updates for the coming season

So here are some things you might want to know:

Potatoes should be in bloom or nearly finished (remember our micro-climates) When they bloom that signals the plant to start making potatoes. So if you want tiny new potatoes just wait a couple of weeks from the bloom. If you want nice big potatoes then wait until Sept or later when the plant completely dies down. Clear it up as it does so and then wait a nice week to dump the can. Let's hope it's not raining.

Next is peas. No where else in the U.S is peas a summer crop but here in the northwest. I'm sure everyone else thinks we are crazy to be complaining in nearly August that our peas are starting to yellow and die down. So harvest what you have and be glad. Remember you can plant something else. Peas are a yellow, spring card so no tears please!

I ordered my fall variety seeds and they have arrived. Fall beets, fall kale, fall carrots, etc. August is the month to fill in the garden blanks with the orange fall crops. My favorite being kale which is heavenly only after a fall frost! There are fall salad mix seeds too. Look at your seed catalog and find something to plant for fall.

Next bit of business too far ahead for some to think but garlic we must talk about garlic and shallots. I have harvested all of mine and it is dried and today it went into mesh bags for storage. It gives me a solid feeling to have these two bags of garlic. A center of my cooking. If you order your garlic plants too late they will be sold out. We get our garlic in time to plant them in late Sept. early Oct. Plan a spot they can go in your garden. They get tall, they stay in the ground until late June to late July. Plan ahead and order them in the next couple of weeks.

Remember to add compost to your squares each time you remove a plant and get ready to add a new one. Just a scoop or two. Here is my list of what I'm doing in my garden:

1. sprayed the potatoes for rust spot and the squash for white leaf mold
2. blanched and froze several bags of peas but not near as much as in years past
3. Am watching the little tiny bush beans, the tiny peppers and tiny zucchini in three colors!
4. Collecting the over planting of Kale and blanching and freezing
5. Watering daily. Mels mix is not like your soil, it's 6 inches up off the ground and it dried out in so much heat. You don't use as much water to get it wet but I do have to water all pots and square foot mels mix daily.
6. I still collect lettuce and replant both the choi's and lettuce as I eat it. My chives are going crazy and I'm sharing them with everyone.
7. Have my eye's on the onions. We are eating the ones too close to one another. Very yummy as is the garlic. I put some mels mix over the onions that got too exposed. With mel's mix being so light I won't stop the onions from growing as big as they like. Onions are harvested when the tops die, don't let them make blooms it causes the onions to rot ready to make seed!
8. ordered my fall/winter seeds and my garlic for fall planting.
9. Ate two yellow cherry tomatoes. yum
10. Herbs are doing better so finally I am collecting them. We had some great thyme on some veggies last night
11. Tied the potato branches that were beginning to brake into a nice bundle to hold them up.
12. Tied the onions up so they wouldn't droop down to collect slugs
13 yes I'm still doing my nightly slug walks.
14. I've planted beets where the garlic was I'm craving pickled beets!

What am I eating, garlic, shallots, kale, peas, chard, spinach, 2 tiny sweet tomatoes, choi's, lettuce, broccoli, basil, beet greens, onions all kinds, leeks. Raspberries (I'm keeping them wet so they don't dry up) oh tonight we ate a green zucchini and soon a yellow one!

Tell me what you are harvesting

Sweet peas

Rainbow Chard

I'm back
I had a great vacation!

I came home to a big green garden. Amazing how much growth takes place with a little heat. It's what I hope for a couple months of every summer.
I read the square foot gardening chat and some places are harvesting such wonderful veggies and I feel jealous.
So
Let's see what wonderful things we can grow in the Northwest.
Tell me what you have been harvesting and how it has been to eat it!

Sweet peas among the other peas

The peas have been doing good and I've harvest a good amount and so have my garden helpers while I was on vacation. I planted sweet peas among my eating peas and the fragrance is heavenly.

I've been eating my lettuce for months and I keep planting more and eating more so that goes on with success. My herbs are now happy and sturdy enough for harvest. Today I hope to put my hand into one of the trash cans of potatoes and get some baby ones...let you know what happens with that

Potato can in bloom


kale

Kale

I've had a bumper crop of kale and it is lovely soft kale for salad. I like to put it into everything, stir fry, soup, salad, smoothies. All good. I've been collecting beet leaves for greens and some chard which is still a bit small. We ate the over wintered broccoli and still are. Yes they are small but that seems to be the way of things this year. What are we missing? Heat units which are increasing.

beans in bloom bush variety

Onions looking great I'm not letting them go to seed, just snap off the bloom


Nasturtiums perfect size leaves for salad



Some kind of squash in bloom




Garlic is all harvested and tasting really good
I clean them when I use them by removing the dirty dry layer of covering



Here are the eating peas


I've harvested all the cherries and am still working on the raspberries which will go on and on!


Now tell me what you are eating and how your garden is going!
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Blogger Kevin said...

We've harvested tons of lettuce for salad, radishes, carrots, broccoli, cilantro, and peas.

Everything else is growing nicely, except our cucumbers are growing very slowly - they had it rough early on with the cool weather and slugs. We lost a few onions to slugs too.

Broccoli that gives and gives

I planted a mix of broccoli last fall and early spring it was up and mid spring it was dinner, it must have been one of the kinds that makes lots of little shoots for eating later and that is what we have been doing. There has been more little shoots than I have seen before. So here is the list of the mix, wonder which one it was!

Hybrid Fall Broccoli blend:Everest, Packman, Southern Comet and Belstar. Southern comet does side shoots and so does Packman. My guess is on packman.