Rain, Rain, Go Away!

The animals are pairing up here in Massachusetts, the yard is flooded, people are losing power, and wet-vaccing their leaky basements- what a mess!  Torturous after the tease Mother Nature gave us earlier last week.  I am dying to get back out into the garden....my wonderful husband whipped out my new beds yesterday so they are waiting to be put in their proper spot and filled.  The shed is finished (and now needs to be stained), so we are well on our way to a productive 2010 season!  (The beds are one 2' x 18', aka 'Tomato Alley' , and three 4' x 4'. )

I tried my hand at making soil blocks yesterday with organic seed starting mix from Lowe's, and it went quite well.  This came as a surprise after reading many people's tales of trouble getting the right consistency for the blocks.  I don't know if I got lucky or am just not being as particular.....the true test will happen when I transplant into the garden I guess- hoping the blocks will hold up!  The VCC mix I ordered is still not here since NOFA totally screwed up my bulk order, but that should be resolved by week's end, so it is all good.  I was all jammed up with the labeling though, my giant wooden sticks would split the blocks, I do have smaller plastic labels coming...but will they break apart the blocks as well?   For those of you that do them, how are you all labeling your blocks when you are only sowing a few of something and can't put a sticky on the flat for the whole row?  (oh, and FYI- Lowe's has potatoes this year.  Yup, now I have more.)

Next:  a confession.  I actually tallied up my tomato seed varieties yesterday, and somehow I have accumulated the seeds of 40 different tomatoes.  It was the recent Wintersown order that put me over the edge, I think I ordered 20 of those little packets.   So what you ask?  Is too many tomato seeds a bad thing?  No, but I can only grow 20 plants (ha, "only"), so choosing which to try is proving difficult.  I know many of the varieties I have won't perform well here in my zone or in my soil so over the next couple of season's I will need to experiment and see what is happy here in my little kitchen garden.  I have read to grow something for at lest 2 years before deciding it doesn't work for you so that may push this process of elimination out to 2014.  Maybe a Tomato Variety list will be going into my sidebar to record any thoughts this season, I know I can't depend on my memory!

Today's Sowings:

• Pistou Basil
• Lemon Basil
• Lg Leaf Italian Basil
• Thai Basil (Thanks Thomas!!)
• Easter Egg Radish
• Chioggia Beets
• Burpee's Golden Beets
• Extra Dwarf Pak Choy
• Bunching Onions
• Florence Onion
• Bright Lights Chard
• Red Sails Lettuce (one of my favorites!)
• Hon Tsai Tai

I keep re-arranging my garden layout.  Ideally vegetable families should be planted together for rotation, BUT, I keep reading all these great gardening magazines, and they have so many SFG layouts with everything all mixed in together, and they have me wanting a "Salad Garden" and a "Salsa Garden" instead.  Thoughts?

Sweet Potato Know-How

After talking sweet potatoes with one of my gardening girlfriends this evening (Linna over at Linna's Garden Journal) I decided to try and nail down my technique for this upcoming gardening season.  It of coarse helps that we had some baked sweet potatoes for dinner tonight, but they weren't my own.  These were farmstand potatoes and were quite large and delicious.  I want large and delicious tubers out of my garden this year.  And the photo?  While looking for a an actual potato picture I came across this this little "sweet tot" and had to put him in instead.  I can't believe how quickly they grow, these children.

Alright, now back to the vines.....the article linked by the title above is written by a Canadian maritime gardener and I found it to be just what I needed.  Simplified.   No-nonsense.  I have been debating over raised rows or containers for the Georgia Jets.  After reading this article and talking with my friend I think I will fill one of the new raised beds using the lasagna gardening method as Linna suggested, along with raised rows composed of light soil for planting the slips in.  Why not combine multiple techniques, right?

Honey Bear

This little squash is recent product of breeding out of UNH, a personal size acorn that was a 2009 AAS winner. The fruits are small, around 4 inches according to sources, but my first little Honey Bear didn't quite make the mark. (It doesn't require any curing and should be enjoyed within a few months of harvesting, no problems there.)

I split this little gem in half and filled it with butter, brown sugar, sage, rosemary, and a sprinkling of sea salt and pepper. It was a tasty treat but I could have eaten three of them since I shared it with my husband. I hope the rest of the squash make it to 4 inches. The plant will average three or four fruits per plant so I am trying to decide if it is worth it...... the vine is quite compact making it a perfect variety for small spaces, containers, and square foot gardens which does detract some negativity from the few servings one would get out of the plant. Next year I plan on growing Sweet Dumpling as well. The fruit size is equal to that of Honey Bear but the vines are larger, thus they will need trellising, but will also put out 8-10 fruits per plant according to Johnny's. Here is a picture of the acorn before it went in the oven, pleasing to the eye for presentation on the plate, but not much to it.

For comparison's sake here is what I believe to be a Sweet Dumpling that I purchased from the CSA this week; A healthy sized squash, and what the Honey Bear should be. I placed a baseball next to it as it resembles my first Honey Bear in size. Quite a difference!

If the flavor is similar it will be a tough choice deciding between the two. Knowing me I will just grow both.

Yesterday was CSA day, here are the items included in the share:

• 4 ears of corn
• 2 tomatoes (small)
• 2 Asian Pears
• 2 apples
• 1 cuke
• 2 summer squash
• 1 lb. potatoes
• grapes (small portion, maybe 20 in all)

I really liked the variety in yesterday's pick-up and it was fun to have locally grown grapes for the first time.

Garden Tour

This first picture is of my blustery back yard, now you can fully understand why my garden is in the front yard.

My messy garden needs some clean-up! As you can see I am still in the 'container planting phase' which is ridiculous considering we are almost into July, darn weather, so pardon the bags of soil, peat pots and containers scattered about. I will post some close ups of the planted containers another day. The kitchen garden is made up of six beds; 4 are constructed with 1x8 cedar boards; 2 are deeper with a combination of 1x boards. How deep you ask? I forget. 12 and 18 inches maybe? I am sure my husband didn't forget since he was lucky enough to rip the boards down to size. (thanks honey!)



The first bed is home to my asparagus (and some peas and milkweed for fun). The second has three rows of tomatoes. There are a handful of basil plants through out along with a row of red onions and 2 rows of cut-n-come again lettuce interplanted.







The third and fourth beds are Cucurbits and Roots. The one in the foreground is divided into 3 sections and contains carrots and herbs; potatoes; carrots and sweet potatoes. The vertical bed behind has cukes, winter squash seedlings, marigolds, and sweet alysum. Some of these seedlings are too small to be seen.

In the fourth bed I have legumes, beans, peppers, onions. the peppers were stuck in to separate the legumes and onions since they do not enjoy being neighbors.

The final bed is the one that gives me trouble. A few plantings of spinach, beets, and chard have been ripped out and started over or replaced with something else. Currently it holds a variety of salad greens, 2 rows drying beans(pole), bush beans, another row of pole beans, zinnias,3 peppers, 1 eggplant and some bunching onions. It's picture can be found below in the last post.

The Passing of Spring & Square Foot Gardening

This cold and rainy weather pattern we are stuck in is starting to get on my nerves. The ripening time on my tomatoes has been ridiculously slow, and the peppers and eggplants are barely inching along......onions are drowning, enough already! I totally appreciate the rain but a few more warm sunny days tossed in would do wonders. I chuckle to myself when I read other gardeners complaining about the heat waves. Maybe my rain isn't so bad after all. But the wind....not sure how high the winds are but things have been moved to safer places on the deck and there are lots of branches littering the ground. The dogs don't even want to be out in it.

I figured I should use the time stuck in this gardening holding pattern to take a look back over the recent passing of Spring, and how the square foot gardening experience has gone so far. I have harvested lots of greens, peas, and a few tomatoes so far.

The positives:

1. I am very happy with the raised beds.
2. The SFG method has allowed me to try growing a little bit of everything which I really like. I figure this growing season will show who the true performers are, what we liked the best, and how much or little of each crop needs to be grown.
3. Weeding and watering has been very manageable to date.

The Negatives:

1. I found the recommended soil formula to be very costly and I couldn't find vermiculite locally. We did our own mix based on Mel's concept and tweaked it slightly for each bed. For example, the extra deep root bed is mostly loam and fine sand; the tomato bed is heavy on amendments and compost. I wish I could have started with Mel' s mix and tweaked that instead, but buying 3 different kinds of bagged compost and vermiculite on-line to fill all my square footage was not an option. Instead we bought a truck load of compost from a horse farm, got free delivery of loam from a friend, and purchased amendments and alternate sources of bagged compost as needed.
2. Another cost, the cedar for the beds did not come cheap.

I should do a photo for each bed so I remember what was where come next Spring. Maybe i will brave the winds.....

How to sow carrots in a SFG

STEP 1: Fold a roughly 12"x12" section of newspaper into 16 squares. Place a dot of school glue in the center of each square and drop a seed(s) into it. Allow to dry.

STEP 2: Remove up to a 1/2 inch of soil in plot where carrots will be going. Lay down newspaper, glue side down and cover with removed soil. Water in.

I go one step further and cover my carrots with burlap. This helps keep them moist between watering (usually twice a day) until they sprout and begin to grow up through the burlap at which time it is removed.