Farmer DaveA Garden Blog from University Place, WA

All the trailing flowers we planted in Spring are really doing very well…. just what we wanted them to do – trail over the edge of the cart.

Flower cart

Flower cart

Just a nice view looking South over the sport court container garden – herb and salad beds to the far left behind the white fence.

Sport court view from the North - looking South

The carrots are doing great – but the lousy cold rainy spring did NOTHING good for the beans this year… I’ll be surprised if we see anything much from them.  They’re tall – 7 feet now (picture is from over a week ago), and have lots of blooms… but the foliage is thin and they just don’t look all that well.

Beans and carrots

We planted 4 different blueberry plants last year – 2 Dukes and 2 dwarf plants – one of the Duke’s never flowered, and the dwarfs didn’t do too much this year either.  But one Duke really went to town – we got quite a few really nice berries and they taste WAY better than the ones from the store.  Hopefully they’ll keep on going for next year and really produce.

Blueberries!

After watching the garlic grow all spring and summer, the bottom leaves started to die down and turn brown.  That was the signal to pull a “test garlic” bulb to see if they are ready… it seems they are.  All the rest come out tomorrow.

First "test garlic" looks good

Anyone following my blog will recall the disaster when the squirrels got to the dozen or so oak seedlings I had nurtured all last winter and dug them all up the day I planted them… all except this one.  They missed a single nut, which despite the odds managed to sprout and is doing very well now.  He’ll stay in the smallish pot until next Spring, then move to a larger pot for a second year of growth.

Only surviving baby oak tree from Thoreau's pond near Boston

This past week the potatoes all started to near the end of their cycle, so I started digging them up in the large pots.  The reds were first – and did very well indeed.  The first 2 large pots yielded 17 pounds.  After a light cleaning, I left them in closed paper bags in the shade for a week, then transferred them into burlap sacks to hang in the garage.

First few reds out of the ground - July 21, 2010

Yield from one large pot

17 pounds of reds in the basket

This certainly has been a long disappointing wait for decent weather to get here.  For most of the spring we had snow (late April), cold temps (40 degrees F) and almost no direct sun.  And MORE than our share of rain.  Yeah, I know the Northwest is famous for rain…. but that’s largely myth.  Most years, we have a lovely spring with growing conditions starting in late March.

This year has just been so disappointing – we really only started getting “summer weather” this month (July).  EVERYTHING was just pathetic in the garden – tomatoes that looked like they were already done for the season, black basil leaves, lethargic or nonexistent growth of anything planted from seed.

June had no posts as really nothing much changed.  Mostly I dug up rotting plants in the yard, some replaced, most not.  Sigh.

But now it seems we MAY finally be into a growing season… so I’ll get back to posting our garden photos.

Check back soon…

After a lot of thought, I have decided to pot up the mints in large 5 gallon pots instead of leaving it in the “mint bed”.  Even though the mint bed is isolated from the main garden, it is adjacent the lawn and I’m just afraid that despite the isolation I THINK is there, this stuff would spread EVERYWHERE.  So to be on the safe side, I’ve potted it up.  For now the pots will remain on the mint bed box, but I’ll move them to the sport court to prevent any roots from finding drainage holes.

Now to figure out what to put in the 4′ x 4′ bed that’s now freed up – only gets partial sun though, so not sure what to put in there…..  ideas anyone?

Spearmint on right, peppermint on left - no longer in the "mint bed"

Mint bed back in early March, just after the mint went in - now gone

So the consensus on Garden Web is that my onions that are starting to bloom should come up now – they are wanting to go into a second year (planted as corms last October), as they only had a single winter so are only 1 year onions.  Rather than wait them out another season, I’ve decided to pull them as they get ready to bloom.  So they are really like REALLY BIG green onions – the biggest ‘bub’ about 1.5″ in diameter.  But they taste wonderful, so who cares…  I learned a lot on this one.

I also have some Walla Walla sweet onion sets that I planted out – THOSE are already 1 year onions, so should bulb out at the end of summer.  Next year, I won’t do the corms again, but rather wait until sets are in the nurseries and plant those instead.

But we’ll have a lot of yummy 1st year onions this year anyway…

First white onions of the season...

Cut and ready to use - May 23, 2010

Here’s a view looking East – North on the left – of the sport court pots and the herb garden at the rear.

Sport court container garden - May 22, 2010

Found this nice Lemon Grass plant at a local nursery and potted it up.  We’ll bring it inside late fall and over-winter it in the house until next spring.  Hopefully will find some good lemon-grass recipes to cook this summer!

Lemon Grass in pot - May 22, 2010

I just LOVE fresh dill… I like to let it just grow like a weed in “safe places” – and will be planting it every few weeks over summer so there is always some coming in.  It seems to do well in containers, which works well as I don’t have to worry or care about self-seeding should I miss the seed pods.  I put the containers around on some non-dirt areas where it can do no harm.

This is the first batch this year – starting to get it’s real leaves – I’ll be thinning it soon.  The other two plants are some sort of sunflower that self-seeded from one of our bird feeders, and I plan to just leave them where they are and see what they do.  If they become a nuisance for the dill, one or both will go.  But they don’t look like “mammoth” variety, so could be a dwarf variety.  We’ll see… I’ll keep an eye on them.

Dill with volunteer sunflowers of some kind May 22, 2010

On a whim, I bought a Pie Pumpkin plant today at a Farmer’s Market in North Tacoma (the one at N. Proctor and 26th that runs every Saturday).  I had a pretty good size spot for it, and it just looked so strong and healthy.  I’ve since put slug bait around it…. should do well in this sunny spot.

Sugar Pie Pumpkin plant - May 22, 2010

We have a love-hate relationship with the 7 acre vacant lot next door to the fence on the North side of our lot.  The love part is that it was SUPPOSED to be 24 McMansions – should have all been done 2 years ago.  But the major slump in the housing market has tabled the project for what we have heard to be, a LONG TIME.  The developer bought at the absolute peak of the market, and there’s no way he can even recoup the land cost, much less make a profit building the homes.  So we should have a fair number more years of the solitude of a vacant lot.

The hate part is the SLUGS and VERMIN that live in big open fields.  We have to maintain rat poison traps around the perimeter.  But the big nuisance is the slugs.  Last year, our first garden, was almost a disaster – they just FLOODED under the fence.  I’ll never forget coming out the day after I put in basil and tomatoes, only to find the slugs had devoured them overnight.

That day I put out slug bait (which I hate to do, trying to be “organic” and all that)… the next morning there must have been FIVE HUNDRED dead slugs in the bed!  What a mess.

So this year, we put down a 2×6 rail that goes down 4″ into the soil and is attached to the fence boards, which seemingly should keep most slugs out.  And I think it really does…. the big ones anyway.  But I think that little ones still can slither their slimy way through the boards and are attacking – especially the Blue Lake Green Beans.  I have a 10′ row with a plant every 6 inches or so… but virtually every one has been attacked to the point that it cannot keep ahead of the slugs any longer.  Several have already given up the ghost.

So tonight, I resorted to slug bait and reseeded several of the areas where the plants had died.  It will put the row out of sync with itself, but I simply refuse to give up to the slugs – even if it means 6 or 8 plants will be WAY behind the others as they grow.

They are even finding their way up the side of 18″ wooden pots – so today I put bait along the top edge of the pot.  Inside is a pumpkin plant that’s been nibbled pretty badly.

Beans being attacked by slugs - May 22, 2010

Slugs attacking the potted pumpkin May 22, 2010

Just a nice shot of the blooming Rhodies and the herb/salad garden in the background.  East is on the left, South at the far end of the photo, with late afternoon sun poking through the rain clouds this afternoon.

Rhodies and herb garden - May 22, 2010

Just a further update of our Potato / Onion Row along the North fence to the NE corner.  I love how everything is bushing out so nicely!  We’re going to have a TON of potatoes, but we love them and have good storage options.

Potatoes and onions in the NE corner

Given my lousy start with horseradish this year, it’s finally really taking off.  It doesn’t seem to mind the insane rain we’ve been getting – an earlier attempt to start it resulted in rot-out of the planted roots due to excessive rain in January.  But it looks like it will do well this year and yield a small root or two for Passover next April.  I’m really hoping it will remain a perennial in the large tub it’s planted in.  Time will tell if it can make it through a severe winter while in a pot…

Horseradish (2 root starts) doing quite well now

We got the last of the herb garden in recently.  Hopefully everybody has enough room to grow properly – I tried really hard to keep the spacings right so things will fill in but won’t overly crowd each other.  So what we have planted are:  curly parsley, Italian parsley, Italian oregano, Greek oregano, Texas tarragon, French tarragon, chives, rosemary, and lemon balm.  The herb bed is the one on the left in the photo below.  Just beyond, past the Rhody bed, is a 4′ x 4′ mint bed with peppermint and spearmint.   And we also have a lot of basil growing, but in pots on the white picket fence to keep them out of reach of the slugs.  I’ve learned quickly that if you want to draw slugs to a bed they haven’t visited before, plant basil!!  We actually left a few “sacrificial” basil plants in the middle of the herb bed.  The slugs slowly devour them, and pretty much leave the rest of the bed alone.  That way  I don’t have to use slug bait – I only use it where I just have no other choice to save the plants.  Seems to be working well in the herb bed – only the basil is being attacked.

Herb bed on the left, salad bed on the right - basil on the fence

Herb garden

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we got this cool old cart from an out-of-business boutique near our home – they kept it out front to display specials.  Anyway, we got it for only $40 and have planted it full of trailing and flowering plants.

After just a month or so of growing, almost all of the plants are starting to trail nicely, and the clematis on the end is starting to explore the frame while it blooms.  I plan to add thin wires along to the top boards over time so it has lots of places to grip and expand, hopefully in a few years covering the entire roof of the cart.  The frame is all steel, and the wood is just “for looks” so even over time after the wood starts to rot out, we can just replace it, as the frame is solid steel top to bottom.

Flower cart

Flower cart

We have quite a few onions this year, planted in 2 different crops.  The first were generic “yellow” and “white” from the home center nursery – they came as corms that we planted in the fall in very large tubs.  This first crop was actually one of the very few things in tubs/pots that survived the killing week of cold we had last December (1 week of sub-20F temps – rare for here – zone 7b).  They came up in January and have been thriving ever since.

The second crop were planted as bundled sets – Walla Walla Sweets – that are planted in the garden – which are not as far along as the potted onions.

The whites and yellows now are starting to bloom – given they were planted last fall, I’m not sure if I should let them bloom… anyone know?  They were planted in October from corms (bulbs).

Bloomin onion... but should it be?

Bloomin onions

Yellow and White onions in tubs - planted October 2009

This week our first peas started coming in – despite the insane rain, the undaunted slugs trying to eat everything in sight, and the lack of expected warm sunny days, our peas are starting to produce.  They’re not quite ready – should be in a couple more days.  LOTS of blooms going on in the row, so hopefully they’ll keep on producing for some time.

In an earlier post I discussed the issues I was having getting catnip started… well, the little shelf was doing fine on the fence, halfway up to where it was too high to get to and too low to reach from above.  I figured that with nothing to “perch” upon (it’s a SMALL shelf!), the cats couldn’t get to it.  I thought the ONLY way they could was to jump on the pot from above, knocking it down…

Well, I guess I was right.  The pot was on its side yesterday morning, with the bulk of the juicier leaves nibbled off.  I half expected to find a totally stoned cat nearby… but I think he had already staggered home.

But I think there is plenty of the plant left to grow, so I repotted him and this time, shot 3 long screws into the pot to secure it to the shelf.  We’ll have to see how this works out… if they still manage to get there, I have another plan – a small shelf suspended 9 feet in the air off the metal basketball hoop standard – NO WAY can a cat get up there!  But hopefully this new attachment method will solve the problem.

Beaten-up catnip after being torn down by, well, CATS!

Screws to anchor the catnip pot to the shelf on the fence

I just can’t believe this weather here lately.  It will be sunny and nice in the morning, looking like a nice day coming on, but by 3 or 4 in the afternoon, TORRENTIAL downpour.  Not “spring showers” stuff… we’re talking SLAMMING rains, every single day for the last week.

It’s really starting to take a toll on things.  Talk about over-watering!!  The tomatoes are largely destroyed – they might recover, but I’ll probably bin them and start over in a week or two when the weather pattern changes.  Same with a number of cukes – just beaten into a pulp from the driving heavy rain.  It seems the only things in the garden that are enjoying all this are the potatoes – I could swear they grow 3 inches a day!!

I just hope it lets up soon…

Baby cukes destroyed by all the hard, heavy rain....

Basil going black from all the heavy hard rain

We bought our house in August 2004 – it came with a tool shed in the back that I can see from my home office window.   On the South side of the shed is a planter box.  From the time we moved in, there was this little maple tree sprout with just 2 leaves on top, only about 3″ tall.  The planter never gets water unless it rains.  Over the intervening years, that silly little maple tree stayed that size, and every spring would sprout the same 2 leaves.

So last summer, when I put in our first garden, I took pity on that poor little intrepid maple (which we have NO idea where the seed came from – zero maples around here!), and put it into a pot with good soil and fertilizer.  Over the summer it grew up to about 8 inches tall, with more leaves.  Then it the fall, it dutifully turned red and dropped it’s scant few leaves.

This Spring, he’s now over 1 foot tall, and covered in leaves!  We’re hoping he’ll actually get some branches this year… all winter he was just a “stick” in the pot!  We’ll keep him in this pot for some time, then eventually up-size his pot and maybe one day, plant him out in the yard.

I don’t have a photo of him as a baby – the photo below is a “stock” photo of about what he looked like in the planter box in the other picture.

Planter box on shed where the maple seedling grew for 4 years

This is what the seedling looked like for FOR YEARS - only water was rain

Our little maple tree today

Here’s a view of the NE corner where the Lilac is, along with a fair number of potato pots as seen in other posts.

Potato, Onion, Lilac corner - May 10, 2010

Just a view of the original North Bed …. peppers at the lower left, out to the container garden at the end, and of course the lilac tree that started it all.

Partial view - North Bed - May 10, 2010

The basketball hoop on the sport court had a little enclosed bed around it – but it was filled with weeds and nasty backfill dirt until this spring.  I dug it down a foot, and re-filled it with home-mixed potting soil.  Just planted some orange marigolds and a couple Thyme plants just to pretty things up.

In my experience, dill will grow just about anywhere… and is best left to its own devices.  So as an experiment I thought I’d plant some in a large container pot – yet another “tub” from the home center for $5, instead of a similarly sized “pot” from the garden department that would have been $20.  The dill is just now starting to sprout (pre-thinning) – with a couple of “volunteer” sunflowers that I think I’ll just leave there.  What the heck – if they get in the way of the dill I’ll deal with them then.  Curious to see how the two get along.

Dill in container with volunteer sunflower - May 14, 2010

NObody uses the sport court anymore.  It sits in a spot in the yard that gets sun almost the entire day.  The concrete holds the heat – on a hot summer day, it’s still warm an hour after sunset.  What a great place to have a container garden!  Most of my pots are black – which also holds the heat and makes the roots happy.  We have garlic, bay leaves, red potatoes, numerous peppers, gourds, blueberries (2 varieties, 2 plants of each), several varieties of tomatoes and cucumbers, basil, and some flowers.  This is a good couple of views of the layout.

Sport Court container garden area - May 14, 2010

Blueberries, tomatoes, potatoes and peppers in container garden - May 14, 2010

Garlic row - with bay leaf and blueberries - May 14, 2010

Container garden on Sport Court - May 14, 2010

Anne REALLY wanted a tree in the yard… we started with the Lilac (in the rear NE corner of our yard, back at the fence corner in this photo).  After a month of looking, we found a beautiful maple tree and planted it in the yard, with a circle of bricks around the site.  We were a little worried about the harsh winter we had this year, that the tree might not make it.  But it’s doing well and thriving.

We have daffodils and spring crocus planted under it, along with a couple of low-voltage yard lights on our backyard lighting circuit – looks really neat at night!

Maple tree - planted June 2009 - May 14, 2010

Ok… so I’ve always wanted to grow catnip for the cats.  Never got around to trying it though until this  spring.  I bought a plant at the garden center, brought it home, and transplanted it into a smallish pot.  I thought I could “hide” it in the flower cart (see previous posts to see that) and Mr. Binx (our little black cat) wouldn’t find it.

WRONG!!!  Within literally MINUTES he was up inside the flower cart, squashing things, trying to get to the catnip plant.  Ok – THAT’S not going to work.

I was lacking any pot brackets, so I screwed some bits of wood together and made a little shelf to put it on the fence – halfway up, where he can’t jump high enough to reach it, and can’t reach it from above.  Hopefully it will grow safely here, and we can pluck off leaves to make him happy from time to time… we’ll see.  He’s pretty clever, so I won’t be surprised if he finds some way to knock the pot down and munch it all down, then fall asleep in a stoned stupor in the grass!

Catnip pot on fence shelf - May 14, 2010

Catnip pot on shelf on fence - May 14, 2010

Mr. Binx is Julie’s cat, technically… but as with most cats, he’s ALL our cat.  When we are working in the garden, he LOVES to come out and follow us all around the yard.  He pays us almost no attention in the house, but once we hit the yard, he’s like a puppy… I coined the term “Puppy Cat” a while ago – he’ll just follow me around everywhere I go, rain or shine pretty much.

I was just out taking the pix for tonights blog posts, and sure enough Mr. Binx came along as usual.  Here’s a couple pictures of him with the garden in the backround.

Mr. Binx sitting on the deck rail - May 14, 2010

Binx looking cute on the sport court - May 14, 2010

Here are a couple views of the salad bed.  With the picket fence on the left, the lettuce is Butter Crunch at the bottom, Romaine in the middle, Oak Leaf Red above that, and a new crop of Butter Crunch on the end.  The herb bed is on the right (against the stones) with pretty much every herb you could want – LOTS of rosemary, oregano (2 varieties), Italian parsley, tarragon, etc.  We also have a “dedicated mint bed” as well (not in photo – see other posts).

When we harvest the lettuce, we cut it down to about 1 inch from the ground, leaving the base leaves in place.  Within days it starts to regenerate and is on its way to a second harvest.

Salad bed on left by fence, herb bed on right against rocks - May 14, 2010

Boy – these guys are GOING TO TOWN!  Reds on the left, Fingerlings on the right.  Each “pot” is a big yard tub from Lowes, with lots of drainage holes I drilled into it.  It’s great to use these tubs for spuds – they are around $5 each at the home stores – take off the handles and put them in the “garden center” section, call them “pots”, and they’re now $20 each!!

I’ve dutifully “hilled” the potatoes as they’ve grown – re-burying them 2/3 the way up the plant.  Both tubs are now fully hilled – started at half-pot at planting.  Hilling makes the stalks produce more potato-producing roots.  I just learned this year to do this… hopefully we’ll have TONS of potatoes.

I’ve ordered in a supply of burlap bags from Amazon.com to store all our potatoes in in cool dark storage.  We go through a lot… so hopefully A) We’ll have enough and B) They’ll keep long enough that we can use them all.

Learning all this as we go.  It’s funny – when I was a kid, one of my garden jobs was hilling potatoes with a hoe in the rows.  Mom never told me WHY I had to do it… just DO IT!  I didn’t learn until recently why you need to hill your spuds!

Reds on left, Fingerlings on right - fully "hilled" - May 13, 2010

This is what our sport court container garden is looking like.  It’s actually grown a lot today, as I have put in a bunch more pots since this photo was taken.  I like the court for my pots because it gets amazing sun virtually all day long, and the heat is “stored” in the concrete even after the sun has set.  No body plays basketball anymore here (we’re going to take out the hook next year).

Behind the court is the lettuce and herb gardens.  The lettuce is closest the picket fence, which I put in to help break up the sun – seems to be working well with the lettuce.  The herb garden is at the rear of that area and also gets really good sun from about 10:00 until sunset.

Sport court container garden area - May 13, 2010

We have a LOT of potatoes this year – last year, we wished we had a lot more.  So we’ve got many large pots of numerous varieties of potatoes growing, planted in intervals so that the harvests will overlap (we hope).  We have reds, whites, and fingerlings this year – numerous pots of each.

This photo is of the three most-recently planted reds that are on the sunny “sport court” that has become our container garden area.  It gets GREAT sun all day long, and the black pots hold the heat – these guys came up FAST.

Red potatoes are up - May 13, 2010

We planted a 10 foot row of Blue Lake Pole green beens this year along the fence.  I’ll be putting up trellis strings this weekend, as they are starting to come up.  Some sort of bug is biting at them, but not too badly – I think the beans will get real vigorous soon, though, and “outrun” the bugs… I don’t want to resort to bug spray just yet… if the bugs keep nibbling, I will… but it’s pretty minor at this point so I’m crossing my fingers.

I’ve grown blue lake’s before – GREAT beans, easy to grow, and they grow FAST.  We’re really hoping they thrive this summer and provide a lot of great beans for us.

Blue Lake green beans - May 13, 2010

Ok… it’s really our second.  The first was a couple of ‘garden gift’ bags for some friends… red lettuce and Butter Crunch.  But THIS was OUR first lettuce harvest.  Butter Crunch and red for us as well, that was for a steak Caesar salad dinner the other night.  The following pictures are the bowls of washed, ready-to-munch lettuce.  It amazes me how better home-grown lettuce tastes than that from the supermarket!

The kids seemed to really like it – we all pretty much ate every bite, and my daughter took leftovers to school the next day for lunch.

Butter Crunch lettuce - first harvest - May 13, 2010

Oak Leaf Red lettuce - first harvest - May 13, 2010

Here’s a view of the NE corner of our garden, just beyond the North bed.  From the left – fingerling potatoes, yellow onions, white onions, more fingerlings, red potatoes, white potatoes (not above the tub yet), 2 tubs of fingerlings, garlic, more red potatoes.  The lilac that started it all is in back.

NE pot garden with lilac

After a rough start with a very cold early spring, our sweet snap peas are finally starting to seem happy – they are about 24″ tall and climbing nicely up their twine trellis.  In front of them are 4 pepper plants (a good companion for peas) that are a bit slow to get going… hoping for a consistent warming trend to help them along.

Here in University Place, not far from our home, is the Green Firs shopping center.  Between the Rite Aid store and Safeway was a little boutique called “Cake” that sold over-priced clothing and home decor.  Out in front, they had this cool little cart on which they displayed daily specials and closeouts.

Last winter, Cake itself became a closeout after a major rent increase.  We just happened to be walking by one day while they were moving out, and asked if we could buy the little cart… the owner sold it to us for $40!!  So we hauled it home and stored it on the front porch until this spring.

It’s now filled with a funky collection of old (used) pots and various trailing and blooming plants, plus a couple of herbs as well.  The tall plant on the end is a clematis in a fairly large pot that we hope over time will expand and cover the frame and roof of the cart, with lots of red blooms every spring/summer.

Flower cart

Flower cart

So last spring, Anne really wanted a lilac tree in the yard…  so we went shopping for one and found a great one at H&L Produce at Orchard and 72nd St. here in Tacoma.  This was last year (2009) in early May.  We picked a site in the corner of the yard, and planted it.  As it turns out, that was the start of our new garden.  From that tree came another tree, a maple, planted in the backyard near the lilac.  And then came the 75′ x 3′ North Bed garden, and then this year the 2 new 23′ x 3′ beds (salad bed and herb garden).

So this is the first year of lilac blossoms… we really hope the lilac will be happy where it is and just keep on growing larger and fuller each year.

Lilac

I’m not sure what’s up with the peppermint (on the left in the photo).  The spearmint is advancing nicely, but the peppermint is just being sluggish.  The soil is quite rich (50% compost, 50% good garden soil) and quite moist, with not too much sun and not too much shade – everything mint should like.  Maybe it’s just the cold spring that’s holding it back…  time will tell I guess.

Yes, the bed is quite isolated from anything in the garden, and I really don’t care how invasive it becomes – yeah, it will probably eventually expand to the other side of the fence, but the neighbor on that side hardly ever goes outside and doesn’t much care for the yard other than mowing once in a while.  I’m just hoping the mint bed fills in this summer…. got a craving for mohitos!

Mint bed - spearmint on the right, peppermint on the left

I was very concerned about our salad bed a while back… planted during the first push of Spring, when the weather warmed nicely and we thought we’d be into a great early growing cycle.  Hardly!  A couple days after planting, we had snow.  Then WEEKS of very cold, very rainy weather.  I thought for sure we’d lose the first crop for sure.  But alas, it has done very well and here in the first week of May is ready to start harvesting for salads.

We have buttercrunch, Romaine, and red lettuce – all doing very nicely.  We just got the second batch of buttercrunch growing a week ago and will hopefully keep rotating the whole season.

Salad beds doing well

We currently have 4 blueberry plants going this year… a pair of Western Dwarf and a pair of Duke – the Dukes are in the LARGE yard tub pots as they will get quite large over the coming years.  Both of the dwarfs have bloomed and are still somewhat in bloom.  The Dukes – 1 has bloomed but the other (on the right in the photo) seems a little behind schedule, and given that blueberries require cross pollination with another variety in order to fruit, I don’t think that second Duke will bear fruit this year.  But I’m not really sure ANY of them will produce until I see it…

Duke Blueberries - blooming on the left, not on the right

Dwarf blueberries (2 plants, one large pot)

Looks like we’re going to have a ton of potatoes this year – fingerlings, whites, and reds – all planted in large pots for easier harvest.  The potting mix I use is 60% cheapo potting soil, 10% perlite, 20% peat moss, and 10% fresh compost.  Makes for a very soft and highly drainable soil for the spuds.  I start with the pot 50% full of dirt, and plant the potatoes just below the surface.  Once they reach about 8″ tall, I “hill them” up with more of the potting mix, and repeat this process until the pot is full.  Potatoes grow UP from the place they start, not down.  The main stem of the plant keeps sending out new roots on which the spuds grow, and hilling them up simply gets you more potatoes.

Also, we no longer buy “pots” – go to Home Depot or Lowes and price a 20″ wide 24″ tall “pot” in the garden center… you’ll find it will cost at least $20, if not more…  buy a “yard tub” over by the ladders and hoses and the same size container is $4.98!!  Drill holes in the bottom and you have a great potato farm for less than 5 bucks!

We’ve been planting potatoes sequentially for several months and currently have 11 large pots of various varieties, all staggered in their growth, so that we’ll have “new potatoes” early summer and a very nice crop at the end.  Good thing we LOVE potatoes!!

Fingerlings going strong in two "yard tubs"

Fingerlings and White potatoes coming along

Here’s just a general view of the SE corner… the white fence is the “sun break” for the salad beds – so that our harsh July-September sun will be mitigated by the fence slats.  Behind them is the herb garden, and the mint bed in the very far corner – 50% shaded but should still do well.  The black pots on the sports court are garlic, bay leaves, blueberries, tomatoes, and potatoes.

Major frustrations with horseradish this year… our first root starts froze to death (in a very large pot) from the unusual uber freeze in early December.  Bought new roots – they rotted from the insane rains we had in January.  FINALLY bought some starts at a local nursery and they seem to be doing well so far.  We’re really hoping to be able to harvest a root section next year for Passover….

Picked up these spring sets “just in case” the onions in the pots don’t grow as expected… never grown onions from sets – only bulbs in the fall, so this is an experiment.

We planted these from bulb sets last fall – actually the only things that survived the uber cold we had the first week of December (killed the garlic, saffron crocus, and horseradish root starts).  They’re just scallion-esque right now, but should bulb out by mid to late summer.  Yellow on the left, white on the right.

Our first potatoes are up and growing FAST.  Reds on the left, Fingerlings on the right.  Left plenty of room to hill them as they grow.

We decided to use the Western “new bed” (25′ x 3′) for a rotating salad bed during the summer… we love fresh salad greens.  It’s in and starting to grow quite well.  Butter crunch, then Romaine, then Red Leaf lettuce.  We left the far end (top of photo) unplanted to allow a second planting in a while.

Here’s our isolated mint bed – sure, it’ll spread – but there isn’t much near it to cause much grief.  Might go through the fence, but neither neighbor is much of a garden person, so who cares!  It’s a partially shaded area, but in my experience mint doesn’t much care – plant it and it shall spread.  We’ll have to wait to see…

Peppermint on the left, spearmint on the right….

So I planted all those acorns that I spent the winter carefully sprouting in the refrigerator … but didn’t think to put mesh of some sort over the pots.

Squirrels got all but one of them.

Another bed we put in last fall – in a nicely shaded corner that gets some sun but not too much – sort of a moist corner – seemed the perfect place for a mint bed.  There aren’t many ‘creep paths’ for the invasive plants to spread anywhere harmful… we’ll see.  It’s a very small bed – only 4 feet square and about 10 inches deep.  But should be plenty for a nice crop of mint every year.

Peppermint will be on the left, Spearmint on the right.

Mint bed ready to plant - 4' x 4'

Given that the horseradish (planted TWICE) froze and rotted, all 20 garlic cloves froze and rotted, as did 10 Saffron crocus bulbs – all in similar pots – it really surprises me that NONE of the onions were lost – they are actually now thriving quite well.  I don’t know what the varieties are – they’re just from Lowes called “yellow” and “white”… next year we’ll try some actual cultivars.

Onions doing well - yellow on left, white on right

Last year we found that we just didn’t have nearly enough salad space and herb garden.  We had no idea how much fresh rosemary, oregano, butter crunch lettuce, etc. we would actually use and like.  Turns out we were WAY short…  so last fall I planned 2 new beds in the SE corner of our 3/4 acre lot.

The bed to the right in the photo will be the Herb Garden – 23 x 3 feet of nothing but herbs!  It’s a well-drained area with full sun from Spring to Fall – I spent a lot of time over the winter getting the soil in place and very enriched with compost, manure and good-grade garden soil.

The bed on the left will be the salad bed – with butter crunch, romaine lettuce, and oak-leaf red lettuce – 12 plants of each.  I’ll initially plant just the Southern half, leaving the Northern half to plant in June – that way (hopefully) we can keep cycling the entire bed for fresh salad greens all summer and into the fall.  Radishes and green onions will be planted in the far bed in the photo, along the fence, where we have a full southern exposure.

We had the little picket fence installed to break up the harsh summer sun a bit – lots gets through, but over the course of the day, all the salad plants get that little bit of shade relief they need to thrive in the hotter months here.

Herb bed on the right, salad bed on the left - 23' x 3'

Last fall we took a short vacation to New England to visit a friend, and ended up touring the famous Walden Pond in Massachusetts where Henry David Thoreau wrote his famous book.  It was a pouring down rainy day and dead calm as we hiked the mile or so from the road in search of the original cabin site in the woods.

Just before arriving at the site, I noticed fresh fallen acorns EVERYWHERE on the mossy forest floor – all of which were fallen from very large and old trees that most certainly would  have been here in Thoreau’s time.   I collected about 25 of them to take home and read up on how to get them to sprout.

First I did the  ”float test” – floaters seldom sprout.  Fortunately I only had a few that floated – the rest sank quickly.  Then I gently washed them and placed them in a very wet paper towel wad in an open zip-lock bag in the lettuce drawer of the fridge.  This was in mid September.  Acorns need to be below 45 degrees or so for at least a month in order to sprout.

I checked the bag every few weeks, changing the paper towel dressing as needed.  Finally, in late January, they all started to crack and the first tiny bit of tap root was poking out.  I left them in the fridge for another few weeks – now today they are going into pots – 2 per pot – for their glacial initial growth.  Even though an Oak tree has a tap root, I should have at least several years before I need to worry about transplanting.

We hope one day to plant ALL of them that grow – at least one in the yard and the rest in some protected land area somewhere.  I’ll never live to see them more than maybe 10 feet tall, but future generations will get to appreciate them

Here’s the sprouted acorns:

Closeup of 2 of the more vigorous acorns from Walden Pond

Here’s the successful sprouters:

The little bridge that takes you to the actual cabin site:

Bridge on way to Thoreau's Cabin site

Lastly, the actual home site where I collected the acorns:

Well, we hope this will be a friendly online diary of our 2010 garden…  please check out the page links to the right for details!

Thanks for stopping by Farmer Dave’s web blog

Farmer Dave & Anne