One Month Later...

Howdy, friends and neighbors!

I apologize for my long absence; it's been a crazy month. So much has happened since my last post! For starters, the strawberries and peas are no longer producing, and in fact the peas have started to die. If you have been watching our Facebook page, you may know that we got quite a few raspberries from Anne Marie's canes (the ones I transplanted this spring are not mature enough to produce fruit yet - next year!) and that I harvested the first of the beets and carrots. I made the beets into a pretty darn good dish: Roasted Beets with Balsamic Glaze, and I added the carrots to a very tasty risotto. Many of the peas went into an alfredo sauce I made. :)

The solanaceae (peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant) have continued to flourish. All of them are blossoming and starting to fruit (although I pinch off the blossoms and berries of the potato plants) and we now have two eggplant - about two inches long apiece - and many tomatoes. The peppers have started to fruit as well, after flowering for some time. All of the above have survived several weeks of very hot weather, with the exception of one pepper: the Thai hot pepper. I think it probably really prefers humid climates, and even though we watered it religiously, the Colorado head and aridity got to it. It was a bummer to lose that little guy, but not a huge loss; I'm not sure what we would have done with so many Thai peppers! The only other ailing plant is a little cherry tomato - the one right in the center of its brethren. I planted five cherry tomatoes, and arranged them like the dots on the five side of a die. The one in the middle is alive, but tiny. I'm not sure what happened - maybe the tomatoes around it blocked a lot of sun, or maybe I was skipping over it somehow when I watered - but it's definitely the runt. I'm not really expecting many fruits from that one, if any, but I'll leave it in the bed just to see what happens.

On to the brassicas! The broccoli are nice and big now, but they still aren't flowering! I'm not sure why this is; they were seeded on time and transplanted pretty much on time, they've been adequately watered and have received plenty of sun... Hopefully they'll bloom eventually. The sooner, the better. The cabbages are doing fine. One of the green cabbages was pretty badly damaged by our hail storm, and lost its apical meristem. As a result, apical dominance was overruled and the plant sprouted four heads instead of just one! I removed the two smaller heads recently, and the remaining two are looking pretty good. They won't be as big as the head on the undamaged cabbage, but they will taste good nonetheless. The red cabbage has a main head as well, but it's a little smaller than the one on the whole green cabbage. Still, no complaints about the progress of the cabbage! The kale is doing great; one is huge, and one is kind of medium-sized (thanks again to hail damage). I really ought to harvest some from the larger one, but to be honest, I'm not sure what to do with it. I know it makes a great green, so I should probably stick it in a stirfry or some such dish. If you want a few leaves of kale, come on over!

I'll lump most of the root veggies together. The beets are doing all right, but they don't really like the heat, so they're a little droopy. I should harvest some of the older ones and use them in something. The carrots are doing fine, though I planted two more rows (about 24 seeds) a couple of weeks ago and they have yet to emerge. I don't like to think that they died, but I'm not sure what else could keep them from emerging. Honestly, they probably weren't watered enough. Hopefully they'll still come up somehow. The onions are doing fine; some of them should probably be harvested soon, as well. I allowed four bolting onions (two red, two yellow) to continue bolting so that they might pollinate one another and set seed, and now their flowers are fully open. I'll have to figure out some way to collect their seeds - it'll be pretty interesting to see what grows from them!

Next, the beans. All of them are doing well. As I said in my last post, the pole beans had some germination issues, and there aren't a whole lot of those. The bush beans did well, with about 75% germination for both varieties. The bush beans also have some blossoms on them, and some of the flowers have already grown pods! Can't wait to harvest those. The pole beans have sent out tendrils, and I have provided them with a trellis pilfered from the peas. The tendrils wrapped themselves around the trellis pretty eagerly, and they have grabbed hold. No blossoms on those guys yet.

Finally, on to the cucurbits! I provided the cucumbers with the peas' other trellis, and they have been climbing that somewhat reluctantly; however, a few cucumber fruits are now developing! A few standard cukes, as well as one lemon cuke. Very exciting! We'll be harvesting those soon. The zucchini and yellow squash, of course, are producing profusely. We have four zucchini, and have harvested from three of them (one is a little smaller, and may never catch up, because it's being shaded by the other three). We have five yellow squash, and two of those are somewhat runty because they were replanted after the original plants died in the hail storm, and now they've been shaded. There are currently three butternut squash (luckily!), which surprises me because I was sure that the ones I replanted wouldn't be coming up - it took them a really long time! None of them are flowering or fruiting yet, because they're so young. The bright side is that they have plenty of room and won't be shaded by other squash. All three types of melons have come up. We have three watermelon, two Tigger, and two cantaloupe (I planted three, but one didn't come up). The watermelon plants are huge, and they are blooming like crazy. One is already producing a melon, and there will be others soon! The Tiggers are also blooming, so it won't be long before they're fruiting as well. The cantaloupe are kinda far behind, so I'm not sure when they'll start blooming, but it shouldn't be too long. The pumpkins...never happened. The two seeds I planted never came up, in spite of my watering efforts, and it just got too late in the season to call Nick about the possibility of buying transplants from him. It is far too late now to think about trying a different variety and starting it from seed, as Frank had suggested.

As it turned out, I actually didn't need to buy more netting. Instead, when I removed netting from the zucchini, I put that same netting over the melons. Later, I removed netting from over the tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers, and now that's just extra. I also added the third layer of tires to the potatoes - again, I got the tires from Alpine Tire Center and painted them off-white using paint from the Larimer County Household Hazardous Waste Recycling Center - and filled the tires with soil and leaves. Ben and I still haven't painted fun designs on the tires, but we probably will at some point...maybe.

I went to ReSource for some floor trim to stake the tomatoes. It was very easy to do, except perhaps for sawing the trim into manageable pieces, but I felt pretty guilty because staking should be done as soon as the tomatoes are transplanted into the garden. Obviously, I didn't do that - and the result was that most, if not all, of the stakes tore through some of the tomatoes' roots. The poor little t'maters look okay still, but it was like I was mauling them! It does make me feel better, though, that there are so many developing tomatoes on the plants.

Well, that's all for now! A whole month's worth of updates. Hopefully it won't take me that long to post again. Until then, my fellow Green Thumbs, fare thee well!

WOG out.

Movin' Right Along

Things are swingin' at Westmore! As you may have seen on our Facebook page, we've been harvesting a pea here and a pea there, along with the occasional strawberry. The peas have been of good size and quite delicious - one challenge they have presented, however, is differentiating between the shelling peas and the sugar snap peas. We had marked each variety, but when the cats got under the netting (repeatedly), they not only disturbed the pea seeds and - I suspect - greatly reduced the number that germinated, but they also took away the markers.  Therefore, I have no idea which plant is a member of which variety, and I have to play a "wait and see" game with the pods. The ones that don't get fat quickly are the ones that I assume belong to the sugar snap variety, and the ones that do puff out are probably the shelling peas. So far, we've just stood in the garden and sampled them. Not that I'm complaining about that!

The strawberries have been sort of tricky - we've discovered that they're difficult to see even when they're nice and ripe, unless you're bending down next to the plants and specifically looking for them. I was a little slow on the uptake for the ones that have ripened so far, and we've either missed them entirely or gotten to them when they're past their prime. The good news is that the one or two perfect ones that we managed to sample have been absolutely delicious - sweet and bursting with strawberryness! Their amazing flavor is also impelling us to keep a closer watch on the strawberry patch for ripening berries - right now, we have about ten on their way.

The beans I planted the day after the hail storm are coming up nicely. The Empress and Golden Wax bush beans are coming up the most reliably - the Kentucky Wonder pole beans have had kind of spotty germination, for some reason. Hopefully, they'll all come up soon.

The first round of beets and carrots are getting big! They are really quite leafy, and I believe we'll be harvesting some soon. The second round are coming up and sending out some true leaves. I'll be planting a third round soon!

I replanted some cucurbits a few days ago, this time using two seeds per desired plant. I'm tired of them refusing to germinate! I replanted one cucumber, two yellow squash, three butternut squash, three cantaloupe, and one Tigger melon, and they should come up within another three or four days. If not, I give up! I also still need to call Nick at CSU to see if he has any leftover pumpkin starts that I could buy - Frank says I waited too long to plant our Howdens; they are too long-season to yield much before the season is over if I plant them this late.

About a week ago, I picked up the next three tires for the potatoes, again from Alpine Tire Center, painted them using free recycled paint from the Larimer County Landfill's Home Hazardous Wastes Department, and stuck them on top of the first layer of tires. I also drove in the rebar stakes I'd gotten - two per tire stack, to hold the upper tires in place against wind, shifting soil, etc. I only put on a base coat of light yellow; Ben and I will be adding some colorful designs pretty soon, to make them a little bit less of an eyesore. After I stacked the second tires on, I filled in their centers with soil from around the first tires, covering most of the potatoes' leaves. Then I stuffed some dead leaves around the inside of the tires (where the tubes would go), as per Louis' suggestion. Actually, Louis had suggested straw, but straw is a lot harder to find than dead leaves, and I think the same principles will apply to the leaves. They will probably break down a lot faster than straw would, but I think they'll be fine for this growing season. The potato plants only took a couple of days to pop right back up through the soil again, and now they're going strong once more.

We have a very healthy population of flea beetles at WOG. I first noticed them on the tomatoes, and now they are also on the potatoes and a few peppers. The eggplants alone of the solanaceae have been left unscathed. Flea beetles aren't a big deal at all in small numbers, because all they do is chew little holes in the leaves. Of course, this is not ideal, because it makes the plant take energy away from growth and fruit production and put it toward repairs, as well as reducing the number of photosynthetic cells, which is where the energy comes from in the first place. I have been smushing the beetles I've been able to catch (not many), but I'll have to purchase some Pyrethrum to get rid of them if their population explodes. However, Pyrethrum is a broad-target insecticide, so it would also kill any populations of beneficial insects we've built up, and that's the last thing we want to do. Here's hoping the population stays small, and that the beneficials we have will help to control it.

We also have some aphids. So far, I've only noticed them on the kale - Ben and I were sampling a kale leaf the other day, and I turned it over and discovered those darn little green bugs. Not a whole heck of a lot, but they were on the other leaves as well. I smushed them all, and so far they haven't made a comeback. There aren't any on the cabbage or the other kale plant, as far as I can tell, or anywhere else. Yet. Come on, ladybird beetles!

I finished the entire roll of netting yesterday. The roll was enough to cover the beets, carrots, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, zucchini, pumpkins, yellow and butternut squash, eggplants, and peppers. Ben was a great help stretching the ungainly netting over tricky hoops - it was a lot easier to do with two people! The only things left uncovered that I'd like to cover are the melons. Gotta get more netting!

That's all the updates we have for today! Thanks for reading.

WOG out.