Garden Update - October 11, 2015

Forget all the vibrant green, mid-summer garden photo shoots.  This is what a Colorado garden looks like nearly halfway through October.  It's still producing which is great, but it's glory days have definitely come and gone.

I did some harvesting yesterday.  Not enough tomatoes there for a batch to can, but I have to pick them as soon as they're ripe.  I'm fighting a squirrel brigade that is fattening up for winter.  They are hungry and they love tomatoes.  ...And pumpkins, as you can see from the nibble taken out of the top.  That's the last of the early-summer planted potatoes and the last of the cukes.

Hard to tell in the photo, but there are still a lot of green tomatoes on the vine.  The plant's leaves are changing over right along with the trees.  I should get plenty more fruit before the first frost hits.

This Dill is telltale of the Colorado climate.  We've still been quite warm.  All the mature stocks went to seed a month or so ago (yeah, I really need to collect them).  But you can see the green of the new starts in the bottom from where it has reseeded itself.

My one and only eggplant.  Not quite true.  This plant produced one other earlier in the year, but it was so small that I don't think it counts.

Kale and Collards still going strong and really looking the best it has all year.

The cabbage and broccoli which looks exactly like it did 2 months ago.  The broccoli looks healthy, but it never sent up any flower stalks.  Too shady in these beds.

The three sisters bed, all but used up.  Corn is ready for the front porch and most all of the winter squash vines were overtaken with powdery mildew.  I had been keeping it in check for a while with a baking soda/water solution, but finally gave up on it.  

The last holdout there is Kaya's ginormous pumpkin.  It's the biggest one we've ever grown.  We ended up with three nice orange pumpkins this year.   There are a couple more still trying to turn over.

Finally, a few more potatoes that I planted mid summer.  And the nicely groomed bed on the end that I prepared for the fall garlic planting.

Let the Lacto-Fermentation Begin!

The first of the cukes and zucchini are in...

The pickling cukes were a little fat and stubby, but not at all bitter.  I was a little concerned about bitterness given the long string of 90 degree days we've had.  

The zucchini made it to the dinner plate just a few hours later.  A little olive oil, oregano, smoked paprika, garlic power, S & P and a few minutes on the grill.  Tasty.

The cukes will ferment for a few days (at least - I like 'em pretty sour) on the counter just like this.  My dill had not entirely gone to seed yet, so I even had a few fresh sprigs to throw in there.

Garden Update - August 2, 2015

The girls new sandbox!  Ok, not really part of the garden update, but you can see the kale behind them at least.  It's a pretty good size - 5'x5'.  I've since added 6 more 50 lbs bags of sand and a bunch of sand pails and toys.  We picked up a little kiddie pool too, so now the backyard is just another day at the beach!

The first ripe cherry tomatoes.  This was a few days ago and being located rather low on the plant, I was so happy to have beaten the critters to them.

The gaggle of tomato plants, filling out nicely.

Starting to see some color.  When the first few start ripening, I'll throw them in the freezer until I have enough for a batch of canning.

Pepperoncinis and basil.  Looks like I'll be doing some pickling of these soon.

Sante Fe Grande - a medium hot pepper.  It's a little bit obscured in this shot, but yes, that's Takoda staring at a ball.

The bush of oregano.  This was a bit of an experiment.  I had chopped it all off for harvest last year, just leaving the bottom of the stems.  It overwintered outside and came back nicely.  I'll be chopping this again soon.

The kale and collards.  Not huge in this shady spot, but not too bad.  We've had quite a few meals out of here already.

Brussel sprouts way at the top.  Waiting to see if it actually produces anything.  Then broccoli.  One of them shot up a tiny flower head, but wasn't even big enough to harvest.  The rest have not flowered yet.  Then cabbage - getting some little heads forming.  Lastly, at the bottom, the Chinese cabbage.  I've been letting the girls practice shooting their shotguns at it.  Kidding.  The slugs have taken quite the liking to this stuff.  Yep, slugs did that.

More cabbage at the top, followed by more devastated Chinese cabbage.  Beets in the bottom half.  These beds don't get a ton of sun either - the beets are struggling.

The girls bed.  The kale in here is the best we have.  The corn topped out at a scrawny 3 feet tall and shot out little ears.  There use to be 4, but something had gotten into one of them and exposed the corn.  Lucky for me, it didn't eat any of it.  It was well developed so I went ahead and helped myself.  Shhh, don't tell the girls!  There's a little bit of Swiss Chard in here too - it may be our best bet for getting chard this year.  It's doing better than the other couple of places I dropped some seed.

The three sisters bed.  The stuff along the left side of the picture gets a lot less sun and isn't doing very well.  You can see the corn there is about 2 feet tall vs, the other side where it's about 4 or 5 feet tall.  It's turned into more of a two sisters bed.  The green beans never took off.  After they first sprouted they were quickly eaten by the rolly pollies.  I replanted, but I think everything around them was already too well established and shaded them out.  There is one lonely bean plant in there that survived and it's tiny.  I did eat two beans off of it yesterday though!  

The first zucchini.  Should be ready in a day or two.  It was apparently very happy to see me too :-o

This is a hubbard squash.  It's the only squash that I've seen form so far.

Onions in the back.  They were about 90% fallen over, so I toppled the rest.  That is the sign that they are roughly 2 weeks away from the ideal harvest time.  In front is where the garlic had been.  Did some replanting here a couple weeks ago.  To the left, the second round of potatoes, just starting to bust through.  To the right, green beans.  Only a dozen out of 26 seeds germinated.  And something is still munching them despite my attempts to dust them with Diatomacious Earth.  Down to 10 now.  Would love to have some beans to pickle, so I have my fingers crossed.

The first crop of potatoes - just starting to die off.  Won't be long before we see what treasures lie beneath!

The cukes.  These were a replant as well, so not as far along as they were at this point last year.  But they are starting to produce.  I'll have a big crock of these fermenting on the counter before ya know it.

Garlic Harvest 2015

It was a bumper crop year for the garlic.  Last year I planted 70 cloves and ended up with 50 mature bulbs.  There were some that didn't germinate and some that took a Takoda stomping.  It lasted me until about February and I only had a couple bulbs left for seed.  This year, I wanted to ensure enough to get me through the entire winter and spring (hoping it stays viable that long) and to have enough for my entire seed stock.  So I planted 140 cloves - mostly to account for the aforementioned non-germination and Takoda stomping.  I ended up with 140 mature bulbs.  Every single clove germinated.  No Takoda stomping.

This was toward the end of May, in all it's lush green glory.

July 6, right before harvest.  Bottom 3-5 leaves brown, exactly what we want.

About a third of the harvest.

Another third!

The beginning of the inside curing process.  It stayed laid out on the floor in the garage for a little more than a week.

Then I tied and hung it in bunches on one of my old cucumber trellises from last year.  It dried like this for about a month until the roots became stiff and bristle-like and the tops were completely brown and brittle.

Today I cleaned it up.  Snipped off the roots to 1/4" and rubbed out any remaining dirt.  Slid off the dirty, outermost couple layers of wrappers.  Finally, trimmed the leaves off, leaving about an inch of neck.

Not only did I end up with a great quantity, but the quality was outstanding.  I had about a dozen really nice bulbs that were pushing baseball size.  I set those aside to use as seed for next year.  Everything else was a very respectable size as well.  No weenies in the lot.

You can see the difference in the two varieties - Spanish Roja up top and Duganski on the bottom.  Scrumdiddlyumptious!

Unwanted Guests

I guess I'm lucky.  I've had relatively few issues with wildlife in the garden the past two years.  I've battled Cucumber beetles and lost a few ears of corn to raccoons, but nothing devastating.  This year, the long eared, cottontail sort appear to be on to me.

That was the morning after having planted the Kale, Collards and Broccoli seedlings.  They sampled a little here and a little there.  Luckily they left more than just stems and I promptly put up some fencing.  I believe they will all recover.

So far, they've decided not to dig under or crawl over the fencing.  They've also left the unprotected Lettuce, Arugula, Spinach and Radishes alone.  

In other news, the Peas have all sprouted nicely and should begin their ascent of the trellis soon.

The garlic is looking a nice hardy, vibrant green.  About a foot tall now.

And the Onion transplants have taken off.  They actually show up in the pictures now!

Garden Update - April 26, 2015

It's a rainy Sunday today, which is something of a rarity around here.  I was hoping to finish preparing the 3 sisters (corn, beans, squash) bed, which will be receiving corn seed next weekend, but that will have to wait for another day.  It does however give me a chance to provide an update on how things are progressing... 

Two weeks ago I had a couple hundred onion seedlings staring me in the face, hardened off and ready to meet their new home.  Flashback a few weeks, I tried something new this year.  Instead of potting up the seedling cups to 3 or 4 inch pots, I simply lined the boxes they were in with plastic wrap and filled them with a couple inches of starter mix.  I opened the bottom of each cup to allow the roots easier exit and nestled them into mix.  Flash-forward to planting day and as I removed the seedlings, I could see the entire contents of each box had basically become one entangled mass of the tiny threadlike roots.  Pretty much what I figured would happen.  My concern is that this method may be a bit more disruptive than individual pots, what with all the root ripping and shredding that had to take place.  So far, they seem no worse for wear and are still standing tall.

That's them in the back, so small as to be barely visible behind the well established garlic.  Only ended up with room for about 150 of them.  If Takoda doesn't trample too many (he's already stomped on a few) and they live up to their touted good storage quality, I should be in onions through the winter this year.

Yesterday was a beautiful day for gardening and I had the less daunting task of getting the the Kale, Collards, Broccoli and Brussels Sprouts transplants in the ground.  I tried the same experiment with these guys, except I put some in pots to allow for the side by side comparison.  The seedlings tucked into the dirt bed obviously did much better than those potted up to 3 inch cups.  If they're happy, I'm happy - and it saves buying peat pots.

I'll take note of how they progress and determine if all the root disruption that occurred upon removal from the community box had any detrimental effects.

I had some broccoli started from seed in this bed, but it was much smaller than the transplants.  I replaced most of it, the lone survivor being the runt in the middle.  Brussels Sprouts in the back row.

This is the bed that I let the girls plant with whatever they choose.  This year they picked Corn and Kale.  We started the Corn inside and it hasn't done much since moving it out a couple weeks ago, but I think it's starting to take - saw signs of some new green growth down the middle of the shoots yesterday.  I threw some Rainbow Chard seed down the middle as a bit of a surprise for them.

Inside for another 2-3 weeks are the hot and bell peppers, some Chinese and standard Cabbage that I forgot about and started a tad late, Eggplant that is taking it's sweet time and the tomatoes, which are looking mighty fine.

Mighty fine indeed.