We’ve had our first couple of really warm days, and the fans are now out of the garage. The warm-weather veggies are digging it. I love gardening this time of year because everything is young and vibrant, and the garden is growing and doing it’s own thing with a minimum of work input.
We’re going to get lots of raspberries this year. Speaking of work- I need to do a better job with the bird netting:
The beans. The edamame have been much more energetic than the filet beans, and much more bug-resistant too:
The cucumbers are just starting to climb the trellis:
One of the four melon plants made it. We filled the space in the box with a Siletz tomato. In theory they should coexist well:
The Oregon Spring are drinking by far the most water of anything in the garden. I’m not sure if that’s a function of the box, their location, or just how much respiring is happening with all that plant mass. It may about time to thin the interior of the jungle:
The rest of the tomatoes (L-R) Roma, Old German, Black Krim. There’s a Purple Cherokee hiding behind the Old German:
The tomatillos are up to the top of the 6′ trellis:
The Tromboncino:
A closeup of the bottom of the Tromboncino. We’ll be eating zucchini soon:
An overview:
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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.
The left column has three boxes of tomatoes, with the Tromboncino zucchini in the big trellis at the back. Continuing to the right in the front row- the next box over has the Oregon Spring tomatoes. The rest of the front row (L-R) is three pepper boxes and then a box of basil. The rear trellis contains the tomatillos, the center trellis has cucumbers, and the rightmost trellis has the surviving melon plant and a new Siletz tomato plant.
The tomatillos are chest-high:
The Oregon Spring are doing their usual early thing. There are lots of blooms and a few fruit:
The Tromboncino will need to be trained to the trellis soon:
Moving to the front yard — we got another good batch of (very big and fat) peas:
There are still more on the vines, though the vines are beginning to look a little “cooked”:
The lettuces in the top of the salad table are doing well:
The front yard now has four little volunteer pansies:
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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.
We chose to simplify a little bit this year and go more with things we know “work”, are easy to process, and will see quick use if they make it as far as the freezer. We added a few new things too, including melons. The descriptions below are copied from the Tilth Plant Sale PDF.
The boy cat checking out the non-pepper group of boxes.
Melons –
4 of- Minnesota Midget Cantaloupe: 65 days. Open pollinated heirloom from 1948 when it was introduced in Minnesota. Measures 4 inches across at maturity, when the rind is a soft yellow and slightly soft at the stem end. Sweet orange flesh with a good muskmelon flavor. The compact vines produce decent yields. Slice into thin delectable servings with an herb infused soft cheese and salted pistachios for a fantastic summer appetizer.
We were going to try these melons last year, but we missed the Tilth plant sale. This will be our first attempt at growing these. From what I’ve read the vines are supposed to get about 4′ long, and the fruits will likely need a pantyhose or sock support or something similar. Hopefully it’s a warm summer, otherwise we may be underwhelmed. 4 plants is one full box.
Sweet Peppers –
6 of- Carmen: 60 – 80 days. Lusciously sweet when left to fully ripen to a deep red, this pepper is perfect for chopping and tossing straight into a salad. A great container plant and a good addition to a sunny veggie bed. 6 inch fruits on an upright plant.
6 of- King of the North: 76 days. Open Pollinated. Here is a sweet bell pepper that will mature in short season climates. Its crisp, blocky fruit will turn from medium green to red if left on plant longer. Excellent raw in salads or dips. Great to use as stuffed pepper or in tempura recipes.
Jimmy Nardello: 76 days. Open pollinated heirloom. Thin-walled 8″ long curved tapering pointed fruits turn deep red when ripe with shiny wrinkled skin. Great eaten raw and super tasty when fried–very prolific! This seed variety is considered by Slow Food USA to be an endangered member of their “Ark of Taste.”
Sweet Chocolate: 60 days. Open pollinated. Early sweet, lobed, thick-walled fruits. Ripen from dark green to a rich chocolate color. Cold tolerant.
The Carmen and King of the North do well every year. They’re versatile in the kitchen, they’re easy to process, and they’re relatively work-free. One box of each.
The Jimmy Nardello is a pepper I’ve been reading about for years. Tilth finally had them in stock this year. I have high expectations.
Sweet Chocolate is another pepper we’ve been meaning to try and represents a little more variety in the pepper boxes.
Hot Peppers –
2 of- Anaheim College 64: 74 days. Open pollinated. Medium hot flavor make these short season peppers a hit for dips, sauces, stuffing with cheese or roasting. They are just like the anaheims you find in the store but without having traveled all those miles to get to you!
Anaheims are very mild hot pepper — we still have bags of Jalapenos and Serranos in the freezer, as well as dried Thai Chiles. We have no shortage of hot stuff, so we took a pass on the lava and went mellower.
We have two open slots for peppers, to be filled in the near future.
Tomatillos –
2 of- Verde: 70 days. Open pollinated. A classic deep green tomatillo with high yields, ‘Verde’ is ready when the husks have split and are drying. Very intense rich flavor which pairs well with sweet summer tomatoes and makes a fantastic salsa. The high yields will allow you to freeze them as you pick, saving some for winter sauces and stew ingredients. Give tomatillos room to spread and they will favor you with their riches.
Our favorite type of Tomatillo. Larger fruits = less handling. We grow these in an A-frame trellis and run extra twine for support for the branches. 2 plants fills one box.
Zucchini –
4 of- Tromboncino (aka Zucchini Rampincante): 60-80 days. Open pollinated heirloom. A Tilth favorite, the flesh of this variety has a smooth buttery texture and a mild flavor—the taste of summer! The 12 to 18” long fruits are “trombone”- shaped and can grow in curly cues or hang like bells on a trellised vine. Harvest when they are a pale, grass green or leave a few fruits at the end of the season to mature to a buff color and enjoy them as you would a winter squash.
Historically we’ve done two Tromboncino plants in one box. I sort of screwed up when I picked up four. This variety is relatively mildew resistant and they grow vertically up a trellis, so I’m hoping that four plants will work anyway. We’re partial to the taste and texture of Tromboncinos. We’re unlikely to ever grow “standard” zucchini again.
Tomatoes (2 tomato plants go in one box) –
2 of- Oregon Spring: 60 days. Determinate. An extra-early variety that sets loads of meaty fruits weighing 3 to 5 oz., with excellent flavor. Compact plants set fruits even in cool weather and continue to yield all season long. Nearly seedless. A perfect choice for ketchup and sauces.
2 of- Roma: 75 days. Determinant. Premium canning tomato, ideal for sauce and paste. Pear-shaped scarlet fruits are thick and meaty with few seeds.
2 of- Black Krim: 75 days. Open pollinated heirloom. Indeterminate. From the Black Sea region of Russia, these 10-12oz beefsteak type tomatoes have a strong, rich flavor that is common with black tomatoes. One seed catalog noted that the fruit is best when half green and still firm. Very productive. Reportedly is a consistent favorite at tastings, so why not give it a shot?
Old German: 75-85 days. Indeterminate. Fruits are golden with reddish streaks. Produces large, rich and full bodied tomatoes. Great for fresh eating tomato, salads, and salsa.
Cherokee Purple: 85 days. Open pollinated heirloom.Indeterminate. Slightly flattened, 6-8 ounce tomatoes with a purple cast. Shoulders will remain green when ripe. Deep, rich, smoky flavor that’s not too acidic. For fans of the black/purple tomatoes, Cherokee Purple is one of the best This seed variety is considered by Slow Food USA to be an endangered member of their “Ark of Taste.”
We chose not to do eight different tomato plants this year. We passed on Taxis because their yellow sauce is very sweet and requires cutting with other red sauces. We also passed on Sungold (or “Sun Gold”). The small fruits of Sun Gold require a lot of fiddly work and the orange sauce is very very sweet.
The Oregon Spring are early and dependable. They taste good and they’re high-yielding. Normally we’d pair these with a Taxi.
The Black Krim win basically every taste test we do, and the deep purple fruits make great sauces.
The Romas were selected specifically for sauces. I thought we’d have more success this year if we did a mono-box and they didn’t have to compete with anything bigger or unruly.
We wanted one more “black/purple” tomato. We’ve grown Cherokee Purple in the past and enjoyed them, so that was the selection. Looking at the PDF, we may want to try “Carbon” next year.
The Old German sound like a great fit due to their size, versatility, and color. We’ve never grown these, but on paper they’re a winner.
That leaves one box left over, which will contain six sweet basil plants once the weather warms up.
EarthBox covers are sort of necessary evil. The covers that the company sells are of marginal quality, and they run around $2, each.
Instead we go to Home Depot and buy a roll 10′ x 25′ x 3.5 mil black plastic. Right now a roll is $12. The finished cost per cover is 20 cents, each.
To create the covers, unfurl the roll. The folded, short dimension is the 10′ length. Without unfolding it, cut it into 3′ pieces. You’ll get 8 pieces with 1′ left over at the end:
Then unfold each 3′ x 10′ section. Cut those every 24″, making five covers at 2′ long apiece.
As it turns out, the folds happen at about 8″ intervals and it makes measuring easy. They’re straight too, which is good if your scissors tend to wander.
To “attach” a cover to an EarthBox get a putty knife and tuck the plastic between the sides of the EarthBox and the dirt.
It’s easy to do, and we now spend $2.40 on covers per year instead of $20+.
The first asparagus to come up this spring! Given it was only planted last year, that makes it the first asparagus ever!
Talking to another local who grows asparagus, I thought we might have to wait until closer to the end of the month to see some shoots. Nope!
Last year we planted asparagus in three different areas of the back yard. The thinking was that they’d likely do better in some places and worse in others. Depending upon how many survived the winter we could try to consolidate the plots into the best spot. Also, if we did lose a few to the wet and cold it might not be terrible, since they may have been over-crowded in the first place. More elbow room might be a good thing!… Or they were going to be fine all along as is… Hard to say.
Of course, this all means that our first real harvest is a year away..
Each year when we grow peas I push some stakes into the ground and add trellis netting. It never looks awesome. The peas usually do well until the sunny days kick in. At that point their pots dry out quickly and the peas suffer.
Attaching the trellis assembly to the salad table is an attempt to address those issues:
It’s the same Ultomato stakes and netting that was used last year. The netting just happened to almost perfectly wrap around the North and East sides of the newly seeded salad table. I used cable ties to attach the stakes to the table. Quick and easy.
It’s a sturdier build than just pushing the stakes into the ground. As an added bonus, the pea pots are spread around the shady sides of the salad table. They should be relatively protected from the sun, and therefore cooler.
Here’s the line of pots on the North side of the table:
Once they get a bit taller the plants will poke out above the salad table. That’s the theory anyway.
All in all, combining the trellis with the salad table makes for a cleaner and more compact solution, and the peas aren’t as crowded this year. Hopefully it works out great.
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Two other thoughts:
We’re getting a lot of mileage out of the pea trellis. Here it is stuck into the soil at the edge of the walkway almost one year ago. After the peas were done we attached it to the lemon cucumber trellis for extra support.
The clamp light rig seems to keep the soil near the lights around 78F. No need for a heat mat. The other good thing is that the clamps can be attached to the top bar and pivoted to face downward. Lots of room for vertical growth:
No more posts about peas in the immediate future. Probably.
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Finally, one inspiration for the title of this post — From the album More Songs About Buildings And Food; Talking Heads version of Take Me To The River:
Crazy, huh? They’ve spouted and grown between 6 and 10 inches tall in just over a week. If you look closely you can see the roots poking out of the bottom of the rolls. (The empty looking pots have recently planted dill and cilantro seeds. They should make an appearance sometime in the next week or so.)
Today was their first day with time outside. I left them outside for a couple of hours after work. The temperature was in the mid-forty degree range, and I didn’t think it’d whack the peas.
Hopefully the weather will be decent enough in the next few days to plant them outside. The forecast calls for night-time temperatures in the 20’s tonight and in the 30’s until Wednesday, possibly with some snow mixed in. We may just have to take our chances, since I don’t think the peas will fit in the current setup for another week — they’ve already grown almost to the top of the lighting rig.
That, and the toilet paper rolls are really beginning to show some mold. My inclination right now is not to use toilet paper rolls the next time around and instead use some of the reusable plastic “pots” we’ve gotten from nurseries over the years.
Over the winter I came across a blog post that recommended using emptied toilet paper rolls as mini pots for starting seeds. It looked neat, clean, and easy, and it seemed like a great way to use up a free resource. The author simply cut the tubes in half, placed the smooth (uncut) side down in a baking dish, and filled the tubes to 1″ from the top with damp soil. Seeds were placed on the soil and buried to the appropriate depth.
I could have been neater about it — here’s what I wound up with when I planted peas:
When I added a little water many of the rolls immediately began to unravel. Right now I think they have enough integrity that when the seeds sprout I’ll still be able to plant the plugs without too much drama. As it is, added water needs to go on the bottom of the dish, otherwise all the soil would wash out of the tubes.
I also did some tweaking on the lighting rig. It’s now smaller, at about 20″ x 8″:
The lights are now nearly touching each other, and the light is much more concentrated. The lights themselves are around 1-1/2″ above the soil. It’s very bright, if only in a small space of 16″ x 8″. That’s enough room for direct light on about 15 paper roll tubes. The dish could probably hold 25 tubes or so. It seems like a good compromise that doesn’t totally dominate the counter top.
The first time I tried the lighting rig (version 1.0) most of the plants wound up leggy, partly because the lights were a ways apart, and (I think) partly because I needed to leave the lights on for more hours than I did. This time I’m targeting ~16 hours a day. 16-18 hours seems to be the consensus on the interweb. We’ll see. Assuming this works we’ll start beans and Brussel Sprouts the same way in a couple of months.
Last year’s post was titled “Too Many Seeds, Probably“. While we did manage to use up some of the inventory, not everything was consumed. Still, I wanted to try some new things. The list:
The left column is the Territorial Seed catalog number. The thinking behind the “new stuff” –
Escalade Spinach Organic: We used up the last of the spinach packets, so it was time for more.
Garlic Chives-Nira Organic: Rick Bayless loves garlic chives, and it sounds like something we’ll love too. As an added bonus, slugs don’t mess with alliums. We should be able to seed them about “wherever” and have success. (Rick grills them. He then dices the garlic chives and adds them to many different dishes.)
Guardsman Onion: Replenishing the scallion supply. We planted the last of these seeds in the fall.
Joi Choi Pac Choi: A Chinese Cabbage variety that’s supposed to grow faster and be more bolt resistant than regular Bok Choi. We’ll see. Because it’s a Brassica the cabbage moths and aphids will come after them. We’ll likely grow the Joi Choi with Brussels Sprouts, cover all of it with tulle, and dose with Neem Oil (wikipedia link). In theory that should work to keep the bug population down. In theory.
Maxibel Bean: A french/filet bean. Think Haricot Vert. The slugs may like these too much to be worthwhile. I figure we can try them in a few locations and see what shakes out. No trellising required. So long as the slugs don’t decimate the plants we should get something. Super fresh Haricot Verts have the potential to be awesome.
Territorial Seed Company picture.
Midori Giant Bean: An extra-early maturing Edamame. I love Edamame. No trellising(!)
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I see now that everything that’s really “new” is either indestructible or potential slug/pest bait. So it goes. We’ll know how effective Neem Oil is by the end of the season.
Black Krim – 10.9 pounds. [75 day indeterminate heirloom.] Relatively poor yield in 2016, which was true of everything else too. In the two previous years the yield was around 23 pounds each year. Keep that in mind as we go down the list. Always a favorite at the tomato tastings with its rich, earthy flavor. Black Krim also makes a great sauce. Keeper.
(Purple) Cherokee – 14.1 pounds. [80 day indeterminate heirloom.] Produced earlier than 80 days and continued late — it wound up with the 2nd highest yield of the eight tomato plants. Cherokee did well in the tastings. Definite winner that we’ll grow again assuming we have the space. (Pictured above on the back sheet tray, right side. Probably.)
Oregon Spring – 10.5 pounds. [60 day determinate.] An early and abundant producer that tastes good and makes good sauce. It’s a small determinate, which is another point in its favor. (Smaller determinates don’t require some of the pruning and maintenance that the indeterminate varieties do. And they take less space. And everything else gets more sun by association. I can see us trying for a higher ratio of determinate tomatoes going forward.)
Valencia – 10.6 pounds. [55-60 day indeterminate.] New to us, these were supposed to taste of pineapple, which no-one could detect in the tastings. Still, the plant did well, the fruits had a “full” tomato taste and ripened to a cheery bright orange.
Sun Gold – 6.6 pounds. [65 day indeterminate] Very poor yield from a very sweet tasting and popular tomato. Most years we’d see around 16 pounds from this variety. We’ll get ’em next year.
Yellow Pear – 8.5 pounds. [78 day indeterminate.] I thought it would be a good idea to put another indeterminate cherry tomato with the Sun Golds. We weren’t impressed. The Yellow Pears didn’t really taste of anything, the skins were thick, the yield was “meh”… Last year we didn’t love the Sweet Millions, this year it was the Yellow Pear. Not a keeper. We’re still searching for a complimentary cherry tomato and are open to recommendations.
Roma – 3.0 pounds. [75 determinate.] Terrible. We’d averaged 22 pounds per year over the last three years. Smothered by indeterminates, the Romas need a better location in 2017. Most likely the “correct” answer is a dedicated box (two plants) of Romas.
Paul Robeson – 8.5 pounds. [85 day indeterminate.] Another purple/black variety. Late, but tasty. We may not have room for three purple/black varieties next year. Keeper if we have room.
Taxi – 22.7 pounds. [65 day determinate.] Taxi is a top producer- Every. Single. Year. 25.9 pounds in 2014. 24.6 pounds in 2015. The marginal weather didn’t effect the Taxi plant in the least. We have a lot of yellow tomato sauce.
Tigerella – 12.1 pounds. [65 indeterminate heirloom.] The Tigerella got a little squished in the middle of the garden. Still, the yield was good (relatively), and the plant was one of the last hangers-on of the season.
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The Tomatillos:
“Verde” – 19.7 pounds from two plants. This was a new variety to us, and it’s my new favorite. The yield was good, and the fruits grew to be larger than the other two varieties we’ve previously done. (“De Mipa” and “Mexican Strain”.) That means less work and less processing. Winner.
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The Basil:
We’re done weighing basil because I find it too tedious. We’ll get around 3 pounds of leaves per box per year. Good enough. We waited too long to harvest this year — the plants sort of yellowed before we got to them and a lot got wasted. The plan next year is to harvest 1/2 of the basil on August 1 and half of what’s left each successive week until the plants yellow. (Or something like that.)
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2016 Summary:
The total yield was 194.3 pounds, though we didn’t count the garlic, scallions, or other cool-season greens that we’ve counted in other years. Not including the basil it comes to 17.7 pounds per box, or about 6.0 pounds per square foot of growing medium. It could have gone better but nature had other ideas. I’m not going to argue.
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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.
An overview:
FlatbreadGarden 