Henbogle

Cukes and pumpkins

I planted the cucurbits in the area that formerly comprised the quackgrass-infested raised beds.  Before planting, I fertilized with Garden Tone 3-4-4 and laid IRT mulch.  After planting, I covered each bed with floating row cover to add warmth and prevent squash bugs and cucumber beetles.  We will be adding mulch to the edges of the raised beds and path to prevent erosion.

summer squash

Planted from seeds started May 15:

• Super Zagross Middle Eastern Cucumber
• Marketmore 76 Cucumber
• Sweet Success Cucumber
• Sarah’s Choice Melon (Cantaloupe)
• Savor Melon (Charentais)
• Winter Luxury Pumpkin
• Small Sugar Pumpkin
• Costa Romanesca Zucchini
• Sunburst Patty Pan Squash

I’ll plant a couple more melons and some cukes in the hoophouse Monday, I hope.

While I planted, Dan continued his quackgrass removal quest in the blueberry hedge on the other side of the garden fence.  In the photo on the right you can see the blue sled loaded with weeds.  Once that is done it will get a heavy layer of newspaper and/or cardboard and dried grass clippings to prevent weeds.

brassicas

Cimi di Rapa

What’s going on under the other row covers?The brassicas are HUGE.  They were transplanted on April 22, sowed March 29.  I’ve been cutting kale already, but I’m not seeing any heading up of the broccoli or cauliflower.  The Cimi di Rapa and purple bok choi I direct seeded in late April are looking a bit insipid, though — I think it has been just too hot for them, sigh.  This might be an instance where the IRT mulch was not helpful.  If I’d planted them earlier, perhaps, but who knew it would be July weather in May?  I hope the broccoli starts heading up soon, I’m hungry for some tasty broccoli and am a little worried the weirdly hot May we’ve had will cause them to bolt or be unpalatable.

tomatoes & peppers

The recently transplanted tomatoes and peppers look great.  They have settled into their new digs just fine, and appear to have suffered very little setback in growth.  I gave them a nice drink yesterday and then covered them back up with the row cover.  I don’t see any buds yet, but am considering springing for a patio tomato from a local greenhouse in hopes of some early tomatoes to go with my abundance of lettuce. I also have high hopes for home canned tomato sauce, salsa, and maybe even some home canned enchilada sauce if I can find a recipe.

With the cucurbits in, most of the garden is now planted.  what remains are the beans, so maybe those will go in today, too, both bush and pole beans.  I must have lots of green beans for delicious fresh eating and of course, dilly beans!  Oh, and more red onions, too, once I pull the remaining leeks.  Then it will just be succession planting and my new cutting flower bed to get planted.  I hope the IRT mulch will have greatly reduced the amount of weeding but no doubt there will be some of that, too.  What else am I forgetting?  No doubt something :-)

Oh yeah, herbs and the kale bed for the hens.

Inspired in part by Daphne of Daphne’s Dandelions, this year I decided I wanted to see if my gardening habit came even remotely close to paying for itself by comparing expenses to the value of what I produced based on market prices.  I have always looked upon gardening as more of a hobby obsession with edible results.  I chose varieties based on color (the panoply of purple vegetables) or in the spirit of trying lots of new varieties, or foods I haven’t eaten, let alone grown, before.  Even though I had decided I would track expenses, I still ordered too many seeds, and new varieties to try even though I had some of a different variety.  I decided I just couldn’t focus on reducing costs versus the pleasure I find in trying new things.  After all, if my aim was really to save money, I wouldn’t garden at all, but would just grocery shop at Wal-Mart,  ick.

I also haven’t decided what to do about the big-ticket items, such as the hoophouse and my mini-tiller.  The mini tiller has applications beyond the vegetable garden, how to parse out the expense of that?  Suggestions, anyone?

Given my indecision, here are my expenses to date:

Yikes, $258.16!  Of course, the seeds do include quite a few packets of flowers.  Ahem. I’m sure that added significantly.  My penchant for trying new varieties is expensive, and who can resist the catalog copy, with words like succulent, slow-bolting, sweet, long-season, never-bitter….  Still, I did actually go a little overboard this year, I think because I was so crazed between work and my Master Gardening class that I just duplicated some items at Fedco and Pine Tree Seeds.  At least they are things that are viable for a number of years!

Determining my crop values is a bit trickier.  The last time I was at the farmer’s market I checked the prices of things I am currently harvesting:  lettuce, spinach, leeks, and scallions.  I decided to use Farmer’s Market prices rather than grocery store as they are more comparable to what I grow in quality –indeed, that is why I grow them.

WOW!  $162.62!  Holy cats, it is much higher than I would have expected.  On the one hand, I can’t imagine paying $9/lb for lettuce right now, BUT I can completely support buying locally grown-harvested-processed lettuce.  Not only does it TASTE way better, it is so much fresher it can only be more nutritious, and buying it at the Farmer’s market keeps the dollars I spend in the local economy.

What would I do if I were not growing my own?  Would I just choose not to eat lettuce, and stay true to the eat in season mantra?  I doubt it, given my efforts to reduce calories/increase raw vegetables in our diet, I would probably purchase organic lettuce in the supermarket, switching to Farmer’s Market lettuce as it becomes more available.This small exercise really drives home the point about the challenges in our food system, though.  Eating fresh foods is far more complicated and expensive than pre-packaged food.

I won’t go into the other, non monetary benefits of gardening, as they are probably incalculable, but they are real:  the immense satisfaction of growing your own, the taste, reducing your carbon footprint, the opportunities to greatly broaden your food horizons by trying new kinds and varieties of vegetables.

I’ll be updating this post, making it a page accessible through a link under “Gardening Resource Pages,” and plan to update it weekly throughout the season.  Currently things stand at:

Expenses: $258.16.    Crop Value: $161.62    TOTAL $-96.54

This just in from my Master Gardening professsor:

Reprinted from UMass Veg Notes:

Late Blight (Phytophthora infestans) Confirmed in LA, MD, and Northwestern PA

Isolated outbreaks of late blight have been confirmed in Louisiana, Maryland, and Northwestern Pennsylvania.  The original source of inoculum has not yet been identified.  Given the season last year, chances are good that P. infestans inoculum may have overwintered in infected potato tubers.  The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has been screening tomato transplants destined for the retail and wholesale markets and so far those samples have been negative. Several other suspect samples have been submitted to their Plant Disease Clinic and those have also been negative.  We have had no confirmed cases of late blight in MA this year.  The largely dry weather pattern over much of the state is not conducive to the spread of the organism that causes this disease, but it is critical to scout not only this year’s tomato and potato crops but also last year’s potato fields where infected tubers may have survived the winter and are sprouting infected volunteer plants.  Early identification and eradication of inoculum sources will help to reduce the likelihood of an outbreak later in the season if the weather favors disease development (rainy, cool, cloudy) for an extended period of time.

—-

I have not heard of any confirmed cases of late blight in Maine this year, but this is a good warning for us all to keep our eyes open.

If you think you may have late blight in your crops or on volunteer potato plants in old fields, please contact your county UMaine Cooperative Extension office (622-7546 or 1-800-287-1481 (toll-free, in-state) for Kennebec) or the UMaine Plant Diagnostic Lab at (207) 581-3880 or 1-800-287-0279 (in Maine).

Please, not this year!

We had a glorious weekend here at Henbogle, with clear skies and a gentle breeze.  I’m sure it was greatly appreciated by the seniors who graduated this weekend from the college where I work; last year’s commencement day marked the beginning of the rainiest June on record, ugh.  Let us hope that this weekend’s weather again is the beginning of a weather trend.

While Dan banished the quackgrass, I transplanted 20 tomato and 15 pepper plants into the IRT mulch, and then covered them with floating row cover as I did the brassica bed.  Prior to putting down the IRT mulch, I amended the bed with cottonseed meal 6-2-1 slow release organic fertilizer, and  laid a drip hose.  When transplanting, I watered the plants in well with Neptune’s Harvest liquid fish 2-4-1 fertilizer to give the roots a bit of phosphorous and offset transplant shock  — my soil test shows I have plenty of calcium, potassium, phosphorus, organic matter, and a medium amount of magnesium.  Maybe I should have added some epsom salts?  Well, if I see signs of magnesium deficiency I can give the plants a foliar spray of Epsom salts, 1T per gallon of water.

After transplanting the tomatoes and peppers, I peeked under the row covers to check on the brassicas.  Holy cats are the plants huge!  They are growing like crazy, and the catnip in there is going to bust out of the row cover if I don’t watch out.  As soon as the buds form I will harvest that and give the room to the broccoli plants on either side of it.  I can’t wait to taste some tasty home-grown broccoli in a few weeks!  I watered the plants today, and realized a second benefit to the slug-prevention plastic cup plant collar — the collar makes it much easier to water the plants under the mulch, acting as a funnel directing the water to the plant within.

Now, the bad news.  Carrots.  Why are carrots so hard for me ARGHHHHH!  I’ve had maybe 4 carrots germinate of the carrots I sowed earlier this spring.  So much for interplanting with radishes.  Well, I’m done with carrots.  They are dead to me now, dead!  Instead, I will plant bush beans and make lots of dilly beans, and buy carrots at the farmer’s market.

The lettuce in the main garden is coming along, I need to transplant a few plants to correct the spacing and get some weeding done, but it looks good.  Ditto the Swiss chard and beets in the next bed.  The garlic is looking great, I am really curious about it.  I have about 40 plants, maybe more.  Some is not growing quite as vigorously, not doubt thanks to being snacked upon by hungry hens.  I need to hit the garlic with a side dressing of fertilizer.  If it tastes half as good as it looks I will be thrilled, as it is a lot easier to grow than I expected.

Finally, the former site of the raised beds is ready for IRT mulch and then I have squash, cukes and melons to transplant into this space.  I hope to get this done this week.

My very own action hero the Amazing Wonder Dan** has performed yet another wonder:  The old raised beds are gone, and with them the quackgrass and creeping charlie.

He dug out all the grass and weeds, turned over the soil and removed as many quackgrass rhizomes as he could find, and hauled all the weeds out to compost in the woods. (We didn’t want to risk adding it to our not always hot compost pile.)

This was a huge job, the kind I would rather avoid at all costs, but he insists he likes doing it.

This area looked like this a few weeks ago.

Now all we have to do is make the paths, fertilize, cover with IRT mulch, plant the melons, squash and cukes, and get the bird bath in place.   Hooray!

**Amazing Wonder Dan not sold in stores

I’ve had a question about the row covers and plastic cups in the brassica bed, so thought I’d explain it more clearly in a quick post.  I cut the bottom of a plastic cup and tuck it over the seedling.  This is a slug prevention strategy.  Slugs love my garden, and call all their friends and relatives when new seedlings go out.  The cup adds a barrier the slug has to ooze over before reaching my tender seedling.  I put the cup in the ground with the smooth rolled rim in the soil, leaving the jagged cut edge for the slug to traverse before reaching the seedling.  It may be overkill but I also use a sprinkling of diatomaceous earth and some non-toxic slug bait.  The tops of milk jugs also work to protect seedlings from slugs, and act as tiny little hot houses in addition.

The row covers are held on with 3/4″ pvc pipe slipped over rebar lengths inserted into the soil.  In theory, floating row cover can just lay atop the seedlings as they grow — except for tomatoes and peppers which don’t like it.  What I discovered to my great dismay last year was this enables the slugs to go to town eating the developing  florets of the broccoli and cauliflower.  As I already had the pvc and rebar for small hoop houses and the snowdome for the hen’s winter range, I decided to use it to make larger hoops for the row cover to keep the slugs from traveling across the row cover to the broccoli.  I primarily use the row cover to prevent the evil cabbage moth and cabbage looper from laying eggs in my cole crops — it is highly effective at that.  You can see images of how I set up the hoops here.  I also feel that the hoops look tidier than the fabric just laying on the plants.  I’d rather see gorgeous plants, but don’t want to have to use pesticides.