Just a quick harvest

I just got back from a weekend on Lake Michigan and headed out to check on my crops. Found some harvest-able veggies out there. I probably could have pulled more but I'll wait until I'm able to do more with them before getting over zealous.

Peas, beets, bulbing onions, and a not quite ready Purple Dragon carrot

Garden Updates for Summer/Fall

As my last post indicated, things/gardens are always changing. This means that I, as a gardener, must also evolve or watch my garden slowly become empty as I harvest crops.

Because of this, I put seeds into some starter pots in order to transplant them in a few weeks. Included in the batch is Brussels sprouts (I decided to forgo a spring crop and just do a fall crop as it is rumored that a few light frosts on the sprouts will help sweeten them up a little), red peppers (as my previous starters have all died), 5 color Swiss chard, 3 types of lettuce (because much of mine is about ready to harvest and a second crop this year would be nice), melon (as only one that I have planted directly has sprouted), lime basil (these too have failed to survive my first transplant), and cucumber. Here is hoping that they all do better the second time around.

Here is my seed starting cell pack

Also a quick update on my peas by way of pictures as they are growing fast and furious right now.

Everything Turns! Turns! Turns!

"To everything there is a season" as The Byrds once sang.

And that rings true for my life both in and out of the garden. Right now the season seems to be a busy one. I haven't done a blog entry here in at least a week or two. With good reason. There have been dance recitals for my daughter, neighborhood garage sales to participate in and run, Fathers Day, etc etc. And it is not going to slow down anytime soon.

The garden seems to be the same way. A lot of high 70's/low 80's weather coupled with a good dose of rain over the last week or two has the garden growing at warp speed! I'll get to that more in a little bit by way of pictures.

The last time I had left you with an entry, I believe I was bemoaning the fate of my plants at the hands of pests. I have some bad news but mostly good news for all of that. First, the bad. I previously had mentioned that my  one patch of radishes had root maggots in them and across the yard the other patch had gone unscathed. Well... as I was pulling the last of the spring radishes from my "good patch" I found a few to have the dreaded root maggots. So gross.

BUT! There is good news to be had, as promised. My beets and spinach that had been battling leaf miner have made a great recovery thanks to my crushing of the eggs on the back of leaves every other day or so. It would seem I have helped to interrupt their life cycle. Although I cannot take all of the credit. I also used some Captain Jack's Organic Insecticide two or three times and it seems to have pitched in with the effort as well. I've also seen some predatory beneficial insects buzzing around the garden so I will share some of the success with them too. Good job little ones.

The beet leaves are looking much healthier now

The beets have rebounded so nicely that there are some close to harvest!

 So there is a great success story. Patience and a little effort took a crop that looked to be almost lost and turned it around in almost two weeks. Without using heavy pesticides/poison.

My Purplette mini bulbing onions are starting to come along as well. 

Here is one I harvested as a tester to see where they are at in their growth.

Also, my peas have grown over a foot in the last week and have started flowering and producing pods!

Look how tall they are now!

Game on

 And not to be out done but some of my pepper plants have been flowering and producing peppers already as well!

The plant is going to need to grow faster if it wants to support any more of these spicy guys

More flowers

As of right now the only downside is that my beans and melon have been fairly sporadic with their sprouting and even when the beans do sprout it looks like squirrels or something have been eating about half of them. Also, some of my spinach is getting ready to bolt. Need to eat it soon. Oh well. I can't complain too much. Everything seems fairly healthy. Here, take a look and judge for yourself.

Here you can see carrots, beets, onions and more carrots

Mmmm lettuce

Pole beans

Summer Squash and Zucchini

Pepper and Tomato plants

More Pepper and Tomatoes

Basil

Pepper plant

And here we have compost pile tomatoes. They started growing out of compost so I'm going to let them go and see what happens!

 So there it is. Gerich Gardens in mid June. There have been failures, sure. I like to call them learning experiences. The next thing I want to do is get my Brussels Sprouts ready to plant out for a fall crop. There is always something to keep you busy for each and every season. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

Well things just got real. My beet leaves have looked a little wilted and under developed for a few weeks. I couldn't figure out what was wrong. After much closer looks and research, I have discovered they have leaf miners which is a type of fly and it's larvae. I found this article about them. I even found some of the flies in action on some of the plants and killed them straight away. They are very small and hard to see, not like a regular house fly. I went through all of my beet leaves and found the tell tale white eggs and wiped/crushed all of them with my fingers. I plan on doing this at least a few times a week to help reduce the numbers since it is too late to put on floating row covers this year. Obviously next year I will place them in a different location and start with floating row covers to see if that helps. The other bummer part is that I found some of the white eggs on the underside of my spinach about ten feet away. I did the same to them by crushing the eggs. I would say I found eggs on about 75% of the beet leaves and about 33% of the spinach leaves. Another downer is that I found 3 leaves of my beets to have brown aphids on the underside. I ripped off the affected leaf and crushed the aphids between my fingers and disposed of the leaves. I looked around my other plants in the area, especially my Romaine lettuce and didn't see any signs of either of these two pests.

Oh, we aren't done yet. I have radishes on opposite ends of my yard, two different beds. Just got done plucking round two of radishes (as seen below) from the bed on the east side of my yard.

Look how pretty they are!

Wandered over to the ones on the west side. These are twice as old as the ones I just picked and while the leaves are developed nicely, the root itself was slow to develop. I always just attributed this to it not having as much sun throughout the day. Nope. I pulled up four or five radishes and all had white maggots in them. And due to the basic disgusting nature of them and how they aren't suitable for most viewers, I will not put up a picture. Just from some quick internet research, I believe they are cabbage maggots or root maggots? Bummer. Not a fan of that. So I guess it is off to the gardening store I go looking for alternative measures. I'll also take suggestions from all of you as well!