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The Old Guy's Garden Record

June 30, 2022


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Wednesday, June 1, 2022

Our Senior Garden - June 1, 2022
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Our East Garden - June 1, 2022
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I once again need to hustle and get our 80' x 80' East Garden plot planted in June. I tilled it once last month and even replaced a corner marker sage plant. We often don't get this area fully planted until mid-June.

Half of the East Garden will be easy to plant. I'll broadcast buckwheat seed over it. The buckwheat will get mowed and turned under and re-seeded as green manure possibly three times his summer.

The rest of the East Garden will have sweet corn and kidney beans direct seeded into it. Some of our open pollinated sweet corn will go in as transplants to avoid cross pollinating our sh2 sweet corn. Other transplants will include broccoli for seed, melons (cantaloupe, honeydew, and watermelon), tomatoes, and paprika peppers.

I have a bag of seed potatoes for the East Garden, but I fear they'll rot before I get them in the ground. I also have a bunch of Encore pea transplants for the East Garden.

We almost had peas and lettuce last month. I'll begin picking peas in a day or so, although it will be a few days until we pick enough for supper. Some of our lettuce is ready to be taken as early lettuce.

Aisles scuffle hoed againAmes Scuffle HoeMy actual gardening for today was limited to scuffle hoeing the aisles between some plantings in our main raised bed. I'd hoped to finish mulching the bed with grass clippings. But I noticed that a lot of seedling grass had survived my previous scuffle hoeing and needed to be hoed again. With rain on the way, I'd rather the ground be moist before mulching.

We're off and running for the 2022 gardening season. Our raised beds are planted and mostly mulched. I've tilled our large East Garden plot once, making a second pass down the middle of it for our row of tomatoes and paprika peppers.

We have lots of transplants under our cold frame for the East Garden, with a couple of trays of melon transplants still under our plant lights that need to be hardened off soon. And I still need to fill in our herb bed with some basil, parsley, and dill.

Burpee Seed Company

Friday, June 3, 2022

Our first ripe pea pod of the season
Pea vines fill five foot trellie

Tall, early peasOur tall, early peas direct seeded on March 14 produced their first ripe pod today, but only one. We should be into some good eating (and freezing) the next two weeks.

The pea vines have now reached the top of our five foot double trellis. That's about what I expected. The peas are a mix from our letting the Champion of England and Maxigolt varieties cross pollinate a bit the last two years for seed saving. We probably have some landrace crosses of the two varieties and some that are pure Champion of England or Maxigolt. The Champion of England variety typically produces vines over five feet tall, while the Maxigolt variety usually runs about four feet tall. Both varieties germinate well in cool soil and produce very sweet peas.

Our Eclipse peas that I transplanted on May 15 got flattened by some strong storms last month. They are slowly recovering and beginning to attach to their trellis.

I also have two trays of Encore peas hardening off on the back porch. They will go into our East Garden plot.

Obviously, we really like peas. Our how-to, Another Garden Delicacy: Homegrown Peas, tells how we grow our peas.

Renee's Garden

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Saturday, June 4, 2022

Dog damageA2 Web HostingI noticed yesterday that one of our dogs had dug holes around our tomato cages in our main raised bed. I'd guess the dog was going after moles. Fortunately, the tomato cages had kept the dog from disturbing our tomato plants.

That made my first job this morning filling in the holes and re-mulching those areas. Beside the ten or twelve holes dug, I also had to remulch several areas previously mulched. Wind, walking in the bed, and the mulch decaying lets weeds sprout where the mulch has been disturbed. So I did a little weeding as well.

I moved on to picking peas, but found only seven pods ready to pick. Those peas quickly were added to some Suddenly Salad for lunch.

While picking, I saw that I'd forgotten to remove the cutworm collars from the peppers I'd transplanted last month. That's a pretty serious error. While the cutworm collars protect tender young plants, they also limit the plants' root growth. In removing the cutworm collars, I was surprised at how dry the soil was around the pepper plants. That triggered a new job for the morning...lots of watering.

Crispino lettuce plant beginning to headHead lettuce row beside pepper plantsEach pepper plant got almost a gallon of starter solution (Quick Start and Maxicrop Soluble Seaweed Powder) I had on hand. I'd left our four cubic foot garden cart at the edge of our porch where clogged guttering overflows. I used the water collected to water the peppers with most of it going on our narrow bed of tall, early peas.

Next to our pepper plants in a narrow raised bed, some of our Crispino lettuce plants are beginning to head. The long row of head lettuce plants is mostly for saving seed from the Sun Devil and Crispino varieties. Hopefully, we'll also get some head lettuce for the table before hot weather turns the lettuce bitter and the plants begin to bolt.

Planting the head lettuce in a long, single row isn't best for pollination. I'm lucky that lettuce self-pollinates, although a little crossing with other plants might improve the plants' genetics. But the big thing with saving lettuce or other seeds is that it allows the plants to adapt somewhat to our local growing conditions.

Terracotta Composting 50-Plant Garden Tower by Garden Tower Project

Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Powdery mildew on pea vinesCease biofungicideWhen I went out to pick peas today, I saw that we had some powdery mildew getting started low on the vines. Some sources say once the mildew gets started, there isn't much of a remedy. However, I've found that both Serenade biofungicide and Fungonil to be effective in controlling the fungal disease in its early stages. Serenade is no longer available, but Cease biofungicide is said to have the same formulation. Sadly, it only seems to be available in 2 1/2 gallon jugs for around $90! Since I still have a big jug of Serenade, that's what the peas got sprayed with.

I'd been worried about how few blooms and pea pods our early peas were producing. I did a web search on the subject and got all kinds of reasons, including too much or too little nitrogen, warm temperatures, poor soil, lack of sunlight or water, and on and on. While we've had some really warm days, I guessed that water was the problem and really soaked the pea bed a couple of days ago. I was rewarded today with lots of new blooms.

Lettuce
First lettuce of the year

Snapdragon blooming amongst pea vinesI did pick more peas today. Our last pickings disappeared into some chicken and dumplings last evening. One bright spot today was a snapdragon amongst the peas coming into bloom. I've found that snapdragons do well when planted around peas. They get overgrown by the pea vines at times, but many of the plants survive to bloom later on. Both our tall, early peas and our short Eclipse peas have snapdragons planted at the ends and middle of their rows.

I moved on to cutting a couple of lettuce heads. I cut a Coastal Star and Majestic Red. When washed, the Coastal Star tasted a little bitter. But that was an outer leaf and the lettuce hadn't been refrigerated. Getting good lettuce in the spring is always tough for us as when the weather warms, the lettuce turns bitter and/or bolts. We do far better with fall lettuce.

When doing the harvest, I saw that our one Barbados lettuce plant was beginning to bolt. Rather than pulling it, I may just let it go to seed for seed saving, as our Barbados lettuce seed is really old (2009).

And for a touch of humor, I saw a CNN headline that read Lettuce shortage forces KFC to offer cabbage in Australia. I guess if you live in Australia, it's not so funny.

Our how-to on Growing Lettuce.

Garlic - June 7, 2022Our garlic planted last October is looking good. It may be ready to be dug towards the end of this month or in early July. We dug our garlic last year on June 29. The latest date I have recorded for digging garlic is July 10 in 2008.

Sometimes garlic will show signs of flashing, a yellowing that may denote a nitrogen deficiency. Since we've experienced flashing occasionally in our garlic, I splashed leftover starter solution on our garlic area in April. I also gave it a foliar spray of some Miracle-Gro Liquid All Purpose Plant Food (12-4-8) last month.

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Of course, towards the end of the garlic's growing period, its leaves will naturally yellow, a sign that the garlic is about ready to dig.

If you grow garlic and enjoy cooking with it, digging a head early and cooking with it is a real treat.

Also, from our how-to on Growing Garlic, making garlic powder just after harvest is far easier than waiting for the garlic to dry. The garlic cloves peel easier at that point.

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Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Our Senior Garden - June 8, 2022Nearly an inch of rain - June 8, 2022Between our hanging basket plants, transplants under our cold frame, and crops in our raised garden beds, I've spent a lot of time of late watering. At least for now, that has changed for the better. We had quite a storm move through this morning that dropped almost an inch of rain.

We have showers in the forecast for Friday. The rain is a good thing, but it also has made the soil way too wet to do much of anything in our East Garden plot.

A good picking of peas today resulted in fresh peas with our supper this evening. It was a funny meal. We'd bought a whole ribeye recently and cut it for steaks. Turns out, the on sale ribeye was too tough to chew even after being marinated and tenderized. So today, I ran steak through our old manual meat grinder, and we had ribeye hamburgers for supper. They weren't any better or worse than hamburgers from ground beef. But my lovely wife noted that the ribeye was actually cheaper per pound than ground beef these days.

I almost blew it with one of our hanging basket plants. I'd planted Super Elfin XP Clear Mix Impatiens in a coco basket planter/hanging basket. Coco baskets dry out far more quickly than plastic hanging baskets. I saw yesterday that the plants had lost their blooms and the leaves were slightly wilted. I plopped the coco basket in a large rubber feed pan full of water. By this morning, the plant had begun to bloom again.

Impatiens in coco basket

Hoss Tools

Friday, June 10, 2022

Violet of Sicily cauliflowerEarly peasI noticed yesterday that one of our Violet of Sicily cauliflower plants had put on a head. I was a little concerned that the head had a yellowish tinge to it. White cauliflower that has yellowed is usually bitter. But this variety may have just been in its transition to a red head, as it had a touch of red coloring by this morning. With temperatures headed for the high 90s next week, I'll need to get the cauliflower picked soon.

Our tall, early pea vines are now filled with pea pods ripening and with more blooms. I froze two half pints of peas today. And as usual, it began to rain as I picked peas this morning.

I also noticed that a few of our short Eclipse pea plants have begun to bloom. There's only about twenty feet of separation between the Eclipse and the tall peas, and I hope to save seed from both plantings. That's not enough room for good isolation for seed saving. I try to time the short peas to bloom after the tall peas are done blooming. It just didn't work out this year. Fortunately, there's a row of tomatoes and another of green beans separating the two pea plantings that may be a good barrier to pollinators.

The first clutch of hummingbirds here have obviously left the nests they hatched in. My first clue was that the tiny birds emptied a sixteen ounce feeder in just a day. There also was a lot of traffic and fights for dominance at the feeder yesterday. So I hung a second feeder to cut down the mayhem at the feeders. When the next clutch of eggs hatch and the birds leave their nests, I'll need to hang yet another feeder to handle all the birds' feeding needs.

First hummingbird feeder Hummingbirds at feeder Second feeder hung

Crispino lettuce headWeather Underground Extended ForecastWith the high temperatures predicted for next week, it's unlikely much of our lettuce will be edible soon. Even though our row of head lettuce is mostly for seed saving, I took a head of Crispino lettuce today. Even with the heat we've had, the lettuce was quite sweet. I had an outer leaf of the head on a sandwich this afternoon. About half of the thirteen head lettuce plants I transplanted a month ago have begun to head.

I seeded Japanese Long Pickling cucumber seed today to use as a succession crop when our tall peas come out. The JLP variety has a days-to-maturity rating of just 60 days from direct seeding. Starting the plants now should have them ready just about the time the peas are done. Like the tall peas, the tall cucumber vines benefit from growing between a double trellis.

I used seed we'd saved in 2021, 2020, and 2018. I also started a couple of cells with JLP seed from Reimer Seeds. Using the same variety from another source helps prevent inbreeding depression which we've experienced in the past with the variety. A good crop of cucumbers this year is important as we're on our last jar of homemade pickle relish!

Alibris: Books, Music, & Movies

Monday, June 13, 2022

Our Senior Garden - June 13, 2022Heat index - June 13, 2022 - 2:30pmI'd let gutter overflow fill our four cubic foot garden cart again. I used the approximate 35 gallons of water on our tall peas and our pepper plants. I did the watering in the morning. By the time I picked peas around noon, it was getting really hot and humid outside. Fortunately there was a nice breeze. The peas I picked yesterday and today shelled out to about two pints frozen.

Looking at our extended weather forecast, I suspect I will be stressing our wells with watering over then next ten days or so. High temperatures will remain mostly in the mid- to upper nineties with little or no rain predicted.

Mid-afternoon, I took a couple of buckets of compost out to our pile. I'd hoped to do a little transplanting, but with the heat index at 113°F, I chose to return to the air conditioning inside our house, shower, and watch the January 6 Special Committee's hearing on TV.

Botannical Interests

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Sage corner marker plantJapanese Long Pickling cucumbers upToday's high temperature was 98°F, making it another day for morning only gardening. I finished a job I started three weeks ago, replacing the sage plants that mark the corners of our East Garden plot. An injury to my shoulder put off completing the job...and planting our East Garden.

The three plants I put in today were started last year and overwintered in our sunroom. I backfilled the planting holes with peat moss and native soil, mixing in some lime and 12-12-12 fertilizer. They got lots of starter solution and a bit of landscape fabric around them to hold back weeds.

Best Buy  - Smart TVsI picked more peas yesterday than I had any one day this season. By today, pea production had dropped in half. Whether it's the hot weather or just time for the vines to be done, I don't know. I'll probably pick one more time before letting the vines mature pods for seed saving.

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While I hate to see the end of our early pea season, we have more peas coming from our short peas. And the timing is just about right, as almost every Japanese Long Pickling cucumber seed I started on Friday germinated. Once the early pea vines are cleared, the JLPs will go in their space. And yes, I thinned the JLPs to one plant per cell, but only after taking the photo above right. I'm looking forward to making lots of sweet pickle relish and bread and butter pickles this summer. Since we have several volunteer dill plants up in our herb garden, I may even make some dill pickles for my lovely wife who loves them.

Strawberry Moon

Strawberry moon

Space.com: "June is also blessed with what Native American cultures have nicknamed the Full Strawberry Moon, and this year is extra special as it will also be designated as a supermoon to add to its lunar appeal."

Chewy.com

Thursday, June 16, 2022

Fedco Bulbs 2022 CatalogOur Senior Garden - June 16, 2022While seed catalog season is long over, we received a catalog from Fedco Bulbs in yesterday's mail. It offers garlic and flower bulbs for fall planting. While I like to page through paper catalogs, there is a downloadable PDF version available.

Let me add here that if you're considering planting garlic for the first time, ordering your garlic sets early ensures being able to get the varieties you want. Vendors often run out of the most popular varieties by the end of July!

Our how-to, Growing Garlic, tells about one of the easiest, most trouble free, and productive crops one can grow in a home garden.

And to keep the Federal Trade Commission happy, I must add here that we're a consumer member of the Fedco Seeds Cooperative. If Fedco ever pays a dividend, we'll get some, although that's not why I joined.

Botanical Interests Burpee Gardening Required FTC Disclosure Statement: Botanical Interests, Burpee, Renee's Garden, and True Leaf Market are some of our Senior Gardening affiliate advertisers. Clicking through one of our ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale. We're also a consumer member of the Fedco Seeds Cooperative. Renee's Garden True Leaf Market
 
 

Friday, June 17, 2022

Early peas about doneEclipse peas blooming and setting podsWe had light rain predicted for the morning hours today. Instead, we had powerful thunderstorms come through, dropping a little over an inch of rain in just a few hours. In between showers, I picked peas and did a little weeding around our pepper plants. I was careful not to touch the pepper plants, as one can spread disease working wet plants.

I'm going to let our blend of Champion of England and Maxigolt tall, early peas go to seed. As they mature seed pods, the snapdragons planted around them are coming into bloom. I'll only get a brief respite from picking and shelling peas, as our short Eclipse pea plants are blooming and have a few pods on them.

Gloxinias coming into bloomOur gloxinias on our dining room table are coming into bloom. I started bringing them upstairs in the summer to our dining room several years ago. The east facing bay windows provide some pretty intense sunlight in the mornings with indirect light the rest of the day. That seems to suit the plants well.

By late fall or early winter, most of the gloxinias will be in or headed into their required annual period of dormancy. So today, I started gloxinias from seed saved last year. Since first year gloxinias take about five months from seeding to bloom, that should give us a few plants in bloom over the winter.

A2 Web Hosting

Sunday, June 19, 2022 - Father's Day - Juneteenth - Lettuce

Our Senior Garden - June 19, 2022Our row of Crispino and Sun Devil head lettuceWe have a lovely row of Crispino and Sun Devil lettuce plants. Transplanted on May 12, the Crispino lettuce have matured heads all at about the same time. The Sun Devils aren't far behind. Other than opening a salad bar, there's no way we can use that many heads of lettuce at once. But eating all the lettuce was never the plan. The thirteen lettuce transplanted are mainly for seed saving.

From our Growing Lettuce how-to:

I stumbled into saving lettuce seed a number of years ago. I let a head of Crispino lettuce sit in the garden well past maturity in an area I didn't need to re-plant. When it put up seed spikes, I decided to let them grow to see what would happen. The plant, all by itself, produced good lettuce seed that I'm still using in 2022!

After the surprise producing Crispino seed, I began trying to save seed from the [then] patented but discontinued Sun Devil variety. It took several years of trying, but eventually we got a nice seed crop from one plant.

The job could have been easier. A gem from both Rob Johnston, Jr.'s Growing Garden Seeds and the late Nancy Bubel's The New Seed Starter's Handbook suggests removing outer leaves from head lettuce plants and/or cutting inch deep slits in the head (an "X") to promote seed stalks emerging. Apparently, tight heads can trap the seed stalks inside the head, preventing seed production. I feel a little silly after unsuccessfully trying to save Sun Devil seed for several years. The answer to my problem was in my garden library all along.

Lettuce head with X cut in itSo this morning, I removed the outer leaves and cut X's in many of the lettuce heads to stimulate them putting up seed spikes. This is the first time I've tried that trick, so we'll see what happens. And because the lettuce was so pretty, I didn't cut several heads, hoping they might not have turned bitter yet from all the hot weather we've had.

Garlic

Garlic ready to digI knew that our garlic was close to being ready to dig. The leaves of the plants are yellowing, not from a lack of nitrogen, but simply because they're at the end of their life cycle.

To make sure I dug one garlic from the end of each of our four rows of garlic. The digging yielded four mature garlics, although the one elephant garlic had split its outer wrapper. That makes it a poor candidate for long term storage. So it will get used for seasoning, garlic powder, or even a trip to our local food bank. It appears that we'll once again have a bumper crop of garlic.

First garlic dug Garlic scape bloom

As I'm somewhat prone to do, I left several garlic scapes to "bloom." Although none of them produced "blooms" as spectacular as our 2014 Best Garden Photo, one of them turned out to be fairly pretty.

We usually grow four fifteen foot rows of garlic spaced eight inches apart. In row, we space the garlics eight inches apart. That yields about eighty garlics if all the cloves produce. And that's about two to three times as much garlic as we'll use in a year's time. After saving garlics for planting in the fall, the excess goes to family, friends, and the food bank.

Hummingbird Feeders

Tuesday, June 21, 2022 - A Change of Plans

I've finally had to admit that my shoulder injury isn't going to heal quickly enough to plant and care for our large East Garden plot. So last evening, I dumped our tomato, melon, and paprika pepper transplants into our garden cart to go onto our compost pile. Typically, I drop off extra transplants at our local food bank, but these plants had gotten way too large to transplant. Abandoning our East Garden plan also means no sweet corn, potatoes, or yellow squash and probably no kidney beans or Encore peas. I might be able to squeeze in the kidney beans as a succession crop in our main raised garden bed.

Cart of lettuce leaves and transplants to be composted

I'm hoping I can get a good cover/smother crop of buckwheat on the East Garden by scalping the grass and overseeding it. While my lovely wife has banned me from mowing this summer due to my neck and shoulder injuries, I do sneak out and do small mowing jobs when she's not around.

Some Cheerier News

I've been trying to grow daisies in a spot at the back of our yard for years. I'd turned an area there for an isolation plot years ago, only to find gray clay soil an inch down and orange clay below that. When our beloved dog, Mac, died in 2016, I buried him at the site of the isolation plot and tried starting daisies there. We occasionally got a bloom or two, but the plants never overwintered until this year. So now at long last, Mac truly is pushing up daisies.

Daisies

1800Flowers

Wednesday, June 22, 2022 - Grilled Chicken

Chicken breast filets on the grillLast night, I used one of the test garlics I dug on Sunday. I was making Lindsay Funston's Best Grilled Chicken Breast from a recipe on Delish that we really like. Using fresh garlic is always a joy because of its aroma and ease of peeling the cloves. I found that besides our garlic, we also had dried rosemary and thyme from our garden that the recipe called for. The only change I made from the recipe was reducing the cooking time for the chicken breasts, as ours were breast filets that cook a bit quicker than full chicken breasts.

Curing/Drying Table

Drying/curing table in 2020I set up our drying/curing table in the garage today. We use it each year to dry and cure our garlic and onion harvests. If we get a harvest of butternut squash, they get cured on the table as well.

The table isn't anything fancy, just a 4' x 8' sheet of 5/8 inch plywood over some sawhorses. I actually use four sawhorses...two quality ones at either end and a couple of plastic cheapies underneath to catch the sag of the plywood when it's loaded.

I think I'm ready to dig garlic!

The Home Depot

Thursday, June 23, 2022 - Digging (Lifting) Garlic

GarlicGarlic on drying tableI knew it was going to be hot today, so I got out early and had our garlic dug and stored on our drying/curing table before 11 o'clock. There were 55 good hardneck and softnecks and 15 elephant garlic. That's way more garlic than we'll use in a year for cooking, garlic powder, and planting this fall.

The garlic will need to cure on the drying table for about two weeks. Once the leaves have dried, I'll trim them off a couple of inches above the garlic bulbs and also trim off the roots. Then the garlic gets bagged in old mesh potato bags and stored in our basement plant room. With our onions beginning to bulb, I'll need to get the garlic off the drying/curing table soon to make room for onions.

Crispino head lettuce putting up a seed spikeElsewhere in our raised garden beds, a Crispino lettuce plant I'd cut and X in has a seed spike showing. That's a good thing, as most of the head lettuce was intended for a seed crop.

The snapdragons planted by our early tall peas and our short peas are beginning to put on quite a display of blooms.

Rocket Mix snapdragons by tall early peas Madame Butterfly snapdragons by Eclipse short peas

The poor snapdragons get overgrown, first by peas and then by cucumbers later on. But they usually survive and produce more lovely blooms in the fall.

The snaps at far left are the tall Rocket Mix variety. Next to them are the shorter, hybrid Madame Butterfly variety.

With the garlic out, I'll need to rototill the area soon and decide what succession crop to plant.

Sam's Club

Sunday, June 26, 2022

Green beanFertilizer, lime, and peat added before tillingGardening chores keep piling up, and I find that I have to switch from job to job, often before the first is done, just to keep up. Picking green beans wasn't part of my plan for yesterday, but the beans seeded 52 days ago with varying days-to-maturity figures of 50-55 days appeared to be ready. When I got to the end of the row, the 55 day variety, there wasn't much to pick. But the picking produced two pints of green beans which I froze with onion and bacon seasonings. There simply weren't enough beans to justify getting out the pressure canner.

I also picked about twenty Eclipse peas. They're maturing slowly, but should pick up with around an inch of rain overnight.

I tilled the area where our garlic had grown. I added fertilizer, lime, and peat moss to the soil before tilling. I'd hoped to rake the bed and plant kidney beans, but my bum shoulder said "no more" after wrestling the tiller around.

Kidney beans, Encore peas, and Japanese Long Pickling cucumbers will be succession plantings done this week. Although we've had some serious setbacks due to weather and injuries, I'm excited about getting our next round of gardening started.

Early, tall pea vines cleared

JLP cucumber transplantsWhile I'd planned to plant kidney beans today, our tall, early pea vines had browned out overnight. So today's main task was pulling and composting the pea vines, while saving mature pea pods for seed saving. I also had to snip off and save the seed bearing spinach stalks next to the pea vines, saving them in a grocery sack for drying. While there's some light weeding still to do, I should be able to get our JLP cucumber transplants into the ground in the next few days. I was sorta proud that I was able to save most of the snapdragons blooming along the sides of our double trellis.

I did a little online research before composting the pea vines. While I'd sprayed the vines with a fungicide, there was a good bit of powdery mildew on them. While there are varying opinions online, the consensus seems to be that composting kills powdery mildew and its spores. So our vines went onto our compost pile.

Fruit Bouquets

Monday, June 27, 2022 - Peas

Weather Underground Extended ForecastWe're in for a couple of delightful days of good gardening weather. High temperatures both today and tomorrow are predicted to be in the low 80s.

Encore peas transplanted and mulchedI began my gardening day by raking smooth the bed where our garlic grew. I strung a row for our Encore peas, but used a one inch board to make a shallow furrow marking the soil down the row so that I could pull the string. My Encore transplants were already too large, and I didn't want them getting tangled in the string.

I started down the fifteen foot row spacing the Encore transplants several inches apart. I quickly realized that I wasn't going to get all of the 72 transplants I had in the row at that spacing. So I began digging short trenches and put in four to six plants at a time. Even after a good rain, each planting hole or trench got a good shot of starter solution.

Peas are a cool weather crop. Even though this planting is only for seed saving, I don't know if the peas will bloom and produce seed in the dead of summer. Hey, I'm not sure if the plants will survive the transplanting. To help the young plants along, I mulched them with grass clippings to hold in soil moisture and hold back weeds.

I haven't as yet decided on whether or not to trellis the short Encore peas. If they take, a trellis will help produce a cleaner seed crop with less rot from peas on the ground or mulch.

Kidney Beans

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Kidney beans seededI started a row of red kidney beans from a seed strain we've been saving since 2015. The variety had a days-to-maturity listed as 102 days, but ours have consistently matured in around 85 days. That's just enough time to sneak in a crop, even with fall's shorter days, before our first frost.

I started out today with the planting area tilled and fertilized. All I had to do was smooth out the planting row (footprints from planting the row of peas) and plant. I made a shallow furrow with my garden hoe, sprinkled some granular soil inoculant down the row, and then watered the furrow. I spaced the seeds about an inch and a half down the row before covering them with a generous inch of soil. I'll need to water the kidney bean row daily until the bean plants emerge.

We use the kidney beans in our Portuguese Kale Soup, Texas Nachos, and to make Refried Beans. I'm really hoping this crop is successful, as we ran out of our own refried beans mid-winter, as we didn't get a crop of kidney beans last season.

Cucumber bed hoedPrepping Cucumber Bed

I continued preparing one of our narrow raised beds for some cucumber transplants. I've found that following our tall, early peas grown between a double trellis with vining Japanese Long Pickling cucumbers works well for us. The sixty day variety produces long cucumbers good for slicing, but that excel for bread and butter pickles and sweet pickle relish.

Cucumber bed cleared and hoedI'd cleared the bed of pea vines yesterday, but there were lots of weeds to be pulled in the area next to the trellises where we grew our spinach. I also needed to hoe the area to chop up pea roots and a few stray weeds. To access the area to be hoed, I pulled up just one side of the trellis. Also, the plastic coated clothesline wires that support our nylon trellis material had stretched and had to be tightened.

Tomorrow, I'll hoe in some fertilizer and lime before transplanting and mulching the cucumber transplants. And yes, all of the snapdragon plants around the trellises have survived so far.

Dill

Our herb bed
Dill weed (leaves)

Dill in bloomI grabbed a lovely shot of some dill blooms a few days ago, but hadn't been able to work the shot into this blog. The dill are volunteer plants from seed dropped in our raised herb garden bed last season. They're growing between a couple of vigorous sage plants that have been in the ground since I built the raised bed in 2016.

While the dill is in bloom, looking down the plants one can see dill leaves that save well as dill weed for cooking. The dill leaves won't be good for cooking soon as the plant works to produce viable seed. I won't be harvesting the leaves or seed, though, as we have lots and lots of dill seed and weed saved in years past.

Annie - thirty years agoBut dill weed has a special place in my heart, as I used it in a recipe that helped win my wonderful wife's heart. She called the recipe "seduction chicken!" There's also a seduction fish variant of the recipe that these days I struggle to remember!

Hummingbird Feeders

First Nature Hummingbird Feeder 32 ozI'd hung a third hummingbird feeder a week or so ago. It's one the birds don't like all that well. Since I was having to fill our other two feeders, sixteen and twenty ounce feeders, twice a day, I switched an old flat feeder the birds don't like for a cheapie 32 ounce plastic feeder. The tiny birds don't like that feeder all that well, but it will give me some respite from constantly filling the feeders.

We're currently going through about five pounds of granulated sugar a week to make nectar for the birds. We use the recommended 4:1 water to sugar ratio for the nectar.

It's a small price to pay for the enjoyment we get from watching the birds at our feeders.

David's Cookies

Tuesday, June 28, 2022 - Peas Again

I'd hoped to transplant cucumber plants today. But I awoke this morning with my body in full protest after my ambitious gardening activities yesterday. I'm finding that as I age, I often have to take a day or two off after a day of heavy exertion. Today was one of those days.

By afternoon, I thought I felt good enough to at least pick a few peas. My back was killing me from the bending required to pick the Eclipse supersweet peas. Shelled, the peas picked made about a pint. I put half of them in a pan for supper and blanched and froze the rest. Sadly, those will be the only Eclipse peas for our table this season, as I'm going to let the pea plants produce seed for seed saving. With the patent (PVP) on the Eclipse variety having expired, I'd like to be able to share some seed with other gardeners.

BTW: Despite the heat we've had, the Eclipse peas were delicious.

Not content with just shelling the Eclipse peas, I also shelled the peas I had drying from our tall, early peas. I really wasn't happy with the production of those peas this year. Dry conditions, heat, and possibly the crossing I allowed of two varieties may all have contributed to lower production.

Gloxinias

Tiny gloxinia startsGloxinias in bloom on our dining room tableThe Gloxinias I seeded on June 17 have emerged. While I tried to be careful not to plant too many of the dustlike seeds, I counted about thirty sprouts (from the larger version of the image), about ten to fifteen more than I wanted.

Our dining room table is filled with gloxinias in bloom. I need to get started hand pollinating some of the flowers for seed saving. I also need to spread the plants out a bit in a couple more trays.

By the time the newly seeded gloxinias come into bloom, the plants on the dining room table should be in their required annual period of dormancy.

Each year as old and new gloxinias begin to bloom, it's exciting to see the varying colors amongst the single and double blooms.

Magenta and white double gloxinia Purple and white single gloxinia Velvety red double gloxinia

Dungarees

Wednesday, June 29, 2022 - Cucumber Transplants In

Cucumbers transplanted and mulchedA Japanese Long Pickling cucumberI transplanted eighteen Japanese Long Pickling cucumber plants into our narrow raised bed with the double trellis that previously supported our tall, early peas. That succession has worked well for us for several years.

My first job was to hoe in some lime and 12-12-12 fertilizer in the planting area. Then I began transplanting the JLPs, putting them fairly deep in the soil, as the plants had gotten a bit taller than I'd like. Each planting hole got a generous amount of starter solution.

I fortunately had a good amount of cured grass clippings to mulch in the new planting. After mulching, I went back and watered each plant again, as some of the plants were already showing some stress from the transplanting.

Tightening the clothesline wires that support our nylon trellis came next. And then I wove some of the taller snapdragons that had fallen over into the netting.

This planting, along with the kidney beans seeded and Encore peas transplanted earlier this week will require daily waterings until the plants get going. Even with a good rain last week, our soil is pretty dry in the raised beds.

Hardware World

Thursday, June 30, 2022 - June Wrap-up

June, 2022, animated GIF of our Senior GardenEartheasyIt's been an interesting month. I began the month with high hopes for our garden plot, experienced some adverse weather, got injured again and had to give up planting our East Garden plot. On the other hand, I have enjoyed the challenge of growing as much as we can in our raised garden beds. We've had some nice peas, a little lettuce, and another bumper crop of garlic. Rabbits ate all our beets, some lettuce and cauliflower, but didn't bother our carrots and onions. I actually picked our first onion of the season today for something I was cooking. It was a Walla Walla. They usually bulb later than our other onions, but not so this year. Our tomato plants have fruit on them now, and we even have a few small peppers set on.

Botanical Interests Burpee Gardening Required FTC Disclosure Statement: Botanical Interests, Burpee, Renee's Garden, and True Leaf Market are some of our Senior Gardening affiliate advertisers. Clicking through one of our ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale. We're also a consumer member of the Fedco Seeds Cooperative. Renee's Garden True Leaf Market

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