Mid-June Update

I was going to put the photos up last week, but I didn't get a chance. I have taken a whole bunch over the weekend and this is the result. I did finally get my bird poo, so I think that might have helped everything getting much bigger. In fact, everything is bigger than they are in the photos except the sunflowers. I think the Bambi Brigade took them last night. All the heads have been chewed off completely. Not cut (as if by humans) or raided (as if by Squirrel Squadron) just gone. Like what happened in the Great Raid of '08 to my corn. I didn't like those sunflowers anyway since they were hybrid and not mammoth, but it would have been nice if I could have gotten some of the seeds. Everyone in the cave heard it apparently. The Littlest Giant thought there was a baby outside. The Wife couldn't tell either but though she heard people or talking. I head it too, and thought it was maybe another owl or coyotes or something. Whatever it was all the heads were taken the same way. I didn't look for prints (which I should have) but I presume it was some deer and their fawns that took them. So, I'll replant some Mammoths there. Anyway, on with the pics!

Cherry tomato plant before I added the fertilizer. Plants are a little yellow, testing the soil this weekend. I think I need some lime.

The potted Bell Pepper plant now planted in the ground. It almost died in its pot. When I took it out it was very pot bound. Doing much better where it is, although no flowers at the moment.

The first of hopefully many baby pumpkins. I'm amazed, this orb has gotten twice as big since I took this photo only 5 days ago.

The flint corn. See the yellowing there too? Must be acid.

The tomato plants as a group. Yellowing there too.

The bell and cayenne plants. Doing very well, still no flowers though.

The peanuts in they spot that was the parsnips. These guys sprouted a whole 4 days after I planted the seeds.

The driveway bed looking up toward the house.

'Watermellion' as The Littlest Giant calls it. This was a replant as the first round didn't take. I think it was soil temp. As warm as March was, the soil was barely in the 60's when I planted these. Its routinely in the 70's now.

Cherokee beans learning to climb up their poles.

Alas, one of the lost heads. This one was almost ripe too. See the yellowing on the leaves? That's originally what made me think it was acid. Or lack of iron.

These are the only Mammoths I had planted. In the main bed. They are doing very well for themselves. I don't expect heads until sometime in mid July. Note how they are turning toward the sun even now.

Honeydew planted from the seeds of a melon bought at Whole Foods.

A family portrait of the now headless sunflowers.

Second planting of cucumbers. Doing well.

One of my other pumpkins sporting some nice flowers. You can't see it, but there are some baby pumpkins beneath. Hoping they last. I still have not decided what to do with the water barrels since I had to move them away from the house. Its not supposed to rain all week, so I think I will just drain them in the bed, and store them at the back there.

Finally, some tomatoes on one of the many plants I have. These are slightly bigger now, but not ripe yet.

June 1 update

Interesting proceedings in the garden over the past month. Watermelon, cucumbers, and eggplant did not come up, even though it appeared they were. Either I was mistaken, or they just didn't make it, because what I thought was the actual plants did not continue their existence. One of the cayenne plants that I planted didn't make it either. I also harvested all of the parsnips, which yielded quite a lot of tubers. They were, after all, in the Main Bed 'sweet spot'.

I have mixed emotions about the peat pots that I used. They worked to get the plants up and running, but have not decomposed in the ground despite the tomatoes, sunflowers, and pumpkins all reaching large sizes. However, all the plants have already flowered (except the peppers), so they are all 'dwarf.' I have fertilized twice since planting, but they are all mini plants. The sunflowers (non Mammoth as I wanted, but a smaller variety) already even have seeds that the finches have promptly attacked. So is it the pots? The fertilizer? or did getting them out early make them produce early? I don't know. I need my bird poo to tell.

All the plants that did survive the transplants are doing very well though. My potatoes are outgrowing the patch, the corn is almost knee-high, and the cherry tomato plant is producing, but small tomatoes. Hmm, why is every thing dwarfed? Potassium since they are already fruiting? I'll have to re-test the soil.

I have planted peanuts in the parsnip section. Replanted the watermelons. Planted honeydew in place of the cucumbers and finally planted ...something where the eggplants were. I can't remember what it was.

I do have some red delicious apples growing on their tree. Nothing on the fuji though, they didn't even flower this year, but I know they are an every other year thing. And I do have pics of that. Ill try to get more pics up this weekend when I do some weed and feed and prune the trees around the garden. Stay tuned.

May Day! May Day! May Day!

Well, no, there isn't anything terribly wrong. Its May 1st. And when you are home and sick on May 1, you might as well update your blog right?  It appears I have been remiss, but actually I have been quite busy in the garden. Its doing well, except that I had to rip out my 2 blueberry bushes. Seems termites have invaded the Giant's cave. Yes, we had to put all that nice poison in the ground to stop them. YAY! :( They used Termidor to do the dirty work. I know, directly connected to CCD, but what was I supposed to do? Baits could take a year, although that would be the next step. Yes, I'm anguishing about that, but I also don't want the cave getting eaten from the inside out.

OK on to lighter stuff.

I started this year with growing my tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins and sunflowers in my patio grow-house provided by The Wife. It worked fabulously! Assembled sometime in mid-February by the dynamic team of The Giant and The Littlest Giant 'helping'. My only critique is that the wood is quite soft (cedar) so be careful putting those screws in. You can easily strip the holes. Also, wingnut bolts that hold the top flaps open when you are hardening don't work at all. I just propped them open on the sill at that point anyway.

I got all my starter materials from our local nursery Campbell and Ferrara and there I essentially bought the entire Espoma Organic line; peat pots, starter soil, fertilizer, the works. Everything works great. Although I think that mow, the Plant Tone fertilizer doesn't have the kick that I wanted. Its only like 5-3-3. I think I will order my seabird guano from Home Harvest. That stuff is 13-12-2. That's some good shi.... well, you get the point.

All my seeds were from Johnny's Selected Seeds. I didn't think the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange seeds were particularly good last year. So if it wasn't left over, or if I didn't save from last  time, I bought from Johnny's.

The Patio Grow-house circa March 15

Peat pots in the Grow-house

Of course, I knew that when you plant when its in the 80's (yes early March was in the 80's) you suddenly get the frost the last week. Sure enough the last week in March and the first week in April came a few frosts. So, like any good gardener, I covered up.

The Grow house protected against the chill

Finally after hardening off the plants, and a week after the last frost, I prepared the soil.

The Littlest Giant and I prepping the beds

The Main Bed being prepped by The Littlest

View up the Driveway Bed with the Main bed behind.

As you can see, the Driveway Bed had lots of extra dirt and manure added this year, it just wasn't full enough. The Main Bed however didn't have a lot of additions. One because I didn't have that much time to get enough dirt for both (50 bags total) and second, since I am doing no-till this year, I didn't want to change too much. However, there were some depressions caused by the 3 Sisters mounds last year, so I had to fill in the gaps. The Littlest was helping fill the holes in that pic. Rented the pick-up from Home Depot this year. $19 for an hour, only took me 35 minutes. Worth every penny!

For the first time ever, the Master Plan for garden! Usually I sketch it out (which I have) but is more legible if I transpose it to something digital. I did that on Gridpapr. Got the public account. No $$$. ;)  Sow without further ado....

The Master Plan (not to scale). I have pumpkins and stuff in other places, but those are experimental at this point. 

The 3 Sisters, just flint corn at the moment

Mammoth sunflowers, with a 'volunteer' potato in the lower right corner

Tomatoes, part one, with the cherry tomato plant I grew indoors circa Dec '11

Closeup of the cherry tomatoes, just about to red. 

Tomatoes part 2. this has the bell pepper plant I stated with the cherry tomato plant

Carrots coming up next to the tomatoes

The Driveway Bed from the street. Is that a lion? ;)

The Main Bed from the 'bottom'. That steak is NOT a grave marker. 

Watermelon just coming up 

Evening Sunflowers coming up. No cucumbers yet. 

Parsnips planted last year. I suppose I should harvest them. Put peanuts in their place. 

Pole Beans coming up. That's what the gravestone pole was for. 

Bell Peppers with Cayenne's in the top right

Eggplants coming up. Its that bluish-greenish blur. 

Pumpkins, one of many plantings. 

Ye Olde Pumpkin Patch, err.. Potato patch. 

Horizontal of the Potato Patch

Water barrels on vacation. Had to be moved because of the Termite treatment. I'll put them back when I get some bricks laid in their original spot. 

 That's it for now. Fortunately the weather has gone back to wet and below normal temps for all of April, so that was a good thing. However, its supposed to be in the 80's again and wet for the next week. Lets see how that goes.

The winter that wasn't

I am so glad that climate change is just a liberal conspiracy. Because with months of above average temps, 72 degrees yesterday, and the cherry blossoms blooming, I was getting worried. I guess Phill will say six more weeks of winter so that the liberal media can control us that much longer (and he did, I knew it!) Meanwhile, those socialist Europeans are getting what they deserve with people actually freezing to death.

*shakes head*

How can policy makers be blind to this? Do they not care, or understand, or are they just so thrilled that they can play hooky and hit the back 9 with their Big Oil buddies that they see this as a good thing? At what point will they actually just open their eyes and see what the rest of us who work with the land see? This isn't 'nice weather' it is climate out of whack.

I don't normally swing political here as a point, but I have to take note of it. Sarcasm included. This isn't Al Gore's personal grab for power so that he can install himself as Emperor of The Moon, this is reality. This is the world that we are helping to create.

Healthy Harvest Farm

Sorry, have to do a shameless plug for my friends CSA located in beautiful Bellefonte, PA.

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Healthy-Harvest-Farm/215516528533269

Internet:
http://www.healthyharvestfarmcsa.com/index.php

They really know their stuff, and I would trust the lives of the entire Giant family to them, please check them out!

Thanks!
The Giant

Free at last aka Season 4 post-morterm

Finally. Done. The Higher Mind of New England has released me. Forever. Yay. :)

The garden basically went to pot after Irene since I had no time and it was really badly damaged. 2 Weeks later TS Lee dumped 11 inches of rain on me in 1 day. It was all a loss. Nothing really produced in great numbers except the Jalapenos (always a staple), Sweet Peppers, and the Bell Peppers. I think I finally figured out the Bell's, soil temp is really important. If its not like 72 degrees the seeds just don't germinate. We got 1 eggplant, the peanuts did very well (although I didn't soak them in saltwater so they are really bland), the melons (or 'watermellions' as The Littlest Giant calls them) did well except for the exploding properties, parsnips are still in the ground, tomatoes did OK, but still suffered from overcrowding despite my frequent culling. The lettuce and spinach did great in the little pots in front of the house, shaded but warm.


Things that did not do well:
4 sisters (sunflowers, sweet corn, beans, pumpkins) although the sunflower seeds kept getting taken by squirrel squadron so it wasn't their fault, same with the pumpkins.
Potatoes, rotted in the ground, again. I think I am over watering them (aside from Lee).
Amaranth did exceptionally well, until Lee soaked everything and the seeds started molding. As a consequence I did not harvest them. The tomatoes crowded the carrots, so I left them in the ground with the parsnips, Ill see how they do in the spring. The apple trees had cedar apple rot, so I sprayed. I wasn't expecting much though. The 1 apple I got was taken by Squirrel Squadron or the Bambi Brigade. Bluberries, all eaten by birds before they ripened. I need to cover them.

Take away from this season:
1) Different plants have different water needs
2) temp is important in starting out,
3) prune severely

For next season
1) Trying flint corn instead of sweet to see if they will hold up in the rain better.
2) Starting 'delectable seeds' (aka sunflower and pumpkin) in my newly acquired mini-greenhouse (generously provided by The Wife) early to avoid them being taken. Also starting the Bells and other warm soil plants here.
3) Making a scarecrow similar to the illustration in the Marvel Comics adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. Hopefully this keeps the Squirrel Squadron away (and will look cool). I have a solar panel (also provided by The Wife) to which I may attach a servo and a motion sensor to make the scarecrow move. We will see how much time I have.
4) Not a fan of the Southern Exposure seeds I purchased. I think I will try Johnny's Selected Seeds this season.
5) Seed potatoes from Whole Foods. Yes they worked the best and the cheapest.
6) Experimenting with Pumpkins in different pots in different places at different times this year. A neighbor planted his whole front law with pumpkins around May. Not one fruit as far as I saw. I'm thinking if I plant them in front of the Butterfly Garden, maybe they will get some extra pollinator attention.

OK more later, with pictures.