Common Ground

Above is a picture of what I grabbed from the garden for dinner tonight. Some exciting firsts for this season with the “Sun gold” cherry tomatoes, “Nyagous” tomatoes, new potatoes and Lebanese cucumbers. The potatoes were amazing! They are soft and buttery this early on. The sun gold cherry tomatoes are very sweet, as promised by the seed catalog. It’s nice to be able to go shopping in the garden before making dinner.

It’s easy to get frustrated when something doesn’t work out well. I have been having a lot of trouble with broccoli and cauliflower transplants this year:

I’ve had this happen at least 3 times so far this year. The seedlings I put out wither and die a couple days after putting them in. I think the reason is the hot weather combined with the row cover directly over them. I haven’t quite figured out the row cover and broccoli combination yet. Last year I left the cover off until the broccoli was in the ground for 3 weeks, but they were infested with cabbage maggots by that time. This year I decided to put the covers on immediately, but that’s obviously not working either. Oh well, I’ll replant another 2 flats and hope I get it right finally. The net result is that broccoli and cauliflower won’t be ready until probably late September. Early broccoli was a bit of a disaster this year too for various reasons. I’ve probably only got about 30 plants out of more than 100 that I planted. Some serious wind yesterday ripped the cover off of those and blew a couple of them over just before they started forming a head.

But, on the other hand there are many crops that are doing fabulously. I think things are maybe a bit behind because of a cool May and early June, but the rain and recent warm weather has been a great thing for most crops. An example is this years melon beds:

I have been growing melons (or trying to grow melons) for as long as I’ve been seriously vegetable gardening. I guess that’s 6 years. Last year we had a decent harvest but any other year it’s been no more that 2-3 melons. I have never seen melon plants looking as healthy and vibrant as they do now, this early. The cucumber beetles haven’t really shown up yet and the plants are growing like crazy. It now looks like I could have left a bit more room between the watermelons (above, left) and the other melons (above, right). I was worried about pollination as I haven’t seen too many bees around, but today I spotted two large melons in the patch already.

Melons are tricky here because they require a long season (70 days to harvest) where the soil is very warm. Our soil is naturally warm enough by now (early July), but not really warm enough for late May and most of June for melons to grow well. The answer seems to be clear plastic mulch (no longer visible under the plants). An added step I took this year is row covers over the plants for the first 3 weeks. The other problem for the plants is cucumber beetles. They attack the young plants and spread bacterial wilt, which the melons are particularly susceptible to. This year the beetles have come out quite late. I’ve only noticed them just this week on some of the zucchini and squash plants. Interestingly, they are far more attracted to zucchini and squash once those plants start flowering and at that point they leave the melons alone. I think from now on I will make sure I have some zucchini as far ahead as melons just for this reason.

I guess this post is getting long, but if you’ve come this far, here is a mini photo tour of the garden from today (click to enlarge):

Southwest section of garden showing (from left to right), new beds for broccoli and cauliflower, new bed for carrots / rutabaga / kholrabi, bed of carrots / beets / parsnips, bed of zucchini and cucumbers, bed of potatoes, bed of asparagus (with more potatoes behind)

Northwest section showing from left-front to right-back: squash, peas, broccoli / brussel sprouts, cabbage, tomatillos / peppers / eggplant, tomatoes, sweet potatoes (hard to see), herbs / lettuce (hard to see) and finally, beans both pole and bush

Northeast section showing from back-left to front-right: garlic, lettuce, empty bed, leaf lettuce, perennial onions, carrots (ready now!), beets, celeriac, onions (set), onions (from seed).

The Southeast section consists of more asparagus and the melons shown above. Missing from the tour is the sweet corn and jerusalem artichokes at the far west of the garden.