Tag Archives: Radishes

April Showers bring HAIL?

The past month hasn’t seen much activity in the garden.  April, true to its history has been wet, wet, wet.  A surprise hail storm lasted long enough to see a rather large pile of hail exit the roof and establish itself in front of our porch.  Its remnants were still there the next morning when I left for work.  Fortunately, the hail was small and didn’t seem to do any damage either to the balcony lettuce or to the spinach seedlings just coming up at the community garden spot.  I’m sure the lettuce was wondering what was going on.

This Just In

Today saw the planting of two varieties of potato, Makah Ozette and Nicola. The latter is a European variety of a lower glycemic potato. I’ve only found ONCE source in the US so far, the Main Potato Lady.  Once again I opted for planting in half buried large nursery pots, 6 in all. I learned about this method from a community gardener in the UK.  Also into the ground went some beet (Cylindrical) and radish (French Breakfast) seed.  Yeah its wet but there wasn’t a lot of disturbing the soil except where the potato pots were ‘planted’.  I think they are happy.

Whats Growing

Broccoli and Chard:

4 starts of each went in the ground near the end of last month.  I wasn’t planning on planting chard but they are so pretty and I was so needing to plant SOMETHING.

Garlic:

Last years two garlic plantings are coming along nicely.  Looks like I have near 100% of what I planted up and ready to start the season.  I gave them a bit of fertilizer last month and with all this rain they should be getting the full benefit.  Bring on the sun.

Kale:

Another overwintered crop.  I planted these from starts late last summer.  We’ve been eating on them for about a month now.  They have started to go to seed but the dog will eat the unopened flower tops so life is good.

Leeks:

The last of the overwintering trio.  A fellow gardener offered up some tiny leek starts last spring.  They ended up getting overshadowed last summer and stayed pretty small.  They come back with a vengeance this year and are almost ready to harvest.

Lettuce:

The old lettuce seed I planted last month did nothing.  Not surprising.  I think the seed was circa 2014.  I picked up some starts from a local garden center and tucked a few starts of the old Amish variety in next to the onions and a few other from a mixed lot into the balcony planter.   I decided to bite the bullet and buy some fresh seed and start those in a plastic container inside.  They are about half ana inch tall now and will be tucked out here and there once things get more settled.

Peas:

My nearly vegetarian dog LOVES snow peas.  We do too but she ends up eating most of them.  I planted half as much as I did last year, a single cardboard trough worth.  The idea was to get them up indoors, grow them out on the balcony to about six inches then plant out.  The scheduled roof redo meant they went into the garden early.  So far so good.

Spinach:

The two varieties of spinach are coming along nicely.  Spinach bolts when the days get to be a certain length so the season tends to be short here as we get long pretty early.  Its a pity, the climate could make for some awesome spinach almost year round.

Beans , Beans Good for Your Heart…

Bean Trellis

Bean Trellis

This has been an odd year for beans, at least in my garden.  The first planting of pole beans evaporated into the ether.  Planting number 2 just sat there during our extended cool spring weather.  They have started growing now but are so far behind other bean plantings at Rock Farm I’m feeling a tad bit jealous.  This past weekend they were finally tall enough for me to string the trellis.  Last year I used some netting that I purchased.  It worked well enough but at the end of the season trying to salvage it was an exercise in futility.  I ended up cutting it out of the dead vines and pitching it.  Not wanting to waste money this year I opted to do the same thing I did with the peas, wrap jute around an upper and lower cross bar, which seems to be working wonderfully in the pea row.  I already had the three vertical poles in the ground, a sturdy bamboo pole flanked by 2 t-bar posts.  I used two 1″ pvc elbows and a t to attach two bamboo poles across the top, end to end.  I ended up driving a short piece of rebar into the end of one and pounding the other onto it.  Its pretty sturdy and has works as a single unit all last year and looks just fine for this year.  Not wanting to buy anything else, I tied two remaining 6′ t-posts to the bottom of the three vertical posts about 2″ off of the ground.  I wrapped jute around the top and bottom posts at about 6″ intervals.  Should work fine and will be so much easier to deal with come fall.

Bush Beans

In other bean news, 1 row Contender, 2 rows Topcrop & 1 row Roma II went in after the garlic, arugula and lettuce came out.  The garlic wasn’t as large this year, possibly due to the extended cool spring even though the number of days in the ground was the same as last year.  Last spring seemed a lot warmer.  The tops were dying back and I needed the space so out they went.  The Inchelium was spectacularly unimpressive.  Half of them didn’t make it to spring and the other half were very small. I know they are typically smaller but these seemed reeeally small.  The Lorz Italian had respectable sized heads and all made it through the winter.  I have no experience with either of these varieties so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  The Silverwhite and Turkish Giant, were a decent size but smaller than last year save one or two heads most, if not all made it through.

Garden in late June

Lettuce

Speaking of lettuce, I finally emptied the bed of Renee’s cutting lettuce blend.  Can’t remember the exact name right now but it lasted much long than I thought it would.  Even as the stems were elongating to form seed the lettuce wasn’t bitter. I ended up removing a lovage transplant that was taking up way too much room.  I also beat back the arugula and reclaimed the area for a row of the beans.

Potatoes

The potatoes are taking over the county. I’m really hoping there are actual potatoes under all of that green. I ended up having to run some stakes and jute to corral them, they were headed for the neighboring plot. I ended up having to snip back a couple of stems as the beets were complaining.

Garden Flowers

The ‘Persian Carpet’ zinnias are blooming and I clipped a few for the little multi-holed ceramic vase we picked up from a pottery shop during a recent trip to Orcas Is. The reds, yellows and oranges against the blue of the vase is striking. The dahlia’s I planted in the garden next to the potatoes are going to bloom any day now.

Balcony Garden

The parsley was sending up a flower stalk so it was time to harvest. My haul was pretty respectable given that it was growing in a 6″ clay pot. The oregano was staring to outgrow its clay pot so I cut it back too. It is on my replant list. I cut back a lemon verbena a week or two ago. I had read that lemon verbena can be used to make a lemony pesto. WRONG! While it is physically possible to do so, the result was nothing that I would ever eat voluntarily. Now I just have to decide whether or not I want to take up previous real estate and keep the plant or let it go. I’m leaning toward the latter.

In the spirit of spiffying up the balcony, I attempted to transplant one of the volunteer nasturtiums from the garden into one of the long planters that sit on the railing. It had been filled with pansies but they were looking pretty sad. The transplanting was a baaad idea. I ended up having to take so much off of the top to compensate for the pitiful roots that I was left with a bunch of empty stems. The good news is that it does seem to be sending out new shoots at some of the leaf nodes so all is not lost.

Visitors

Slug - Arion rufus
I ran across an ‘Arion rufus’ or Red Slug under the nasturtiums. This one isn’t native and is quite destructive in the garden. I found the darker Arion a couple of times in the past but this was the first time I’ve seen one this color. Googling it was at first unclear if this was actually a red form of ‘Arion ater’ but further reading led me to believe it was more likely A. rufus. In either case its time in the garden is past.

Harvests

  • Beets – Red Baron Dutch (6/20)
  • Chard (ongoing)
  • Garlic (6/21 thru 6/25)
  • Lettuce (6/25 final)
  • Kale (ongoing)
  • Oregano (ongoing)
  • Parsley (6/25 final)
  • Snow Peas (ongoing)
  • Zinnias (6/25)

Plantings

  • Beets – Cylindrical (6/25)
  • Beans, Bush – Contender, Roma II & Topcrop (6/25)