May 26, 2009 First Vegetable Flowers

The first flowers started to appear on my vegetables and it happened almost overnight! We were out there yesterday and there were only a few flowers on the tomatoes, and a little bud on the zucchini. It's pretty encouraging sight to see!

Pepper buds...

Pea flowers...

Cantaloupe flowers...

First tomato... it's a Plum!

Zucchini flower...

And here are three shots walking down the garden to see how the rest is looking:

May 26, 2009 Battle For the Eggplant

After a little research I have identified the bug that's been devastating the Eggplants: Flea Beetles (Here's some more info). So I am taking swift action by first trying an organic solution. I read on several websites that a garlic spray will deter them. I used a modified version of this recipe (I used less water and substituted dish soap).

Garlic & Pepper Spray

Protect your garden plants from cabbageworms, caterpillars, hornworms, aphids, flea beetles and other chewing/sucking insects by routinely using a natural spray that you can make at home. The spray must be applied regularly, especially after a rainfall. Brew up a batch as follows:

6 cloves of garlic
1 Tbsp dried hot pepper
1 minced onion
tsp pure soap (not detergent)
1 gallon hot water

Blend & let sit for 1 - 2 days. Strain & use as spray. Ground cayenne or red hot pepper can also be sprinkled on the leaves of plants (apply when leaves are slightly damp) to repel chewing insects or added to the planting hole with bone meal or fertilizer to keep squirrels, chipmunks, dogs and other mammals away from your gardens. Be sure to reapply after rain.

--From the Capital District Community Garden Website

It's going to rain for the next few days, so I'll make the first application soon... I'll try and document it's effectiveness.

May 22, 2009 Memorial Day Weekend Update

First the good news:

The sunflowers have been planted, and although I've said it before: THAT is the end of the planting in the main plot. All but one are looking good after being in the ground for a few days. They were looking real leggy in the peat pots, but they have now seem to have taken. (The double-row on the right side of the pic below)


The new peppers have had no problems adjusting. The first set of six peppers are noticeably bigger than the second and third plantings. I've never had luck with any pepper but the hot peppers I grew three seasons ago. All the bell peppers I tried in containers were tiny and misshapen.

The tomatoes are all looking good. The one plum tomatoes is not growing as fast as the others, but it's too early to worry about it. I have had to pinch off several suckers on the rest. Here's a good article about tomato upkeep and some discussion on how best to remove suckers: http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/pruning-tomatoes.aspx


This is the largest of the zucchinis. The rest are doing just fine, but this one has two more leaves than the rest.

The peas are growing strong and tall. I'm hoping they start producing before it gets too warm out.




Now for the bad news:
I've lost two cucumber plants, however the six remaining plants all look good. I'm not sure what went wrong with them and haven't had the time to research it. It seems the stems went limp, and they just fell over dead.

Additionally, all four eggplant are looking a little suspect. They seem to have attracted the most attention from what ever bugs, slugs, and caterpillars. They're not down for the count yet, but some of the leaves are looking ravaged and they don't look as strong as some of the other plants in the garden. I've read that they're slow to grow to begin with, but I'm worried that if they get to too stunted this early in the season I'll have problems down the road.

May 16, 2009 Hot Peppers From the Market

I was able to find a good variety of Hot Peppers today at the market as the vendor last week promised. I stayed away from the Habenero and bought some edible peppers: 1 Ancho, 1 Jalapeno, 1 Cayenne , and 1 mystery pepper that didn't have a tag on it and by the time I got home I couldn't remember what variety it was. I guess I'll find out in a couple months. I also filled in all the room I had for tomatoes with two more Plums and a Grape.

So that does it for vegetables in the garden. The last thing I'm putting in will be some Sun Flowers I started from seed last week. They're starting to get big and will try and get them in by mid-week. At the same time I also started from seed 5 Watermelon and 5 Pumpkin seeds. The plan is to put them along a stone wall currently covered with weeds. It's going to be a fairly large project to clean that up which we haven't had the time yet to do. But as soon as the seeds start to get too large for the peat pots I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get it done.

Over the last couple of days all the seeds in the garden I planted out there have started to sprout. The Cucumbers are moving a little slow, but the entire row of Pole Beans have all come up. The first of the Bush Beans have also sprouted. You can see in the picture below the difference between the ones that I started indoors (in the back) verses the ones I planted as seeds (front left).

Peas are still looking good!

The Zucchini have all grown some new leaves. I was a little worried about them when the first (round) leaves were turning yellow. All the true leaves (spade-shaped) that opened look good and no insects have tried to eat them yet.

The other bit of news is that I pulled the first vegetables. Just a few radishes and a couple of the larger heads of lettuce for a salad with dinner tonight. Tuna steaks and a garden salad... yum.

And finally, here's the latest schematic of the garden:

May 9, 2009 Slug Attack

I checked on the garden the other day and noticed that the radish leaves were full of holes. I'm sure that this is only the first of many attacks from the thousands of insects in the fields. While I'm not 100% certain what eat the leaves, I was able to find a problem that has been getting worse with all the wet weather. Slugs. (the pill bugs supposedly are OK, I read that they only eat decaying matter).

After a quick Google search I learned that beer traps seem to be the most effective way of getting rid of them- at least the ones that you don't take care of by hand. So I marched into the local beer distributor and asked for the cheapest, crappiest beer they have. That's right you guessed it: Miller Light.

I set out a few plastic containers full of the "beer" and sunk it into the dirt about an inch. The You Bet Your Garden guy recommended that they stay above the soil an inch or so to keep beneficial insects from falling in, so I did. I also turned over all the boards lining the garden and flicked them all off into a tub of salt. I hope that will keep them under control!

May 9, 2009 More Plants From the Market

Today was the second week of the Grower's Market in West Chester. We got there a little later in the day this time so the selection was a little weak. But I was able to find some of the items I was looking for. I left with:

• 4 Cantaloupes
• 2 Purple Peppers
• 1 Sweet Banana Pepper
• 1 Luigi Pepper (They look like Frying Peppers, but have no heat)
• 1 Lemon Boy Tomato (large all yellow)
• 1 Mr Stripey Tomato (also large yellow but with stripes)
• 1 Super Sweet Cherry Tomato
• 3 Eggplants (American this time)
• 1 Rosemary Plant
  
• 1 Marjoram plant
• 1 Sage Plant
  

All I'm missing now are 2 more Plum Tomatoes, 1 Cherry Tomato, and a few more Pepper plants. I was especially disappointed that no vendor had any hot peppers today. I was promised by one of the farmers that next week there will be six varieties of hot peppers to choose from- and that's just one stand! I plan on getting a Jalapeno, a Hungarian Wax as they are spicy but still edible. I'm toying with planting a Habanero, but I'm not sure that I'll ever eat a single one! I like to keep my peppers at 100,000 or less... Here's a chart. I'm open to suggestions, but I guess I'll see what else they have there next week.




I think I'm also now set up with the herbs I want to grow this year. I have now 2 basil plants, 1 Thyme, 1 Oregano, 1 Cilantro, 1 Tarragon, 1 Rosemary, 1 Sage, and 1 Marjoram. I have everything but the Basil and Rosemary in two long planters. It's the same set up as the previous two years and it's worked well. The closer they are to the kitchen the better!

All the plants are now in, and my hands are sore from all the additional yard work. Place looks great though! (Thanks Stacey for mowing the path!)

I also had decide to change out the tomato cages for large wooden stakes. The cages I had were only three feet tall and I'm hoping the tomatoes get a little larger than that. It was the best I could do when I was growing them in pots on the roof of my old apartment, but not now. So I pounded in some stakes and reused the tomato cage for the bush beans. I took the larger, more sturdy three-sided tomato cage and used that for the cantaloupes.

Here are the Loupes and Eggplant:

And the Peas are climbing!

May 5, 2009 A New Plan After the Market

It's been raining in West Chester off and on now since Saturday and won't stop for another three days. After work on Saturday I put in all the plants we got at the Grower's Market as well as support for the beans. It was a lot of work, but it was fun. I ended up putting in two 7 foot poles and strung chicken wire between them. It wasn't exactly Swiss engineered but it's much sturdier than I thought! A MUCH better job than what I did with the peas. After all the plants were in I realized that the garden plan I came up with in March needed to be revised. So here's the current plan (green are in the ground, yellow is planned, and red went in but never came up):

I was able to get out into the garden after work again today to put in the last of the seeds I started. I also finally snapped some pictures of all the work on Saturday. So here they are:

Four tomatoes - 2 Plums, 2 heirlooms

Six peppers: 4 Red, 1 Orange, and 1 Green

The peas are starting to climb the support.

This is a Japanese Eggplant. The guy at the stand that sells the Asian vegetables convinced me to get one. It sounded interesting enough so I decided to make room for it along with three regular eggplants in the plan.

Here's the first pole beans that desperately needed to get into the ground. They sprouted super quick and were outgrowing the little peat pots in a matter of days. I started 30 more after we bought some more dirt and had them in peat pots for a couple of days, but I decided to plant them before they sprouted just to get them in the ground.

The original plan had room for only two, but they were sold in a four pack at the market. You can never have too many zucchini right?

Should be able to eat some of this soon... yum.

It's looking a more like a garden and less like a dirt patch!

Here's the reverse angle!

May 2, 2009 Opening Day at the Market

I was able to get the market for a few minutes today. Enough to snap a couple of pictures, buy a few plants, and run back to my car. Since I got back from work Stacey and I spent the rest of the day mowing, planting, re-potting, tilling, and weeding. Busy day! I ran out of light to get to any pictures of the results, but if there's a break in the rain then I'll post what we put in today...

For now though, here are a couple of pictures from the Grower's Market today:

May 1, 2009 May Rains

It's been raining for two days and more is on the way. But in a break in the rain today after work I went down to check everything out. So here's what everything looks like today:

The radishes (on the right) have grown quite a lot. I may dig one up this weekend to see how they're looking! On the left are what may or may not be carrots. I'm going to let it go for a while longer and see what happens. I'm now fairly sure that most of them are the weeds that have been popping up everywhere, but at least I'll find out what they are!

Here are the peas. I still need to find something that they climb up that doesn't have such wide spaces between. In the upper right is the spearmint that came up by itself. I may have to get rid of it to make way for the beans that will be going in soon.

The lettuce looks like it has appreciated all the rain.

And here's a close up of one of the grape vines. What I thought were flowers were actually the leaves budding out. But these look a lot like grapes to me...

In addition to all that, a few days ago I started a dozen pole beans, 4 bush beans, and 6 cucumbers from seeds and they've all germinated. Also, tomorrow the Grower's Market opens in West Chester and I'm going to try and sneak down for a few minutes and see what's available. I'm anxious to get the summer vegetables started and in the ground! I have an obligation tomorrow during the market hours, but next week I'll have lots of time to browse and go crazy by filling up my trunk with seedlings... I can't wait!