Hot in the City

88, 90, 92, 93, 87, 87.

What do these numbers mean? They are the highs from today through the next 5 days. If it hadn't before hand, Summer has officially announced its presence now.

The good news is that the garden is (mostly) thriving. Knowing that I'll be off my feet for a few weeks after Wednesday has really lit a fire under my ass to get the garden prepared for being semi neglected.

For starters, I now have two fully functioning 55 gallon water barrels hooked up. They are attached to each other with some tubing so that when the main barrel fills up to near the top, the excess drains into the secondary barrel. The second barrel had some leaking issues with the spout not quite fitting right but I put some silicon on it today and mostly stopped it. There are still some leaks that I will try to address tomorrow after things have dried off. It's pretty exciting! I watered my whole garden using my barrels today. And with hot stretches like the one I'm in now, it's really easy to see the benefits of having some water reserves. I also dug out holes below the spouts so a) the watering can can fit underneath them easier and b) there is a spot for the excess water to go rather than making it a muddy mess around the whole area.

My main carrot and beet area is still doing fine after last weeks thinning. I suspect in a week or two they will be ready to pluck as well. That area will next harbor a fall crop of spinach and lettuce and maybe even some Watermelon Radishes which I've heard are better suited as a fall crop.

Speaking of things being better suited as a fall crop, as I mentioned in the last post, my lettuce crop had bolted and went away. However, I have since cleared all of that space of any and all rouge weeds and laid down a layer of my own home made compost. I may have also mentioned that all of my broccoli and cauliflower I planted for the spring grew really really big and then never formed any actual broccoli or cauliflower heads. I have heard it said before that those are both notoriously difficult to grow AND that they are better suited for fall. At least here in Michigan. I've learned my lesson about trying to grow them in spring. SO, what I have done in the space that previously grew my lettuce is planted round two for a fall crop of Early Snowball Cauliflower, Broccoli, Colorful Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts. I also planted this combo on my side bed by my garage. I'm doing a little experiment....

This site gets limited morning sun but full midday and afternoon sun

This site by the garage gets morning sun and some afternoon sun

I want to see which, if either, will grow better this fall.

My peas are winding down and I suspect with this weeks heat wave that they will wither fairly fast.

In their place I think I may plant some beans and carrots. I'm not sure if I'll do pole since the trellis is already set up for their climbing nature or if I'll do bush. 

Speaking of carrots and beans...

Here is my second round of carrots which are a few weeks from being ready. The poles to the right are for my pole beans. The poles themselves seemed to be working fine until I had to pull most of my pole bean plants due to them having Bean Rust. I was pretty sure that is what it was just by looking at them but a quick search confirmed it. So in the garbage they go. Composting will just spread the disease.

Here is one of four of my huge squash plants. I have a feeling I will have a lot of squash soon

This is my miniature acorn squash, also huge. 

Both rows of squash

My dad came today and helped me get my tomatoes staked up. I thought we were just going to tie each plant up to it's own stake. He had other plans which were far more fancy than I thought.

It's my very own tomato corral! 

Now my tomatoes have their very own fence to lean against and grow on. I had to tie a few to the wood just to keep them from falling but the rest seem to have fallen right in line. I think this will do just fine.

My volunteer tomatoes growing from out of one of my compost piles. 

 I was still able to collect some compost from the same pile the tomatoes are growing out of and spread it on the garden today.

My pepper plants seem to be doing just fine. 

More peppers next to some marigolds and my tomato corral.

This is behind my tomatoes. These are my basil plants, Italian and two lime ones as well. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be swimming in it soon.

And last but not least, my side bed.

I cleared this bed from the peas and broccoli. Today I laid on some compost and planted beets, Swiss chard and romaine lettuce. So that is the last of it right now.

Here is to hoping that all of my new plantings get off to a healthy start. It should be hot enough to germinate everything pretty quickly. The problem with that is that once they sprout, this heatwave might be enough to wilt them before they even get a chance to get started. Keeping them well watered will be a challenge after Tuesday. May just have to use the hose until then. Either way, I'll try my best to not let the heat of summer kill my crop.

Things That Happen

Right smack dab in the middle of my first full year/full scale urban gardener endeavor, I'm hit with the news that I have an umbilical hernia. It doesn't feel all that great when doing a lot of bending, which gardening tends to entail. I'm seeing a surgeon on Thursday to schedule a surgery. The recovery time is a bit slow. A good 3-6 weeks before I can lift anything over a few pounds or do anything that would entail a lot of flexibility such as gardening or picking up my son. So knowing this, I made today the day where I went and did a big garden clean and harvest. It may be my last chance to do so on my own this season, depending on when the surgery is scheduled. Plus I took a walk in my neighborhood today and met/chatted with a fellow gardener and that gave me another boost of motivation. So hi to Ann, if you are reading!  

Let me first comment on some things that I unfortunately do not have pictures on right now. My tomatoes are booming. Again (last year they turned themselves into a registered jungle). I had all the intentions of staking them and then summer happened and I lost track of time and didn't get it done. My dad said he will come over Sunday and get it done for me as the pushing the stake into the ground and the bending over and etc etc just isn't a good idea (despite me doing it today which I am already, a mere 30 minutes later, paying for). They are starting to lay over and crush some of my peppers and basil, all of which are doing amazing thus far! 

My pole beans are making a slow climb of it. They are climbing but I expected a more rapid growth rate. We'll see. Perhaps a dose of fertilizer will help that out. My bush beans are coming along nicely though. Also, my Zephyr summer squash and zucchini are coming in great with some being ready to pick in a few days. My acorn squash are also getting big leaves on them and developing nicely thus far. 

My lettuce is done until the fall crop comes along. The spinach is all about done as well. The peas are still producing but I'm seeing a fall off in rate and amount and some of the shoots are starting to yellow on me, signalling the end is near for them. 

Now on to today's harvest. 

My Chioggia beets with a random little albino one. They may be a little on the smaller side but I'm just glad to have a harvest after what they looked like a month or two ago due to the leaf miners. 

My Burpee Golden beets. 

Chantenay Red Cored carrots. 

Paris Market globe carrots

Purple dragon carrots. Love the coloration/variation on these carrots. 

Mini Purplette red bulbing onions. These have done so awesome whether transplanted or started from seed outside. Highly recommend. 

So there you have it! A great harvest so far. I still have about 1/3 of all of these left in the ground to develop more before another harvest. Some of them were crowded on space and now that the space is freed up, I'm hoping the thrive and beef up. Or maybe it's veggie up? Either way. If I missed any information that you are curious about, just ask! This post is rushed to be done before my son wakes up from nap so I may have skimmed over some details. I hope you enjoy. I know I am. 

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!