Late Summer Garden

Late summer and the vegetable garden is starting to wind down.  The wax beans are harvested, canned and the plants pulled up and fed to the horses.  The radishes are gone, as is the lettuce. The field pumpkins have reached full maturity and are waiting to be harvested.  The miniature pumpkins aren’t far behind.This year I only raised four tomato plants, thank goodness.  They are pumping out more fruit than I can eat.  Many are going in the freezer to make soup over the winter.  Fresh tomato salads with chunks of feta cheese, oregano, and basil use up many tomatoes and are so delicious.  Most of the gladiolus corms I planted this spring grew to splendid stalks of flowers that I’ve been enjoying in the garden and cut in the house.

The sunflowers are racing the frost to put out all their blooms.  It takes them so long to grow eight feet tall that they may lose some of their buds to the cold days quickly approaching.  We squeaked past the full moon without a frost and should make it frost-free to the end of the month.  Yesterday a cold front moved in and last night we got into the mid-40sF.  Fall is in the air!

I just harvested most of the indian corn.  The blue jays and crows were starting to make a dent in the crop.  There are just a few ears remaining to ripen in the patch.  I left up all the corn stalks to try and hide the slow maturers from the hungry birds.

The carrots are almost ready to pull and the sweet peppers have done well even though they were frosted in early June and got a big set-back.  The swiss chard produced a bounteous crop this year and still is pushing out leaves as fast as it can.  Luckily chickens and horses LOVE swiss chard because I’ve certainly had my fill for several months into the future!

The zinnia, glads and bachelor buttons add so much lovely color. They also attract butterflies, moths, and even hummingbirds that may visit vegetable flowers while they are in the garden.  So sad to think that in a month it will all be over and I’ll be putting the garden to bed for the winter.

Bean Season

Here are the last of the fresh beans for this year.  We had them for dinner tonight.  Summer is coming to an end when bean season is finished.  I love wax string beans, their yellow goodness is mellow and buttery.  It is hard to find organic canned wax beans in the grocery store so every year I grow and can as many as possible to enjoy over the winter months.

Last year was a good bean year, I still have five pints left over.  In the past month I added twenty-two more pints.  I feel like a squirrel, storing food away for winter.  The little rodent must feel the same sort of contentment as I do looking at a full larder.  It will be a long winter, but the summery goodness of wax beans can be enjoyed on the most icy night in February.  When I eat them I remember the hours I spent in the garden planting, weeding and picking through heat and biting insects and threatening thunder storms.  A little bit of summer on my fork.

Gardens and Flowers in July

This has been a challenging year for plants on the farm.  We endured a month-long drought with barely a drop of rain.  Many days were hot with temperatures up into the 90sF.  When that weather finally broke, it was to violent thunderstorms and heavy rain.  We are now about 3 weeks post-drought and the plants are recovering. I had to stake and tie the sweet william stems after several storms beat them down.

During the drought I spent hours watering gardens and perennials to try and save some plants.  I gave up on the lawn.  Many areas dried up until the grass crunched under foot.  Those spots are beginning to green again.  The garden plants were growing very slowly even with all my watering.  It is amazing how quickly the gardens took off once the rains returned.

The hay crop will be poor due to no water when the best forage grass was trying to grow.  The timothy and brome grasses are stunted, hibernating or dead.  The clover fared better, but excess clover in the hay is not ideal.  Now the rain keeps coming so that hay can’t be cut.  Looks like hay will be expensive and in short supply this fall.

The rains came in time to save the day lilies and we are enjoying a beautiful display.  Other perennials such as phlox and mallow have taken off and are blooming well after wilting for weeks.  It seems that when there is a drought and the upper soil layers become dry, the watering I do for particular plants is better than nothing, but not enough.  The water is wicked away by the surrounding dry soil.  It would take so much water to make up the deficit that our well would be drained. We are lucky the well is 300 ft deep and doesn’t run dry.

I was particularly concerned with the welfare of the new perennials established last year and this spring, the purple bee balm, blazing star, coneflower and lavender.  They have all pulled through.I have not given up on growing lupine. It is a tricky plant to start. For several years I’ve been trying and have 3 established plants.  I sowed over 60 seeds this year and currently have 30 baby plants. They are waiting to be reset in larger pots.

Lupine likes sun, but also requires moisture. It does well in bright locations with deep, rich, drained soil and tolerates some shade, especially during the hottest part of the day. I’m hoping to establish a colony of lupine that will spread. If I can just get the little plants to live. Baby lupine are apparently delicious for birds and small mammals who like to snack at my nursery. I keep the babies on top of the cat’s outdoor run to discourage attacks. The vegetable garden also lagged during the drought, even with regular watering.  The corn did well and was hip high on the 4th of July.  It’s starting to tassel now.  The pumpkins were slow to start.  Now they are off and running! I planted field, pie and mini pumpkin varieties.  The drought seems to have affected the squash bugs and cucumber beetles. Their numbers are much lower than usual this year.Sunflowers volunteered and I allowed them to stay in the middle of the pumpkin patch. They are just starting to flower. I also planted sunflowers along the garden fence. These were badly affect by the dry conditions. Some have sprouted and are growing, but the volunteers are stealing the show.The rains set the wax beans growing into a veritable jungle. They have over-run their area and are pushing on the tomatoes. Soon I will start picking and canning beans. Bean season passes quickly, then the plants will be removed, opening space for tomatoes and pumpkins. The purple bean flowers are so pretty.This year I grew only 4 tomato plants. There are 3 of an early variety and one later Brandywine, a heritage beefsteak type. This is the second year for tomato cages. I’m very happy with the way they support the plants, protecting the fruit from maurading rodents. Sadly, just a couple days after I set out the tomatoes and peppers in early June, we were hit by an abnormally late frost. Many of the leaves on the plants were killed, though the stems remained. I left the plants to recover and they have, but the crop will be late and small. Peppers like cool, moist, and partial shade.  I put them near the south garden fence so there will be shade during the hot part of the day. I plant flowers like nasturtiums and zinnia in the garden for color and to attract pollinators. There are some nasturtiums around the peppers. Four bachelor buttons volunteered from last year’s crop.  I transplanted them to a corner near the radishes.  I also put in 25 gladiolus corms, some along the garden fence, some in my annual gardens.  I’m looking forward with anticipation to their lovely spikes of blooms.  This year I tried growing a long, mild cylinder radish with mixed results.  The nematodes have attacked the roots so that many are eaten before I can enjoy them.  A few have reached usable size and they are quite good.  I also planted head lettuce very thickly.  I’ve been harvesting the young plants as leaf lettuce, thinning to leave a few to form heads. My Mantis tiller went in the shop for repairs. When I got it back last week, I gave the garden a good tilling for weeds. It’s time to till again. All the rain is really encouraging the weeds. I’ve hand weeded around most of the plants and use the Mantis between the rows. The Rainbow chard and carrots are growing exuberantly, finally. For a while during the drought I was afraid they would die. A catnip plant grows at the end of the carrot row. Several catnips volunteered. I’ve been allowing them to mature then pulling them to collect lots of stems for drying. The flower garden by the house is graced with a lovely pot of red begonias that keeps exploding with color. These plants do not seem to appeal to slugs and snails. The pests are busy devouring many of my prettiest annual flowers just as quickly as they open.The baby fig tree has gone outside for the summer. It has 6 figs ripening. I wish they would get on with it, can hardly wait to eat fresh figs! The plant needs to be repotted, but I hesitate to disturb it until the fruit has matured.So, I’m happy to say we have survived the drought and are flourishing at the moment. The driest month of summer, August, has yet to arrive. I’m hoping we do not have to suffer another long spell without rain. Some of my plants may not make it through a second bout.

In the July Garden

It’s July, with lots of heat, humidity and showers, so the garden’s growing fast.  The wax beans have taken over their area and are full of blooms.  In about a week I should start harvesting beans to can for winter.  The corn did better than knee-high, it was belly button high for the Fourth of July!  The stalks are beginning to tassel.

The field pumpkins, pie and mini pumpkins are all enjoying the long, warm days.  They are rapidly spreading to fill any empty space in the garden.  I’ve seen a  few squash bugs and cucumber beetles, not as bad as some years.  Could be the plentiful rain does not agree with them.

I just finished the first thinning of the carrots, much to the rabbits’ delight.  The carrots and rainbow chard are coming along nicely.  Soon I will enjoy the first chard harvest.  Excessive rain when the chard was sprouting caused it to germinate spottily.  I will seed the empty space in the row with carrots.  They still have plenty of time to mature before fall.

The strange tendril peas are very happy growing up along the garden fence.  They are covered in blooms and will soon make the most delicious fresh peas for eating right in the garden.  The peas rarely make it up to the house to be cooked.  They are too yummy raw.

Purple peppers are starting to grow well now after a slow start.  Two were chewed off by something.  Both stems continued to live and are putting on leaves again.  Hoping to get at least one pepper each from those two damaged plants.  As you can see, I still have plenty of weeding to do!

This year the tomato patch is nice and orderly, not a jungle at all.  The plants climb up inside their cages, supported off the ground.  They already are producing lots of fruit.  I can hardly wait for my first taste of garden ripe tomato.

Now, if only the sunny weather with adequate rain continues.  And no hail storms wander our way as they did up in northern Maine a few days ago.  Quarter-sized hail hammered the area just below Moosehead Lake.  That kind of hail is devastating to gardens (and everything else in its path!)

Return to the Garden

It’s been a couple weeks. let’s check in at the vegetable garden.  I have been busily weeding, training vines, picking bugs, thinning rows and hoeing up the dirt around the bases of plants.  The weather has been quite warm with many days in the mid-eighties to nineties F.  Scattered thunder showers have provided adequate water.  Everything in the garden is growing with abandon.

Miniature pumpkin vines in the foreground and field pumpkins in the back.  Little fruit are already setting.

This humid, hot weather is corn’s favorite growing condition.  If you watch carefully, you can see the indian corn get taller!

A sunflower, winter acorn squash, red sweet peppers, beets and a row of carrots along the fence.  I have harvested loads of beet greens, eaten much and given more away to friends and relatives.  I even made some pickled beets!

The peppers are very happy this year.  Last year they mostly failed.  This time I planted them closer together, about 8″ apart.  They are in the shade of the corn for much of the morning and have the beets nearby for humidity.  Peppers like moisture and partial shade.  Several plants have good-sized fruit.  I may eat one now and not wait for it to turn red!

The bush wax beans are in full bloom.  I expect to find beans waiting to be picked any day.

The first tomato, right on schedule.  Think I’ll pick it for my salad today, before some slug or mouse can chew a hole in it.

Lettuce, anyone?  This is head lettuce.  I let it grow close together and thin as I need lettuce until just a few large plants are left to make heads.

Bachelor buttons, marigolds and zinnias to brighten the garden and provide cut flowers.  The Japanese beetles were devouring the zinnias.  Finally I dusted them with insecticide and the plants have started to bloom.  No bugs bother the marigolds, they have natural insecticides to keep pests away.

Garden Tour

Today’s cool temperature and fine mist is a welcome change from drought conditions and day after day in the 90s.  Last night we had a thunderstorm with heavy rains.  I can almost feel the plants breathing a deep sigh of relief at the much needed water.

Despite the adverse conditions, the vegetable garden is doing well.  The indian corn was knee high on the Fourth of July, so we’re right on schedule there.  A few days ago I beat the weeds back with the mantis.  Still need to rake the loosened weeds and throw them out.  Also need to weed right around the plants again.  I did that about two weeks ago.  Weeds don’t seem fazed by drought.

The red sweet peppers are doing much better than last year.  I planted them closer together and am trying to make sure to give them plenty of water.  They are all beginning to bloom.  The beets are ready to be thinned for the greens.  Can hardly wait for a steaming bowl full flavored with salt and butter, yum!

Carrots are ready to be thinned as well.  I already thinned the pumpkins and squash.  They have out-grown the threat of squash bugs and cucumber beetles sucking the juices dry.  I think it was a hard year for those bug pests, I didn’t see hardly any.  Could be they don’t like very dry conditions.

The tomatoes are blooming and some have several small fruit forming already.  Can’t wait to harvest my first tomatoes!  These Early Girls usually have fruit ready by the end of July.  We’ll see how they do.  The lack of rain may have slowed them down.  I watered three times, but I suspect tomatoes like even more moisture.

The wax bush beans are beginning to flower.  Once flowers show up, watch out!  There will be beans to harvest in no time.  I still have about a dozen cans of beans left from last summer.  That’s ok, never too many beans.

I planted head lettuce that is ready to be thinned and also beds of marigolds, zinnias and bachelor buttons.  One bachelor button plant volunteered from last year and has lots of pretty mauve flowers already.  Always enjoy a little color in the vegetable garden.

The sunflowers struggled a bit, but are now growing well.  Most are about a foot tall.  Once they get this big, they begin to shoot toward the sky, nearly doubling in size every week until they reach six to seven feet.  They will be covered with bunches of small blooms that later form black oil seeds for the birds.

So, everything is growing right along here in the garden.  Am hoping the rain returns more frequently so I don’t have to water too much. We’ll check back in a couple weeks to see how things are going.

Garden’s In

After much weed pulling, tilling and fence installation, the garden was ready to plant last week.  It took two days to get all the seeds in the earth.  The weather has been so dry for so long that the dirt was like talcum powder.  I watered after planting to give the seeds a start.

The weather forecast was for rain over the past weekend and through most of this week.  Happily, we finally got a good soaking yesterday afternoon and overnight.  It poured!  Now the sprouts will start to pop up.

It is time to set the last of the plants in the garden:  the tomato and red pepper seedlings.  These came from a greenhouse last week and have been hardening off outside in the shade, preparing for the harsh conditions in the full sun and open air.  The tomatoes already have flowers!  The variety is Early Girl, a nice medium-sized tomato that is very early.  Usually I get my first fruit by mid-late July.  Yum, can hardly wait for that juicy, home-grown taste!

Planting Time

Here are some of the seeds I’ll be planting today.  Just seeing all that lovely produce inspires me to get out there and weed and till!

Currently the garden is little more than a 50 foot square spot of dirt choked with weeds and overgrown with Jerusalem artichokes in one corner.  The area will quickly transform, with my exertions, into a fenced spot of fresh earth marked with rows of newly sown seed.The spring has been cool and dry, again.  Chance of frost still exists, but I’m willing to get started now.  Tomorrow’s forecast is rainy, perfect for jump-starting plants.  Next week I will put the tender tomato and pepper seedlings in the ground.

By the first week of June we should be safe from frost.  Yesterday was 86F, with lots of sun.  Today is cloudy and mid-fifties.  The weather is so changeable in Maine in spring that it doesn’t do to take something like last frost dates for granted.

Early August Garden

August 3, 2015

July 14, 2015

These photos of my garden were taken about three weeks apart. What a difference! The growth of the corn and sunflowers is especially apparent.  I’ve also added a run for my rabbits, an edge of which is just visible in the lower left part of the top photo.  The bunnies LOVE their new 8′ x 12′ run!  All the female rabbits go out together and have a great time.  I will blog about them later.

I just finished a major weeding of the garden and it’s looking pretty spiffy so I took photos to share.  The wax beans are ready to pick!  That gave me a surprise this morning.  I didn’t realize how quickly they were developing.  I can make a meal on just fresh wax beans.  The beans are in the center of the photo on the left.  They have come a long way from the struggling shoots of early June.

I have harvested four tomatoes and eaten one. It was yummy!  Some more are ripening on the vine.  No more buying tomatoes for awhile!

There is an ample supply of greens from the small patch of head lettuce.  As the plants are thinned, I collect bags full of sweet, tender leaves.  Because there is such an abundance, I share a few with the horses and bunnies.

The sweet peppers are not doing a whole lot. There are a few tiny peppers to be found, but overall rather disappointing. The peppers are growing in the open area of the photo at the right.  There are tall marigold plants between them and the fence.  I will try adding some urea to the soil around the peppers.  Maybe that will wake them up.

My zinnias are under attack by Japanese beetles!  The nasty bugs are taking big bites out of their leaves and petals.  I will set up some beetle traps to lure them away from my flowers.

The strawflowers I planted never sprouted.  So I dug up that area and planted a row of carrots.  They will be ready to harvest this fall.  I wonder why none of the strawflowers came up?  The seed was fresh and I planted and cared for them as directed.  Oh well.  That is the second time these flowers have failed me. Guess I’m done with them!  The newly planted carrot row can be seen in the lower right corner of the top photo of the garden.  It is the freshly dug area just beyond the growing carrots near the fence.

The winter squash and pumpkins are making a major growth spurt.  During June they mostly hibernated, but late July saw big gains in size for them.  They are busy blooming and spreading their vines.

I love the sunflowers. The variety I grow has many blooms per plant. This year my sunflowers are volunteers and it looks like they all came from a yellow-flowered plant.  Still they are big and beautiful.  The plants tower above my head, maybe eight feet tall.  Bees adore the pollen rich flowers.

A small groundhog has been spotted several times trying to find a way inside the garden fence.  He better stay clear!

Garden’s Popping Up

Despite plentiful sunshine and rain, June was a slow month for the garden.  The plants seemed to lag.  The photo above was taken July 9th, right after I tilled with the Mantis to reduce the weeds.  Perhaps the weeds were exerting a dampening effect on the vegetables because the growth has been noticeable since weeding.

The photo below was taken this morning.  The corn, lettuce, zinnias and carrots have surged.  The squashes are starting to gain some momentum.  Weeds are also creeping back and will require hand removal.  It may be that once a plant reaches a certain critical mass, the growth is faster.  The early days could also be spent developing a root system that is not visible to the impatient gardener.The weeds were growing mostly in the pathways and open areas, I try to keep the immediate vicinity of the vegetables weeded by hand.  Just the presence of so many other plants could possibly affect my domestic babies.  We learn more and more of how plants do battle under the ground, emitting chemicals through their roots to impact each other’s growth.  Wild weeds have a determination to grow that their softer, coddled garden cousins lack.

Boston bib head lettuce

Indian corn reaches heights of seven feet or more, adding inches every day during this hot and humid cornscateous weather.  After tilling last week, I hoed the soil into mounds six inches tall around the base of each corn plant to encourage the growth of their secondary roots. These help anchor the tall stalks during high winds from thunderstorms and freak tropical storms.

I also weeded and hoed the soil up around the wax beans. This plant does not do well against weed competition and requires plenty of support around its long stem to hold up the developing burden of beans.  Due to the spotty germination of the beans, I had to reseed, hence the marked difference in the size of the plants in each row.  The second planting was more successful than the first.  The rows should fill in nicely now.  The bean patch may appear small, but I have confidence it will produce a bountiful crop.

 

In the tomato jungle, several plants have green fruits on them.  One tomato is even starting to get a whitish hue indicating it will ripen soon.  I can hardly wait to eat tomatoes from my own garden!  The flavor is superior to anything available in stores. In the background, the sweet peppers are visible amongst the weeds.  They are blooming and have formed a couple baby peppers.  I will hand pull the weeds and apply more mulch to the peppers and tomatoes.  At the very end of the pepper rows are massed plantings of marigolds that should soon begin to bloom.

This year I am growing more flowers with the vegetables.  The bachelor buttons that volunteered from last year are covered with blooms.  Zinnias are showing buds.  The straw flowers trouble me.  I am not sure that any sprouted.  That part of the garden may remain empty.  Since I don’t know what a baby straw flower looks like, I’ve been removing obvious weeds from the area and hoping the some of the unfamiliar ones might be what I want.  Time will tell.

If no straw flowers show up, I might put a few more carrots in the area. Carrots can be seeded throughout the summer because they grow fast and will make a fall crop.