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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 ...

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fall counter

My counters are full of bowls and baskets of vegetables! A bountiful year. The earth has been good to us.

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wet aerial view

Seems like its been raining all month! Plus temps are falling. Summer's gone. Cukes and tomatoes are looking ragged. With the dampness, I haven't done much work outside and chores are waiting.

This weekend is forecast to be dry. I want to clear out the cold frame, replace the plastic and fill it with baby seedlings that are growing inside. I'll also plant clover and winter rye under the tomatoes and in the empty beds.

At my community plot, I'll plant garlic. Maybe also consolidate the fall greens and put up hoops and row cover. Same at my parents garden - hoops and row cover over a long row of fall greens.

... click on the label below to see previous aerial photos of my garden ....

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leek and potato soup

One of my favorites! I printed out the recipe I posted a few years ago (here's the link) and my son helped by stir it. I haven't harvested my single celeriac yet, but the recipe is great without it.

The leeks are from my local CSA. I grew leeks once long ago and they did well. I should try them again.

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photos of my garden plot

Here are a few pictures of what's growing now in my community garden plot. My lettuce is finally looking good. I have lots of oak leaf coming along. I can start tinning this soon. At home, I have smaller lettuce seedlings that are looking good too: mostly Prizehead, escarole and red romaine.

Other greens growing include: red bok choy (I think), mizuna, escarole frisee, spinach and arugula. The broccoli is forming its second set of heads now that the weather has cooled off. Some of these are quite nice. And the beets (sowed the first week of August) are harvest size now - its been a great year for beets.



The purple flowers are some morning glories growing up my old popcorn stalks. They stay open all day now with the declining sunlight. I'm sad how dim the light looks in my photos taken at about 4 pm on Sunday.



I also have a couple rows of snap peas in bloom. I planted these late August, but they grew very slowly during the hot September weather. I think they'll need a week or two more to produce, but frost could come anytime now. A gamble. A lot of fresh new dill plants coming up all over the garden. I wanted to use up some old seeds. It smells great.

I've also found stray garlic sprouts popping up where I grew garlic this year. I always have this happen. When garlic is left in the ground too long, heads fall apart and I don't harvest it all. Any left behind sprout in the fall. I'll need to designate a new garlic bed soon. I'll move the volunteers and plants saved cloves from my summer harvest. I have enough this year to go without purchasing more.

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my plot on last day of summer

Lucky I have the giant sunflowers and big purple hyacinth beans this year, because right now, there's not much else going on in my garden plot.

Well I do have a big patch of basil, a patch of sweet potatoes that I really have high hopes for, and nice chiles. But not much else. The beans all succumbed to the beetles. It was a terrible year for beans in all plots at our community garden. I have empty pole bean tepees and empty shell bean beds where I had to pull plants before they produced anything.

And the dry hot weather has been brutal for those of us who didn't come down daily to water. I have especially had trouble with fall carrots and lettuce sprouts drying out. I've lost many sowings of these in the past months. I finally have big seedlings from indoor seeding, but its so late now that I will put them into my cold frame soon. Only a couple weeks now until we get a frost. I heard that not far west of here they have already had light frosts.

Cucumbers, tomatoes and chile peppers in my home garden are still doing good. They have the luxury of an automatic sprinkler. I hardly used this at all last year. Today's harvest was a bunch of North Carolina pickling cukes, a couple Cherokee purple tomatoes, and two pretty chiles: numex and poblano.

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today's harvest - chiles and broccoli!

Even as I was picking these Numex (Joe Parker) chiles they seemed they they should be stuffed. Chile Rellenos? I've never made them before, but these chiles smell so yummy, I think I will try.

And I was really happy to see some nice broccoli heads today. Its still my old spring planted broccoli plants. I never needed the space for something else, so they have stayed in just for the nice blueish-green of their leaves. With the cooler weather, they are producing some sparse heads.

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digging potatoes

Freshly dug potatoes! I grew 4 varieties this year: Cobbler, All Blue, Green Mountain, and Rio Grande Russet. The Blue potatoes produced very well and are a nice purple color. My favorite is probably the Russets, which grill very nicely.

I only harvested about 1/10th the amount of potatoes of last year's harvest. This year, I planted in a very shady bed in my home garden. Mostly because of last year's late blight problems, I decided to remove all late blight susceptible plants from my community garden. Next year I am looking forward to growing potatoes in full sun again.

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my kitchen garden

Here's the vegetable garden I grow on the side my house. This is the view from the east - the shady side. That's the potato bed in the foreground. The cold frame is at the far right in the bright sun. It is mostly full of cucumbers right now. They are amazing this year. I pick 2 or 3 a day. Much more than I can eat. I will make another batch of pickles soon.

On Sunday, I removed the melons from behind the cukes (they did not do well here) and planted a couple rows of fall beets and lettuce. The seedlings were started inside under lights. Soon the cover will go back on the cold frame. I'm hoping this bed will produce greens into the winter.

One of the items on my list of things to do this week is to call a tree trimmer. One big branch of the giant shade tree to the east is hitting the roof of our house. I am hoping in addition to removing this branch they can remove some others and give my garden a bit more sunlight.

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today's harvest - cukes and tomatoes

My mom emailed and asked if I was OK. She said there were no entries on my blog since last Monday! I'm caught! Well, the garden is still growing and I'm fine I told her. Just one of those weeks where the job kind of takes over everything else.

But I do have a bunch of garden things to catch up on. My larder is filling up. My fall lettuce is doing well. And I'm looking forward to a fun day of digging sweet potatoes very soon.

Today's harvest is tomatoes and cucumbers again. They are so wonderful. Mostly Big Beef, Pink Beauty, Opalka, San Marzano, Cherokee Purple and Giant Belgium. Enough to eat one a day fresh and make a batch of sauce for the freezer once a week. The cukes won't quit either. Plenty for eating and pickling.

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wind-ripped cold frame

We had a serious wind storm the other night. I believe it was the remnants of a hurricane, though I don't know which one. Lots of rain and wind. Its the first time I have had damage done to my cold frame. The plastic sides were ripped open. Fortunately, plastic panels are easy to fix. We'll staple on fresh sheets soon.

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a fine fall day

What a beautiful weekend! Perfect for running in the fields and swimming!

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roasting chiles

My son helped with this project. He charred the chiles over the stove flame and then I peeled and seeded them. There are now 6 or 8 baggies of roasted chiles in the freezer ready for a sauce someday this winter.

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digging sweet potatoes!!!

My son helped me dig sweet potatoes on Sunday evening. What a great event!!!

I have to admit that to get my 18 year old into the garden, I had to trade for something he was interested in - $$. Since he currently doesn't have a job, but wants cash, I offered him the rate he got at his most recent job. Anyway, he got the garden fork and started in on the bed as I ripped out the vines.

My sweet potato bed was about 4 by 4 feet. Located just east of my popcorn (that failed this year :( ), its was bit shaded, and the vines had grown up and into the corn stalks. Its my first attempt at growing sweet potatoes and I was nervous.

Underground crops are such a suspense. I may have been holding my breath as we started. But with my son's first digs, he turned up beautiful orange, red and white tubers. And as I pulled the vines, lots of tubers came up attached to the plants. Wow! What a nice crop. My final weighing said 8 pounds of sweets. A good size bucket full.

One of the best parts was when my son said "I'm finished. I've got all of them." I asked if he would double dig just to make sure he found all of them. He said he had been double digging and they weren't any more. So I offered him a dollar for any additional ones he could find. His eyes lit up and he went back to digging. I tended the basil, weeded here and there, picked the pumpkins, and he dug. He kept announcing "Here's another!" ... "One more". Eventually, he earned another $15 and I finished the rest of my garden work with great company.

There is something very exciting (or not) about underground crops. I was so excited to dig potatoes with my parents this year and they turned out horrible - eaten by voles. Who would know. The leaves look great, but what'[s underneath?

The sweets we dug were all sizes and shapes. Tiny ones, big ones. Red, orange, white. Sunday evening I threw a few baby sweets in to roast. They were delicious. I started to peel them, but learned that baby sweets don't need to be peeled. I've never had a baby sweet potato before.

So I have another basket for my larder. We love sweet potatoes! I am looking forward to enjoying all of them.




Click on the label below to see my past posts about sweet potatoes.

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A Matter of Space

Earlier in the year I blogged about how much difference it had made to my wallflower seedlings whether I'd kept them growing in small pots or had planted them straight into their final containers. You can see what happened here, but basically the seedlings in small pots, with restricted space for their roots grew much better.

But there's an irony here - because potting seedlings in this way may mean less space for them - but having a multitude of individual pots lined up takes up far more space on the balcony. And when you're balcony gardening, space is at a premium.

So when my next batch of seedlings was ready to be pricked out, I hit on an alternative.

Some of them went into small pots, but then those pots went into a larger container and the spaces between then were filled with soil. And more seedlings went into the spaces, their growing room equally restricted by the walls of the pots around them.

It's worked a treat. If anything, some of the seedlings in the spaces between the pots have done even better than those in them.

Soon I'll be moving them to their final containers. But even here there's an advantage. The seedlings in the spaces won't have to be moved at all. I shall simply take out the pots and leave them where they are. So no disturbance to the roots at all. And where the pots have been taken away, I'll have neat "pot-sized" holes, where I can pop in other plants to add variety - again meaning minimum root disturbance.

It's been an experiment that really paid off, and one that I'll certainly be repeating in future.

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The Tree of Heaven ... or Hell?

I love this tree, particularly at this time of year when the red seed pods glow against the green of the leaves. This one is growing on the canal close to home. But wherever you are in this area you don't have to look far to find it. Usually though it looks like this...

It is one of the most invasive plants I know of. It seeds itself everywhere - including in the containers on the balcony. I pull out two or three every year. And as soon as a piece of ground is left undisturbed for aseason, up pop swathes of the young trees. Our local railway line is lines with them on both sides of the track, not a centimetre of space between them.
What are they? Ailanthus altissima, also known as Swingle or the Tree of Heaven - a reference to its height, which can reach 25m. But for anyone trying to keep it from taking over their land, a more appropriate name would probably be the Tree of Hell.

Other plants must think so too. They don't have a chance - it not only reproduces so rapidly because of the huge numbers of seeds produced, but also because it produces a chemical which inhibits the growth of other plants (1). Some trees just don't play fair.




If you've been looking at the photos and thinking But isn't that some sort of sumac? No, it isn't. Whilst the leaves look very similar, they are actually two different species. Not sure what you've got? Well, they say that if you break of a leaf of ailanthus, it smells bad. I tried it this morning ...

The leaf I picked came from this one. Last year as I was hoicking the self-sown seedlings out, I took pity on him and potted him up. He's been attacked by something in the past couple of weeks (a fungus??) and I've had to pull various of the leaves off, so while I was at it I had a quick sniff.

I couldn't smell anything, but then it's common knowledge that when the sense of smell was being given out, I was standing way out of line...

Introduced into Italy in 1760, as an ornamental plant, Ailanthus has now largely taken over in many areas. A report produced by the Italian Ministry of the Environment together with various other institutions (2) gives a detailed description of ten of the most invasive plants in the country. Of those ten, Ailanthus altissima is the only one shown as present in every single region in Italy.

And it's not just in Italy. It's become a pest throughout much of Europe. When I was in London this summer I noticed them growing in the park at the back of the house - somewhere I'd never noticed them before. They weren't very tall, but they were maturing fast. Once they start to seed, there'll be no stopping them.

And they're right behind the garden.

References

1. Ailanthus altissima - Wikipedia
2. Plant Invasion in Italy - An overview

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