Cathy – Page 4 – Grow All I Can

August 2, 2021

2021: Spring Broccoli

I’ve had some issues with broccoli in the past.

I expected them to grow fast, produce a good size head and then hold in the garden till I had time to deal with them.

I was usually disappointed.

Until now. I think I’ve found the variety for me. Eastern Magic by Johnny’s Selected seeds is early enough, productive enough and sturdy enough to make it a spring staple in the garden.

I started 10 plants on February 15th, and fertilized them twice before transplanting them the first week of April. I covered them with a row cover, because (I think) everything grows better under a row cover. Also, we had a very cold spring and this way they were protected if things got frosty out there.

May 30th: So far I’ve harvested 5 broccoli crowns and a bunch of side shoots. Tomorrow I’ll pick the rest and pull the plants from the ground. Since broccoli are heavy feeders, I’ll work some fertilizer into the soil before the next planting.

I picked these guys on May 31:

So the grand total for the spring harvest was 8.15 pounds of broccoli. I only included the crowns and the side shoots in the weight, because those are the only parts we eat! The other parts of the plant went into the compost pile.

I have a few seeds left so I’m going to start a fall crop around mid-June.

August 1, 2021

2021: Cucumbers

August 1, 2021: Not a big fan of cucumbers. They’re not the most versatile vegetable and their taste is rather uninspired. I do like pickles, though, so I generally grow enough to make eight or ten quarts and then yank the vines from the ground. I made 3 quarts yesterday and then picked six more cucumbers today, including this guy.

If I make pickles tomorrow I’ll be halfway to my goal.

July 31, 2021

2021: Onions, Part 3 : Harvesting

July 22, 2021: So I picked a few onions today…

I wish I could say that I just threw these in the ground and never gave them another thought-but that would be a lie. I weeded and fertilized religiously, covered them with a sheet of plywood when a hailstorm threatened, and checked them every morning for signs of bugs, disease or failure to thrive. For almost six months I babied them. I was onion-obsessed. Now it’s harvest time and they’re fabulous and I can’t believe how stupid I am.

For some reason I was under the impression that Ailsa Craig was a good storage onion. It is not! I repeat, it is not! The storage potential is less than three months. My dreams of a midwinter root cellar overflowing with onions are dashed.

I’m going to go through the curing process anyway. Three months is better than nothing. I guess I’ll be freezing the rest. Or drying. I’ve never done that but now would be a great time to try, I think.

Anyway, I’m going to let them cure in the sun for a few days and then I’ll cut away the leaves and the roots and weigh them. I’m hoping for about fifty pounds.

July 29, 2021: So I let them dry in the sun for a week, and this is what they look like now. I can’t leave them outside any longer because rain is in the forecast for the next week or so. I’ve got to clean them up and get them in the house.

And here they are! I removed the leaves and roots and weighed them and now I have a horrendous headache from onion fume inhalation. It was worth it, though. I was hoping for fifty pounds, but I got eighty! Woo Hoo!

The onions in the basket will be taken into the basement and spread out on a table to (hopefully!) dry out a little more. The ones sitting on the deck are a little soft in spots so I’m going to cook those right away.

While they’re cooking I’m going to start planning next year’s onion crop-this time I’ll make sure it’s one with good storage potential.

July 13, 2021

Sweet Potatoes, Onions and Beans, Oh My!

So Bed #5 was only supposed to be occupied by sweet potatoes and pole beans this summer, but it was called upon during the onion emergency to support and sustain the extras that didn’t fit in Bed #2. And it did an admirable job. But now things are getting a little crowded. I’m going to pull these onions soon, like by dinnertime, even though they’re not fully mature. My husband wants french onion soup, and it seems silly to go out and buy the main ingredient when I have 150 or so of them in my yard. Besides, the sweet potatoes need room to grow.

I also put some of the extra onions in Bed #6, the salad bed. If I had ever doubted the importance of full sun in onion growing, I don’t anymore. Bed #6 gets part sun, at best, and the onions grown there were puny.

tiny onions — onions grown in part sun (Bed 6)

large onion — onions grown in part sun (Bed 6)

The onion on the right, after removing the leaves and roots, weighed in at nine ounces, while the onions on the left, untrimmed, barely registered on the scale. The salad bed, while suitable for leafy greens that like a little afternoon shade, is no place for onions.

June 30, 2021August 9, 2021

2021: Potatoes

Of all the things I’ve planted this year, potatoes have caused the most worry.

I’ve grown potatoes twice before. Once they did well, once they did nothing at all. According to my reference book, I could plant them April 1. The shipping schedule of my supplier should have had them here in plenty of time to prep and plant by then. The Covid-corrupted shipping schedule had them here a month late. I threw them in their grow bags between 12 hour shifts at work and hoped for the best.

They’re growing like gangbusters. They’ve been in the dirt a month and they already have flowers forming. I think flowers mean the tubers are growing, and the tubers cannot be exposed to light because that makes them turn green and green tubers are poisonous. So yesterday I frantically threw more dirt on them before another 12 hour shift at work. It was the second time I had “hilled” more dirt around the stems. It was also the last, because now I am out of dirt.

I’m worried that the yield in the grow bags won’t be substantial enough to be cost effective. In the grocery store conventionally grown potatoes are about $0.80 per pound. Organic are $1.50 per pound. I spent $19.95 on seed potatoes. I’ll have to grow 13.3 pounds of potatoes (I used the organic cost) to break even. I don’t think that’s gonna happen.

I’ll have to see if I can squeeze another raised bed into the space allotted me for next year. Even a 4′ x 4′ bed would be triple the growing area of the two grow bags. It’s worth investigating.

Update: August 9, 2021: My concerns about yield were well founded. Each grow bag only produced about five pounds of potatoes, which is better than nothing I suppose, but certainly not what I was hoping for. I’m not blaming the potatoes, though. Any shortcomings were definitely my fault. They did the best they could in the space they had. Next year I have to make room for them in one of the raised beds.

June 30, 2021

June 29, 2021: On Track To Meet My Goal?

THE TIME ASPECT:

So far we’re 99 days into a 245 day growing season. The unofficial start of my growing season was March 23 (The day I direct seeded the beets, carrots and sugar snap peas outside, in the garden) and will probably end around November 23 (The day I pull most of the carrots for Thanksgiving dinner). I did start a bunch of stuff inside, under the lights, in February, but that doesn’t really count. So lets see if I’m on track.

99 days/245 days * 100 = 40.41%

So 40.41% of the growing season is past, have I grown 40.41% of the vegetables I said I was going to grow? The yield through June 29 is 93.01 pounds.

93.01 lbs./375 lbs. *100 = 24.80%

No, I have not. Not even close.

I’m worried, but hopeful, for three reasons.

Onions: They occupied all of Bed #2 for the last three months, but contributed nothing to the above total. That will change in the next few weeks.
Summer stuff: I imagine once the summer stuff starts coming in (hello, zucchini!) the numbers should add up quickly.
Another round of cabbage: I harvested 40 pounds of it in the spring. I’m counting on a fall crop of another 40 to put me over the top.

THE SPACE ASPECT:

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’ve got about 208 square feet to work with. That means I have to produce 1.8 pounds of vegetables per square foot, or 57.6 pounds per 4′ x 8′ bed. How am I doing?

Bed #1: kohlrabi and cabbage, 11.99 + 42.70 = 54.69 pounds. Almost there! And now the cole crops have been replaced with tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.

Bed #2: onions, not harvested yet, 0 pounds.

Bed #3: sugar snap peas, carrots and beets, 3.3 + 4.74 + 15.38 = 23.42 pounds. Oh dear. Not even halfway there.

Bed #4: broccoli, 8.15 pounds. Long way (49.45 pounds) to go! Hopefully the corn and butternut squash that’s planted there now makes up for it.

Bed #5: no spring crop, 0 pounds.

Bed #6: lettuce and radishes, 6.52 + 0.23 = 6.75 pounds. Well, I suppose it’s better than nothing. The salad bed started out good in April but fell apart in June. It’s time to get serious about salad.

So, space wise, the yield looks like this:

93.01 lbs/ 208 square feet = 0.45 lbs/square foot, which is 25% of the 1.8 lbs/square foot goal.

CONCLUSION:

With 40% of the growing season gone, I’ve only produced 25% of my goal. I am officially behind schedule.

June 18, 2021

2021: Spring Cabbage

The cabbage did well this spring. I started eight plants on February 15th and transplanted them into the garden the first week of April. They were fertilized twice with a liquid organic fertilizer at half strength before going into the ground. They were covered with a row cover after going into the ground. The bed had been prepped with compost and organic fertilizer. The five heads to the right are the last of the spring crop, harvested on June 18th. The variety is Ferry’s Round Dutch and I used Ferry Morse seeds.

The spring total was 42.7 pounds, and I’m so proud of me and my cabbages! But now is not the time to rest on our laurels! Now is the time to make Stuffed Cabbage, and Ham and Cabbage, and Coleslaw and Borscht (I have beets to use up too)! Now is also the time to start our fall crop of cabbage. Another eight plants should suffice.

June 9, 2021June 11, 2021

2021: Growing Spring Beets and Carrots

I direct seeded these guys in the garden on March 23. The two pictures below show what they looked like on April 19th and May 31st.

thinning root crops — beets, carrots and sugar snap peas on April 19, 2021

beets, carrots and sugar snap peas on April 19, 2021

If you look carefully at the first picture, you can just about make out the two rows of beets: one on each side of the tape measure. Then there’s a row of tiny little carrot tops in the center, and a row of sugar snap pea seedlings against the back of the bed.

In the second picture the beet and carrot tops are a foot tall and the sugar snap peas are growing over the top of the trellis.

The tape measure is there because I was thinning them out. What a tedious job that is! Even for just an eight foot row. But necessary. I made sure the carrots were spaced two inches apart and the beets, three.

I used Ferry Morse seeds for both root crops. The beets are Detroit Dark Red and the carrots are Rainbow Mix.

The beets could be harvested any time now.

The carrots are a bit small. They need another week or so in the ground.

June 7, 2021

2021: Tiny Tomatoes!

I love tomatoes. Even when they look like this:

funny looking tomatoes — Tomatoes from 2020: Weird year, weird tomatoes

Which is why I was so excited when I saw this in the garden this morning (June 4, 2021).

tiny tomato growing on tomato plant — First tomato of the season

This is a variety from Burpee called “Steak Sandwich.” I started three of this variety, one of “Jubilee” and one of “Cherokee Purple” on March 15, and I transplanted them into the garden in mid-May. Three are in grow bags and 2 are in the raised beds. At this rate, I might have a ripe tomato or two by the Fourth of July!

June 1, 2021February 9, 2022