Holy Crap! It's Summer!!

The Oregon summer finally hit on the 4th of July.  We've had a steady few days of 75 degree and up weather and not a cloud in sight. 

Nearly all of the hot weather plants are in the ground now, just holding out on a few last cabbages before the final four plants go in the ground.  This week has been a frenzy of harvests of peas, strawberries (still!), last lettuces, cauliflowers, cabbages, carrots and onions.  Today will be spent blanching and freezing the veggies picked throughout the week.  Normally I would do this immediately after harvesting, but it was such a busy week i barely had time to pick them, rinse them and throw them in the fridge. 

Garden this week.  The tomatoes and peppers are still small so the beds look kind of bare.

My harvest total for this first week of July has hit 10 lbs.  That's nearly half my June monthly total in one week!  No tomatoes yet though; and the tomatoes and squashes will be my largest harvests by weight.  July is looking like it might just pay for the whole garden.

According to my current calculations my garden veggies are costing me around $20/lb.  Of course, the grow room was a big part of the costs this year and it will last me for many years to come.  Just one 30 lb pumpkin will bring me down to $10/lb so I'm not too worried about my costs balancing out anymore.  As long as I get something from my hot weather plants I think the garden will pay for itself.

Harvest Monday: June 25th

Harvest Monday is sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions and is an opportunity to share your harvests and what you do with those harvests with others.  Please stop by to see what other gardeners are doing this week.

This week I went strawberry picking at a local farm.  After picking and hulling 9 1/2 pounds of berries, I made 18 jars of freezer jam.  I don't think that 18 plus the 5 remaining from last year is going to last us a full year though.  The farm will have raspberries ready this week, so I will be out picking them and hopefully make up another 10 or so jams, so we'll have enough to last until next summer.

One of the week's harvests: broccoli, pearl onions, sugar snap peas, and carrots.

 Besides the farm picking, I brought in another 3 lbs. of strawberries off my own plants (yay! more strawberry shortcake! I am going to get SO fat.)  As well as several more harvests.  Mostly the harvests were of pearl onions, a few carrots, and some sugar snap peas.  I did get a couple good sized broccoli and one small cabbage, because I was impatient and couldn't wait any longer to pick one.  The peas, onions, carrots, and broccoli went into a stir fry.  My mom got a bunch of everything except the broccoli too.

Yum! Stir fry.

 The cabbage and remaining onions and carrots will be made into coleslaw for my husband; and any peas that come in will either be eaten as snacks or frozen for another time.

My daughter stretching out to enjoy the evening on the patio.

It's amazing how much arm-twisting goes into getting a 13 year old computer geek outside during the summer, so I was amazed and pleased to see my girly outside after our jam-making, enjoying a little relaxation in the night air.  This picture also makes it obvious that the patio could use some tidying up, so I think that will be my chore for the day.

Garden Update: June 19th

Let's take a walk around the garden.

Coming in through the front gate we pass the strawberries, currently they are cranking out about a pound of berries daily. 

Tomatoes starting to perk up.

As we enter the gate to the left we see the remaining un-planted starts in their pots.  A scoop of compost in each pot, followed by a dose of fish fertilizer, and a dose of compost tea the next day has really improved the health of the tomatoes.  They have perked up, greened up, and kicked out a few healthy new leaves.  There is still some purpling but they are definitely improving, and hopefully with another boost of tea in a few days that too will fade.  I'm really surprised they are recovering so well, I was afraid I would lose them all within a week or two.

The remaining starts; tomatoes and a few peppers.

Turning to the left we see the first raised bed.  With the removal of the celery, broccoli, garlic, and remaining lettuce the bed is looking pretty thin.  Several tomatoes have been planted to replace the harvested plants, and all of the cucumbers as well.  The sugar snap peas in back are cranking out pea pods like crazy, though none have yet begun to bulge with seed development.  The first of these peas should be ready in a day, possibly two.

First tomato to develop.  Oregon Spring.

I finally have my first tomato beginning!  It's a bit late to be at this stage, but the Spring has been rather cool and wet, and I am happy to have anything right now.  Oregon Spring has proven itself to be a great producer in the past (for such a small plant), and judging by the 18 flowers on it right now I'm guessing it will be again.  IF the weather ever warms up.  The other tomatoes that have gone in the ground are green and healthy and obviously recovering well from their bout with malnutrition.

First nasturtium blossoms.

Further along the first bed we see a burst of color as the first nasturtium blooms pop out amid the blue-green leaves of the cabbages.  The Parel cabbages have firm but small heads and are nearly ready for harvest, Derby Day however still has a long way to go.

Graffiti cauliflower

 Surprise, surprise! Deep within the recesses of the cauliflower leaves are tiny but beautiful little heads of cauliflower.  Graffiti is ahead of Amazing by a few days, and the color is just incredible.  The one good thing about the cooler weather is that I may actually get summer cauliflower undamaged by heat.

Herb and bench area

 Moving past the first bed we see the bench area, the herbs here have exploded.  The lavender and sage doubled in size, the spearmint is spreading (and recovered well from whatever was eating it).  The catnip looks very sad, but that's to be expected since the cats flop down and roll on it, and then chomp the leaves off like it's an all-you-can-eat salad bar.  I'm surprised it's survived at all.

Bed #2

Just past the bench is the second raised bed.  The peas are not as tall here, but everything else has grown above and beyond.  In fact, I was forced to break off several of the largest broccoli leaves because they were shading out so many other plants.  A few little lettuces are tucked away here for later eating, and some beautiful dill is hiding in amid the brassicas.  Otherwise it is very similar to the first bed.  On the far end are the few peppers I planted after pulling the chard and kale.  I transplanted one chard plant and one kale plant into the pumpkin bed in hopes of a few more harvests.

Whiskey barrel and pots

To our left, at the end of the patio, sits the first whiskey barrel.  The barrel currently contains Alex's carrots, most of which are just sizing up before being harvested.  The eggplant, slicing cucumbers, and jalapenos were planted a few days ago.  There are also a couple bolted cilantro tucked into the barrel, and I plan to let them go to flower to help attract beneficials.  Behind the barrel are three large pots containing artichokes and my rhubarb.  They are all growing well, but there will be no harvests off of them this year.

Whiskey barrel 2 and pots

 Further to the left is the second whiskey barrel.  This barrel holds a few little lettuce plants that will be harvested soon, and the same eggplants, jalapenos and lemon cucumber combination as the first barrel.  The three large pots hold my potato plants.  Feeling down into the dirt beneath the potatoes you will find several long thin rootlets that will hopefully plump up into potatoes soon.  The small pot contains a spare kale that had nowhere else to go, it's struggling and I probably will never see a harvest from it.

Stepping into the yard between the barrels we face the shed and the rosemary and thyme planted in front of it.  Both are growing incredibly well and the tiny thyme flowers are always buzzing with insect life.  I didn't picture the third barrel here, but it sits along the fenceline billowing with flowers.  The delphinium has faded and gone to seed, so things look a bit shabby, but the bee balm is just about ready to bloom and the glads and lillies are popping up between the other flowers.

Pumpkin bed.

At the very back of the garden sits the pumpkin bed.  Beans fill most of this bed, both pole beans along the back, and bush beans throughout.  A massive zucchini has filled the corner near the fountain and will take over most of that side of the bed by summer's end.  To the left side of the bed, planted along the shed trellis are the pumpkin plants.  They are healthy and growing but haven't yet had enough heat to begin their stretch up the trellis onto the shed roof.  There are a few tiny basil planted at the front edge of the bed, but the slugs have happily nibbled them down to almost nothing and I will be surprised if they survive to provide me fresh basil this year.

Turning left and walking through the back gate we come into the previous blackberry patch.  It still looks pretty shabby back here.  Annual and perennial weeds are popping up throughout the yard, the lava rock path only extends a few feet before giving up, and the blackberries are popping out new leaves all over.  I go back there and trim them down to stubs every week or two, but haven't gotten up the time and energy to finish all the cleanup yet.  There is a small strip of cleared ground though that contains four small plots of winter squashes.  I have given up any thoughts of growing corn back there though, it is too late and the area still isn't ready for it.  The squashes are doing well for the most part, a few died (likely eaten by slugs) but the rest are starting to stretch their leaves out and expand into the area.  I can't wait to see them take over that space and make it a flowing carpet of squash leaves and flowers.  And eventually, fruit!

And that concludes our tour.  Please stop by the concession stand on your way out.

Harvest Monday: June 18th

My best harvest so far! Mostly because I decided it was high time to start pulling things so I could plant more tomatoes.  I even remembered to take photos this time.

Saturday alone I managed to harvest over 7 lbs. of veggies.

3 lbs. strawberries

A pile of celery

Some pearl onions that were starting to look like golf balls sitting on the dirt.

Garlic braid, I have no idea what variety this is but it doesn't seem to get very big, the tops had all fallen over.

The last of the Swiss chard and first planting of lettuce, and the first of Alex's carrots.

My garlic were ready according to everything I know (which isn't much), but the bulbs were very small and even the largest only appeared to have about 4 cloves to it.  Oh well, maybe next year I'll plant some other variety, these were given to me last year by a friend and i figured I'd give them a shot.

Alex is super excited about the carrots finally coming up, the Sugarsnax are fabulous and the first to arrive.  I think Little Finger and Atomic Red could wait a bit longer to harvest.

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions and is a place to share your harvests and what you do with those harvests with the garden blogger community.

Next week, more strawberries, peas, onions and carrots (I'm hoping!).

End Of May: Garden Update

I haven't posted in over a week, partly because I've had visitors coming and going, and partly because the garden hasn't done much in that week.  I harvested several more heads of lettuce, and some kale and chard that I sauteed up and threw in the freezer for another time.  There are still no ripe strawberries or peas and the anticipation of them is killing me.  I did pull enough lettuce to get my two earliest tomato plants into the garden finally, both are Oregon Spring and one is already flowering.  Sadly it also suffered a bit of sunburn during the hot days a few weeks ago.

Flowers on Oregon Spring tomato.

The garden as a whole is getting rather crowded.  Not so crowded that the plants are suffering, so I think my spacing is okay, but the carrots and onions are starting to get shoved aside by the cabbage leaves.  The good thing about spacing things so closely is that there's very little bare dirt, which reduces weeds, and the shade of the plants helps keep moisture in without needing mulch.  The bad thing is that sometimes your cabbage gets a little overzealous and completely smothers your carrots.

The garden is getting crowded.

 The broccoli are finally getting some heads on, I wish I had enough room to let them keep growing after the main heads are harvested, but I will likely get one large head each and then rip them out to make room for the tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers.

Broccoli head.  It had better get bigger than this!

 Despite the damage done by slugs, we are still swimming in lettuce.  Sadly, because there are no tomatoes and carrots and other such things, and I refuse to go buy them when we'll have some of our own soon... I have been struggling with making salads.  Plus, the lettuce are so pretty!  Especially the ruffly Red Sails next to Salad Bowl and the tall straight green of Valmaine.  All of these varieties ended up being delicious too.  I was very happy with my mixed lettuce seed, except that it was mixed so I couldn't control the proportion of each variety to each other.  I ended up with 2 Red Sails, 4 Salad Bowl/Slo-Bolt (I can't tell the difference!), 6 Valmaine, and like 20 Buttercrunch! 

Lettuces are too pretty to pull... just can't bring myself to do it yet.

 My little boy, Alex, has an amazing green thumb.  He was the one who planted the sunflowers last year that grew over 14 feet tall.  This year he planted some carrots in one of the whiskey barrels.  They are doing much better than mine, though I did have to thin them a bit.  Every day he goes out to check on his carrots and says "They are doin' good!"  He's so excited for them to get big enough to eat after all this waiting.

Alex's carrots.

 My brother informed me that it was way beyond time for me to fill up my potato buckets, so I scooped in more soil to a few inches below the tops of the plants.  I'm still kind of winging it on the potatoes, I just plan to keep them alive this year... I'll work on improving my harvest next time. 

Potato pots, potted kale and more lettuces in the whiskey barrel.

 The pumpkin bed is uncovered, and the beans are putting on their second set of leaves.  Soon enough the entire corner where the pumpkin bed is will be a wall of green, with piles of fresh green and purple beans coming in.

The pumpkin bed; pumpkins, zucchini, pole beans in back, and bush beans.

Finally, my stockpile of canned goods from last year has been reduced to 2 jars of applesauce, 1 bread and butter pickles, 1 pickle relish, 5 jars of strawberry jam, and 1 freezer jam.  Time for the last minute push to get things finished off before the restocking begins.  Guess we'll be eating a lot of PB&J in the next few weeks.  I made a total of 41 jars and frozen 1/2 pints of strawberry jam last year; I'm thinking that worked out to just about right.  Though this year I'll be doing more freezer jams and less canned, they are so much easier.

Soon enough the sun will be back full force and plant growth will take off again!  Can barely contain my excitement!

Finally, It Looks Like a Garden!

 Can definitely tell the difference between the phone camera and the good camera.  Bunch of shots of the garden after nearly a week of gorgeous weather, the sun really helped get things moving along.

Kale

Artichokes and cilantro

Alex's carrots.  He checks on them regularly to see if they're ready yet. :)

Broccoli.

Leaf lettuce

Romaine lettuce

The tulips are done, but the pansies are taking over.

Oregon Spring tomato just waiting for an opening in the garden beds.

Swiss chard is finally starting to grow at a decent pace.

Potato plant, 3 of the 5 I planted are growing well.  The other two never did anything.

The first bed is really starting to look like a garden now, but the second one has some catching up to do still.

Raised bed 1.

Raised bed 2.

Hot weather starts enjoying some sunshine.

New whiskey barrel (#3) with perennials and bulbs planted.

Strawberry bed, flowering and doing great, but I really need to weed the path next to it.

That's how my garden's growing today, not long now till there will be peas, lettuce, kale, and strawberries coming in on a daily basis.  Over the next few days I plan to make some adjustments to my watering system, and have my brother help me with some work in the front and back yards.

Quick Pics and an Update

Just to keep things updated:  I cleaned out the back shed yesterday, forcing my poor mistreated husband to do the dirty work of smashing all the wasp nests in it.  Everything in there is now neat and tidy, we have tons of free space there now and as a bonus there is no longer a giant plastic Frankenstein staring at me every time I look for a shovel.  Frankie is going to Goodwill to grace the porch of some other kindly soul on Halloween night. 

The trailer is filled with things to go to the dump, and we didn't even get the other shed done!  I still have work to do in the back yard to prep it for all of my overflow plants and the squashes, but it's in much better shape now and won't be too much work.

The seedlings are all out enjoying a lovely sunny day.  Everything is in great shape; but I am desperately awaiting the sprouting of the eggplants and peppers which seem to be taking forever.  Until i know if they will sprout I don't want to plant more.  The eggplant seed pack says it'll take 16 days for germination!  In gardening, that's like saying an eternity.

Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden supply sent me a catalog the other day with an enclosed free pack of Beefsteak Tomato seeds, so I suppose I will add them to my list of varieties to plant, and a friend gave me a few seeds of Chadwick (?) Cherry tomatoes as well.  I think that brings my tomato variety list up to around 12.  Hopefully I can find room for all of them, I generally only plant one of each variety but the Brandywine and Cuore di Bue which I plant two of.  This year both beds will be planted in hot season crops though so i might be able to fit extras of each, as well as the peppers and cucumbers.

I can't wait to have a larger garden, the lack of space is really beginning to get to me. 

For posterity's sake here are a few quick pictures of how the garden is coming along:

Sasha enjoying the garden.

Sasha is a firm believer that the garden is a tiny jungle grown just for her.

Pumpkin, zucchini, cucumber, and tomato seedlings in the sunshine.

more tomato seedlings, the ones in the clamshell haven't sprouted yet.

Winter squash seedlings are getting big... may be time to repot.

Bed #2 all planted and covered

Whiskey barrel #2 bizarre scattering of volunteer sunflowers, carrots my son threw in, cilantro in need of planting and two old onions I had no room for.

Whiskey barrel #1: kale and a few spare lettuces (they are sad because they went through the snow)

Backyard full of Goodwill holiday decor. Wanna play Where's Frankie?

The lovely, (almost) blackberry-free soil behind all the Goodwill boxes.

And that about wraps it up for today!  It's supposed to be hot, hot, hot today reaching a near record high of 81 degrees so I think I'll kick back and relax and just do the dump trip to conserve energy.  Have a lovely day all! :)