Broccoli

I picked a small head of broccoli today. IT WAS DELICIOUS!    I also planted another round of green beans and weeded. I took pictures but i fell victim to a malicious script which caused me to have to do a full system restore on my computer so i lost the images i had saved to desktop.
Other than that today was simply a day of weeding and peering at how things were going and things are looking good!

Raintree Plant Order

On Thursday of last week, i hinted to my hubby that another $100 in plants would pretty much complete my berry collection and finalize the yardscaping goal.  He said OK willingly and on payday he reminded me to go ahead.

So i submitted my order to Raintree on Friday.  They have unusual plants and a decent reputation.

SKU	Product	Item price	Quantity	Total
D743	Titan Seabuckthorn(fem)-Gal Pot)	$22.50	1	$22.50
C315	Prunus maritima 'Beach Plum' sdlg	$4.50	4	$18.00
H2024	Goji Berry Phoenix Tears-4 Inch Pot	$9.50	2	$19.00
E031	Goldbeere Elderberry-Gal Pot	$16.50	1	$16.50
E015	Caerulea Blue Elderberry	$14.50	1	$14.50
D746	Sea Buckthorn(male)	$19.95	1	$19.95

Subtotal:	$110.45
Shipping cost:	$26.95

Now i'm not sure if they are still shipping, Starks is not, but since i ordered Friday afternoon nobody will get my order until Monday and if there is a problem i will be contacted soon.
I did notice something about plant availability on their website but i didn't see a cutoff date- so i'm guessing that if i don't get some or all my plants this year i can get them next Spring. That will be fine by me as long as all of the varieties are available still.

I had planned to try growing Goji from seed,  but last year's attempt didn't pan out. The seeds sprouted readily enough, but growth was maddeningly slow.  I did find this article How to Grow Goji From Seed and i think the problem was the depth of the growing container- i guess Goji stop growing once their roots hit bottom. The bottom comes fast when the seedlings are growing in a styrofoam mushroom box that is only 3 inches deep.

I have seeds for Seabuckthorn--- but Seabuckthorns come in male and female. I'd have to grow twice as many seeds to be assured at least one male and then it would be 3 years before the plants could be sexed.  If i buy one male i could grow more seeds, knowing i have a fertilizing male already. Not wanting to wait too long, i got a female known for being particularly prolific as well.

My beach plums from Oikos died over winter. I think the buckets got too dry before freezes came. Raintree's beach plums are cheap enough to try out.  They are salt resistant and should do well next to the roadway where their salt resistance (winter road salt) will come in very handy.

I'm getting a good collection of Elderberries now that they are no longer restricted up here, Yay!  I'm hoping Currants will come off the list soon as well.  I have never eaten either...  
Anyway, two more types will give me a collection of 5,  three black, one golden and one powdery blue.

So i can't wait to learn if i can expect things this year or next.

Looking back and playing around

Looking back to this time last year....

It was interesting. Around now we were using the air conditioning almost daily. The tomato plants were large,  two weeks from this time last year i was picking green beans.

I mean we had temps in the 80's.  We've been 60's and 70's lately and a good deal of rain, which is good and bad.  With so many overcast days it seems that things are lagging a bit.  This cool weather is probably great for the brassicas because they aren't battling high summer heat.  But what a difference between years.  This weather sure is horrible for getting weeding done.  I think i may get behind badly like i did last year.

On the positive side of weeds taking over is more organic material for the dirt when all gets plowed under in the fall.

I've been surfing around and i found a few cool things.
I have used a sourdough starter a number of times and i liked how i didn't have to buy yeast for a loaf.  The packets are convenient and all and really not that expensive honestly.  But there have been many times that i have wanted to bake a loaf of bread and found that i am out of yeast packets.

So, learning that i can dry sourdough starter at home and it can store indefinitely in the freezer (and i assume also in vacuum packs) makes me happy.  So i plan to try it myself soon. Just need to whip up a batch of starter and let it age a bit, then i'll probably dry the starter on the lowest setting in the Excalibur .

http://www.breadtopia.com/drying-sourdough-starter-for-long-term-storage/


Another thing i found on the crocheting front....  A great tutorial on  African Daisy granny hexagons.  These are some of the prettiest color combination patterns i have ever seen.  I have started my first one and thanks to the fab tutorial its going great.


http://heidibearscreative.blogspot.com/2010/05/african-flower-hexagon-crochet-tutorial.html

I even printed it off just in case i need a portable version of the pattern until i have it memorized.  I want to do a multicolored, random mix of colors and then i'd love to do one with a daisy mix.  Maybe some black-eyed-susans. I'll use Simply Soft by Caron.

Well i think that is about it for today.

Just thinking

I tried getting some more radishes, but i guess i'm expecting them to be ready too soon..?  Its a mix of types but all i pulled seem to be about the size of my thumb nail or not much larger.  Its been warm, i thought radishes just got hotter, not slower. I seem to forget every year. lol


When the rainy weather ends, i'll plant the next round of green beans. Hopefully i'm inundated gradually this year.

My summer squashes seem to be recovering nicely since being dusted.  I'm just sevining everything before it blooms.  The bugs are wicked this year.  The number of toes-up striped cucumber beetles that appear under the plants the day after dusting has been astounding! I hate to use it, but i think the garden would be a total failure this year without it.

I haven't seen many cabbage butterflies so far,  though i saw a number of them earlier in spring. I haven't been dusting the coles so i don't think its that.

I don't like posting entries without pictures but its too wet and now its dark. :o)

First day of Summer

Its beautiful out. Blue sky, some thin, high clouds- not enough to cast shadows so its basically a clear day.  Temperatures are in the high 70's to low 80's,  dry and comfortable with a pleasant breeze. Just perfect.

Garden is doing well.  Needs much weeding of course.  The little one's wakefulness is making it hard to weed and get most things done. I have been bemoaning he condition of my grapes, they are growing like crazy and i wish i had understood pruning instructions this spring-  bu i didn't understand them at that time.  Now i do and i realize what i should have done.  Hubby bought me a nice set of pruners.  Not expensive ones, but for 5 grapes i don't need $75 pruners. Under $20 for a set of two is fair enough.  These actually look like good ones, drop forged and come apart for sharpening. One is a bypass and the other is a needle nose.  If i wanted to sound all pro, i could call them secateurs, but i think 'pruners' is a better suited word for my skill level. lol

The other task i have been bemoaning is setting up my netting for the cucumbers.  But then, they don't really need it right now. I got such a late start on them due to the low germination of many of my seeds. Three of the four types had to be reseeded at least one of each. 

I also need to spread some 10-10-10 in the sandier part of the garden. Its so sandy there is slow growth.  I also have some leaf yellowing going on with my squash.  Their large leaves have yellow along the edges and i'm sure its a fert issue.  The new part of the garden does not have much compost or manure from last year in it. Its very sandy and would be perfect for carrots if i wanted any this year.

Another thing is that the apple tree is due for another treatment of Bonide. I have to stay ahead of the bugs this year.  I missed one spraying last year and that was the end of it for the apples.
I need to also research what i may need to spray the pear tree for.  Its doing wonderfully so far. I actually don't know what bugs will bug a Stanley Prune Plum or any other plum for that matter.   I'll also spray the grapes for fungus and blight after they are pruned. Mainly a precaution- its been on the damp side this year.


Well someone has finally fallen asleep so....


________________________________________

I got the apple tree sprayed!

And the grapes pruned

Before:

 

After:

Marechal Foch before:

Marechal Foch after:

It wasn't as intimidating as i expected it to be. With all that growth i understood what was going on. Books tell you that this or that branch will do something if you don't prune it and why,  but its different to actually see what that is.  So now i know what happens!  And now i'm ok with removing parts.

I noticed some browning on some leaves,  just one so far.  I think this was Frontenac  or Reliance:

basic update

Not much to report. i expect more radishes as the days go by.  No woodchucks yet.  The beans are up, the corn is up...  i have weeded with the scuffle hoe. The potatoes have been located by the Colorado potato beetle, they and the striped cucumber beetles have been Sevin Dusted...

So far so good. Still holding my breath over the woodchucks though.  This will be   a perennial problem.  One year without them will not guarantee the next.

The Sub Arctic tomato seeds i am germ testing haven't done anything yet, but there is still time. One of my tomato plants croaked and another isn't looking so hot, so if the Sub Arctics do get going i have spaces for them to fill.

This is a difficult year for me as the youngest is big enough to get into trouble but not small enough to take long naps like last year.  Everything is done as quickly as possible.  Next year may be easier since she will be 3 and old enough to understand more about why mommy says no.  Big sister may also mature enough to want to help with a willing spirit.

But i'll do what i can as much as i have time for!

Weather post

Dreary weather this week so far. Supposed to be nice tomorrow and then back to the ugliness.  The weeds in the garden are almost as big as the plants.  I'll need to do my weeding with the collinear hoe tomorrow if i get the time.

I did get to pick 5 more radishes today, i would normally take pictures but they were eaten too quickly.  Its an enormous delight to begin eating the results of your work each Spring!

So far things are looking good, no woodchucks yet. Goodness, i hope it stays that way!

Woodchuck prevention program

I looked it up and last year  the first raid by woodchucks on my garden was June 21, 2010.  So if the vermin go by their calenders, i expect them to send a reconnaissance party after my cabbages within the next two weeks.  This means i have about 10 days to install  a few miles of razor wire, electric cabling and landmines.

I wish.

Most likely all i will be able to do is lay out some chicken wire and top it with a strand of electric fence. I am hoping that i can scare them off a bit by depositing the dog's solid waste just on the other side of the fence.  We have been doing that all spring. Hopefully the 'chucks will notice it there and assume the dog can reach that spot and it will keep them away.  I may let the dog loose on one just to solidify the impression that dog doo + real dog = danger.

I planned to grow a lot of kale this year since it was the only thing that wasn't touched last year, but the poor germination in the direct seeded areas kind of kicked that plan.  I might start some seeds anyway.  I fully expect to lose half my cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower to the woodchucks this year. Might not be a bad idea to have something on hand to replace what will be lost.


So that is the plan for today during Little Miss Cute's naptime.

I'll also bait the Havahart trap and keep it baited, refreshing the bait every third day.  Hopefully i can trap them before they destroy my plants.

If i get raided real bad this year i will have to reconsider growing certain crops at all.  I just might have to give up on broccoli and cabbage.  Concentrating on tomatoes, radishes, kale, asparagus, cucumbers and maybe beans.  But woodchucks like them too,  i have seen them mow down rows of bean sprouts in my parents' garden.
One year a woodchuck did it to my parents twice.  They planted, the beans sprouted and got eaten by a woodchuck. They replanted and it happened again.  So they tried a third time and my dad spent the day lying in wait for the culprit.  They live rural and can use guns on their property.
When mom drove into the driveway that evening after errands, dad had the woodchuck laid out in the middle of the driveway for my mom to see.  My mom is also an animal lover, but i know she cheered about the demise of that one!

Good thing is that if i do have to quit some crops, cabbage is cheap....but broccoli and especially cauliflower is not. But i can weigh the odds on the rest of what i can grow.   Maybe i'll only grow the more expensive stuff and really guard it.

Meanwhile, i'll just keep praying the garden gets left alone this year.

Pictures and old seeds.

Planted the Autumn Olive today.  Right between the rose of sharon and the big hydrangea. If it survives winter it will be about 3 years before i see berries. They are supposed to have a cranberry-like flavor. We'll see.

Took some pictures yesterday.

Onion row

Tomato row, cucumbers are too small to see and the summer squash are too far off

 

Potatoes

Kossack kholrabi

Red cabbage

Broccoli. Praying i don't get 'chucked again this year!

Peppers and eggplant

Small herb patch. More going in shortly

Edelweiss.  This is the one i had to relocate, so it is a bit behind

Marechal Foch , going like crazy as usual.  I need to prune it back.

Marechal Foch flower buds

Frontenac

Reliance

Reliance flower buds

Edelweiss two

Edelweiss flower buds

York, Nova and unnamed edderberries

Stanley prune plum doing great

Some petunias

Blueberries

Might get a quart of berries if all these ripen

Purple smoke bush.  Its happy to see the silky dogwood gone.  I still need to train it to lean to the right

Herb seedlings. They need a bit more time to grow before going into the garden.  I was late starting them.

Now for something that i get a kick out of. Hubby accidentally threw out a collection of paper seedling trays that i was saving for seed starting next year. So he felt bad,  and then he was at the recycle station and found me a whole lot of assorted size plastic seedling pots, peat pots and paper trays in a box.  So i was digging through a box and i found a bunch of seed packets. They were all Johnny's Selected Seeds. The packets are quite old. The design has changed over the years.

I was happy to find a tomato packet among them. I looked it up and it is supposed to be a good variety for up here.

Very old seeds.  (And i have a 12 year old manicurist in case you were wondering.)

But Johnny's seeds are usually good well after their expiry date. So i'm going to do a germination test.  If the box of pots was stored someplace cool and dry i should have fair luck.

Moist paper towel

Dump out the seeds. Quite a few left. Maybe 40. I didn't count

Lined up neatly

Fold them up

Sealed up and off to a warm, dark spot.

I hope one or two are still alive. I'll definitely save some seeds from these if they germinate and if the fruit are any good.

First harvest

Picked 2 radishes today. They looked like French Breakfast. They were yummy!

Garden remix

I planted peppers and eggplant today.  I also reseeded the cukes that didn't come up.  Only thing is i goofed on them.  I was supposed to leave room for the eggplants and peppers,  but i wasn't thinking and i had to put the eggplants elsewhere.
About 6 of the beets sprouted so i just raked them over and put the peppers and eggplants there (next to the butternut squash. My parents' garden is still wringing wet, so they planted their tomatoes alongside the house and didn't expect to plant more than that-- this means i still have quite a few plants, so they took up almost half a row.  This means my bean row is not going to be as big as i planned.

So what i did was narrowed the rows of corn and added a strip of beans.  I'm still not convinced that any type of corn is going to provide much in this small garden.  If all hades breaks loose we won't be sustained by corn. It may be the Jerusalem artichokes and all the greens i can put by.  Not that i'm expecting a sudden specific calamity, but gardens are supposed to be for an independent way to save some money and be a backup plan in case of job loss etc.  Its not like the economy is going to get any better very soon.

Anyhow,  today i planted the beans and corn as well and re-did the garden map.  Watering for about 45 minutes seemed to get things moist enough.
I also put the usual cream and red petunias in the big pot next to the front steps. The one stocks seedling wen right in the center.
We saw bees all through the blueberry blossoms.  Gorgeous day to be outside.



I also spent the better part of the day with my mom.  Its been one year since my grandfather died, so we bought some flowers and plants for his grave site and paid our respects.  I'm glad i was able to spend the time with her. Its still very hard on my mom.  Both of her parents are now gone. We still have our memere who is my mother's step-mother,  though i never thought of her as 'step' anything!  She is sprightly and full of goodness. One of my grandfather's best friends stepped right in and has been a great comfort to her.  His wife was one of my memere's close friends and died recently also.  Now the two of them travel together everywhere. Is a beautiful thing!

Nursery and planting

Went to the local greenhouse/nursery. I bought 6 different types

Pac Man broccoli
Early Dividend broccoli
Blue Wind broccoli
Cheddar cauliflower
some red cabbage i forgot the name of
and green cabbage who's name i already forgot. Rockhead or something.

i pounded in the sockets for the hoops and installed the hoops- i'm hoping the row cover will protect my veggies from both woodchucks and feral children.

its too windy out now to put the cover on by myself.  My oldest daughter is keeping an eye on my littlest while she sleeps.

i did get the apple tree sprayed though.

About 70% of what i had seeded last month did not come up. I don't know if it was the seeds or the weather, if something munched the seeds or the tiny sprouts....  but i used last year's plant labels so i won't accidentally weed out what did come up, then just planted the nursery seedlings in the gaps.  There were enough gaps to put all 6 containers of at least 8 plants each.
i didn't even bother to map what i planted, i just plunked it in.

Awesome possum

So...   i had set the Havahart trap the other evening after startling a woodchuck who was not 50 feet from my garden.  I used half a banana and a mushy kiwi, diced up and served on a paper plate. I just knew i was going to catch something.
I didn't have time to check the trap the next morning,  but later that afternoon i remembered to go look during nap time. I could see that the trap had been sprung but i couldn't see inside too well- but i knew it wasn't woodchuck colored!

It was, of course, playing dead...or napping.  But it ate all the bait and the paper plate it was served on.

I called my oldest daughter out to see it and help me set it free.  She thought it was pretty cool.

We released it and watched it scamper/waddle away.


Other than that, not much else going on.  I'm noticing that many of my cabbage & broccoli seeds are not coming up- though i planted 3 or 4 in each station.  Its disappointing and yet another example of why i should start the seeds in flats next year.  It makes me want to head to the greenhouse again.  At least i don't want big gaps.  There's a 90% chance of my doing just that today.

I need to get the corn planted. "Knee high by the 4th of July" is the adage and if i don't get to it soon, it will only be ankle high by then.

I've hardened-off the eggplant and peppers.  They will go in when i find a block of time. I should be able to do this on Saturday.

There.

Hydrangea pruned.
Havahart trap set.
Garden watered.

Planting

Got back from the nursery later this morning. I had bought some pencil thin onion plants, yellow Spanish. I also bought 3 parsley plants, 3 sage, 2 oregano and one marjoram.

Just got done putting them in when the youngest daughter woke up.  I set the sprinkler to water them and came in.  Half hour naps are not fun.

I was going to prune the dead branches off the hydrangea and seed some more kale, but that isn't going to happen today.

I did startle a woodchuck in the back, it was right about at the fence line where we haven't finished it yet.  I'm going to set the trap as soon as i get the chance to get back out there.  Best to be proactive this time around.  Not too happy about it though, its way too soon to start having to deal with the vermin already.

We had been putting the dog's droppings behind the fence in that area hoping it would deter them.  Our fence is two feet inside our property line and he nice neighbors don't use that part of their yard so its not on their land and not in their way.  But it dosen't seem to have helped. Suburban vermin aren't scared of domestic  dog doo.

Gardening footprints

Unfortunately, i'm not being poetic.  My garden is beginning to look like i am growing footprints instead of plants.
I could tolerate the cat footprints and when hubby tripped into my onion bed while mowing.. i could understand that as a one time thing...  but now i have neighborhood kid prints in there.  The kids around here are what i call "feral children"  they are taught nothing good and so they act it. Zero respect for anything, not other people or fence boundaries...

So now i have about 10 footprints in my onion bed and a few in the potatoes, and at least one set among my broccoli.
I really hope this isn't how the summer is going to go.

I plan to be putting the electric fence up soon, the woodchucks will be appearing sooner that i expect,  i hope he kids are prepared to respect the electric fence sign.

For the most part the rest of the garden is doing well. Some of my winter squash seeds are coming up, tomatoes are looking good. Potatoes are emerging. My onions were coming up, but many have been stepped on.  T he radishes are getting multiple leaves.  The beets aren't showing up.  The weeds are going bonkers.
I'll need to lift off the whole tunnel to check on the cucumbers again.  What i had hoped were cucumbers turned out to be squash volunteers,  so those got plucked away. 
I'll be planting corn as soon as i can .

I may go to the nursery and get some onion sets and give up on the seeded onions...  there are just too many footprints in that plot.  I haven't decided yet....  If i don't get sets i might just leave that bed to its own devices until its bean planting time and i can just put string beans there. 
Either way, i need to take a trip out there to get some herb plants.  Just parsley for the most part. Maybe something else if it catches my eye and can fi in there. Another thought is some Asian greens,  i have plenty of seed for that.  I'll soon have extra seed flats too, its warm enough for the eggplant and peppers to get under the row cover with the tomatoes and squash.
In the end, though i like the onions from the garden, they are rather inexpensive at the store still, i think it won't be such a bad thing to grow something that can't be store bought instead of the onions... like Asian greens....

Either way, i think i'll start my onions in flats rather than direct sow next year.  That goes for most everything too.  I have located most of my seeded in broccoli and cabbage, kholrabi too...  but i don't like how i have to look so closely.  I prefer having seedlings to plant.  That was this year's first lesson. 
I will start tender stuff indoors and wintersow things like onions and brassicas.

I have a scuffle hoe i need to restore. Hubby found it with my red garden rake in the free pile at the "recycle plant"-- aka, the Town Dump.  Anyway, the hoe is crusty and dull. It needs work with a wire brush and i think i can use hubby's lawn mower blade sharpener  to put the edge back on the hoe.  It attaches to his cordless drill like a drill bit. Its kinda neat, it should do the trick.

Now that my oldest daughter is out of school for the summer, i have an extra set of eyes to help me watch the little one.  That is if my oldest wakes up before noon....

Found: The Sun

It was amazing yesterday.  Spent much of it outside with the little one, kiddie pool,water hose and assorted outdoor toys.

I took some pictures of what was going on in the yard and garden....

Stanley prune plum is really waking up now

unnamed elderberry

Nova elderberry

York elderberry, at least it should be,  it had lost it's tag before i got it

Edelweiss

Reliance

Frontenac

Marechal Foch

Edelweiss 2, the one that got moved earlier this spring

Asparagus and Welsh onions

Horseradish

Jerusalem artichokes

bumblebee, making up for lost time in the pollination department

apple tree, looks more like a weeping tree. I may need to prune it back more?

rhubarb, taking off as usual

first of the lilacs opening

mixed radishes sprouting

Today is looking good so far, clouds are beginning to filter in so it may turn out hazy for the rest of the day... i'm hoping that's as bad as it gets. For now, its sunny and warm. I have already had the youngest out to play for about an hour until she started getting cranky.


I took a look at the onion bed and i see nothing onion-like coming up. It would sink if all my onion seed fails- but i decided to plant green beans there if that turns out to be the case.

I've been mapping all my garden spots lately- to exercise my obsession with grids and charts...  i'll have to go get detailed measurements of my mini vineyard so i can get them drawn up (hopefully nap time comes early).  The grapes' trunks will get too big for their tags eventually, same with the berry plants getting too bushy. If i map them out i won't have to worry so much about which is which when i really need to know!  I wanted to maks some decorative tags out of Fimo,  but i may never get to it and if i do, hey won't last many years.