Posts in category: Garden-Wellington

The 2012 garden is planted–see maps below.  Whew!  Everything is in its place and I’m on to less urgent maintenance projects, like weeding and catching up on the blog.  We’ve been working hard, and it’s nice to have a break.

NEW THINGS 2012:

• We’ve completed framing all of the beds!  The raised beds without frames worked well enough, but the framed ones are so much better at keeping the weeds out, and with the sloping edges of non-framed beds there was less planting space.  With the frames I can plant much closer to the beds.  Also, we think that the frames should keep the ducks out of the plants should we let them into the garden to snatch bugs.
• I’m trying some Minnesota Midget melons.  I’ve tried some melons before without success, but these are smaller, with a shorter growing season, so I’m giving them a go.
• We created a new “Three Sisters” patch of corn, beans and squash.  We’ve done the 3 sisters before, but this year we put a new 15’x25′ bed off to the side, near the ducks.  To keep ducks and bunnies out, we framed it and added a couple feet of snowfence around the perimeter.  See photo below.  I’ve planted 3 varieties of corn to mature early, mid and late season.  All are organic, non-gmo, non-hybrid corn.
• I’ve sprayed with beneficial nematodes to hopefully limit the bugs which grow in the soil.  I hope this helps, particularly with the cucumber beetles I had so much difficulty with last year.
• I’ve done a much better job of mulching everything right from the start.  I’m using some chopped up moldy hay we’ve had sitting around, mixing it with some dry manure.  It seems to be working well, except that the manure is full of weed seeds.  I figure I’ll just deal with weeding that first batch of weeds that pop up to get the benefit of the manure in the garden.
• The tomatoes are spread out a little more this year.  Instead of doing double rows of tomatoes in the beds, they’re all in single rows, mingled throughout the garden and planted with tomato companions: basil, carrots, onions, marigolds, thyme.  I’m using a variety of trellising methods, as I haven’t decided on a favorite.  There are pros and cons to all the methods I’ve tried so far.
• The greenhouse worked well and was used for getting plants ready for transplant in addition to winter edibles.  We had fresh greens for salads just about all winter.  Some seedlings were planted in the greenhouse beds until ready for transplant, others were just put into the GH during their “hardening off” time.  I also planted just a few (4) tomatoes in the greenhouse to get off to an early start.  The tomatoes on those plants are green and growing at this point.  We’re looking forward to fresh tomatoes soon!  The last couple of months it got pretty hot in there some days, so to add additional ventilation and cooling we installed an old swamp cooler Tim had previously used for the house.  We put it on a thermostat and were able to keep the greenhouse from reaching the mid-90’s down to 80 or lower.  It was very helpful!  We’ve now removed the polytarp cover on the greenhouse, and it is open air for the summer.  
• I fixed up a small area with a few perennial flowers.  It’s a hot spot against the wall on the south side of the house, and not good for most veggies.  Hopefully the flowers will survive.

Main Garden 2012

3 Sisters Patch

I’ve mentioned previously this cool tool at growveg.com to create a garden plan.  My current plan is now published and can be seen here: 2012 Garden Plan  I’ve also placed a link in the sidebar at the right.  This only shows the main garden area.  It will look something like this:

We’re also preparing a patch to the west for “three sisters”: corn, beans and squash.

I’ve been busy studying garden catalogs and websites to find my seeds for the 2012 garden.  Seeds are ordered, and mostly in!  I’ve already started a few things indoors, under lights.  Some will go into the greenhouse for an early start: mostly greens, and a couple of tomatoes.  The greenhouse is a new adventure, so everything I do there now is an experiment.

The greenhouse is holding strong, even with all the gale-force winds.  And the plants are doing well, I guess.  (I don’t really know what to expect.) We still have a little lettuce left from what was planted in the fall, although it’s been attacked a bit by aphids.  Other than that, we’ve had some nice, fresh kale, spinach and swiss chard.  The beets, kohlrabi and rutabagas have yet to form bulbs, but they have some nice foliage.  The peas have blossoms and one of the napa cabbage has been eaten–the other is ready to pull.  Next fall I’ll do things a bit differently, but this was a good start.  Some days it’s 80 degrees in there, the mornings are very rarely below freezing, but since everything in there can handle it, the plants bounce back after it warms up.

The ducks are still producing 4 eggs almost every day.  If anyone would like to purchase some, they’re $4/doz.

I’ve been way too busy to write about what I’m doing.  I’ve picked and preserved almost 300 lbs of tomatoes.  I’ve canned diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, marinara, mexican sauce, salsa, bbq sauce, ketchup, tomato chutney, taco sauce, tomato butter, and I’m sure something else I’ve forgotten.  I’ve also dried several batches of the tomatoes.  There are still some tomatoes on the vine and I’d like to make more salsa.  Other than that, I’m about done.

I’ve picked, frozen, refrigerated or dried other things, too: corn, beans, peas, carrots, onions, garlic, basil, thyme.  I didn’t get much summer squash this year.  One by one, all the plants died after a slow start to begin with.  They had trouble starting due to cold weather, then cucumber beetles.  They were finally growing ok, but the squash bugs got them one by one, then some powdery mildew on the last two survivors.  I pulled them up and trashed them, as they were also being eaten by the squash bugs that wouldn’t die from the organic pesticides I tried.  I guess next year I’ll be more proactive with bug control!  After working to get cucumbers to grow I had two plants, until one shriveled up and died.  The last plant produced two cucumbers before its end.

The raspberries and blackberries are giving us their first fall crop of nice berries.  I got ONE honeyberry off one of the two plants–hopefully next year they will bear more!  The older strawberry plants have been producing a fall crop after a midsummer rest, but the newer plants (planted this year from starts I bought from the nursery) haven’t produced at all.

I did more beans to dry this year, and they are hanging up drying–ready to shell now, I’m sure, but I’m too busy to do that just yet.  After I see how many I get and cook them, I’ll decide whether I want to do that again.  They are so cheap to buy, it may not be worth the bother, unless the quality is much better.

Soon I’ll be digging up potatoes and sweet potatoes.  The butternut squash is still on the vines, although I suppose I could pick it any day.  For all the vines, I only got about five delicata squash, which are picked and curing.  The buttercup didn’t make it at all, I fear they also suffered from cucumber beetles and squash bugs.  Dang!

I’m already beginning to sketch out next year’s garden, deciding what to grow and where to put each thing.  I’ll be planting onions and garlic soon, so needed to know where I will put them.  I’ve planted a few things in the area that will be a fall cold frame.

Tim is beginning to construct our greenhouse, and I’ve begun some seedlings in the house that will go out there for the fall.  Hopefully I can grow some salad items, kale, leeks, beets and kohlrabi for an extended period of time.  Then, I should be able to start a few things early in the greenhouse, and use it for growing seedlings and hardening things off before going outside.

Whew!

Hornworms

I found a hornworm looking thing wandering across the concrete, and thought, “Oh, no!”  I looked around on the tomato plants and didn’t see more worms or any obvious damage, so I was puzzled.  I expected to find some tomato plants defoliated near the top with just stems and leaf spines like I’d seen a couple of years ago when I found the nasty worms.

Defoliated grapevine

Later, Tim hollered “What happened to the grape?” and one of our grape plants was COMPLETELY defoliated.  Not one leaf left!  We looked at the others (we have three grape plants) and found a few more of the creepy worms.  We picked them off, sprayed some neem, and will keep watching for them.  I’ll also be spraying the tomatoes with neem and hope that keeps them away.

Where do these things come from???

These grape vines are being grown tall to grow overhead on a trellis that is not yet built.  It will be a roof over a small patio area.  Hopefully this poor grape has not met its fate, and will survive this ordeal!

With all this emphasis on our new ducks, I haven’t mentioned the garden, but it’s growing great, for the most part.  This week we’ve been enjoying PEAS.  We have Snow Peas, Sugar Snap Peas, and Shelling Peas.  I made a nice stirfry with the snow peas last week, and enjoy the Sugar Snaps raw.  I’m freezing some for later.  I’m wishing now that I had planted more of them.  Perhaps I can plant some for fall harvest.

We’ve also been eating kale and kohlrabi, and I made a pretty good quiche out of that combination, along with some extra large scallions I didn’t harvest in their prime.  Right now I’m dreaming up some sort of kale-kohrabi lasagna.  Sound good?  It’s really fun going to the garden and thinking, “Hmmm, this can be harvested today.  What can I make out of it tonight?”  Oh yes, some of the beets have been eaten, others were turned into pickled beets for winter salads.

After bad weather just after planting, I really had thought I’d have a disappointing garden.  Yes, there are some disappointments, but all is not lost.  My tomatoes have bounced back and I have many huge, lush plants with lots of flowers, particularly the bush, or determinate, type.  The tomato harvest will be late, so hopefully we won’t have early frosts, but I should have plenty of tomatoes.  Some of the indeterminate ones are odd and short, but hopefully I’ll get something out of them as well.

My squash and cucumbers suffered some setbacks as well due to the weather and the cucumber bugs.  Those dang bugs kept eating my young plants, and I kept planting new seeds to replace the damaged ones.  I finally have as many growing plants as I had planned for, but they are much smaller than they should be for mid-July.  I’ll have a late harvest with these as well, but I still think I’ll have enough to enjoy, especially considering I normally have more squash than we can eat.

The peppers are the most sad.  I love my peppers, but unfortunately fear I won’t have much of a harvest.  The plants are small, but finally coming back with new growth.  Some have peppers growing on them even with few leaves.  Some peppers began to grow then dried and shriveled up.  I’m bummed that I didn’t follow my own plan, which was to leave them under the cold frame for the first couple of weeks.  Had I done that, they would have flourished.  I took off the cold frame because it was difficult to water them (lifting the cold frame for each watering) and I wanted them to have the benefit of rain.  Instead of nice rain, they experienced hail, extreme wind, and temperatures that were too cold for them.

Potatoes, beans, herbs, carrots, basil, corn, strawberries…let’s see, what else?… all seem to be growing along their merry way.

This year I tried several new varieties, mostly of peppers and tomatoes, and hoped to find out which were “keepers”.  With the extreme weather, I may not be giving them a good test.  On the other hand, I’ll certainly know which can survive the worst conditions!

This summer has been very rainy, more so than normal.  We have forecasts of thunder showers almost every day, and many days we do get the rain.  With our soaker hoses on timers, we frequently have a guessing game of whether to leave the timers on or off, thinking we may get rain.  With 60% chance of heavy rain today, I think I’ll turn them off for now.

Well, it’s been a difficult planting season!  After all my planning, it seemed like everything went kaput the last few weeks.  The week I’d intended to plant (starting May 15, our “average last frost date”) turned cold and rainy.  I knew that there was questionable weather coming, but due to our plans for a trip I needed to get things into the ground.  Also, the things that were “hardening off” in the cold frame were getting too big for the cold frame, and at one time a couple of things were damaged when the cold frame fell on them during watering.  I was tired of them being in the cold frame, so I went ahead and planted.

Planting the tomatoes and peppers went pretty well.  Within a couple of days after planting it was quite windy and rainy, and they sure got beat up.  A couple of the tomatoes snapped in half right where they had been tied up.

Squash and cucumbers went in the ground also, but got beat around in the wind a bit as well, not looking very happy.  I lost the cucumbers and some squash.  At least it is early enough to replant and they should be fine.  I also have seen a lot of cucumber beetles, so have begun to spray for those with spinosad.

Now we’ve returned from vacation, and with so many plans to work in the garden immediately, I came home very sick, and won’t be able to get out to the garden.  It will just have to wait.

I think most plants will survive, but they sure aren’t in the best condition.  The peppers were damaged by hail, and many leaves were left dangling or in bad shape.  The tomatoes are small and thin, but still alive.  The cucumber seeds I planted after the first ones died did not come up.  The squash that was still alive and in fairly good condition before I left have been chewed up, presumably by the cucumber beetles that are still everywhere.  There are weeds everywhere as well.  Hopefully soon I’ll feel well enough to get back to work!

This week many gardeners in the Fort Collins area were plagued with a large amount of marble-sized hail and lost a lot of their crops.  Fortunately, the hail here wasn’t as bad and my plants aren’t much worse than they were already.  I guess all the locals are now pretty much in the same boat!

All year I have planned on planting my seedlings outside this week.  After all,  even though the “average last frost date” is May 15th, the last two years have had great weather in May and I guess I was fortunate.  NOT THIS YEAR.  As mentioned in the last post, I went ahead and planted, even though the weather has been questionable.

All week we’ve had lots of rain and cold (but not freezing) nights.  Most everything is still alive, but I wonder how much damage I’ve done by planting them out so early.  I’ve lost a couple of tomato plants that have snapped off in the wind.  With 52 tomato plants, I suppose it is not a big deal to lose a few!  Most of the week I’ve had the peppers covered with the cold frame and they’ve done well, but yesterday when I took it off and left home it hailed.  There are a few holes and rips in the leaves, but all still seem to be alive and they should recover.  I don’t think the cucumbers have survived, but that’s not a huge problem, I’ll just put more seeds directly in the ground–starting them indoors was merely a head start and not necessary.  The squash still looks good.

Perhaps all will be well and everything will turn out ok.  The garden is looking good, with plants in almost every bed.  I still plan to plant the basil, which hasn’t even liked hardening off in 40+ daytime weather–the leaves have turned brown.  Later I will sow the bean seeds, carrots, more corn and greens.

I’m very glad we’ve covered most of the pathways with woodchips.  It allows me to walk through most of the garden without collecting mud on my shoes.  We still need to finish up a few pathways, but it’s looking pretty good.

There is a nice article about when to plant seedlings outdoors on the GrowVeg website.  Too bad I didn’t read it earlier!  I did grow extra things, I just didn’t save any to replace what died after transplanting outside.

Tim remembers hearing that “farming is the ultimate act of faith.”  Perhaps true.  For those who depend on growing things for their food or livelihood, it would be very nerve-racking.  For me, I can still survive and buy food at the store if the weather turns and kills everything, and I’m still fretting, hoping things will survive the weather and my mistakes.  I shouldn’t worry…for Father knows my needs and clothes even the lilies of the fields.

4:20 pm: It has just begun to rain and it’s about 46 degrees.   The forecast the next few days/nights is for rainy days in the mid-to-high 50’s (not so bad), but 40-ish each night (not so good).  The past few days have been off-and-on cold with cold nights.  We’ve had some nice rain, so things are greening up.  It’s just frustrating not knowing when to plant or what’s ok to plant.

I guess I’m getting more exposure to Colorado unpredictable weather.  I know that May 15 is the “average” last frost date, meaning there’s a good chance it will still be cold and/or frost after that date, but the last two years have been warmer and I’ve been too optimistic.  Next year I will start things later and not plan on being able to plant by May 15, as I have the past two years.

I know that tomatoes and peppers need warm weather, and have heard not to plant them until it is consistently 50 overnight.  However, I’ve had them out hardening off all week inside the cold frame, even the nights that were 30.  It was just too difficult to carry them in and out each night & morning.  Yesterday I went ahead and planted the tomatoes and today the peppers.  I’m keeping the peppers covered, at least overnight, until it warms up–the cold frame fits nicely on top of the peppers and should keep them well protected.  Some of the tomatoes have hoops over them and are ready to cover with frost cloth as need arises. So far, I’m leaving the tomatoes uncovered during the day.  Not sure what to do with them overnight.

I’ve read that there is really no advantage to getting the tomatoes out too early–that bigger tomatoes grown inside and planted out early aren’t ready to harvest any earlier than those done a little later and planted when warmer.  Apparently warmth is the key, and it’s possible that tomatoes planted in >40 degree weather won’t produce as much fruit.  We shall see.  At any rate, next year I plan to start them later, and won’t plan to plant them out as early.  If there’s really no advantage, why bother?