Bye-Bye Squash

It happened again this year.  Both squash plants, huge and producing fruit prolifically, just completely wilted and deflated in a few days.

Its the squash vine borer.  I cut open a stem and immediately found four fat larvae.   Will have to get into organic pesticides next year.

Late June:Growing like crazy

Cherry tomatoes proliferating.

The larger 6 by 3 bed.

The smaller 2 by 4 runneth over, thanks to the squash

and pole beans.   You'll see some basil in there too.

There are more of these around our property

borders than we've ever seen.  We won't

know what to do with all the rasberries.

We got this mess cleaned up this weekend.

Patio Trellis

Leslie has been talking about upgrading the side patio
into a true outdoor sanctuary.    The first thing she wants
is more privacy from the neighbors, and we both agree a
wall of climbing roses would be a fantastic solution.

Leslie jumped out of the gate and bought three large
climbing rose bushes at a local nursery.  These things
are already six feet tall.

Now the eternal dynamic in our relationship is swinging
into play:  she wants them up on something today.
She will always go for the quick and cheap route, with
the emphasis on quick.   I'd rather spent more time and
find the right design, but I'm not in control.

That means for me to be invested and happy, I have to
find a way to provide quick and quality.

This has lead to some furious research on trellises.


After a lot of this thinking about our needs (in the middle of
the night), I sat down with Maya, the 3D animation software we use
at Bluesky, and came up with this:

The legs will be sunk three feet into the ground and
cemented in.  The trellis will stand eight feet tall.

From this 3D blueprint, I derived a board and cut list which
gave me the confidence to walk into our local lumber yard
and order some #3 cedar as if I actually knew something
about what I was doing.

I'm doing the best I can to move this project along before
too much more spring goes by, which means stealing an
hour here and there before and after work, or during lunch.

The first batch of cedar for the first (prototype) of three
trellises will be delivered tomorrow, and I'll try to have the
boards stained and sealed this weekend.

Everything up, almost.

Its been a week since seeding and we're seeing almost all pots
showing growth.    Pots with multiple seedlings have already
had the weaker ones clipped ( stiff upper lip, now).   The Pablo
lettuce--the nifty looking ornamental heirloom with purple coloring,
is showing tiny true leaves after six days.   Also, the tiny cotlydons
themselves show the purple pigmentation right from start.  That
was fun to discover, as in my limited experience all seedlings look
pretty much the same during their initial emergence.

Wondering about the reasons things sprouted sooner than the
germination times list on the packets.   For example, Kale is
stated to be 8-12 days to germinate versus the 3 days here.

Only the Romaine is holding to its printed schedule.  After
seven days, seeing a tiny speck of green in one of the three pots.

Starting the 2011 growing season

While I have a better idea this year of which plants to start early,  my
over-all philosophy is still one of engaging in a grand hopeful experiment.

So here's the first report for the new year.

Set up my indoor seed starting apparatus--trays, jiffy pots and Sun
Blaze T5 lamp on Sunday, February 13th.  On Weds the 16th I have
the first signs of germination!   I planted a bunch of cold weather
species: Kale, Broccoli, Broccoli Rabe, Heirloom Lettuce, Romain
Lettuce.  Will update with pictures soon.   I hope to be transplanting
these outsideto a cold frame in a few weeks.    My goal is to have a
successful harvest of this crop by April.  

Who knows?  We'll see what happens.

Early August

Well, the story of my two little raised beds has had more plot
twists than an Agatha Christie thriller.   We've lost some of the
largest and seemingly most robust looking crops, some had been
given up on only to suddenly start producing, and we've enjoyed
sampling some of the summer's output over the last month.

I'll try to sketch out the scorecard.

Broccoli Rabe-  F

Cos Lettuce

Carrots

Fennel

Basil

Parsley

Rosemary

Tomatoes

Pumpkins

Squash

Back from vacation

We've been away for five days and its like we have a whole new
garden.  You sort of expent to come back to an untended garden
and find it half dead, especially with this heat, but it looks
like those stingy tomato plants have yielded as many as 10 new fruits,
and the pumpkin which seemed unable to produce female flowers
that didn't shrivel up, now has two strong females ready to
be pollinated.  It gets you thinking a bit superstitiously, as if the
plants were playing a trick on the gardener all those days as he
hovered over them looking for any sign of production.

So to ponder the conditions that finally caused things to jump to life.
Temps were high 80s/low 90s and sunny for the entire week.  Basil
and tomatoes love this but the flip side is obviously the plants cant go
too long in those conditions without water, as attested to by large
swatches grass starting to go dormant.   Seeing the forecast for this
heat wave the day before heading out, I made it a priority to hook
up the sprinklers to a timer so the garden could get sprayed twice a
day.  I also had some drip irrigation coming from the rain barrel, but
with the leak in the barrel it looked as if that supply would run out in
a day or less.  I also threw some mulch down to help retain what
moisture was in the soil, and the plants must have gotten a healthy
enough sip each day.  Perhaps I was over-watering before and it was
delaying fruit set.

Also, its likely the psychology of the novice gardener was a strong
factor, in not allowing for the fact that nature takes its own time.
Ok, so some plants wait for July to get busy--there's still plenty of
summer left.