Taking Stock on the First Day of Summer

Summer is officially here and the garden is doing quite well. At the moment, I am sort of between crops. Last weekend I harvested the first round of pak choi. There were several dozen perfect heads though I did wait a little longer than I should. Some were starting to set flower buds. I left several of the smaller heads to grow a little longer. I definitely waited a little too long for those. A little rain and some high temperatures and they bolted. I decided to leave a couple in the ground and let them flower. I want to see if I can collect and save the seeds. There are still several dozen pak choi from the second round of planting. I’ll have to really keep an eye on them so I don’t miss them at their peak.

Pak choi harvest

Oops! Waited a little too long.

Maybe I can collect some seed.

The arugula has also started to bolt. That’s not too surprising. It was around this time last year that I ended up pulling the plants because they were flowering. I’m debating planting another round but the heat really makes for some peppery greens and I don’t see the heat going away anytime soon.

Bolting arugula

The rainbow chard is going strong. I’ve been harvesting it a little at a time when it is small and we’ve been eating it in salads. The season has been much dryer than last year (which is actually good as last year's wet weather caused a fungus on my chard) so, with any luck, it should keep doing well for quite a while.

So many pretty colors!

With everything else, it’s a waiting game. Everything I planted is making a decent show of it. The corn is several inches tall and the runner beans are starting to reach for the trellis. The cucumbers, cantaloupe, and four types of squash (if you include pumpkins) are all looking healthy and happy. And I’m happy to see new blossoms on the tomato and pepper plants. I just need patience and continued good luck, and I should be busy with produce in no time.

Tomato blossoms

Almost pepper blossoms

The biggest challenge this year has been dealing with the squirrels. Last year, I don’t remember seeing any squirrels at all until in the fall when a new batch of young ones took up residence in the maple tree in front of our house. This year, we’re practically tripping over them. There are chipmunks too and no matter what we try, they are still digging in the garden and eating most of the strawberries. We’ve only been quick enough to get maybe two dozen berries before the little rodents have snatched them up. We’ve tried netting over the berries, cayenne pepper over everything, Critter Ridder around the perimeter, live traps, and, yes, rat traps (we went for the nuclear option). Nothing seems to slow them down.

We were quick enough to get about
two dozen berries before the squirrels.

Stupid squirrels! There are no nuts hidden in
the garden. Those are beets and your insistent
digging is threatening their very existence!

All of the other wildlife has stayed respectfully out of the garden. The rabbits are happy in the clover and the deer seem to just enjoy lying nearby. I did have a doe sniffing around the front flower beds just the other day while I was eating my breakfast. I will have to investigate some natural repellents. I would rather not have my hostas and lilies chomped off like they were last year.

Bunny luxuriating in the clover outside the garden.

Button buck just chilling next to the garden

Morning visitor in the front yard

Got anything good for breakfast?

Starting Seedlings and Hardening Off

This year I finally decided to invest in a grow light setup so I could start seeds indoors. I had tried several times before with mixed results. Mostly the seedlings came up, had fabulous potential, then died off. I blame myself for those failures as I’m sure I lost interest at some point and did not treat the new little lives as kindly as I should have. I have come a long way with learning patience and care and this year had a very successful batch of seedlings.

Grow lights a-growin'

Over the winter I did a lot of research into grow lights. At first I thought I would rig up something on my own. I could buy a couple lights and then build some sort of stand but then I would need a spare table or sideboard which would cost more. Trying to be economical seemed to cost a lot more in time and effort. In the end, I went to the Gardener’s Supply Company website and ordered the Stack-n-Grow light system with one add on shelf. The unit was easy to set up, light weight, and had nearly enough room for all my seedlings. I say nearly enough because by the time I re-potted all of them, it was full to overflowing.

Brand new set-up with its first seedlings

I started my first seedlings at the end of February. I have been planning a flower garden (a very un-Shaker garden) since last fall. I priced out perennial plants and decided to try starting some seeds on my own. I planted Echinacea, butterfly weed, lavender, chrysanthemums, columbine, and wild Oswego tea, the seeds of which my husband collected while in the field for work. They all sprouted within a week and quickly grew into strong little plants. I thinned each to one per cell and watched most of them thrive. About a month after planting, I transplanted the seedlings into 3” peat pots. I had nearly a dozen of each variety.

Oswego tea seedlings before thinning

Butterfly weed seedlings, tall and proud

In early March I started tomatoes and peppers. I had gotten the tomato seeds free in 2014 with a catalog order. They are Martino’s Roma tomatoes, a variety I have never tried before. I usually like growing Juliet tomatoes and some kind of beefsteak but I figured I would give these a try. If they didn’t come, I could always get some other varieties at the greenhouse. But they did come and are doing quite well. I transplanted them twice before planting them out – first from the starter cells to peat pots then once more into large plastic pots. They were large enough to set out in the peat pots but the weather was still a bit iffy and I didn’t want to stunt their growth in the 3” pots. That seemed to be a good decision. I transplanted them out into the garden a week ago and they now have little buds on them.

Peppers and tomatoes in larger pots

Tomato successfully transplanted into the garden

I tried starting two types of peppers – California Wonder sweet peppers and Poblano peppers. The Poblano seeds came from a pepper we got at the grocery store and apparently were not viable. That’s too bad. I purchased the sweet pepper seeds and they grew very well. I did lose one of the seedlings early on but I still had five to plant out into the garden. They are looking particularly green and lovely so I have high hopes.

Peppers happily transplanted

So green!

I started another round of seedlings in early April – cantaloupe, fennel, dill, and cilantro. The herb seeds came from a Chia herb garden I found on clearance after Christmas. I had actually started the basil, parsley, and marjoram from the kit in January. (There were only three pots in the kit even though there were five packets of seeds. Weird.) So, the extra herb seeds got started with this round.

Fennel and cantaloupe seedlings in peat pots

I have learned that hardening off the seedlings is very important for successful transplant. Our back porch is wonderful for such a thing. It faces east so it gets some sunlight in the morning and shade in the afternoon. It is screened in so that air can move through but strong winds are a bit tempered. The flower seedlings got a good week of hardening off before I planted them out.

Hardening off the flower seedlings

Unfortunately, I kind of forgot to start hardening off the vegetable plants until three days before I intended to transplant them. I transplanted the flowers about ten days before the veggies and herbs. So, the veggies got a rapid transition on a particularly hot Memorial Day weekend but the vast majority of them did just fine. The dill and cilantro, however, melted right into the dirt and were no more. I’m not too heartbroken, however. I’ll directly plant some dill seeds in the garden and I don’t like cilantro anyway. It is a vile-tasting herb. I only started the seeds because I had them.

Panorama of my lovely garden on June 4, 2016

Overall, the seed starting went very well. I will certainly be doing it again next year.

Back in the Garden Again

The 2016 gardening season is in full swing now. Nearly everything is planted in the garden and we’ve already been able to pick some things. It is wonderful to be in the second year of a garden. The chives were up and ready to use by the middle of April and on the 25^th of that month we had our first asparagus. We made a rhubarb pie on May 7^th. We had to supplement the fresh rhubarb with some frozen from last year to fill the crust but it tasted very good. The strawberries are coming back strong as well.

Garden at rest in mid-April

Home-grown asparagus - yum!

As usual, I spent much of late winter/early spring poring over seed catalogs and working out my garden layout. After the fungus on the chard and beets last year I had to make sure I rotated things around this year. That’s just good practice anyway, but it did lead to a lot of erasing on my plan. I thought I had it all set when I realized I had put the tomatoes where the potatoes were last year and that’s a no no. So, I had to make some changes but finally got everything worked out.

Potatoes starting to peek through

I put the first seeds in the ground on April 29 – scallions, beets and arugula. At the beginning of May we put in the potatoes, carrots, pak choi, chard, snap peas and garden peas. Since then we have been battling squirrels who think their nuts are still stashed in the garden from last winter. In all fairness, I have pulled out two acorns that were on their way to turning into oak trees so the squirrels are not entirely wrong.

An oak tree in the garden? I don't think so.

Nearly every day there were new little drill holes in the raised beds. I wouldn’t mind the digging so much if it didn’t disturb the new seedlings. The only seeds the tree rats seem to actually be digging up and eating are the snap peas which have been entirely cleaned out. All the other plants are just collateral damage of the digging. I tried dusting everything with cayenne pepper but that seemed to have no effect. I probably didn’t use enough. One container got spread over the entire garden. I have some other pepper-based repellent on the way from Amazon so we’ll see how that works.

The Enemy

The strawberry bed seems to be a favorite place for the squirrel digging. Again, they have not damage the plants, they are just digging everywhere among them. I worried that when the strawberries actually did come on that the squirrels would finally turn their attention to the berries. After waiting over a year for the fruit myself, I am not about to give them up to the squirrels or the chipmunks or the birds, for that matter. So, I got some bird netting and made a little cage over the plants. I got that done a few days ago and so far so good. (fingers crossed)

Protecting the strawberries

I just got the rest of the seeds in the ground yesterday. The list is similar to last year – corn, pumpkins, beans, cucumbers, summer squashes, acorn squash. I gave up on some vegetables I planted last year like kale, turnips and spinach and have added watermelon radishes to the mix. I started several plants indoors earlier in the spring but I forgot to start hardening them off until yesterday morning so I’m not ready to plant them out yet. I’ll write more about starting the seeds in my next post.

View of the garden on May 28

My husband asked me the other day if it actually saved any money growing produce ourselves or if it was cheaper to just buy vegetables at the grocery store. My first thought was that it must be less expensive at the store, especially if you figure in the time we put in to keep the garden running. Of course that’s one of my favorite parts of gardening so I hesitate to consider that an expense. So, I decided to run some numbers. This year, we spent $23.89 on seeds and $55.77 to amend the soil. We also spent $374.87 for everything needed to start seeds indoors. That’s a grand total $454.53 (so far). Will the garden produce that much store-quality veg? I don’t know. If it does, great. If not, well, at least I had a great time playing in the dirt!

Pak choi seedling

Strawberry blossoms

Arugula before thinning

Chive blossoms

Garden pea seedling