Tag Archives: Pumpkins

Downtime

September came and went without much going on garden wise. The temps cooled and the rains made a regular showing. Fred kept creeping along to the point of needing his own zip code. Helda kept putting out beans like crazy, more clubroot was found in the broccoli planted this spring and the zucchini kept getting larger and larger as the number of visits per week declined. One a positive note, large zucchini can be treated like eggplant (bake the slices instead of frying them) and made into a wonderful zucchini parmesan.

The milder temps were not soon enough for the spinach tho. It all bolted and ended up being dug into the garden to help enrich the soil. That is new for me. Typically garden refuse would go into the compost pile. This year I made trenches and dug it back into the garden. Everything went in except the brassicas (clubroot) and anything with seeds like the few large cucumbers I ended up missing over the summer. The lettuce I planted at about the same time also bolted. I cut it off at the ground level to see if there would be any chance of getting anything decent once the temps cooled. Doubtful but worth a try.

figlets2015-09-13 All of the three fig cuttings I started last Spring have figlets and are about a foot tall. I started with a bag of dormant 6″ long cuttings from the Brown Turkey and Petite Nigra container plants a dear friend adopted. Looking at these I’m thinking they are all BT. This is fine as I do prefer their flavor over PN.

The second round of carrots I planted ended up with little holes through most of them. A root maggot of some kind. Need to research that one. I’m thinking a floating row cover would be a good idea next time.

The Iditarod tomatoes took forever to start producing but once they did were pretty consistant and had a good flavor. The Celebrities were gone at about the time they started so we have had a good run of tomatoes from the two plants on the balcony.

The horseradish I planted in a clay pot and buried is HUGE. While I did have a horseradish plant I had never harvested any of it so that will be new for me. I know it is one whose ability to regrow from the smallest piece of root left behind. For this reason it was planted in a clay pot and buried. It remains to be seen whether or not that will work. There is, after all, a drainage hole at the bottom.

Lessons learned: 1. Wait to plant spinach and lettuce for fall. Mid July was much too early.

Keeping Track

Spinach

Every year I promise myself to keep better records than the year before and every year’s end I look back and realize I was nowhere near as consistent as I had hoped. Not sure when I planted the lettuce in the pic but it does look good.

So far I am 1 for 2 with the late spinach. The Oriental Giant is showing signs of bolting but the Palco is looking good. The days are still warm but not as crazy warm as they were earlier.

Fred

The bad news is Fred has a case of the powdery mildew. More bad for how he looks than anything. The good news is Fred has been joined by Ethel. The couple have completely taken over the walkway between the two 50′ (I think) long beds.

Frog

I saw one of these little guys last year on the broccoli in my Helpline row across the garden. They must like the cabbage worms or perhaps the few aphids I see occasionally.

Solarization

Anita is trying to beat back clubroot. According to the prevailing wisdom solarization can help to take the numbers of spores down. Hope it works. I’m going to miss brassicas.