Green Growth Everywhere

You get this sense from the plants that they understand what it is that they are supposed to do. On this level you see the tomato vines not simply doubling in size each week, but reaching for greater purchase, doggedly stretching to hold some new part of the world around them and eager to brush this part of the cage and then that part of the surrounding fence.

They are never quite satisfied these plants. They pull against their roots, curse those of us who walk so freely, and then they spread by whatever means they can. I may not be able to walk, mister gardener, but I can grow in a way that your temporal sense can not detect.

Just the sort of attitude I’m looking for in my veggies.

The first portion of the season is just about over. Lettuce is bolting except for the extremely shaded oakleaf and bib. The spinach has a week or two left I would think. The peas, if not prolific, are in their prime but the heat is really building now. I’m hoping for a few more weeks.

The potatoes. My goodness. Big. Flowery. Constantly being squashed down by these whacky heavy rain showers we keep getting here in Connecticut.

The tomatoes. Yikes. Getting bigger by the second.

Pole beans are nearly in their full pole position. Bush beans are getting there and have started to flower just a bit. Onions and leeks doing well. Beets, perhaps a bit crowded, but so far okay. Cukes are kicking in and fence climbing. Peppers, nice except for one that seems to have fallen over. Chard still going and no end in site. Carrots, not great, but we’ll get a few bunches. Black radishes.. something diabolical happened there. Perhaps too crowded, but they pretty much shot up and flowered.

The bed that is mostly full of lettuce, spinach and chard with the pea trellis on the western end will soon be struck. I’ll replenish the soil and see about planting something else there either in the next couple of weeks or I’ll leave it for a later summer planting of peas or something like that.

The growth is very, very pleasing. We’ll see how things progress from here.

Filed under: aerial , aerial garden, vegetable garden

Blotanical: An Aggregator of Gardening Blogs

A month or two ago I found Blotanical. It’s a community site of sorts that features a rich membership of gardening bloggers. If you are gardening and blogging about it, you need to join. It’s free and once you are in you can participate in the exchange of favorites, blog picks etc. all with the goal of promoting people’s blogs and of elevating your own ranking within the membership. It’s sort of a closed loop system – each time you pick a blog entry or a blogger, you’ll earn points for yourself and call more attention to the blog/blogger.

I’ve found more gardening blogs here than through any other method. It was all built by Stuart Robinson of Gardening Tips n’ ideas and it’s kind of mind blowing how he crammed so much functionality into it.

Check it out! Even if you aren’t a blogger I guarantee that you’ll find more gardening blogs here than any other place.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Pleasing Power Of Pea Petals And Pods

If I had to guess, I would put my money on peas as the second most loved vegetable to grow just after tomatoes. There’s something about them that brings out the hyperbole! Ask a gardener which variety of pea she likes and you’ll get “I grow nothing but X.. it produces like crazy and it’s as sweet as candy!”

I’ve got three varieties of peas going.

1. Cascadia. A sugar snap pea that is absolutely fantastic. Thick pods, juicy, sweet. The best I’ve grown. Insert personal hyperbole here.
2. Carouby de Maussane. A gorgeous plant that produces long, thin snow peas.
3. Golden Sweet. A yellow snow pea with a long vine.

There are basically three kinds of peas. Snow peas are the flat pods with small dots of peas growing within. The pods are edible. Snap peas have fatter pods and fatter peas within and the pods are edible. Green peas have fatter, bigger pods and the pods usually aren’t edible – you shell them to pull out the peas.

The beauty of peas is the variety. While I don’t have any of the traditional “garden” (green) peas going nor do I have any that will extend deep into the season (there are usually three pea season varieties – early, second early maincrop, and maincrop). I go for that lovely early burst. Peas grow quickly and fade just as fast around here, but it’s one of those truly seasonal vegetables that I can’t imagine going without.

Carouby de Maussane

Carouby de Maussane

Cascadia

Golden Sweet

Pea trellis getting big

Carouby Flowers

Pretty Carouby

Filed under: Peas , carouby de maussane, cascadia pea, golden sweet snow pea, Peas

Tomato Mulching: Grass

Now that my tomatoes are settled in and comfy it’s time for some bedding!

A lot of people swear by red plastic for tomato mulch, but that just seems unfounded for me. Why red? Plastic mulching is probably fine – maintains a more even soil temperature than other mulch options, keeps weeds out just as well. But why red? Not sure I’m buying it!

I’d love to try a green manure mulch – something like hairy vetch planted with the tomatoes. But, this year it’s just back to something tried and true.

A fairly thick layer of grass clippings (3″ or so) works great. Dried or fresh. About the only thing to worry about is the huge nitrogen boost that grass will give, but since the decomposition of the clippings takes a while it probably won’t impact your plants. Too much nitrogen before fruiting can lead to a green leaf boost and reduce fruit yield. (Hitting the plants/soil with some seaweed powder or something is what you want to do to promote fruit.)

The nice thing about using grass is that you can just let it compost on top of the soil, turn it in for the next year.

Mulching of any kind does some good stuff:

1. Maintains a more even soil temperature. Applying mulch too early in the season can keep the soil temp too low, but once the temps warm up you can keep it in the sweetspot longer.
2. Prevents erosion. Keeps your soil where it should be.
3. Improves moisture retention.
4. Blocks weeds.

Give it a shot. Grass works great and is easy to find!

Filed under: tomatoes , grass mulch, tomato mulch

A Game Of Tag!

I’ve been tagged! By Daphne from Daphne’s Dandelions.

Blogging tag games are a good thing – better than the traditional chain letter. Usually, in a chain letter, the sender threatens you with some kind of imagined “bad luck” or curse if you do not forward the chain letter. Those kinds of things are stupid. But blog tagging is a nice way to create traffic and awareness for your blog and for others and there is no hooey associated with it. Here are the rules:

• Link to the person who tagged you.
• Post the rules on the blog.
• Write six random things about yourself.
• Tag six people at the end of your post.
• Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
• Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Here are my six random things:

1. I really, really like pizza and beer. Together.
2. I’d like to believe that the original Star Wars movies hold up, but I’m scared to discover the truth.
3. My wife is way smarter than I am.
4. I’m slightly ashamed of my hairy knuckles.
5. I think that Galileo, Darwin and Einstein kick ass.
6. I like to look at the vegetables I grow more than I like to eat them.

And here are the people I am tagging.

Henbogle. I love this blog. Maybe it’s because they are New Englanders. I don’t know. It’s got everything. Veggies, chickens, recipes.

Pumpkin Soup. Each time I read an entry I’m reminded that calling my garden a “potager” rules.

Garden of Eatin’. Tons of information. Always a good read.

A Sonoma Garden. We’ve linked to each before and I’m sure I’ll link again! One of my clear favorites.

Esther In The Garden. Jabberwocky. Surreal. A blast.

Tiny Farm Blog. They do things on a scale that I can barely comprehend! Small to them perhaps, but it’s a pleasure for me to see how big things could be. And they do it all responsibly.

Check them all out if you can. Maybe you know them already, but if you don’t I promise that you will enjoy them and learn a ton.

Filed under: Uncategorized , blog tag

Tomato Controversy: Pruning – A Sucker Born Every Minute

Depending upon who you ask (and they’ll often tell you that it further depends upon what variety you are growing and how you are supporting them) tomatoes either don’t need or do need pruning.

Let’s get down to what I think works according to the general consensus of whatever science there is.

1. Pruning will reduce your total fruit yield, but what is yielded will be larger.
2. Pruning is not required, but it in many cases and in many zones will improve the plant’s odds of avoiding fungus invasions and other disease. Overcrowded plants can create little humidor environments with moist air stuck inside and limited air circulation! Keep in mind that removing too many suckers etc. can actually hurt your fruit. The leaves create little sun umbrellas that help eliminate sunscald. The more sun and heat that your zone gets, the better it is to leave more leaves.
3. Focus your real pruning on your indeterminate tomatoes. Smaller determinate (bush) tomatoes will have their burst yields reduced if you prune them. From time to time, I prune away smaller lower branches or suckers from determinate plants like Roma, but it’s just to keep things off of the soil. For semi determinate varieties like Celebrity, prune just a little – wait for flowers to emerge and prune off the suckers (we’ll define that in a second) below the first flower cluster, but not the sucker just below it – skip one in other words.
4. Wait until the plants have settled nicely and have grown a bit. For my bigger indeterminates I’ll wait until the first few suckers (seriously.. we’re going to define that in a second) have developed into branches/vines and my plant is filling in the cage or the stake.
5. I’m gonna get you sucka! Prune the suckers. Okay, so moving on… Alright, alright. The definition of suckers. You’ll see it defined something like – “the little shoots that form in the crotch (yes.. crotch) of a branch and main stem”. Run your finger up a tomato plant, starting at the base of the stem – the main vine. You’ll hit a branch soon. Look right where the main vine and branch join and you may see a sucker – a new branch shooting up at about a 45 degree angle. Left to its own devices, it will soon turn into another vine and will even grow fruit. Leave a few on to grow and “pinch” off the others. That’s pruning.

Experimentation is probably the key here. Some people swear by pruning others swear while pruning (like me.. man that’s a lot bending over) and others swear that pruning is a waste of time. See what works for you. Do it all the way! Do it half way (a little thing called “missouri” pruning where you only pinch off the tip of the sucker), but do something for goodness sake!

Filed under: tomatoes , determinate tomato, indeterminate tomato, pruning tomatoes, semideterminate tomato, tomato sucker, tomato sucker pictures

I’ve Learned Two Things About Rabbits

My wife and I have a system. If she calls my cell phone two times in a row when I’m at work, it means she really needs to talk to me and I should leave whatever soul-sucking meeting I’m in. When you are garden crazy, here are the kinds of double phone calls you get:

Me: Hey, what’s going on?

Wife: There are rabbits in your garden.

Me: Rabbits? S? More than one?

Wife: Kyle saw them. Yeah.

Me: In? In my garden?

Wife: Yeah.

Kyle In Background: He hopped away.

Wife: I let the dog out. He’s patrolling now.

Me: Good. Let’s not feed him for a while. Bet he’d love a soft little bunny.

In Winnie The Pooh, Rabbit was always the flustered gardener. Meticulous and neat, but always on the edge because he knew that Tigger was soon to come bouncing by, smashing his cabbages and carrots. He spent every waking moment with his garden and somehow always seemed to bounce back when some tragedy wiped out his work.

Well, I don’t really think that A.A. Milne spent much time studying the animals he wrote about. I’m here to tell you – rabbits aren’t the patient gardeners Milne led me to believe they were. They are, in fact, varmints and they will leave no clue as to how they infiltrated your garden. There will be no hole dug beneath your fence. There will be no ladder left behind. There will be nothing that indicates to you how they did it. And they will eat. They will not wait for winter and patiently stockpile things. They will eat as if their survival depended upon it because it does. And can you blame them for wanting to enjoy beet greens over grass shoots?

About two years ago I had some rabbit. Cooked in a french way.

So, I’ve learned two things about rabbits. First, they don’t garden in the traditional sense. Second, they taste delicious.

Filed under: garden pests , garden rabbits, varmints

Get Your Estate In Order Aphids: Good Guys Arrive

Here’s the thing with pests. By definition they must be doing something to bother you. And in a very weird way, I welcome the sight of pests in my garden. If they’re trolling around on my tomato, lettuce, and potato leaves it must mean that they value the meal. And if they value the meal, it must mean that good stuff is being offered. Twisted, but it just seems like if the bugs dig my plants I’m on to something.

I don’t use sprays and chemicals. As I explained in the monkeys eat bugs post, I mostly just get down in the dirt and pluck the bugs off myself. Still, I love it when the cavalry arrives!

Today the cavalry were all ladybugs AND (this was cool) ladybug larvae.

The ladybugs are all over the potatoes, peas, and greens. They cluster together sometimes in the shade of leaves (or twine), strike out on their own for some water or bugs, and get down to larvae business.

It is worth rejoicing if you are seeing not just ladybugs, but the larvae. They eat like my 1 year old son – cramming fistful after fistful of pests into their jaws while they build up the means to hit the pupae stage before becoming the black-spotted dealers of bug justice that we all know and love.

The larvae just look amazing to me. Most of the time they are described as alligators and I can see that. They taper toward the end and the tail can look like the scaly, segmented tail of an alligator. But the blur of dusty red on their middle, the black of their bodies, their impressive jaws – they look like deadly aliens.

The larval stage lasts a while, several weeks. The pupae stage happens when they decide to take a little rest. After about a week, the pupae are gone and we’ve got adult ladybugs ready to defend the harvest.

The good guys are here bad guys. Head for the hills.

Filed under: garden pests, pests , ladybug larvae

A Sonoma Garden: Great Soil Post

It’s a blog entry for all gardeners! So full of simple, practical advice for your soil – this one is a keeper.

I’m a regular reader of A Sonoma Garden (and highly covetous of the Sonomaness of their lives) because it’s got it all – cool postings about their lives in general, great pictures, vegetables, advice, different approaches, recipes…. great stuff.

Here’s one for everybody.  A quick summary on how to improve the quality of your soil. Great reading.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Delousing: A Practical Primate’s Approach To The Garden

If I was an old world monkey, I would choose my social grooming targets carefully and in accordance with my life-defining mantra of minimal effort for a suitable reward. Would I choose the baboons with the broadest backs or the thickest pelts? The tallest, strongest baboons? The baboon who is richly nippled with billions of bloated bugs begging to be my protein shake?

Would I seek groups of baboons, loads of them, all to be groomed by my skilled fingers and teeth, one after another in a merry go round of blissful bug squeezing, popping, and biting – all to sate my unending hunger? The work! The effort to peel so many ticks from so many broad backs! All for the potential return of altruism and the honey of bug guts?

I doubt it.

I would seek the smaller backs, the more manageable plots of monkey fur, just enough to make my connections, feed myself and call it a day. I’d leave the large pelts and group pickings to my more industrial brothers and sisters, the ones with the technology and patience to comb all day and all night.

The moral my friends! The moral…

Plant yourself a smallish garden cuz it’s easier to pick the freaking bugs off of the damn leaves. Too many plants means too many bugs and too much popping of beetles. In this case… three lined potato beetles.

Filed under: pests , three lined potato beetles