June 9, 2015

The blasted rain still hasn't let up. The mornings are beautiful and sunny, but by lunchtime it's cloudy with rain soon to follow. 

Our new tomato plants are struggling. We haven't had enough sun to make them happy. So we don't have high hopes for them unless the weather pattern changes. Gee, I thought we were suppose to be in an El Niño! The eggplant and pepper plants look terrible. So we yanked them out. Time to try growing replacements.

The older sprouting broccoli is still producing small florets, though the plants are starting to look over mature, the younger broccoli looks super. 

So does the young cabbage. 

The spinach is starting to bolt, but it still is tender and lushly green. Must be because of all the rain. The garlic chives that we drastically cut back due to bugs is now growing well. It's about 10" high already. The chard looks like it's swallowing steroids! It apparently loves the wet, cloudy afternoons. 

We harvested potatoes today, a variety called Purple Majesty. They are real dark purple. And it's a great producing variety for our location. 

Here's today's harvest, not including the greens (kale, chard, spinach, broccoli greens, herbs). 

Today's lunch was made from the excess from last week's harvest. Pumpkin soup with chunky vegetables (pipinola, green onions, chives, carrots, broccoli). It was delish! 

End of May + June 2

Boy, we've been getting a lot of rain recently. Not so much large volumes at any one time, but something just about every night. It's been a hard few months trying to grow certain vegetables. But the greens, spring onions, and potatoes are thriving still. 

So what's still growing well for us? Potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Beets. Chard. Kale. Broccoli. Cabbage. Turnips. Radishes. Green onions. Chives. Basil. Beans. Taro. Spinach. Carrots.

What's doing poorly? Cowpeas. Tomatoes. Eggplant. Peppers. Peas, because of disease. The pipinola aren't doing poorly, but they aren't doing great either. 

But we are still getting harvests. 

The harvest above doesn't show the greens because people pick what they want of the kale, chard, spinach, and herbs. 

We had a bag full of tangerines given to us this week,  they also were shared among the volunteers. They turned out to be quite juicy and sweet. 

Many, many weeks ago Matt started onions from seeds. Several weeks went by and we finally planted them out into the garden....just wee thin seedlings that we planted in clumps rather than try separating them. Finally this week we began separating the onions and replanting them. 

We know from prior experience that these newly transplanted seedlings will grow very rapidly. It not be long before we are harvesting green onions. 

May 19, 2015

Recently the weather hasn't been too kind for the garden....and the volunteers. Every day for the past two weeks there has been rain of some amount and duration. And it's beginning to show in the veggies. Aphids are showing up everywhere. Flea beetle populations are exploding. Spittle bug is attacking the oregano. Mildew is starting up on the kale, cowpeas, and gourds. And a fungal disease is destroying all the peas. Not fun. 

Today we repaired some of the damage by removing sick plants, trimming back the chives, and removing older leaves in order to open up plants to more air and light. We hope it helps. 

On a good note, we planted lots of new stuff. An entire bed of Lancelot leeks got in today. Three beds of seed potatoes went in....a general red skinned variety and an unusual purple. Chard, beets, and assorted greens were added to the garden too. Missy brought several tomato seedlings, so we can now look forward to cherry tomatoes and roma's. 

The pallet fence that has protected the garden area for the past year was in need of a little attention. .....wow, it's been a whole year! Doug and Matt tackled the job, getting everything re-aligned and stable. 

The one thing that is doing better than super, in spite of the rain, is the last planting of potatoes. They went into the brand new bed that Matt created. To say the least, they are growing like super plants! They are the tallest potato plants we've ever had. They're well over the top of a five gallon bucket. 

Today's harvest was meager. But it's been quite some time since we had such a paltry harvest. But at least everyone had something to take home. Sweet potatoes (whites, oranges, purples), broccoli, pumpkins, chard, two types of kale, green onions, carrots, cowpeas (only a few), plus we picked our first two gilfeather turnips. And five dozen eggs got shared. 

May 5, 2015

In spite of difficult weather, the garden is still producing. But we have gone through and cleaned out all the plants that are not thriving. Time to restart certain things. Luckily we have plenty if starts and seed potatoes waiting for round to get planted. 

We tried a red mustard for the first time. Nobody knows what it tastes like, but it sure is attractive. 

We are getting a nice harvest if sprouting broccoli buds. We have also Ben harvesting leaves from the extra  plants that we plan to thin out. 

The pole beans are pau (finished) so we let the last got to seed. They will be used to start the next crop. 

Some of the older plants in the garden are also becoming over mature. The salad burnet visually looks lush and fine, but with the plants now older, even to young leaves are tough and not pleasant tasting. So the plants got the old heave-ho. Same with the spinach plants below. 

Harvest today included spinach, red mustard, green beans, radishes, beets, snap peas, broccoli, potatoes, pumpkins. Plus chard, kale, green onions, and an assortment of herbs. 

April 2015

Flea beetles, aphids of kale , pea virus, mildew on cowpeas

We are growing our own onion starts this year. The seed is small and difficult for us to sow thinly. So the seedlings came up in clumps. Prior experience has shown us that we can allow the seedlings to grow together for a while, then when more developed they can easily be separated and transplanted. So for now they are in clumps. 

Our Swiss chard is growing strongly. We sowed a mixed color package of seed. So we are seeing a rainbow of colors. While the colored ones are a tad tougher, the colors are appealing. We find that the chard responds very favorably to being mulched. 

This time we tried growing long beets in addition to the standard round ones. They did just fine. Some got quite large before we got to them but they were still tender and sweet. 

The sprouting broccoli is starting to produce buds. The broccoli is a bit crowded so we plan to remove the smaller plants, harvesting them for their leaves and small buds. That will give the larger plants more room to develop. 

The spring we are seeing lots of the pineapple plants producing. Some are already growing the stem sucker, which becomes the replacement plant. You can see the sucker in the photo below growing out the side of the stem below the pineapple fruit. There are also several small slips growing from the base of the pineapple. These two can be planted but take longer to produce the next fruit. 

Now for the bad news......

Aphids have moved into the kale. We didn't notice them at first until they had already caused a lot of damage. We got rid of them using soap spray, but even so, the kale took a nose dive two weeks layer. We have removed those damaged plants since we have plenty of other kales for picking. 

The snap peas are succumbing to some sort of pea disease. We haven't identified the culprit yet. 

Mildew is finally showing itself in the garden. For months now we have been anticipating it. The weather seemed ideal for mildew. The first crop to show mildew this time is the cowpeas. 

Vog attack! The volcano has been acting up lately, sending bursts of vog our way. The taro has been burned and so have the gourd leaves. Long sections of gourd vines have been burned. 

March 2015

Cutworms!  The garden is seeing more cutworm damage once again. Luckily it is not a severe infestation. But it does get frustrating to see a seedling get chopped down right at the soil. The photo below is from a USDA extension site, but that's the type of damage and worm that we are seeing. 

Our harvests still include a selection of various veggies. We have a fairly steady supply of potatoes, either sweets or Irish type. And the garden constantly has a selection of greens and herbs. 

Another of our experiments below.....

Here we are testing to see of the potatoes will produce a crop if grown and a pea trellis. The peas may eventually shade out the potatoes, so we shall see what happens. 

These young potato plants above are ready for mulching. 

February 2015

The heavy winds last month seemed to have slowed the growth of the veggies. Or perhaps it was just the time of year? But some taller crops surely didn't look so good after the winds. The pole beans, tomatoes, eggplants and such all have had a down turn. But lower growing veggies look good.

Below are the last of the rat tail radishes. Everybody is pretty tired of trying them. They were a nice novelty. Good fresh in salad or for dipping, ok added to stir fry. I bet a good use would be as pickles. But we grew far too many plants. In the future we will limit it to 6 plants. 

The daikons are something that grow real well. Below is a Korean type. They got quite large and still stayed good quality. We liked these quite a bit because we could leave them in the ground longer without them becoming pithy. Thus the harvest could be extended. 

Below is the last of the rat tails we are harvesting for the time being. 

These pallet boxes are proving to be excellent compost makers. As we can find more free pallets, we are making more boxes. 

The compost soil we get out of each box looks and smells quite nice......

The celery we planted us starting to grow up. We have been harvesting individual stems for cooking. 

Another herb tht we harvest individual stems as needed is the chocolate mint. It is a nice flavoring. 

Our cilantro is going to seed. We are planning to use done of the seed for replanting. The rest will go for seasoning. 

January 2015

Good news, bad news month. The bad news first.......major wind storm. While no trees fell into the garden itself, we did have one giant tree smash into the lunch area, destroying both the lunch tent and the potting/work area tent. Both tents were a total loss. On top of that, one lunch table got broken. Bummer. Trees also fell onto the chicken and rabbit pens, severely damaging both. Only one hen died. Poor girl. But happily all the others, including the rabbits, survived unharmed. They all got loose and ran amuck for several days, but in the end everything was fine. 

Good news....

Two new pipinola beds got created. We are using dead standing trees as trellises for the vines. We built a low rockwall around the tree, filled in the bed with horse manure, compost, and soil. Then planted several pipinolas around each tree. They should be producing in about 6-9 months, were aiming for 6. 

We get excess from the garden that does not get eaten, sold or given away. Mostly it's damaged and misshapen stuff, or the rest of the plant parts that don't get harvested. If it's edible, then it goes to feed livestock, otherwise is heads to the compost boxes. Below are two new baby pigs that are the newest recipients of the garden waste. These cute little guys already have told us that they don't like green beans, but the love sweet potatoes, both roots and vines. 

Bad news.....

Grasshoppers. We started seeing holes in the Chinese cabbage leaves. We were thinking it was slugs but we caught grasshoppers in the act of munching. So we went looking for them by using a stick to brush the leaves, causing the hoppers to jump. Gotcha! 

Another insect we are seeing around the perimeter of the garden is the walking stick. So far we haven't spotted any in the garden itself. We don't know if they would damage our garden or not. 

Another pest we see from time to time is the sphinx moth caterpillar. It eats the sweet potato leaves. We don't see many and frankly we don't mind having a few use the garden for the supermarket. We have plenty of sweet potatoes and are willing to share with a few moths. 

Harvest still include a nice variety of veggies. 

December 2014

The garden is producing quite a bit of extra now. Basically we have its & bits of extra herbs and greens, plus carrot tops. Some of these go to the rabbits as a treat. The rabbits are growing big. 

We have nearly all our starter beds planted or set aside for crops soon to be planted. So Matt is creating more beds. It's a lot f work. Digging. Removing rocks. Breaking up the clumps. Adding manure, compost, etc. Here's Matt pictured below. 

We are adding another section of pole beans now. We are not sure what the timing between the plantings should be, but for now we are sowing a patch every two weeks. 

The garlic chives really like our garden. They are fine for cooking. We plan to see if they can be used as  a pest deterrent. 

This months harvest are including bok choy, n addition to the other veggies. 

We have been harvesting a lot of cucumbers lately. But we are starting to see some problems with the pickleworms. This cucumber, below, just had one worm in it. So half the cucumber was salvageable. But we are starting to see many pickleworms and they are ruining the entire cucumber. We're not sure yet how to control this pest. Spraying dipel on the female flowers every day surely helps, but the evening drizzle washes it away too fast. So were considering other options. 

Above, you can see the hole that tells us that there is a worn inside. 

Above, we cut open the cucumber to reveal the light green "maggot". 

Above,  those holes in the flower are created by the pickleworm "maggots'. 

Above, this is what the pickleworm moth looks like. It is a night time moth. About 3/4" long and ours are more grey than brown.