by A.J. Coltrane

Squirrels have been digging in any “unclaimed” dirt in the containers. I thought I could stop the digging by laying bird netting over the dirt. That seemed to work for a while, until a really determined squirrel pulled on the netting. The netting dragged across the seedlings, uprooting a few and damaging a few more. So:

It’s what I should have done in the first place — I added galvanized hoops that we had left over from last year’s Row Cover Experiment. The pictured seedlings are tiny – they were all planted way too late for a winter harvest.

The boxes pictured below were planted early/mid September, which is still too late for a winter harvest (L-R – Dragon radish, mache, carrots, mache again with bunch onions scattered through all the boxes):

 

Next year we need to start seeds in mid-August at the latest, even if it means transplanting things that aren’t traditionally transplanted. we’ll also use bird netting and hoops over everything — I’d guess the squirrels destroyed up to 20% of the seedlings, and that’s just not cool.

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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.

by A.J. Coltrane

The 2013 Tomatoes and Tomatillos recap is here. 2014 here.

(Note that this won’t be the last gardening post of the year. It’s the final recap of how the summer went.)

2015 saw a total yield of 145.2 pounds for the eight tomato plants.  That’s an average of 18.2 pounds per tomato plant, or 12.1 pounds of produce per square foot of growing medium.

(For reference:  The 2013 total was 15.3 pounds per tomato plant.  The 2014 total was 17.2 pounds per plant.)

The Tomato Varieties:

Black Krim – 22.5 pounds. [75 day, Indeterminate. OP Heirloom. 23.5 pound two-year average.]  Excellent yield, attractive purple appearance, and a wonderful deep tomato taste. Winner.

Cosmonaut Volkov – 18.7 pounds. [68 day, semi-Determinate. OP Heirloom.]  The Seattle Tilth description said the Volkov would be early, and ready by mid-August. We harvested 1.5 pounds before August 29, and the other 17.2 pounds in September or later. The light red fruits were pleasant enough.. I’m not attached to these for 2016.

Oregon Spring – 18.0 pounds.  [60 day, Determinate.  15.7 pound two-year average.]  Starts early and produces all summer. Takes up very little space. The yield could have been better, but we lost at least a pound or two to bugs. One of our favorites.

Sweet Million – 9.9 pounds.  [65-75 day, Indeterminate.]  We chose these as a red cherry tomato to compliment the Sun Golds. The yield was poor, and they tasted more or less like supermarket cherry tomatoes. I thought they were a letdown all around. Not a keeper. We’re open to suggestions for a different cherry variety.

Roma – 22.8 pounds.  [75 day, Determinate. 22.0 pound three-year average.]  The Romas ripened really well this year. We did see a little more blossom end rot than in past years. I’m hoping that pairing them with a smaller determinate next year may help limit the stress. We’ll see. Keeper.

Sun Golds – 16.2 pounds.  [65 day, Indeterminate. 17.9 pound three-year average.]  Productive and trouble free, and they taste like candy. Keeper.

Taxi – 25.9 pounds.  [65 day, Determinate. 25.3 pound two-year average.]  We’ve paired a Taxi with an Oregon Spring each of the last two years. They’re both early and they reach a similar compact size. No reason to mess with success. The bright yellow fruit and light taste makes for a nice contrast with the other varieties we’re growing. Keeper.

Tigerella – 12.4 pounds.  [65 day, Indeterminate. Heirloom. 14.3 two-year average.]  Here are the comments from last year:  “Average yield, average taste, but they are interesting to look at. Late to ripen. I’d be fine with trying another variety instead.”  I think all of those points held true again, but the yield went from average to fringe-poor. Not a keeper.

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The Tomatillos:

This year was a repeat of what we grew in 2014.  The tomatillo box contained contained the “Mexican Strain” and “De Mipa” varieties. The “Mexican Strain” has a vertical habit, and the “De Mipa” sprawls a little more. It seems to be a good combo in the box. Our 2015 yield was 15.1 pounds, the three-year average is 17.0 pounds. I think the “Mexican Strain” plant was a little weaker this year, as compared to last year. Still, I’m happy with a yield anywhere in the 15-20 pound range.

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The Basil:

2015 yield – 3.1 pounds.  2014 yield – 2.9 pounds. It doesn’t weigh much, but 3.1 pounds of basil is still over $200 worth at retail. Due to a lack of time, we mostly didn’t due the usual upkeep that basil likes, but the yield was fine anyway.

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2015 Summary:

We harvested 280.5 pounds of “summer vegetables” out of the twelve EarthBoxes between June 24 and October 4. That’s 23.4 pounds per EarthBox, or 7.9 pounds per square foot of growing medium.

The only really significant thing that we changed was that we built three new trellises and used them with the cucumbers and tomatillos. I think the trellises helped the tomatillos in particular. The cucumbers burned up to some degree in the 90 degree days — one thing we may want to try is shading the root area of the cucumber boxes to see if that helps. The flip side is that it felt like we had a smaller proportion of green tomatoes and peppers at the final harvest.

Overall though, we really didn’t have time to do the pruning that the tomatoes and basil appreciate. It didn’t seem to matter that much. It could be that the weather was so crazy nice that it overcame whatever “user error” we provided.

We’re learning a little bit more every year.

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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.

 

by A.J. Coltrane

2013 Cucumbers and Zucchini recap here. 2014 here.

The Tromboncino produced 26.0 pounds this year. The 2014 total was 20.5 pounds. A 27% improvement!

(For reference – the trellis squares are 8″ x 8″. The fruit is 28″ long.)

Being the closest container to the west side of the house, the Tromboncino have been getting 1-2 hours less sun per day than some of the other, more favorable locations on the patio. Next year we may move them to the northwest corner of patio (the photo below was taken facing west, the northwest corner is at the the top right of the picture – that’s where the late morning sun hits first each day). If we do move the box then we’d turn the trellis 90 degrees so that it would run along the north edge of the patio. The difference in sun might help both the yield and with powdery mildew.

We grew two boxes of cucumbers this year — 8 plants total. I don’t think they liked the unusually hot weather. The cucumbers peaked early and disintegrated rapidly after that. In addition, they all became blocky, instead of long and pretty and straight. Bummer.

EarthBox #1 contained four Marketmore 76 cucumbers — the same thing as each of the last two years:

2013 yield – 56.0 pounds

2014 yield – 44.4 pounds

2015 yield – 28.6 pounds

Hopefully in a “normal” year we’ll see 40-50 pounds or so. That seems reasonable, and it would still be about 15 pounds per square foot of growing medium. I won’t complain if that’s the case.

Interestingly, I didn’t think the Marketmores were very photogenic this year. The last photo happened on June 15:

EarthBox #2 hosted two varieties of pickling cucumber (Calypso and National Pickling), and two Lemon cucumber plants.

Mixing two types of pickling cucumbers with very different maturity sizes was a bad idea. It was basically impossible to tell if we were looking a small National Pickling cucumber (which grow to a 6″ maximum) or a full-sized Calypso (3″ maximum). Together they produced 10.6 pounds. Not great.

The Lemon cucumbers did much better — 20.0 pounds from the two plants. I wish they were a little easier to process after harvesting; it’s way easier to peel a regular cucumber, in contrast to a slippery orb:

All up, box #2 yielded 30.6 pounds.  Between the two boxes we got 59.2 pounds of cucumbers(!) It’s too much, really. We’ll likely return to doing one box of cucumbers next year.

Now we just need to figure out what we’ll do with the “extra” box..

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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.

 

by A.J. Coltrane

2013 Peppers recap here.  2014 Peppers recap here. There’s a spreadsheet at the bottom of this post showing the total for all three years combined.

The 2013 harvest was 22.3 pounds from 11 plants — 2.0 pounds per plant.

The 2014 harvest was 31.0 pounds from 18 plants — 1.7 pounds per plant.

The 2015 harvest was 32.5 pounds from 18 plants — 1.8 pounds per plant. That comes out to 10.8 pounds per box, or 3.6 pounds per square foot of growing medium.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that in the future we can expect the yield to be 1.7-2.2 pounds on average per plant.

The 2015 lineup:

Anaheim College 64 — 1 plant.  1.0 pounds:  That’s less than half of what we got from this variety each of the last two years. We’ll plant these again anyway, I think we just got an uncooperative plant.

Bullnose Bell — 2 plants.  2.3 pounds total. (1.15 pounds per plant):  Basically a really squat bell pepper. Their shape made them relatively time consuming to break down. The yield wasn’t very good, and that’s before accounting for the pithy interior. Not a keeper for 2016.

NuMex — 1 plant.  2.6 pounds:  The NuMex were long and straight and produced a good yield. Keeper.

Iko Iko — 2 plants.  4.5 pounds total.  (2.25 pounds per plant):  A bell type. These ripened well and were generally trouble-free.  Keeper.

Early Jalapeno — 1 plant.  0.9 pounds:  Another poor yield from a pepper that usually does well for us. Still, we’re not going to bail on Jalapenos due to one bad year. Keeper.

Carmen — 2 plants. 8.0 pounds.  (4.0 pounds per plant):  Outstanding yield. Super easy to handle and process —  the seeds of each fruit were in a little pod right at the stem. A new favorite! Keeper.

King of the North — 6 plants.  9.1 pounds.  (1.5 pounds per plant):  Somewhat below average yield for what is basically a standard “bell pepper”. The bugs got to these a little bit. They usually do better for us. Keeper.

Lipstick — 2 plants.  2.5 pounds.  (1.25 pounds per plant):  We had one “good” plant, and one plant that made deformed fruit. The only other time we’ve grown Lipstick it produced 1.7 pounds. We’ll see if something else grabs us in 2016.

“Yellow Bell” — 1 plant.  1.5 pounds:  Teeny tiny bell peppers that ripened to orange. The interiors were solid seeds — we used a spoon or a melon baller to empty them out. Not a keeper.

One thing we “discovered” this year is that long, straight peppers are far faster and easier to clean — when compared to the bell types. I can definitely see that characteristic being a tie-breaker when we choose what to grow next year.

Here’s the 2013-2015 spreadsheet, sorted by average weight per plant:

Variety	Count	Weight	Ave. Weight
Carmen	2	8.0	4.0
Tequila	1	3.3	3.3
Gypsy	3	7.9	2.6
NuMex	1	2.6	2.6
Iko Iko	2	4.5	2.3
Tequila Sunrise	1	2.2	2.2
Anaheim College 64	3	6.3	2.1
King of the North	12	24.3	2.0
Jalapeno	3	5.9	2.0
Pasilla Bajio	1	1.9	1.9
Karma	1	1.6	1.6
Cute Stuff	2	3.1	1.6
Yellow Bell	1	1.5	1.5
Lipstick	3	4.2	1.4
Gourmet	3	3.7	1.2
Bullnose Bell	2	2.3	1.2
Hungarian Hot Wax	1	0.9	0.9
Thai Hot	1	0.5	0.5
Alma Paprika	1	0.4	0.4
Banana	1	0.4	0.4
“Bell”	1	0.3	0.3
Total	46	85.8	1.9
2013	10	22.3	2.2
2014	18	31.0	1.7
2015	18	32.5	1.8

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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.