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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

planning garden chores

Buy galvanized metal wire at hardware store for hoops
Find my row cover (in the basement I think)
Find my clover seed
Buy 10 lbs winter rye seed at the hardware store (they sell by the lb)

Home Garden
Clear out cucumber and melon vines from cold frame.
Replace torn cold frame plastic
Attach cold frame covers
Transplant fall seedlings into cold frame
Plant cover crop in beds (under tomato and pepper plants)

Community Plot
Clear out old plants
Plant cover crop
Garlic: Locate new bed, transplant volunteers, figure out how many saved bulbs to plant
Transplant rhubarb to make room for new compost bin
Set up hoops for row covers over fall/winter greens

My Parents' Garden
Transplant fall seedlings
Set up hoops and row covers over fall/winter greens (they may frost Sat night)
Clear out all old plants
Plant winter rye

I doubt I will get all this done, but I have a plan.

mom and dad's vegetable garden

On Saturday, I helped my parent's with their garden. Mom is still recuperating, but doing GREAT. She was the supervisor with her captain's chair. Dad and I got the garden all set for fall.

We removed all the old plants: tomatoes, squashes, and cucumbers. Picked green tomatoes. Pulled a few onions that had been hidden.

We left the big curly kale plants, a bunch of 4 foot tall bell pepper plants, a nice patch of basil, rows of bright yellow marigolds, a 3 foot sage plant, a big tomatillo plant, a row of rainbow chard, and a row of red beets.

There were a lot of garlic sprouts coming up from heads that didn't get harvested. I dug all these and moved them to the other end of the garden. So many it made a triple row!

As we worked the air was quite chilly - maybe 50*F and Skippy had stolen my sweater again. We marveled at an enormous V-formation of geese that flew overhead. Must have been more than a hundred, all honking to each other and heading due south.

I moved a row of lettuce and beets that were in the area we wanted to rake and seed with cover crop. I put them in with the garlic row. The greens will be harvested within a month so they won't bother the garlic. I also added a few new spinach and escarole Frisee seedlings. Then I covered this row with hoops and row cover. I'm curious to see how it will fare as the cold weather comes. The row cover lets light and air in, retains humidity and warmth, and protects from wind. It will stay on for a couple months, or maybe all winter.

We seeded about half the garden with a mix of clover and winter rye.

There was a frost warning for their area, so our last job, as the sun set, was to spread sheets on the peppers, basil and flowers. These sheets will come off tomorrow morning.

Picadilly Farm distribution

This week is the third-to-last distribution from Piccadilly Farm (only two more this fall), located in southern New Hampshire. I host a CSA distribution for them. Every week they drop off beautiful boxes of freshly harvests vegetables.

This week was an exceptionally nice box, so I took a picture. A bunch of carrots, 2 giant red peppers, onions, some scallions, garlic, purple kale, pea tendrils, lettuce, a couple Delicata squash, and the most amazing sweet potato I have EVER seen.

Seeing the bunch of pea tendrils, which had just started to flower, made me wonder if I should pick mine now or wait and hope for peas. I'll watch the weather forecast, wait and hope.

The lettuce is one of the loveliest I have ever seen. Its green oak leaf, and very dense and full. I hope mine fill out this much!

The sweet potato is incredible. 2 lbs 6 oz! It dwarfs my cute little sweets. I may have to save this one for Thanksgiving. I've never seen any thing like it.

cold frame ready for winter

On Saturday, I cleared out the old plants from my cold frame. I removed the cucumber, melon, squash vines, and a few tomatoes plants.

Then I pulled off the ripped plastic from the sides of the cold frame. A wind storm a month ago had ripped them. My husband and I cut and stapled on fresh side sheets. I checked on the type of plastic and the sides are 4 mil basic plastic sheeting from Home Depot. Its not very transparent, but reflects the light well. The front panel was also quite brittle, though not ripped, after a summer of bright light. It may need reinforcing sooner rather than later. (I think it would be good to use a stronger plastic that lasts better next time we replace this. The sides do not need to be transparent.)

After fixing the sides, my husband and I carried out the top panels that had been stored under a tarp behind the garage for the summer. We reattached the hinges. The plastic on these panels is looking very good. Unlike the sides, this is clear (and I think thinner plastic than the sides.) I like the way it reflects our newly painted green house.

The cold frame now looks ready to fill up with plants again. I have a row of broccoli at the back left and one kale plant at the front right. These are plants from the spring. The broccoli are producing heads again now that its cool. Also I planted a some rows of lettuce and beets at the back right a couple weeks ago. The rest is open soil waiting for plants. I brought down a tray of seedlings that I've had under lights. They had a little disaster last night as they fell over onto the floor, but I think they will be fine once they hydrate and unsquish.

On Sunday morning with the top covers down the temp came up to 60*F and the plants were looking very happy. I propped them open and Skippy and I admired the frame. I bet the lettuce will do well here this fall.

today's tomato harvest

I picked a bunch of green tomatoes to ripen inside. I gave half to my mom and this is my half. The plants are still up in the garden and look fine, though the tomatoes aren't growing much any more. There's not much light left as the sun has fallen below the neighboring house.

Sacrificial Mint??

If there's one thing that has done well for me this year, it's these little peppers. They were an impulse buy - I found them as plug plants in a supermarket and just threw them into the trolley along with some tomatoes that I really wanted.

They weren't quite what I expected. I have to admit to having looked too quickly at the label and thought I was buying big, sweet peppers. But when I got home and read it properly - no, they were small, hot peppers.

Now, we don't usually like hot peppers, so I was more interested in them for their ornamental value than anything else. And have they paid off. They've been green and glossy all summer and are now covered in bright red fruit, which looks great against the green walls of the flat.

And unlike virtually everything else I've grown, they've not been touched by sap sucking insects or red spider mite this year. Apart from a bit of caterpillar damage, they're just about the healthiest plants I've got.

Is that because the bugs don't like them? No. These two plants came in a group of four, and the other two went on the front balcony with the tomatoes. And the insects just dived in and munched. They didn't last much past flowering.

So why the difference? The only thing I can point to is this.

Mint, growing at the bottom of the peppers. Or at least, it was.

Back in the summer I wrote a post on companion planting. Some plants will repel insects, thus protecting any other plants growing nearby. Mint is supposed to be one of them.

Now, I ask you - does this look like a plant that has repelled insects? Huh - they've had a feast.

Rather than repelling the insects, it seems to have acted as a sacrificial plant. They've enjoyed the mint so much (and believe me, a while back there was a lot more of it) that they've left the peppers alone.

Well, that's the theory. I can't find confirmation anywhere that mint should attract pests. Every website I've found so far solemnly assures me that insects can't bear it. They've clearly never met ours.

In any case, I know what's going to be growing between all my other plants next year. it's going to be tomatoes and mint, surfinia and mint, roses and mint, hollyhocks and mint, beans and mint, potatoes and mint, honesty and mint, jerusalem artichokes and mint, zinnia and mint, peas and mint, black-eyed Susans and mint, lettuce and mint, morning glory and mint, sunflowers and mint, delphiniums and mint, marigolds and mint, cosmos and mint, calendula and mint, poppies and mint, rosemary and mint, antirrhinums and mint, radishes and mint, alyssum and mint ....

So should you hear people complaining of a mint shortage in North Italy around about the beginning of May 2011, please don't tell ...