Still Harvesting

cucumbers, beans, tomatoes

 I discovered a pile of harvest photos that I haven't yet shown off this morning.  Most of the tomatoes are nearly green in the pics because I have been picking them at first blush.  Now that it's mid-September I've actually managed to harvest quite a few of them, and even my first couple of Fairy Tale eggplants, which are small but still tasty.

cucumbers, tomatoes, jalapenos.

After mowing the lawn a few days ago i discovered the blackberry vines growing over the fence from the neighbor's yard had a conciliatory harvest for me... probably in hopes that the bribe would keep me from cutting them.  It wasn't much of a harvest but I also didn't put much effort into clinbing around in the busshes looking for more.  Mina had them on her ice cream and said they were delicious.

Blackberries!

 Not sure if I already mentioned the results of my potato growing or not.  The 3 potatoes I planted never bloomed, but I was sick of waiting on them so I turned over the 3 gal. pots they were in and low and behold I had potatoes!  There was a total of about a dozen baby potatoes, and some tiny ones that were just developing.  I ate them!  The tiny ones are being saved for spring planting though, maybe I won't have to purchase seed potatoes again.

Beans, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers.

 Eventually all those blushing tomatoes end up looking like the ones below and I use them fresh or cook them up for salsa or spaghetti sauce.

Tomatoes, green peppers, jalapeno, onions, garlic, and lime.  Ready for salsa!

Cooking the salsa.

Cherry tomato bowl.  Plus a couple eggplants.

 So despite the slow end of August and beginning of September harvests, things have kind of picked up as the days are growing shorter and the garden is getting more shade.  We've been seeing temperatures in the upper 80s and occasional 90s the past couple weeks, but that ends this week and temps will continue to get cooler.  So far the tomatoes have managed to prove their worth, even though I haven't yet seen enough at any time to preserve.  The huge fat San Marzanos are driving me crazy though, they are so thick with tomatoes the branches are breaking through the string holding them to their stakes, but not a single one has ripened yet.  Maybe the change in weather will give them a nudge to finish up before they die?

Custom cabinetry.

 The last item to share is that we finished up the final touch on the kitchen before we put in the new floors... the custom cookbook shelf on the end of the island.  I need to pick up a few more little shelf brackets for the tiny shelves, but otherwise it is done.  I think it looks great!  And it's much handier than digging around in the dining room cabinets to find a recipe.  Also, the shelves are designed to contain and hide the electrical outlets for the island, which aren't visible in this picture because they face in toward the oven. 

I have been house hunting this week and found a great place with a lot of potential, including garden potential, just waiting on a response from the bank and needing to finish up the work at this house and we'll be ready to dive into buying a house!

76 Lbs. What a Shame

Painted lady on butterfly bush

Today my vegetable tally is at a whopping 77 lbs.  Not too bad considering that my two large beds are full of tomato plants that have given me a whole 12 tomatoes, and about 2 dozen cherry tomatoes.  Last year my 4 pumpkins alone weighed in at 75 lbs. 

The majority of the weight for August has been cucumbers, most of which came off the Marketmore 97s.  The Lemon cukes are just starting to roll in now, two harvested and several still growing.  I have one small green pumpkin on my shed this year, I can only hope it will ripen before the vine starts dying off.  It doesn't look like it will weigh in at more than about 10 lbs. though.

Pumpkin on shed today.

It has been a very sad year for my garden.  Apparently I'm not the only one either.  My neighbor Julie told me her tomatoes started coming in about 3 weeks later than normal, and her pumpkins are also still green and small.  In a normal year her pumpkin vines sprawl across most of her back yard and she harvests enough for cooking and carving for the whole family. 

Pumpkin vines on shed.

My garden is producing, all of the plants are in good health, but there is such a short window of growing season here that a week or two of cool weather throughout the season can be enough to completely destroy any chance of main season tomato production.

Chocolate Cherry tomatoes.

So far the tomatoes that have ripened have all been the extra early varieties.  Oregon Spring and Beaverlodge Plum and a few varieties of cherries.  I thought that my double planting rotation could be a factor in their lateness, and I'm sure it is somewhat, but it is most definitely not the primary problem.  The volunteer Chocolate Cherries have been in the ground since the first planting went in, and while they have outproduced the other cherry varieties that were planted later, they haven't outproduced them by much.  Like the other plants they are weighed down with green fruit that simply won't ripen.

Indigo Rose tomato

I considered covering them with plastic to extend the growing season.  The late season plants haven't even gotten fruits yet though, and nighttime temps are getting down into the low 50s already.  I just don't know if the plastic will make any difference.  It doesn't look like we'll be having an Indian summer this year, we may not even have much of an autumn. 

Winter is coming.
(snicker)

All in all this year's garden has been a major disappointment.  While the rest of the country has been hit by a heat wave, our tiny corner of the world has been much cooler than normal.  I did have a few standouts in the garden this year though despite the weird weather and will have a post soon to acknowledge those plants that really outdid expectations.

For now, I should probably get back to my housework and prepping for the new school year to begin.

Garden is Slacking Off

Sorry to be a slacker about blogging, but this week has been full of recovery from the kitchen remodel and catching up on all the things I didn't do because I was remodeling.  Like laundry and dishes and cleaning house.

The garden has been rather unproductive too.  The peas are done, but the eggplants and peppers and winter squashes have nothing to harvest yet.  Right now the only things coming out of the garden are a few beans (the Royal Burgundy are still producing like crazy, Fortex is a smaller harvest but still going), cucumbers that have slowed down since their initial burst of fruits, a zucchini here and there, and a handful of tomatoes each week.  I am so sad that after all of the work I put into the garden this year the weather has nearly shut down tomato, eggplant, squash and pepper production completely. 

Surprisingly the jalapenos have quite a few fruits ready... but with no tomatoes for salsa making I'm just not sure what to do with them.  My family just isn't into spicy stuff.

I did can some pickle relish earlier this week, and one quart of dill pickles.  It's my first attempt at pickles, so I'm letting them rest before trying them and hoping that the recipe worked out well.  If anyone has an awesome dill pickle recipe for whole pickles I'd love it if you'd share, I'm always on the hunt for great, tested, and approved recipes.

 That's about all I have to report today, hope everyone has a lovely day.

Kitchen Is Finished!

Wow, kitchen remodeling made for a crazy week.  It's all done now, except for a few final touches, and I'm very happy with the result.  I pinched a nerve in my arm during the week though and it has been almost completely out of commission. 

Even the garden was kind enough to give me a few harvests while I was elbow deep in sanding dust, so I'd say the week was a win in every way.

The kitchen in its original form

My brother tearing out the coat closet

After removing the cabinet doors

Jenn working on refinishing the buffet in the dining room

Lower cabinets are gone!

New countertops getting put in place

Sink almost in.

Alex, being helpful.

Wow, what a mess!

Buffet all finished, still need to paint the wall behind it.

After removing the old island

All finished! Is it obvious what the next big job will be?

I am loving the new kitchen.  It's much more functional, even though it's laid out nearly the same as before.  There are a lot more drawers and better cabinet space to store everything.  A few little things still need to be finished, like touch up staining, painting the buffet wall, hanging the curtains, and building the bookshelf that will fit under the end of the island to hold cookbooks, but the biggest jobs are complete and the kitchen is usable again.  Eventually we will get to the next big project, installing new floors throughout the kitchen and dining room.

zucchini, cucumber, and peas

Potatoes (don't let the picture fool you, they are tiny)

Cucumbers, beans, and tomatoes

While I was busy with the kitchen, the garden still managed to give me a few pounds of veggies.  Nothing spectacular... but that seems to be how things are going this year. 

Woohoo! First Tomato of the Year

In all its glory...

 Picked my first ripe tomato today, it's the Oregon Spring one that's been hanging around for over a month.  In a normal year the first tomato would be picked in mid- to late June.  This has not been a normal year.  On the plus side it weighed in at 7.5 ounces.  Also the two volunteer cherry tomatoes I left in the ground still haven't ripened anything, so I don't think my late planting really affected the other tomatoes; they are right on par with their volunteer cousins.  It would seem that the weather alone has been responsible for the tomato tardiness. 

Tomato and the first two pickling cucumbers.

 The pickling cucumbers are finally beginning to produce, not a lot so far.  I have a dozen plants, but if they don't start doing better i will never have enough cukes at once to pickle.  The slicing cucumber is cranking out fruit faster than they can ripen, I'm guessing I'll have about 3 cukes ready to pick tomorrow and more a few days after that.

I didn't take a photo of the onions i pulled earlier this week, nor did I weigh them, they are curing in the laundry room/grow room/pantry and once cured they will be weighed in and photographed.  I only pulled the ones with good sized bulbs and developed skins, which accounted for about a quarter of what was planted.

Herbs (this basket holds about 2 gallons)

Also, above is the photo of the herbs I trimmed the other day.  Most of this is rosemary, which is buried under the thyme, sage, spearmint, and lavender.  The oregano wasn't big enough for trimming yet, and the cats have mauled the catnip too much to harvest.  All of these herbs were lightly rinsed (to remove spiders and dust), blotted dry, bundled, tied up, and hung to dry.  Once they are crispy i will strip them from their stems, crumble them a bit, then mix up seasonings or bag and freeze them, or fill my nearly empty spice jars with them.  I am a bit disappointed the oregano didn't grow more, I was hoping not to have to buy it for making Italian Seasoning Mix.  The mint and lavender will likely be saved for potpourri or teas, since I don't do much cooking with them.

The one other major thing I did was pull a few problem plants: the last celery that I left to flower for the beneficial bugs, the cilantro (it had long ago gone to flower and was seriously shading out the rhubarb and some peppers) and the dill that was completely infested with aphids and ladybugs.  I let the dill stay in the garden long enough for the ladybug eggs to hatch, and the nymphs to grow into adults, but they were failing at eating enough aphids fast enough so I moved them onto other plants and tossed the buggy dill.  I'm disappointed that I lost the dill before the cucumbers were ready for harvest though, i had hoped to use my own dill for pickling.  The nasturtiums have done their job of black-fly-aphid-traps so well that the aphids are killing them and moving onto other plants nearby, so I pulled a few of the most infested nasturtiums and left the others to continue their work.  Hopefully the aphids will stay out of the other plants again and move into the healthy nasturtiums.

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.

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.

Diagnosis: Malnutrition?

For those who haven't been keeping up with my posts, my tomatoes have been "under the weather".  Initially I thought this was due to a fungus of some type.  After some further research I'm not so sure any more.  I won't be able to take one to the Extension Service booth this weekend because I have other things to do that day. 

Looking into tomato diseases I found that most of the fungal infections have yellowing of the tissues surrounding the brown/gray/darkened spots.  My tomatoes don't have any yellowing until the whole branch has withered and is falling off.

Since they were clean seed, planted in clean soil-less mix, in clean pots, and were inside the whole time I've kind of ruled out any soil or pest-borne diseases. 

But! I did find out something I didn't know, probably because I've never started my own tomato seeds before and had them survive this long.  Purpling of the leaves is an indicator of phosphorus deficiency.  This makes sense, they have been in those little pots full of seedling mix forever, and only had fish emulsion for nutrition (high nitrogen, barely any phosphorus or potassium).  So if they are purple because of lack of phosphorus, maybe their are deficient in other things too... it turns out that potassium deficiency causes browning of the leaf margins and curling of the leaves.  In fact, many nutritional deficiencies cause some type of discoloration and leaf curling.

Sweet Million 4 days ago

So I gave each a scoop of compost to top off their pots, and spritzed with compost tea as planned.  Even if it really is a fungal disease causing the leaf browning and curling, improving the plants' overall health should help with that.  If it's not a fungus, the compost tea foliar spray will still provide fast nutrition.

Sweet Million today

One of the things that tipped me off was that the Sweet Million was transplanted just a few days ago and is now looking much healthier.

It's difficult to tell in the picture, but the earlier shot had a purplish stem and leaf color to it.  It's very obvious that it's a bright, healthy green now; though the leaves that had already curled are no better, the rest look great.

Garden Update

 This week I pulled a lot of kale and a few broccoli and celery and finally got a chance to plant some more tomatoes.  I also put in a couple cucumbers, peppers, and eggplants.

Back to front: peppers, cukes, eggplants.

 All of this transplanting gave me a chance to see how the starts were doing in their pots.  Quite a few that were planted 2 to a pot were rootbound, so I divided them into the newly empty pots. 

Cucumbers and the largest tomato plants.

 Not long after posting about the health of my little plants, the tomatoes started having their leaves blacken and crisp up and then fall off.  I'm guessing it's some type of fungus; the grow room maintains a temperature between 68 and 82 degrees, but when it's hot and humid outside it becomes very humid in there.  So all of the plants got moved outside, for sunshine and cool nighttime temperatures.  I'm brewing some compost tea to spritz them with as well, and if that fails to improve things I'll try garlic water spritz too.  I'm hoping one thing or the other will help them to survive this.

Yellowing cucumber leaves.

 Strangely, all of my pickling cucumbers are still in good health but the Lemon and Marketmore 97 are having yellowing leaves and gray spots.  This always seems to happen to my cucumbers.  All the cucumber disease pictures online look pretty much the same though, so it's hard to tell what might be causing it.  I may take one of the plants to the Farmer's Market next weekend and ask the Extension Agents there if they can identify it.

Sweet Million afflicted by fungal disease.

 The Sweet Million was the hardest hit by the fungus, it has been transplanted into the garden now and I'm hoping it will perk up nicely.  At this rate I am beginning to doubt I'll even have tomatoes this year.

Cabbage head developing

 Meanwhile, in the garden proper, the cabbages are growing strong and have small but firm heads coming in.  The cauliflower are absolutely huge, but still show no signs of heading.

Pearl onions

 While the pearl onions are growing well and beginning to show their glossy white bulbs, the spanish white onions are not bulbing at all. 

Pea flowers!

 Finally the peas are flowering, they seem late to me, though it's probably just my imagination.

Zucchini

 My one and only zucchini is ridiculously healthy and putting out it's first male flower.  There are several female flowers on it as well but they are not quite ready to bloom.

Garden from the East side.  The thing above the fence is the butterfly bush.

All in all everything is doing well.  I'm concerned about the tomatoes, but I have faith that once they are planted they will recover well.  I am anxious to get them into the ground and be done with all this waiting.