winter

Already busy planning out next year's garden and looking through the new seed catalogs! And it was only last week that I finally pulled the last of the carrots and leeks out... Sadly I did not have much time to put the garden to bed in November because I was too busy with other things. Some beds still need to be mulched, and I have yet to finish putting together the compost pile. Fun stuff to do when it's 25 degrees out.

Season's end

I don't feel like writing much, so here's a bunch of pictures! (they say a picture is worth 1000 words, after all)

Fall already?

Temperatures have gotten cooler, it might be almost time to cut down all the basil and harvest the rest of those tomatoes! It's too bad, the garden is looking its best right as it's nearly over.

Looking much better since I tidied up! I've planted peas around those big teepee things. They have not sprouted yet. I also planted some lettuce, kale, and brussel sprouts in that bed, but I'm not expecting too much from them at this point.

Everything's all filled out and looking beautiful!

This bed is doing great, since I've been sprinkling it with deer repellent regularly.

And speaking of carrots... I pulled these up to use in a roast recently. Unfortunately you don't get a good size reference, but the middle carrot was huge! They were all very tasty too. :)

All cleaned up and ready to be baked.

First new bed finished since what, June? It was just too hot all summer to do much digging. I've added compost and lime to this bed, and will soon be planting it with a cover crop.

Two compost piles. The right one is finished, and the left one is being added to slowly. When the leaves start to drop, I'll add plenty of chopped leaves (since I only have a rake and a tiny mower, that's going to be a lot of work). At that time I'll also make a trip to the stable to get horse manure, a trip to the beach to get seaweed, and a trip to Starbucks for used coffee grounds. I'm going to need a lot of compost next summer.

Harvesting

I haven't updated in a month, mostly because I spent almost half of August in Los Angeles, visiting my good friend Al! I had a good vacation there, going to the beach, riding roller coasters, and climbing some serious mountains. Meanwhile, I left the garden in the hands of my Mom, with a to-do list for her to do every day (she was thrilled). So the garden survived my absence, but it's amazing how much things can grow and change in two weeks. I have a lot of work to do out there!

















Here is my dog, Max, posing with all the pumpkins I harvested today. All of these are from a single volunteer plant that got attacked by everything: powdery mildew, squash bugs, and squash vine borers. Despite all that, it still grew five beautiful, big, heavy pumpkins! I credit that to several things: an early start (it sprouted in early May or late April), healthy, deeply dug, compost rich soil, and the fact that no squash has ever grown in that spot before. I hope these pumpkins last for a long time.

Sunflower heads. Drying and removing the seeds from these was a pain in the neck! Not too sure it was worth the trouble. Next year I will probably not grow an entire bed of these again, but instead just a couple in a flower bed for ornaments. It was fun to watch goldfinches eat the seeds, though.

Here's how the garden looked at the end of August. That is a lot of corn! You can't even see the tomato jungle from this angle. Since taking this I have removed and composted the sunflower stalks, pulled up the pumpkin vines, and mowed the lawn.

So much corn!

Here is the difference between un-pollinated and pollinated corn. Unfortunately, every single ear has been attacked by corn borers. That's usually not a big deal, because you can just cut off the topmost section of the ear and eat the rest. But sometimes they slice through the silks before the ear gets pollinated, resulting in this.

Nasturtiums, basil, sweet potatoes, marigolds, lima beans, carrots, chard, and beets, with pumpkin vines in the background. I think marigolds are the most successful thing I've grown this year! The sweet potatoes have lots of beautiful flowers that are only open for a few hours a day.

My strawberry patch is STILL sending out runners! I have to cut them out of the path every week. I'm thinking of devoting a second bed to them, because they're already so crowded in this one.

The tomato jungle! Clearly, pvc pipes are a horrible support, lol! I will have to devise something more intelligent next year (I'm thinking stakes).

I thought this was beautiful.

Everything here is from the garden except for the apple, which I put in the bowl to help those tomatoes ripen.

Siamese twin!

My fall seedlings, which have largely been a disappointment so far. Critters have been chewing on them almost as soon as they sprouted. =(  I've already had to pinch off multitudes of caterpillars and spray with Bacillus Thuricide. Then, something ate the lettuce seedlings right down to the soil. So I put them in this cage, thinking it was probably a squirrel, but today something ate even more of them! So whatever it is, it's small enough to fit through the bars. I've wrapped the whole cage in small deer netting, hopefully that'll keep things out. I really wish I could start these indoors, but I need a couple big florescent shop lights to do that. I'll have to start some new seedlings, but I'm afraid it might be too late for that already.

All but one of the butternut squash, and all of the acorn squash I've harvested this summer. Not tons, but it's something. :)

Pumpkins in July

Ok so it's August now........ but my biggest pumpkin began ripening in July! Isn't that a little early? I dunno, but I hope it lasts until October. Here it is!

This is from my volunteer pumpkin that's taking up half the yard. Right now it's slowly being killed off by powdery mildew, and it has two smaller green pumpkins on another vine.

The squash in the old garden is almost completely killed off by powdery mildew. :( Since I'm committed to avoid dousing everything in chemicals, there's not really anything I can do about it. At least there's some small ripening squashes, and we got plenty of zucchini before it died.

Here is the squash section of the new garden. Still looking ok... but it's also being slowly attacked by powdery mildew. The pumpkins and cantaloupe are being hit the hardest. I've tried spraying it with neem oil and milk. So far neither has completely solved the problem, though perhaps they've slowed the spread. If I grow squash again, I'll be sure to buy varieties that are specifically labeled as disease resistant.

Corn is looking great! No problems with it so far, except for a big ugly worm that I killed while it was trying to get into one of the stalks. Most of the plants have two to three ears on them, despite being crowded so close together. Several ears are producing silk, but nothing's ready to eat yet.

The sunflower's bright, happy faces are turning into sad, droopy faces. :( But that's just because they're growing lots of great big seeds! I am going to cover most of the heads with cloth, which will hopefully keep critters from devouring them...

The remains of carrots, beets, and chard, after the deer snacked on them. I pulled up all the onions that were growing in this bed, and I'm drying them out now. Soon they will become onion braids!

Sweet potatoes, marigolds, lima beans, and nasturtiums. I have had very little success with the limas. They were attacked by everything from snails, deer, and bugs ever since they were seeds. Most of the seeds I planted didn't even sprout. I'll probably only get a handful of beans from them, if anything. I don't think this is a great climate for them. The sweet potatoes are looking healthy, except recently some of the leaves have developed rusty brown splotches... not sure what's up with that. At least the marigolds are doing well. Next year remind me not to plant any southern climate crops!

The first ripe tomato. I ate it. It was delicious. Unfortunately, it was just one little cherry tomato. I think my tomato patch got started too late and needs to be in a sunnier spot.

Weevils?

So I think I've figured out what's chewing on my sunflowers and tearing their leaves to shreds. I believe I've got a weevil infestation. I noticed some damage to a ripening flowerhead, so I poked around in it a little, and a tiny little beetle-ish thing crawled out. Ugh. Now to figure out how to get rid of them before they ruin all the seeds...

STILL no ripe tomatoes! But at least there aren't any more hornworms, yet. Deer ate all the swiss chard over the weekend while I was gone camping. Oh well, I don't like swiss chard anyway! Onions might be ready to harvest soon.

Next on the agenda: finish double digging the last two beds, and get my fall crop seeds started. I also need to order some cover crop seeds.

Sunflowers

Sunflowers have appeared! And they are gorgeous! I feel like I'm living in Provence. Maybe next year I'll grow poppies and lavender too, just to complete the picture.

Me and my flowers. I had to stand on a stool to take this pic, as they are easily 6+ feet tall.

That huge plant taking up half the lawn is just one pumpkin plant!

Tomatoes and corn. That's a pumpkin vine trailing down the path, I cut it out today though.

Beautiful green tomatoes.

Velvet Red cherry tomatoes.

From left to right: Kentucky Wonder, Hidatsa Shield, and a mystery Chinese bean we got from a friend. Japanese beetles have attacked the Kentucky Wonder, but they'll probably be alright. Hidatsa Shield is the short one in the middle, it started producing beans first. The Chinese bean is outgrowing the pole, but has not even started flowering yet.

Lettuce Leaf  basil loves being on the deck. It's delicious, with a slight licorice flavor.

I got lazy and forgot to harvest chamomile for about two weeks, and most of the flowers went past their prime. Also, some driving rain knocked the long plants down. So today I harvested what I could and then cut them back to about 6 inches. Hopefully this will re-invigorate growth, if it doesn't kill them.

summer

This is just a little update to prove that I haven't forgotten about updating this blog! I need to take a new batch of garden pictures, but the weather is not so great for that right now. Everything has grown so much since I last posted pics. My sunflowers are about six feet tall now, and one of the flower heads has finally opened! Very pretty!

I came out to the garden yesterday to find several branches of tomatoes that had been stripped of foliage. Upon close examination, I discovered a huge tomato hornworm, gross!!! I grabbed the scissors and killed it along with several smaller ones. There are lots of green tomatoes now, but no ripe ones yet. They'll probably ripen up when I go out of town this weekend. -_-

Corn is doing well, growing bright green and vigorous. However, I think I planted most of it too late. Next year I'll probably plant an early and late variety at the same time, instead of doing successive plantings. 

Lettuce has all bolted. I'll start the fall planting in the beginning of August. I ordered some fall seeds, and those arrived today, including my two favorite varieties from the mixed pack I got in the spring, Forellenschuss and Amish Deer Tongue.

I dug up and ate some baby dragon carrots and beets yesterday. Yum! Too bad they weren't very big. They needed to have been planted earlier.

I've discovered that the "pumpkin" seeds that I saved from last years pumpkins were definitely cross pollinated with zucchini. They are growing some wierd mutated "pumchinis". They are also not very resistant to powdery mildew, and are being attacked very badly by it. My massive "pumpkin" volunteer is also beginning to die from powdery mildew. The mildew has also attacked the young melon plants. Not much I can really do about it without dousing everything in chemicals, which I won't do. Next year I'll grow everything from disease resistant seed.

"Survival Gardening" rant

Recently, my internet wanderings directed me to infowars.com, where I noticed a prominent add on the side of the page, stating "New Survival Seed Bank Lets You Plant a Full Acre Crisis Garden!" Take a look at the page here. Being a budding gardener, I of course had to check it out. As I was reading the page, I became more and more amazed. I would almost think the whole thing a big joke, if they weren't really charging you for it. They are doing their best to prey on the fears of the paranoid. Anyone who actually buys their "seed bank" probably wouldn't even know the first thing about gardening. And they think they're just going to throw some seeds in the ground in the event of an emergency and suddenly have enough produce to sustain themselves?

Let's say some big national food crisis happened, even during a prime planting time like mid-spring. The grocery store shelves empty out within days. So you pull your seed bank out of the ground where you buried it (the add states: "Indestructible Survival Seed Bank Can Be Buried To Avoid Confiscation."), and toss those seeds in the acre of ground that you somehow have access to in this catasrophe. You probably don't have any compost prepared and don't have access to a rototiller. Maybe you have a pitchfork. You think you're going to cultivate that entire acre with your pitchfork? During a national crisis? Then, even if you get your seeds in the ground, AND they grow sucessfully with no disease/insects/critters destroying them first, it'll be another 2-4 months before you get any produce out of it! Since the grocery stores are no longer functioning, what are you going to eat in the meantime? What if this food crisis happens in mid-winter?

Complete self sustainability is NOT something that can be learned within a few days during an emergency. Most of us were brought up with no real survival skills. We can't function without our cars and electricity. We can't feed ourselves without grocery stores and restaurants. How many people can just go out into the wilderness, and using a few hand tools, build their own house and cultivate a sustainable farm? I'd guess not too many. Learning to survive with minimal reliance on the rest of the world would take most of us years of learning and baby steps.

What really got me going was this paragraph:

"So here's the deal: I'm trying to get the word out before the food crisis becomes too apparent to the general public and there is a run on these seed banks. I've decided to sell the Survival Seed Bank at a discounted price to our customers who use this website to order. For the general public, the price will be a fat $297.00 - no discounts... even to FEMA or military personnel. Take it or leave it. But for existing Solutions From Science customers, as long as you buy online from this site, I will send you everything for just...


$149 Until We Run Out!"

Even taking into consideration their special "indestructable" packaging (and who knows if seeds packaged in such a way can really remain viable for 20 years, as they claim?), I thought that price was a little steep. So I did some research to confirm my suspicions. I thought most of the seeds they were offering looked very familiar, because of the amount of time I've spent browsing the Seed Savers Exchange catalogue. So I looked them up, one by one, on the Seed Savers website. Nearly all the seed varieties they offer are straight from Seed Savers Exchange, even the pictures and some of the descriptions are identical.
I compared the prices for seeds from Seed Savers versus this Seed Bank. I won't bore you with all the details. Here were my totals, for nearly the same plant varieties:

Seed Savers Exchange: 28,037 seeds for $131.60 (not including shipping)

Emergency Seed Bank: 10,055 seeds for $149 "until we run out", then it will be $297. (not including shipping)

The verdict is pretty clear from these numbers. And yet, some people must be duped into to be buying these "seed banks", or else they wouldn't still have their add online.


It's really just makes me laugh.

Zucchini

I am munching on a piece of fresh picked, raw baby zucchini as I type! Delicious! I've been taking somewhat of a break in the garden to work on making some new books for a craft fair, but as of tomorrow I'll be back in the garden full steam. Besides a little weeding and pest management, there hasn't been a lot to do in the garden lately anyhow. I have two beds that still need to be double dug, but there's no rush to plant anything in them. With the exception of a new seedbed, I have not watered at all. Rainfall has been adequate, and the soil holds moisture very well.

I love this picture! I think pumpkin plants are so beautiful and elegant when they're young and healthy. Just look at those perfect spirals!

Dinner! I'm not exactly a great cook, but I try. This is farmer's market peas (why didn't I plant my own?!), delicious white shittake mushrooms, squash blossoms, and parsley, oregano, and chives from the garden. The salad is farmer's market peas and carrots with lettuce and nasturtiums from the garden. Nasturtium flowers are really tasty!

Basil seedlings have found their final homes. They seem to be very happy on the deck, where it's hot and there's lots of sunlight, plus light reflected off the white wall of the house. I also planted the other three seedlings in the garden.

Overexposed pic of daylillies. Well, there was a lot of sunlight!

Sunflower plants, still growing very quickly!

I am very pleased at how quickly and vigorously the tomato plant on the left, a Velvet Red from Seed Savers Exchange, has recovered from its deer attack. It has already outstripped the two plants that weren't attacked by deer. The main stem is gone, but it has four "suckers" that are growing. Although I know you're supposed to trim suckers, I just can't bring myself to do it to this plant. I have trimmed all the suckers from the two undamaged plants, though, and I'm training them up a string.

One of them is producing one whole tomato!! One!! -_-

Lettuce, parsley, and chamomile, growing like crazy. I think we're going to eat the lettuce faster than it can grow, though. It's just so tasty!

Carrots, beets, onions, and some unhappy swiss chard. My broccoli plants used to be in this bed, but this week I harvested whatever I could salvage from them, tore up the plants, and put them in the compost pile. I've reseeded the spot where they were with more beets and carrots.

Full view of the garden as it is currently.