4th of July Update

Holidays are a good time to check the progress in the garden beds.  It’s really quite amazing the progress that the vegetable garden makes in the month of June.  Here’s a picture of the beds on May 30.  To that date most of the production came from the center front bed with lettuce and spinach and the center bed with cole crops.   Most of the summer plants had been in the ground for two weeks. 

Except for a few cole crops those plants are out now.  Carrot, beet, scallion and bean seedlings are growing in their place.  The foliage development of the summer and storage crops has been rapid over the last month.  The garden is approaching peak foliage (a phrase I just made up) and also peak photosynthesis.  Here is the same view today. 

The Silver Queen okra produces an impressive canopy for a young plant.  I thought it would shoot up quickly but its habit looks more spreading.  The leaf on the lower right measured 18 inches across.  The okra pod is almost white, but it has to be picked early or it goes woody.

I built the SWC’s this spring and planted them with Millionaire okra, a compact variety from Johnny’s.  My hope is that in a few weeks there will be enough okra to can some okra pickles.  With some hot peppers in the jar they are hard to resist.

The Honeybear acorn squash is 4 feet across.  So far I haven’t seen any squash bugs or eggs, and I’ve sprayed the stem a few times with Bt in hope of keeping off the borer.  As a matter of fact the garden has had remarkably little bug pressure to this point.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’s not hit by bacterial wilt.  A few years ago I cooked and froze the glut of acorn squash, since they don’t keep that long. 

The butternut and teksukabotu squash are in the new bed close to the pond, on the barren ground that was scraped clean of topsoil when they built the pond.  The plants seem to be getting a footing and are growing rapidly.  The potatoes in the potato box aren’t as vigourous as I like.  Well it is an experiment.

I was hoping for the first tomato by the 4^th of July and there’s one that has a blush of red but it’s not ready.   The past week was cloudy rainy and cool and the hot weather plants have not done much.  In fact we had several days with highs that did not reach 70 degrees, a rarity in this area.  The tall plant in back is Supersonic, the plant on the left San Marzano, and on the right Cherokee purple.  I grow Supersonic nearly every year and experiment with other varieties.

It looks to me like the Cherokee purple is setting out way to many fruits for the foliage it has.  In fact that may be why its growth has lagged behind.  It’s hard to see in the picture but the plant is thick with green tomatoes and blossoms.  Some of the fruiting stems have at least 10 blossoms on them, and it looks now like some of them are not setting.  Other than pruning the suckers I'm not going to prune any blossoms.

This is my first year growing sweet potatoes.  They are just now beginning to escape the box.  I don’t know if this summer will provide enough growing degree days to make a crop.  I’m sure they will make something.

That's the overview in mid-summer.  Knock on wood, it's shaping up to be a productive growing season.  Declare your independence and grow your own food!

Finally some Variety

It's been a tough slog with the summer squash so far.  The first plants seeded in mid May died in June.  They were a Burpee's yellow variety, can't remember the name.  Not to worry, I had seeded a backup plant a few weeks later.  A few weeks ago I seeded more backup plants, this time an Italian squash (can't remember that name either.  I'm writing this post at a coffee shop).  Good thing I did that, because Friday I went into town for a few hours.  When I got back this is what I found:

Snapped clean off at the base it was.  It was a windy day, but this?  I'm giving up on that yellow squash variety, it just doesn't look very promising. 

Well other things are really coming along.  And to tell you the truth summer squash doesn't really move me.  Not when there are vegetables available that I like better, and those are coming in now.  This morning I picked the first green beans, okra and carrots. 

There are two varieties of okra, Millionaire and Silver Queen.  Millionaire is growing in the SWC's and is supposed to be diminutive in stature.  Silver Queen is an old variety that is supposed to get 8 feet tall.  You can probably guess which is which in the picture.  The beans are Provider, one of my favorite beans.  The carrots are Nantes and Cosmic Purple.  I thinned out the two rows of carrots - some of them were too close together - and get to eat the thinnings.  There's also a Picolino and a Diva cucumber in the pickings.

Earlier in the week I picked another broccoli and more cucumbers.  The broccoli is Gypsy.  It looks a little malformed and isn't as tasty as the spring broccoli, but I'll use it. 

I also caught a channel catfish, this time a really nice sized fish 21 inches long.  There are two sizes of catfish in the pond.  One size goes about a pound and was probably born last year.  It will make 5 or 6 oz of filets, just enough for a meal for myself.  The bigger fish go about 3 pounds and were likely born two years ago.  They end up as two 9 or 10 oz filets, each one a good meal.  The entrails go in the compost bin.  Nothing goes to waste. 

For the week:  cucumber 2 lb 10 oz, snap beans 8 oz, okra 9 oz, carrots 1 lb, broccoli 14 oz, total 5.6 lbs.  Yearly total 42.6 pounds.