was one plant was actually multiple plants, so they wound up cramping each other as well. Total user error start to finish. We’ll try again in 2014.

Brussels Sprouts — 1.0 pounds and counting. What we thought was one plant was really four. (again) These weren’t planted until April 20. (again) In retrospect, the correct way to do them is to start earlier and make sure to cover them with tulle to protect against cabbage moths. The sprouts were super slow to mature, and the final yield won’t be very much, but they’re a favorite at dinner around here, so they’ll get another shot in 2014. As a flat guess, the maximum yield could be about 1-2 pounds per plant — six plants per box would equal maybe 10 pounds total(?) Twelve pounds of brussels sprouts would be a *lot*.

Cilantro — 0.8 pounds. Planted on May 5, which was way too late, and it bolted before producing a whole bunch. There is now some cilantro in the plant house. I don’t know that it’s loving the cool weather, but it’s not bolting either, so we’ll see. The parsley is definitely the happier plant house resident right now.

Dill — N/A.  Planted with the cilantro and parsley in the spring, it bolted before we got a whole lot out of it. On the other hand, it did make for one delicious salmon dinner. Needs another shot in 2014.

Spinach — zero pounds.  Planted too late (April 20), it bolted instantly when we had two or three warm days in early May. There’s now spinach growing (slowly) in the plant house.

Bibb Lettuce — 2.0 pounds.  Planted on April 20. Too late. Harvested using the cut and come again technique, two pounds is more than it sounds like, and we got some nice salads out of these plants. Still, this is another plant that might have had a dramatically better yield if it had been handled correctly. The slugs didn’t help out either.

Romaine Lettuce — 2.3 pounds. Same story as the Bibb. I’d like to think we could get 7-10 pounds of lettuce out of one box next spring. I think the “right answer” is succession planting three or four boxes in the early spring, then replacing the lettuce with summer vegetables as it warms up.

Parsley — 0.3 pounds. That number doesn’t look right, but maybe it is. Planted too late…yadda. yadda. yadda. There’s currently some in the plant house that’s looking pretty happy. In theory it’ll last through until the spring. Fresh herbs in December and January would be nice.

Scallion, Bunch Onion — ~2 pounds and counting. They’re still out there. It was scallions in the spring, and now bunch onions in the fall and winter– nice placeholders.

Lemongrass and Shiso — N/A.  The lemongrass is doing well. It needs to be divided and replanted, assuming that it survives the winter. The shiso was a cool idea in theory, but in reality we couldn’t use the huge bush that it evolved into. The lemongrass and shiso also squished the hot pepper plants. The lemongrass may just get a standard pot next year.

There was a whole lot of living and learning going on this year. Hopefully the 2014 yields will be dramatically better with more experienced humans.

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

The cucumbers and zucchini were some of the best, and some of the most disappointing plants of 2013. The disappointing portion was due to a good dose of “user error” of course. Onward:

Patty-pan squash — 1.7 pounds.  In terms of expected output vs received output, the patty-pans were at or near the bottom of the 2013 list. About the time that they swung into gear the issues with mold started, and it was all downhill from there. These were trained vertically in an Ultomato cage, which may not have helped. More on that in the next paragraph.

Cocozelle zucchini — 12 pounds. The cocozelle zucchini shared a box with the patty-pans. I think that both plants would have benefited from trellising, rather than the Ultomato cages. I had read somewhere that the cocozelle could be trained up a cage, and it didn’t work out well. There wasn’t adequate support all the time, and there was some critical vine breakage right when the plant should have been cranking out fruit. I’m of the suspicion that the cramped cage also contributed to the start of the mold.

The patty-pans won’t be seeing a return visit in 2014. The cocozelle will likely get tried again, with a trellis this time. I’m also inclined to try the Trombocino (rampicante) variety. They’re supposed to be relatively mold resistant and pretty low-maintenance overall.

Lemon cucumbers — 15.3 pounds.  One plant that was purchased by accident, it was actually very productive. It was tolerant of the Ultomato cage and was easy to train. We may not do them next year, simply because of how productive the Marketmore cucumbers were. We had *way* more cucumbers than we could eat.

Marketmore 76 cucumbers — 56 pounds.  The most productive single EarthBox. Four plants that were trained into two squares of Ultomato cages. This is something like the weight that I expected to see from the zucchini box. A no-brainer winner for next year.

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

The 2013  harvest came to a little over 230 pounds, not counting the shiso and lemongrass. Of that, eleven pepper plants produced just over 22 pounds of fruit.

The quantity of peppers could have been a lot higher had I actually followed the EarthBox directions and not mixed plant varieties within the boxes. That’s a recurring theme below:

 

The Hot Pepper Box:

The three pepper plants in this box were buried behind the lemongrass and shiso, and I think it dramatically impacted the output.

Anaheim — 2.9 pounds.  The Anaheims basically filled a one gallon freezer bag. We’ll be planting these again next year.

Banana — 0.4 pounds.  Just a few peppers. This plant was the most buried of the three, and it showed. Needs a fair trial in 2014.

Jalapeno — 2.2 pounds.  This again is way more peppers than it sounds like. Visually it’s a couple of freezer bags worth in a single layer, about 50 Jalapenos or so. A few got a tinge of red, but that was about it as far as ripe Jalapenos. A 2014 keeper.

That’s 5.5 pounds of sun-demanding peppers out of the shady, cramped side of 1/2 of an EarthBox. –*facepalm*– On the bright side, it’s still enough peppers to easily last into next spring. We’ll be throwing Anaheims and Jalapenos into everything.

 

 

The Sweet Pepper Box:

18.2 pounds from the six peppers in this box. No competition for sun = the output per plant was 65% greater — 3 pounds per plant vs 1.8 pounds per plant for the hot peppers. Not mixing plant types is the “right” way to do it:

Cute Stuff — 1.5 pounds.  They weren’t cute; they were actually fringe-deformed in appearance. They weren’t particularly productive. (SW corner of the box, which should be about the best spot.) The interior was a little pithy. I think it’s fair to say that we weren’t in love with these. They may not make the cut for 2014.

Gourmet — 1.5 pounds.  The yellow ones that eventually turned a little orange. Definitely photogenic. Moderate output, but then they were in the middle-front (middle-west side) of the box. Probably a keeper for next year.

Gypsy — 3.2 pounds.  Good production from the NW corner of the box. Probably a keeper.

King of the North — 5.3 pounds.  Excellent production from the SE corner of the box. It’s basically a standard bell pepper. Winner.

Lipstick — 1.7 pounds.  Another photogenic pepper that ripened to red. Decent production from the East-center part of the box. Fairly thin walled. Probably a keeper, though I’d be fine with something else.

Tequila — 3.3 pounds.  Purple peppers that turned white when we grilled them. They’re more of a crudite pepper, and even then they don’t taste like much. Not making the 2014 cut.

 

The Straggler:

Even though we tried to pre-plan the garden layout, the piecemeal approach to purchasing things meant that we wound up with one “extra” pepper plant that had to be shoehorned in somewhere. That somewhere was behind the brussels sprouts and the lemon cucumbers:

Bell — 0.3 pounds.  One pepper from this plant. It never really had a chance. I’m actually inclined to do a mono-box of these next year to see how much it would produce in favorable conditions.

 

This year we budgeted 1.5 boxes for peppers. Next year I think it will be either 2 or 3 boxes. I’m leaning towards three. No sharing space next time though.

by A.J. Coltrane

We had a big windstorm yesterday. There were tree limbs down all over the neighborhood, and the power briefly went out a couple of times.

In the plant house life went on pretty much as usual. Ignoring the last week’s slug damage, everything is looking pretty happy, perky even:

The added protection really seems to be helping. It’s somewhat more humid in there as well.

The parsley and cilantro were planted late last week, so they’re still “figuring it out”.

Previous post here.

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Bonus pic of the front yard a few days ago:

 

by A.J. Coltrane

Here’s the latest. It’s a 48″ x 48″ x 56″ plant house. I had been shopping for either a tall cold frame or a small greenhouse. This one is right in between those two things. It cost ~$60 which is about as much as I wanted to spend on an experiment. The Amazon reviews are pretty ok, though it really is strung up tight. Note the support poles that are bending from the strain. Maybe the plastic will loosen over time.

It snugly holds three EarthBoxes. In theory a 4th could be squeezed in along the back if the the other three boxes were pulled all the way to the front of the house. There’s no bottom to the unit, so it just drops right over the boxes.

Hopefully we’ll get some fresh greens over the next couple of months. At the very least it should allow for some earlier planting in the spring.

Previous post here.

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

I harvested all of the remaining peppers after work tonight. It came to eighteen pounds — fourteen pounds of sweet peppers and four pounds of hot peppers. The six sweet pepper plants had a box to themselves this year. The three hot peppers were less than half as productive — they wound up sharing a box with the lemongrass and shiso, each of which got monstrous. To make it even tougher, they were planted on the shadier end of that box. The hot peppers and bell pepper would have done a ton better in their own box, or with short, less “sun demanding” stuff. (The bell pepper was shaded by the lemon cucumber, we got one bell pepper out of that plant.) Live and learn. I’ve been saying that a lot this year.

Did you know earwigs will eat holes into Jalapenos? Who knew? Jalapenos of all things…

 

Today’s pepper harvest. The hot peppers are in the sheet tray. The six sweet peppers are arranged as they were in the box, with the best sun hitting the right side, then the bottom row in the late afternoons:

Left column, bottom to top – Gypsy, Tequila, Banana (yellow, was trapped under the shiso), Anaheim.

Center column – Gourmet, Lipstick (an apt name), Jalapeno

Right column – Cute Stuff, King of the North

The King of the North before harvest:

Continue reading “EarthBox Update — October 7, 2013” →

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

A day late on the update this week. Yesterday was a triple-header of sports:  Seahawks (on tv), Mariners (in person), and Sounders (raining hard in person). I’m still recovering.

This week the weather was cold, windy, and rainy. One day it rained as hard as I’ve ever seen it rain in Seattle. It was blowing sideways and running like waterfalls off of the roof. The temperature dropped down into the 40’s on a couple of nights. The peppers and tomatillos seemed ok with all of that. The tomatoes are finished for the year except for the Sun Gold plant. I believe we’re up over 200 pounds of stuff to date, so no complaints here.

On Friday I pulled all of the semi-ripe Roma tomatoes:

Today I pulled the rest of the tomatoes and almost all of the cucumbers. The cucumber plant is about toast (pic down lower in the post):

Continue reading “EarthBox Update — September 30, 2013” →

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

The tomatillos got pruned earlier in the week. Yesterday the tomatoes and cucumbers received the same treatment. I also trained the cucumber vines towards the “front” — the whole box has been leaning “back”:

The lemon cucumbers are nearly done:

Continue reading “EarthBox Update — September 8, 2013” →

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

I decided that the tomatillos were due for a pruning on Tuesday. There were a lot of yellow leaves in the understory, and a lot of unripe fruit was just dropping off of the yellow vines. I figured pruning off everything that looked sick would leave more sun for the healthy plants, including the tomatoes in the adjacent box. Anything that was yellow was targeted. So I pruned and pulled and pruned and pruned and was left with one healthy plant, and one stump. The weaker of the two plants had basically completely crapped out, but I didn’t realize it until I physically stuck my head into the plants and started cutting.

I also pruned out all of the little runners and new blooms. I don’t think that there’s time for anything totally new to make it all the way to fruition. It really cleaned up the mess, and both the remaining tomatillo and the tomatoes should benefit.

On the bright side, I found another five pounds of tomatillos that had been hiding within the vines.

I had no idea that many tomatillos were in there. It was “Here’s one. And here’s one. Here’s another…”

In retrospect though, it makes sense. The two plants were purchased at basically the same size, but the surviving plant started growing way faster, and the weaker plant started growing, then needed more support because it wouldn’t stand up under it’s own weight. The imbalance was compounded by the fact that the stronger plant was in position to get much more sun, since the weaker one was sandwiched between the strong one, the lemon cucumbers, and the tomatoes.

One winter project is going to be figuring out a layout for next year that maximizes sunlight for everything involved. Live and learn.

 

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Late edit:  Today takes it to 112 pounds of stuff for the year!

 

by A.J. Coltrane

Wow! It’s September already! The tomatoes and peppers are still in full swing. The cucumbers and basil are hanging in there. Everything else is at varying stages of calling it a year.

Previous post here.

An overview from the deck.  (Clockwise from bottom left: cucumbers, peppers, basil, (top row) brussels sprouts, lemon cucumbers, tomatillos, three boxes of tomatoes. In the center it’s marigolds and bunch onions.) That light colored blob on the top right is a Brandywine tomato:

The raspberries are now established. Hopefully that’ll be some no-work goodness next year:

Continue reading “EarthBox Update — September 1, 2013” →