I guess that's the difference of cold spring soil and warm summer soil! And they weren't even pre-sprouted or anything! (I'm used to waiting several weeks for them to appear above ground.)
They actually must have appeared yesterday or the day before because today when I noticed them while checking the protective cover, they're relatively "tall" already.
Transplanted the 4 PT-sprouted piracicabas into the ground today. Maybe risky as they're at the same spot as 4 of the removed ones, so chance of caterpillar in ground and re-emerging? But it's the only spot I have open, so I'll give it a go. Amended the soil as below. Placed the row cover from LV over hoops, BUT I don't like this stuff because it also has sections of small "holes" where if a butterfly landed just so, the egg would definitely go through the cover. So I'll ask around and see if I can find a better one.
Mixed these into the ground today at the 4 spots:
1 Tbsp alfalfa
2 Tbsps kelp meal
2 Tbsps MRP
And set the seeds into vermiculite to make sure they don't get stuck underground.
So fun. Seeing lots of house sparrows, chipping sparrows (feeding a young'un), and song sparrows. The occasional goldfinches (they're not as fond as the platform feeder, so not getting tons like I did last year, but too bad so sad). The millet is going like gangbusters.
The potted short zinnias against the fence (full shade) are doing equally as well as (and actually a bit better than) the potted short zinnias in the sunny part of the yard. Lots of flowers on both.
Gross... Since the only brown part on the outside was the lower 1/4 of the tomato, I figured the upper part would be ok. Alas, no -- only the uppermost part of the upper part looked healthy. Too offputting though to try tasting it, so tossed it.
Will go in the bare part of the potato patch and maybe a few here and there to fill in gaps.
Sprinkled a bunch of 2021's Black Seeded Simpson, scratched it in, watered it, and covered with plastic.
Next year I'll definitely use actual row cover instead of tulle over the broccoli...
Will leave the north-most plants for seed saving but might remove the southmost ones to grow some buckwheat or something.
Decided to dig out two of the in-ground potato plants. Well. Both together yielded a whopping 0.3 pounds. Probably 0.2 once the dirt gets washed off. Oh my.
Granted it's only 72 days and I think these potatoes are 60-90 days, but still, there was hardly anything there.
Not sure if it's because of the blight, or other factors.
Will leave the rest for longer.
The first Big Beef Plus tomato had started to ripen, and while looking at it I noticed it has BER! I don't think I've ever had this happen on any of my tomatoes before. Anyway, brought it inside to finish ripening and will just cut off the bad parts.
From a quick scan of other green tomatoes I'm not seeing any other BER at this point.
Not surprisingly, Scotia was the first to harvest. Big Beef Plus has lots of really nice sized green tomatoes and Beefsteak has some slightly smaller ones, green as well.
The zucchini that I started in PT several days ago didn't sprout, so in that pot I've now sown some fall carrots (Bolero). I had already recently amended the pot with kelp and MRP.
The last 3 of last year's beets still look pretty darn good in the fridge! But I just couldn't bring myself to eat them. Now that some of this year's beets are harvestable, I decided to just chop up last year's three and toss them on the garden.
In retrospect, I could have used them for the arborio rice recipe -- which I totally forgot until after I tossed them on the garden. D'oh!
Harvested the two biggest beets. Even though the leaves were squished under the tulle, no sign of leaf miner on any of them at all! (Whereas the untulled chard have lots.)
Made the beet leaf pasta sauce. Sooooo good.
Weird, noticed today while checking the west chard for leaf miner damage, that although I didn't see any miner damage, all of the leaves over there look.... not great. Kind of peppery/spotty, like maybe some kind of disease? Which is weird, because chard has always been a fantastic year-long producer for me, other than leaf miner damage.
Anyway, will "leaf" it all alone and see what happens.
Today I removed all of the miner-affected leaves of the swiss chard (all of which has been uncovered for a while). The central bed, which as been uncovered the longest, had a lot of badly affected leaves, but also some untouched leaves which don't even have eggs on them.
So anyway, I will see now whether more miner eggs appear and more leaf damage.
Harvested 3 carrots, just because, and their tops looked big at the soil level. They were a decent size, especially coming from the formerly-patio area. Kind of sweet tasting -- nice!
Noticed today while watering that in the west bed, the north one of the south pair, the tulle was right up against the stem. So, a SVB could definitely have come along and laid an egg on the stem through the tulle... I didn't see any eggs, but maybe one already hatched... Anyway, all this to say, if this plant ends up succumbing to the SVB, I suspect this will be why.
While watering everything today I had a good look and saw that so many leaves -- even after having chopped the plants down dramatically the other day -- have leaves, and lo and behold most of those leaves had a caterpillar (some wrapped up in a small cocoon or whatever). I only saw small caterpillars so hopefully they're all recent appearances only from when the plants started to touch the tulle. But for sure next year I will try the row cover instead of tulle.
I tried removing all affected leaves so that when I see more holes I'll know they're new... though I didn't get all of the northern leaves.
They had reached the netting too, and one of the two was doing zero in terms of florets, so pulled them both. Will plant buckwheat there soon.
The two puny/late/shaded zukes that were in with the Walthams will now be un-covered.
About a week ago I had harvested 1/3rd of the round 1 buckwheat; today I harvested the rest. I did it by cutting near the base of the stem, and left the roots and a bit of stem in the ground, because I read somewhere that you can get a second crop if you leave them in (??). All of the round 1 buckwheat harvest went to the two northmost zukes in the west bed, by placing on top of the soil.
The Eight Ball in the hose bed, which I started in PT June 7th, is looking great and this morning the first female opened. Found a bee in the flower but I also hand-pollinated since who knows if that bee found any males zukes.
At planting time, I gave this plant 1 Tbsp mrp and 1 Tbsp kelp meal.
This is 45 days from sow to first female. So, I imagine it will be 50 days to first harvest -- which Google tells me is right on par.
I've been finding SVB eggs on this plant and have been trying to remove them, but being out in the open I'm sure that will be this plant's demise. Will see how long it can go though.
The main bed in the northwest corner is collapsing inward. The pots along the fence are looking sparse. Both are losing leaves. The late planting of runs in the a/c bed isn't collapsing yet but has the same leaf yellowing/spotting.
Will see what the harvest looks like eventually...
Not interfering with it; will see how the plants fare.
Given today's broccoli fiasco, figured there was zero point in keeping the other kale bed tulled, since those plants are huge now and definitely in contact with the netting. Hacked a few of the kales down thinking maybe I'd hack them all, then re-tulle in hopes of harvesting a second growth later, but in so doing found a teeny worm hanging fairly low on a plant, so, nah -- my kale season is over for the year.
I'll leave some of the kale plants there to see how they grow for the rest of the season, re: rot etc.
Dang, never noticed this before on green onions. But as I was inspecting the window-pane damage at the kitchen sink, and slitting the green onions to inspect the insides, I found a teeny worm.
Cleared out most of the NE central bed's kale, and some of the chards, mostly by chopping them down to just the stem poking out (to let the roots decompose in place, and also to see if they re-grow). Then transplanted the PT-sprouted buckwheat in amongst the kale stems.
Pulled two of the runtiest tomato plants in the north bed (each of which was stunted and had just two green tomatoes, with little promise for more), then transplanted 3 Eureka cuke seeds into the southern one, and 3 into the northern one. Figured they should be able to climb the tomato cages nicely, especially since they're semi-dwarf vines.
Ah, so kaolin wasn't effective in keeping the SVB from laying her eggs on the one untulled zuke. Found and removed 10 eggs from this plant today.
Was waiting for the biggest cucumber to get, well, bigger -- but realized today this is as big as this variety gets. Also, in noticing that the vines seem to have stopped growing, at only about 3 feet tall, just realized it's semi-dwarf. D'oh!! Plus all the crowding among the peas/potatoes/tomatoes, the lack of pollinators (and my puny attempts at pollinating), the cucumber harvest may be a bit of a bust this year.
Well, I'll enjoy the ones I do get...
The central bed has 3 Big Beef Plus (new this year) and 2 Beefsteak (from my old tinfoil pack). These all are doing great: Lots of green; big thick stems; good number of flowers and several fruit have set and are growing.
In contrast, the north bed has ~5 or 6 including 1 Scotia and 1 Jasper -- and these are all looking kind of barren -- definitely fewer leaves, thinner stems, many fewer flowers / fruit. I wonder if it's to do with how these are sort of "end caps" of the potato rows, and water may not be reaching them, etc.
Oh the one Jasper plant is definitely the best of the north bed, BUT it's really long and scragly, not many fruit on the way. Will see how it does.
Several periods of intense rain today, in between which the birds were excited to visit. At one point, there was a cardinal, a house sparrow, a song sparrow, and two goldfinches! And at another time there was a chipping sparrow sharing time with a goldfinch. A song sparrow was quite territorial later, driving away the gold finches.
Great to have today's rain, really needed it.
I'll keep the plants up for a while, let the flowers hopefully attract more insects.
Ah, just as I sat here this morning writing about all the birds, saw a squirrel on the fence! Hadn't seen a squirrel on the fence or in the yard whatsoever until now. Maybe all the bird traffic brought him/her over to check out the offerings...
Sent the dogs out to deter, for now... And hopefully the baffle (the wide one) will do the job though I fear there are various things they could climb up to jump onto the trays. I don't mind them eating the bird food but they'd better not spill things onto the ground, or eat MY food :-)
Fun! Quite a few visits throughout the day these days.
Removed the new fine-mesh feeder yesterday because the goldfinches had stopped using it and they seemed to actually prefer the big tray.
So, now it's back to the small millet-only tray on one side, and the big tray on the other side offering sunflower chips (fine but passed through mesh first to reduce dust on ground), peanut pieces, millet, and nutrisaff. I have the green soft mesh seed-catcher tucked right up underneath the big tray to catch the dust and it seems to be working great.
Yesterday evening I put the bird bath back out, saw one taker so far.
Removed one beetle yesterday and one today. The newer leaves show signs of being chewed, and some browning. The last thing I need is another zucchini plant, but for whatever reason decided to kaolin it anyway.
Hmmm, the "round 2" buckwheat which was the first time using the seed from R's had a low germination rate in paper towel, maybe roughly ballpark approximately 50-60%? Hopefully it was a problem on my end.
Whoa! I let these grow in the wild hydro bed as I wasn't sure what they are. Turns out it looks like they're wild evening primrose! A couple are already sending up flower stalks, which is strange, I thought they only flowered in the second year. One is just a crown. But how cool it would be to have goldfinches eating from these right in front of the kitchen window this fall... They loved the ones that popped out outside the fence last year; in that location there are a ton of what must be more of them but all are teeny/very short and crowded together, will see if any of those ones do anything next year.
Not a ton of flowers yet, just a few. Internet seems inconclusive re: whether to leave or remove the flowers, but I want more insects in the garden (given how few zinnias I have this year), so will leave these flowers.
A couple of weeks ago, my old hand-me-down wimpy whipper snipper (small caps) started smoking while using it. So, needless to say, it had to go. My other weed eater is wayyyyy too powerful for my liking, I hate using it, scary/stressful. So I picked up another hopefully-lower-powered one from the store, but hadn't opened it yet. Well, today on the way back from walking the dogs, what do I see at the end of someone's driveway in a pile of give-away things, but an actual Whipper Snipper (large caps)! A nice wimpy 1.2 amps! Plug-in! Tried it out today and wahooo!!! Exactly what I wanted!!! It even has a good amount of line left on the spool.
The only plant that has it so far is the Golden Glory in the west bed, north pair, east one. I had removed a couple of affected leaves a few days ago; other leaves in this plant are showing it too now. I'm going to just let it be and not remove any more leaves or interfere in any way, and see how these supposedly PMR varieties will do (Golden Glory and Eight Ball). Besides, the harvest has been amazing so far, so hopefully even if they all succumb to it, I'll already have had a bunch of zukes.
Pretty small head, but the Walthams were a second-thought, transplanted late etc. A third of it was rotted or something, so pretty small harvest. Will leave the plant there to see if any side heads develop.
Decided the yellow/splotchy leaves mean the potato plants have early blight. Mostly the main patch in the NW corner. The pots in the shade's leaves are yellow but not seeing splotches. The newest patch by the a/c look good so far.
While examing the blight, noticed a bunch of tiny yellow insects on the underside of the leaves. I assume these are aphids.
Anyway, will let all this be and see what happens.
Reminiscent of a minute pirate bug, but definitely different. Has a small white "V" in the middle of the back, and then each side of the "lower back" area has a 3/4 "O" on the side.
Overall colour I'd say is a splotchy/patchy brown. Two long thin antennae. End tips of wings are clear.
[Updated on 10 July 2022 to say this is a lygus bug / miridae. Managed to get a photo of one on a zinnia. Seems to be quite a few around, as some of the green things I thought were aphids it turns out are probably some young lygus. Will just let them be and see how things go.]
And no males in the fridge either. Weird, 7 strong plants and not one male! So, will cut off this one since no hope for pollination (being under tulle).
Hopefully the basil can hack it.... FINGERS CROSSED
Not seeing any new flowers, so it looks like the end is near. But it was a great harvest, tons of peas.
WOW, super happy with how all of the zukes are doing! Even the two that looked pale initially, which I almost pulled back then, have been doing well and producing.
Tulle remains over all of these.
Whoa, while going after a cucumber beetle, a ton of small insects knocked out of the flower into my container. They look tickish in terms of size and shape but I don't they are actually ticks. They don't seem to have wings, they're just walking around the container. ~25 of them knocked out of one single flower!
Update: Posted on an i.d. group and someone suggested stinkbug nymphs. Seems to fit, so I'll go with that.
Saw three goldfinches at once this evening.
A house sparrow visited the platform briefly.
Also, this evening is the second or third time I heard the distinctive calls of a merlin, from the house. Didn't sound super close by, but, close enough.
To give me an idea for future years when setting up the initial tulles/hoops, here are measurements of the height of various things today:
Kale: 31" tall
Chard: 31" tall
Beets: 16" tall, but squished under the tulle; 20+" clearance would be better
Broc (piracicaba): 32" tall and growing
Zuke (Golden Glory): 39" tall and growing
A few minutes after finishing the re-covering, found -- and removed -- a cucumber beetle inside! Earlier today found one on top of the tulle of another zucchini bed, removed that one too. So they are definitely around, lurking...
Wow, this tulle I bought a big bolt of last year is fantastic, it can really cover a nice big and tall area. Used it to upsize the west bed / south two zucchini's home, and the central bed / south two zucchini's home, along with newly cut higher hoops.
For example, the central beds' new digs has the tulle/hoops 37" high, and the square area is 76" x 41". Hopefully the plants should now have lots of room to keep growing well and maintain some air flow. Next year I should do this from the get-go, no matter how bizarre it looks when the seedlings are tiny little things!
Just one so far. Removed. Won't kaolin at this point bec sooooo many leaves.
That bed out in front of the fence is looking awful this year now that the poppies (planted last year, flowered this year) finished. The perennial on the west part of the bed is dying this year, looks awful.
So, from the $0.98 table at CT, one of each:
- Impatiens: "Part shade; annual; downy mildew resistant; remove spent blooms to promote flowering"
- Angelonia (oh! it's snapdragon): "Full sun; annual; flowers June to August".
Awww, the house finch couple who had their nest in the neighbour's porch shrub seem to have moved on. Haven't seen them in a while.
Saw just the one goldfinch last week and no others, so bought and installed a new mesh feeder that's meant for nyjer but I'm hoping will work with the fine sunflower pieces.
Freshened up all of the seeds in the big platform.
Noticed today that the tulle had been lifted up at a spot, by the tall kale. This piece of tulle is just not big enough to contain the tall plants, so I decided just to un-tulle it and use these ones for mulching, since there's more than plenty in the west kale bed for eating.
The east-most pot, which has the most yellow received 2 Tbsp kelp meal and 2 Tbsp MRP, no alfalfa.
The middle pot received that, plus 1/4 cup alfalfa.
The west-most pot, which has no yellow yet and is the big terra-cotta-colour pot, received the 2 Tbsp kelp + 2 Tbsp MRP, no alfalfa.
And all received a good watering.
Removed these 3. For the one that was on a zuke, can't remember which plant -- either the shaded one in the central broccoli area, or the north of the two south ones in the central area.
I'll leave them be; hopefully they'll stay on this type of plant.
Some teeny tiny brownish/reddish ants are enjoying their presence.
One of the carrots (Bolero) in the west bed was peeking up and looked decent size, so I harvested it. Too soon -- not big enough yet. Unsurprisingly given the poor nature of this bed, it's not straight -- and it has a few hairs. Tasted good -- not fantastic, but very decent.
They're gorgeous! I started them last year, from seed collected the previous year from the neighbour's plant.
So, whatever rusty disease they had last fall doesn't seem to have affected them, and no sign yet of the rust this year.
After removing those first ~6-7 beetles, and then applying the one coating of kaolin on June 26th (and it has rained several times since then), I haven't seen any other cucumber beetles yet, neither on the cucumbers, nor on the zucchinis (the zukes are all tulled other than the two late plantings which only have a few leaves so far).
Things are going gangbusters overall! Today's harvest:
peas (tons)
broccoli (piracicaba) (getting a basketful every week)
zucchini (5th of the year)
kale (tons)
chard (tons)
dill (a few sprigs)
basil (lots)
stevia (good amount(
carrot (a bit too early)
They haven't flowered yet, and it doesn't look like the normal aging type of yellowing. For the potted ones in the shade, maybe the lack of sun is finally getting to them? Or some other issue?
For the zukes and tomatoes, sprinked 1 Tbsp kelp meal and 1 Tbsp MRP around the base of each plant and lightly scratched it into the top of the soil.
For the broccolis, same as above plus 1 Tbsp alfalfa pellets.
No special reason as things are looking good, just figured it can't hurt.
Noticed the stem of some of the White Russian kale, which are supposed to be resistant to rot, are starting to rot! Pulled those plants and put them in the garbage (didn't use for chop and drop). Though didn't inspect all of the plants.
Oh no!!! Both leaves are on the GG plant in the west bed, north two, east one. One leaf had tons, the other had a bit. There's relatively decent airflow seeing as these leaves are right next to the path, so I'm surprised...
Removed both leaves and put into garbage.
Golden Glory is supposed to have powdery mildew resistance... with its appearance today I hope that means it can keep growing well despite powdery mildew...
The weather has been warm in the day and cool at night, which seems to be prime conditions for PM.
