June 30, 2011 - The Garden at the End of June (part 1 of 2)



Lots of pictures again, so I'm going to break this post into two parts.


The Kennel Garden


The Fortex beans are climbing up the kennel garden fencing, and beginning to blossom. A second planting of carrots are growing in front, after the first planting was leveled by slugs. A few shallots are begging to be dug from the edge of the bed.


One pole bean plant has gone over the top of the 6' fence.


Pickling cucumbers had to be replanted from new seeds after the first planting failed to germinate. I have three pots in various places along the fence.


Slicing cucumbers fared a bit better, although I lost the first two seedlings. This is the only pot of slicing cucumbers in the garden this year.


The Heavenly Blue morning glories are finally beginning to climb the fencing. I do hope they bloom this year after getting such a late start. There's a yellow crookneck squash behind the bench, which will eventually hide all the garden hoses in that corner.....if it ever gets large enough. It had to be replanted too, and is now the same size as the pickling cucumbers.


Nasturtiums and lobelia give some color to the kennel garden.



The East Garden


The east garden.


Bed # 1 (no photo): The pea vines have been pulled, and bush beans have been planted. However, for some reason I cannot get beans to grow here. They come up as leafless little stubs and disappear. I'm not seeing any slug slime, and the soil is nice and warm now, so this has me stumped. I'm going to try one more planting, with Sluggo sprinkled around and mesh over the top (in case it's birds).


Bed #2 - There is slug damage on the cabbages in this bed, so they may have wandered over to the newly emerging beans next door. The broccoli in this bed isn't giving enough side sprouts to bother with, so I'll be pulling it out this week. The storage type onions haven't bulbed up well either, they might get pulled and frozen for later use. That would clear up half the bed for planting a fall crop of something.


Bed #3 is the Walla Walla Sweet onion bed. Quite a few have already flopped over and been harvested, I expect the rest of them to flop by this weekend. If I can find some seed potatoes or organic potatoes from the store, I'll put them here. If not, this bed will probably be planted with fall lettuce, a final planting of carrots and more bush beans. The tomato plant in the foreground is a volunteer, probably a Minigold, and is covered with blossoms.


Bed #4 is giving us delicious baby carrots. Of the four varieties planted here, I'd say the Ingot Hybrid are performing the best and the Tendersweet the worst. Both Red Cored Chantenay and Nantes are somewhere in the middle on production. The basil in this bed isn't growing as well as in the other bed and pots. We won't even discuss the puny peppers. In years past, my peppers have been knee high, bushy and loaded with fruit and/or blossoms by now. I'm not holding out any hope for this year's crop.


Bed #5: The French Gourmet Green bush beans in this bed are the highlights of the entire east garden. I'll probably be picking them for tomorrow's dinner. The basil in this bed was just picked, and gave me a big basket full that has been banded and hung to dry. More peppers, puny and sickly, but there is actually one bell pepper for four plants. Yes, they've been fed compost tea and fish emulsion, but still no decent growth. I might buy a four pack or two before it's too late to get them planted.


The beans in bed # 5 should be ready to pick for tomorrow's dinner.


Bed #6 has the Rutgers tomatoes (3). They have just a few blossoms, and no sign of fruiting yet. In fact, the blossoms have been dropping from all three plants. There are a few carrots (spotty germination), and huge green onions that really need to be pulled and eaten....we tend to eat the sweet onions instead. These bush beans look good, and are beginning to blossom.


Bed #7 was recently divided into two beds. I'm finding, as I age, the 4' beds are harder for me to reach to the center. The new narrow bed on the right is filled with tiny carrot seedlings. These are from a new packet of seeds, as I think my older seed is losing viability. It only took about a week after Annie ripped the netting over the beets and chard for it to become full of leaf miners. Between that and the slugs, I'm ready to rip out the chard and go to plan 2 for the fall planting. There are more carrots, beets and onions emerging to the left of the beet row. We had roasted baby beets this week, and they were so sweet and delicious, I wished I had planted more....well, now I have. If the leaf miners want the tops, so be it. I'll be happy with the bottoms.


The Walla Walla Sweet onions that were pulled from bed #3 are hanging in the shed to dry, along with the basil that was picked yesterday. I can keep the doors and windows open for ventilation.


The top pulled right off of this one, so it came straight into the kitchen. At 9 ounces, it was one of the larger ones. That's quite a bit smaller than the ones I grew last year.


11 comments:

  1. I guess neither of us will get a stellar pepper crop this year. I'm just hoping for some peppers at this point.

    I'd be very happy with a nice ounce onion. I haven't a clue as to how large mine will be. But at least they will be better than I've done before. I still have a couple handfuls of them that just up and died on me for some reason, but a lot of them lived.

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  2. "leafless little stubs and disappear" is exactly what happened to some of my beans, too. I was just stumped. Since I am gone for a week at a time and can't spy on emerging beans during the week, I had no idea if they actually came up like that (genetic defects?) or if they were being attacked by some sort of a predator as infant seedlings. I hope your next planting with Sluggo and bird netting work for you.

    And you're not the only one with struggling peppers. All of my transplants grown from seeds are not doing well at all, with their growth stalled at around 4 inches high. Bizarre.

    The rest of your garden, however, looks beautiful, organized and well-diversified as I would expect Granny's garden to look like at this time of the year. :)

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  3. WOW! I'm really jealous of those onions, they look good enough to eat raw!..and so many whew! i can't catch up to you no matter how hard I'm trying..Are those little white flowers Alysiium? I've planted rows of them and nothing came up ..even after all the good rain :o(

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  4. Gran those onions look fantastic! We have such a hard time with them here, but I sure love that you post photos so I can dream! Also, I think I'm suffering from "bush bean back" and will definitely be doing Fortex next year instead of crawling around all bent over in the bush beans LOL!

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  5. Beautiful, all of it! I love the way you and Thomas can get the mix of fall and summer crops at the same time.

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  6. Daphne, you and I have always had nice peppers. What happened?

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    Thyme, I think it can be caused by planting in ground that is too cold, but when it's this warm out I have to blame slugs or birds, probably slugs.

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    Ginny, yes it's alyssum. I planted it from seed last year, and it volunteered this year. The volunteers aren't as pretty as the originals though.

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    Erin, I planted a lot of bush beans, and when it comes picking time I'm sure I'll regret it. My back hurts really bad picking beans, even in raised beds, and most of mine will be down nearly a foot lower this year! I just need so darned many (Otto & Annie's food), I have to depend on the bush beans for quantity.

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  7. Ribbit, the way my garden is growing, I'll have spring, summer and fall crops all emerging at once! The only good thing is, in 2008 I didn't get my garden planted until the end of July, and I still had a pretty good harvest.

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  8. Granny, your cooler weather may be the reason the peppers are so small. Boy, we have had some hot weather and my peppers are huge and producing like mad! I have had some disappearing seedlings as well. Some of my cucumbers and a lot of my tatsoi seedlings disappeared over night!

    All in all your garden looks great and will give you a bountiful harvest!

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  9. Robin, my peppers were so pretty going in, they should be knee high by now :-(

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  10. Granny, your onions look great! Mine are still waiting to be picked, just as soon as I can get out there! I enjoy seeing your profusion of green. It's a beautiful thing.
    ~~Lori

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  11. Lori, thank you. I still have more onions to get out of the ground, I wonder where I can put them all!

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