Where did summer go???

I meant to blog so many times this summer, but man, babies certainly are demanding masters.  We've turned a major corner with respect to sleep (no, not at night....sigh...), but now he is napping in the crib instead of on me, which is wonderful.  While I didn't manage to blog this summer, we still did quite a bit of farming.  The weeds really took advantage of the fact that I had little time to devote to garden upkeep, but many of our crops still thrived.  In the interests of trying to ensure that I remember what worked and what didn't about this gardening season, here's my mini end-of-summer recap.

The good:

We had bumper crops of cucumbers, beans (apparently two sites of pole beans and a full bed of bush beans was excessive), swiss chard, sugar snap peas, carrots, scallions, leeks, shallots, herbs, peppers, eggplant, potatoes, lettuce, and broccoli.  I learned how to can, and so this year we were able to preserve quite a bit.  I've made a staggering amount of cucumber pickles and pickled green beans and relishes, and we've frozen broccoli and green beans as well.  I may freeze some chard and more green beans.  The bean yield has been so heavy that I've begun to actually get irritated with the plants for continuing to bear fruit through today.  The dogs and I now have a game where I toss the overgrown green beans to them over the fence.  Even Bullet is getting tired of eating green beans by now, which should say quite a bit about how many we've picked.
The bad (and the bad was ugly):

Tomatoes.  Oh, tomatoes.  This year I had such high hopes - no morning sickness and I've learned to can.  And then blight struck.  All of my tomato plants are either dead or dying, and our yield was pathetic.  My neighbor took pity on me and gave us 17 pounds of their tomatoes, so I was still able to live the dream of canning tomato sauce (I dream big), but not with my own tomatoes.  Maybe next year will be the year that my tomato crop matches my tomato consumption/preservation abilities.

The zucchini and two of my sweet mama winter squash plants succumbed early to squash vine borers.  Luckily the Uncle David's Dakota Dessert squash and one sweet mama squash plant survived, so we'll have at least a few winter squashes. 

The beets never amounted to much.  Unlike last year, this year's crop had a terrible germination rate, and then I never got around to planting a squash crop.  The same neighbors that gifted me with tomatoes also gave me some beets, which Bullet promptly peed on.  Just not a good year for beets at my house.

The potato bugs were terrible again this year even though I tried very hard to stay on top of the eggs.  We didn't have many tomato hornworms, but my tomato plants also died, so that one's a draw.

I started cauliflower seeds inside in June in hopes of a fall cauliflower crop, and they were the most anemic seedlings I've ever seen.  Only one survived the transplant, and it doesn't look too motivated to actually form a head. 

The cabbage worms this year were terrible.  Next year I MUST put floating row covers over my broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts.  Because cabbage worms are really gross, and I'm tired of picking them out of my broccoli and then having a sneaking suspicion that I missed some.  Ew.

Rough plan for next year's garden:

More paste tomato plants, one whole bed, and much more vigilance about blight.  Also, three cherry tomato plants, and one slicing tomato plant.

Fewer bell peppers, more hot peppers - maybe two bell pepper plants, two poblanos, two jalapenos, and a banana pepper plant.

Same amount of eggplant, with a similar mix of small varieties.  Half a bed seems to give us a good amount for using and preserving, and I found some very tempting canning recipes for eggplant that I'd like to try next year.

A full bed of carrots again, but next year we need to fully till the bed before planting, and thoroughly thin the seedlings.  We have a very funky looking bunch of carrots this year.

More shallots, at least half a bed, and fewer scallions (1/8 - 1/4 of a bed).  1/4 bed of leeks seems to be good.

More leaf lettuce and less mustard greens, which seem to be a favorite of the flea beetles.

Shelling peas in addition to sugar snap peas.  Also, I think July was too late for a fall planting of snap peas.  The plants are growing, but I doubt we'll have peas before frost.  We'll see...

Three cabbage plants, maximum.  I don't know why I keep letting Mike talk me into a full bed of cabbage.  We really don't eat it.

1/2 bed of cucumbers, and that may still be too much!

1/2 bed of bush beans and 1 site of pole beans.  I know that pole beans and haricot verts are supposed to taste better than the regular bush beans, but this year I grew all three kinds, and thought they all tasted about the same.  Loved them all, but apparently I do not have a refined green bean palate.

1/2 bed of chioggia beets and 1/2 bed of golden beets, and lots of finger crossing that they germinate.

1/2 bed of broccoli is plenty when the plants produce side shoots like they did this year.  And I'd like 1/2 bed of cauliflower.  Next year I'll have to buy seedlings early for a spring crop.

Two beds of potatoes is good.  The mixture of early/regular/late was also good, although the mid season and late potatoes seemed to be ready at the same time.

New crops I'd like to try for next year are kale (to go in 1/2 bed with chard), fennel, parsnips (I think maybe I'd need to plant them this fall?  We'll see if that happens), soy beans, walking onions and hard neck garlic. 

Next year I'd like to have a greater mix of varieties and vegetables, now that I know the yield that we're getting when we devote an entire bed to one plant.  I'd also really, really like to stay on top of the weeds a bit more next year.  We'll see how farming with a toddler compares to farming with a newborn.

The joys of parenthood - or, when picking potato bugs becomes your idea of a break

Firstly, Landon continues to prefer, vehemently, to sleep only in the wrap during the day, and snuggled up next to me at night.  While I enjoy his cuddles, this does make it quite hard to get anything done during the day, and is also getting quite hot.  So there you have it.  While I have managed to do some farming during my "baby breaks," I've had very little time left for blogging.  Right now, though, Mike is at work trying to get the little guy to sleep in his crib, and so I have both a bit of time, and a need to be distracted!

The garden looks fantastic, despite my neglect.  We've been enjoying our own lettuce, arugula, mixed greens, radishes, and herbs for a few weeks.  After our recent heat wave of last week, the arugula and greens bolted, but this timing was for the best, as the arugula was sharing space with tomatoes and eggplants who were looking for more room.  Tonight we had our first broccoli, which was delicious.  Tomorrow night's dinner with be broccoli quiche with our own broccoli and our own eggs, and I'm already looking forward to it.

Left side of the garden 7-1-2012

Right side of the garden 7-1-2012

First broccoli harvest!  7-1-2012

My perennial nemeses, the potato bugs and their disgusting larvae, are back.  This year I tried to be more diligent about finding and removing the eggs from the potato plants, and I do think that helped, although I have noticed the larvae over the past two days.  My potato plants are tremendously happy, which has made bug picking a bit more difficult as there are so many leaves to check.  I hope this means that we get a huge potato harvest, as the potato bug picking portion of the summer always leaves me needing a reminder of why it's still worth it to grow potatoes.

Potato plants 7-1-2012

We also have our first tomatoes!  I was surprised to see them this early - it feels earlier than last year, but I haven't had a chance to check my old posts to confirm this.  The snap pea plants are also flowering, and green beans and pole beans are growing well.  My uncle david's dakota dessert squash plants have already exceeded last year's growth, and I'm hopeful that this year I'll actually get to taste this squash.  My leeks/shallots/scallions seem to have flourished despite the weird worm that was eating them earlier in the season, and you can see that one of my holdover tomato plants is happily growing in the corner of that bed.  I've decided to leave my mystery tomato plants alone to see what they do.  I have no clue what variety they are, since they are holdovers from last year's grab bag of heirlooms.

First tomato!  7-1-2012

Uncle David's Dakota Dessert Squash 7-1-2012

Pole beans 7-1-2012

Snap pea flowers 7-1-2012

Beets.  Well, a couple, anyway.  7-1-2012

Bush green beans, lettuce and mixed greens 7-1-2012

Mystery tomato, scallions, leeks and shallots 7-1-2012

My lettuce transplant experiment was a total success!  The moved plants adjusted well to their new spots in the bed, and I'm quite proud of what I think was an innovative work around to thinning, which is a gardening concept that I have yet to embrace (honestly, out of laziness more than anything else).

Happy lettuce 7-1-2012

You may have noticed that the weed situation is looking fairly good - this is entirely thanks to our family friend Joe, who spent the better portion of his last visit to our house weeding the garden, and to whom I am eternally grateful.  Anne also weeded, and planted chard and green beans to fill in some holes in those beds, and she started the cauliflower seedlings indoors (they look very sad and leggy right now, though, so no pictures). 

Hilling, weeding, and the first potato bug sightings

We've had a ton of rain over the past week, which has been fantastic for my seedlings and even better for my weeds, so today when Landon was ready to be handed off to his dad, I headed out to the garden.  My first task was hilling the potatoes, which have gotten huge over the past week.  Mike picked up two yards of compost this morning to use for hilling (and for other things, as that is clearly an excessive amount of compost to hill two beds of potatoes), so I started by shoveling the compost out of the truck into the garden, then into the beds.  I'm going to be one sore mama tomorrow.  I surveyed the plants for potato bugs and eggs before I started, and found about 10 potato bugs, although I couldn't find any eggs.  I'd really like to catch the eggs so that I don't have to deal with the larvae, so I'm going to try to get out to keep checking over the next couple of weeks.

The seeds that I planted two weeks ago are all coming up nicely, and earlier this week I put in my second planting of bush green beans.  I'm planting three sets 10 days apart, in hopes that they'll be ready for harvest at a staggered interval this year. 

Pole beans 6-10

The beets continue to do nothing.  Strawberries are coming in, and I hope that this year we'll be able to snag a few before the birds eat them all!

 In the lettuce bed, I've tried to replant some of the lettuces, rather than thinning them, as my seeds came up in clumps (I'm sure this had nothing to do with how they were sown...).  Today they transplanted lettuces are looking a little limp, but I'm hoping this will work.

Lettuce 6-10

 The carrots and radishes look fantastic.  We harvested our first radish for salad on Saturday night, and it was delicious. 

Carrots and radishes 6-10

Chard 6-10

 I think cutworms got to one of my eggplant seedlings and one of my pepper seedlings, so we hit the farmer's market again to buy replacements.  The other seedlings in those beds are fine, so I hope these were isolated incidents.

Eggplant and tomatoes 6-10

 I have at least three tomato seedlings that have come up from last year's crop, including the one below (with one of last year's onions), one in the scallion/leek/shallot bed, and one nestled in with the cabbage.  I haven't pulled any of them yet, as I'm still admiring the fact that they took the initiative to grow.

Rogue tomato and onion from last year's garden 6-10

Snap peas

 Lily has spent the past week trying to eat the bulbs that my mother planted, so Mike installed a pretty fence around the perennial garden out front to keep the dogs out.  It looks lovely (he also mulched), but has been completely ineffective as far as the dogs go, and I've caught them both in there several times.  Apparently the new mulch is delicious (says Lily).  She can't understand why she's also banned from the vegetable garden...

Mostly planted

I had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend, with lots of farming and even a bit of sleep.  Mike and I hit the farmer's market on Saturday morning to pick up eggplant, pepper and herb seedlings, and then stopped by Skillins to get a few last herbs and tomato cages.  When we got home, Mike strapped Landon into the Ergo and they had major father son bonding time while I spent two wonderful hours in the garden, weeding and planting.  On Monday, we repeated this setup and I "finished" (are you ever really done?) weeding and planting the summer seeds of bush and pole beans, zucchini, cucumbers, winter squash, and basil.  Mike then managed to pull off the feat of watering the garden while wearing the baby, which was impressive but ultimately unnecessary given the huge amount of rain that we got yesterday.  Also on Monday, my mom planted day lilies, gladioli, and peonies in the flower bed around the well.  Lily has spent the past two days trying to dig up the bulbs and eat them.  She also helped herself to a generous serving of last Thanksgiving's fried turkey oil that was in the barn.  Anyone want a bearcub?

The tomatoes seem to have benefited from the actual hardening off that I did this year, and they look happy in their spots in the garden.  The carrots, radishes, snap peas, potatoes, and swiss chard are germinating very well.  My beets have barely come up at all.  I'm not sure if they are just being slow to germinate, if they were duds, or if something is eating the seedlings.  Also in the category of garden puzzles is the fact that some bug is snacking on my scallions/leeks/shallots.  I was under the impression, from all of my gardening books, that bugs left onion family plants alone.  Not in my garden.  These tiny black and white caterpillar/inchworms are munching the tops off of all of these plants.  Very odd, and I haven't found a solution yet since none of my go-to garden guides mention this type of pest.  So for now I'm just hoping they go away.  I'm sure that will work.

cabbage 5-30

chard 5-30

herbs 5-30

from front, eggplant, arugula, tomatoes 5-30

potatoes 5-30

radishes & carrots 5-30

beets (?) 5-30

We started spraying the arugula, mustard greens, and cabbage family crops with organic insecticidal soap as the flea beetles are just terrible this year, and they've officially killed one broccoli plant.  The soap has helped a bit, but we'll need to keep on top of it as it only works when it's wet.

Our peach trees both have a fungus, so I think we are once again going to spray and forgo the notion of organic trees this year.  I think if we don't, we may lose them.

In chicken news, the girls continue to look like a very ratty bunch due to all the pecking, but are laying very well and are enjoying the weeds that I bring to them from the garden.  One of the rhode island reds has become broody, and she spends her days and nights trying to hatch the fake lime in the corner of the coop.  She may not be intelligent, but she is very determined.  Expect baby limes any day....

Seedlings everywhere

This spring has been very kind to the garden.  The combination of plenty of rain with warm sunny days mixed in has been fantastic for my seedlings, and it looks like the garden is off to a promising start.  Carrots, radishes, chard, lettuce (including mixed greens, mustard greens, and arugula), beets, snap peas and scallions have all emerged and look happy.  We have flea beetles again this year doing a number on the arugula, mustard greens, radish and broccoli seedlings.  Maybe next year I'll get a chance to give them some protective covering.  We also harvested our first rhubarb crop last week from the two larger plants.

Lettuce portion of mesclun mix 5-20

Snap peas 5-20

I've been surprised to find that while having a baby has made me a slightly more responsible gardener, in that I now weed almost every day while Mike is holding Landon.  I certainly didn't weed this much last year, and I hope that I can keep it up, as the beds do look much better.  For mother's day, Mike bought me a tiny pop up tent with mesh sides for Landon to occupy while I farm.  Now I just need to get the baby to tolerate being out of my arms for more than 30 seconds, and we'll be in business!

On my morning tour of the garden this morning I noticed that the potato plants have just begun to emerge.  My goal for this year is to preempt a potato bug infestation by scraping the eggs off of the plants, so this week I'll need to start monitoring the plants.  I'd love it if I didn't have to spend so much time this summer "harvesting" potato bug larvae.

Potato plant 5-20-2012

Emerging potato plant 5-20-2012

The tomato seedlings are looking very happy in their new pots.  Since the weather has consistently been so nice, I think I'll start hardening them off next week, and then plant them outside.  I'm hoping to get to the farmer's market next Saturday to pick up eggplant and pepper seedlings, and then finish the first round of planting next weekend.

Tomato seedlings 5-20

Whenever you read about planting mint, you can't miss the dire warnings to be very cautious in your placement of the plant as mint is a vigorous spreader, and nearly impossible to get rid of.  Well, not in my garden.  Last year I carefully planted my chocolate mint and spearmint plants in their own pots within the herb bed, and made sure to keep the runners out of the larger bed.  I'm not sure what happened, but my spearmint never came back.  So I continue my streak of failures with "easy" plants and will be picking up a new spearmint plant at the market.

A sad tale of two mints 5-20-2012

The dogs have been a bit neglected since Landon's arrival, so to occupy themselves they've begun a serious excavation project in the front yard, to Mike's dismay.  At first it was a hole, now it's so large that I think it's safe to say we have the beginnings of a tunnel.  We're a bit concerned about the possibility of a cave-in, but at least it keeps them busy and away from the chickens...

Bullet going in

Bullet coming out

Finally, the junior farmer is two months old today!  He's just starting to smile and coo, although both are hard won and haven't been captured on camera yet.  He's a very easygoing baby most of the time (except for at 4AM.  He's lucky he's so cute).  At two months old, his favorite things are eating, looking out the window, looking at his parents, looking at the penguin on the bar of his bouncy seat, more eating, and being held.  We continue to adore him.

Despite the lack of blogging, we are farming

Having a newborn makes gardening rather tricky, but we have managed to get our cold weather plants in the ground over the past month, and have started our tomato seedlings as well.  We've figured out that Landon is quite happy to be worn in a wrap, so Mike has been doing the bulk of the actual farming work, while I wear Landon and supervise.  I hope that once I can wear him on my back, I'll be getting my hands dirty more often.  At any rate, a quick run-down of our progress so far this season:

Around April 15, we started the tomato seedlings inside.  We let them go in their starter cells for much longer than we did last year (due to nothing other than parenting induced exhaustion), and just transferred them into larger pots last night.  Right now we have 24 seedlings, and I plan to plant 12 of them in the actual garden, sending the extras off to Taperman and anyone else in need of tomatoes.

Tomato seedlings 4-18

Tomato seedlings 5-6

Tomato seedlings 5-13

The weekend of April 29, we did our first cold weather plantings, getting arugula, mesclun greens, sugarsnax carrots, beets and scallions in the ground.  I had wanted to get more done, but this was my first attempt at leaving the baby inside with his dad while I farmed, and I just couldn't stay outside for longer than an hour.

The next weekend we tag teamed the planting, and got the potatoes, chard, half of the cabbage, broccoli, radishes, carnival blend and koruda carrots all planted.  We've had a nice warm spring with lots of rain, which I'm hoping will be good for the garden.  So far, it's been excellent for the weeds, so we've had to spend about equal time weeding and planting each weekend.  The chickens have been the happy recipients of the weeds, which is the only upside to their presence.

This past weekend we took Landon on his first trip to the farmer's market to pick up leek, shallot, more cabbage, and brussels sprouts seedlings.  We ran into one of his baby buddies from our prenatal group, and even though he slept through the entire outing, I think he enjoyed it.  At least, we enjoyed it!  Mike broke out the rototiller and cultivator attachment for the weed whacker to create some additional space on the northern side of the garden for the brussels sprouts and for sunflowers, and he planted all of the seedlings.  Landon and I supervised (again, Landon slept).  Now we just have the warm weather crops left - eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, bush and pole beans, squash, and zucchini.  I think I'll plant them Memorial Day weekend, and we'll be hitting up the farmer's market one more time before then to get some more seedlings, since we'll need to buy eggplant and pepper seedlings.

Easter egg radishes 5-14

Rhubarb 5-14

Sugar snap pea seedlings 5-14

I'm planning on starting cauliflower seedlings inside once the tomatoes move into the garden, to be planted in July for a fall harvest.  We'll also plant a second row of sugar snap peas for a fall harvest (hopefully this will be different than last year, when I said that we'd plant a second row of peas, but never actually did). 

The fruit trees have been blooming for the last two weeks and are just beautiful.  Right now the apple and crab apple trees are in full bloom.  So lovely.

Finally, the chickens.  They aren't a pretty group.  We've tried giving them extra protein in the form of sunflower seeds, and extra mental stimulation in the form of large seed blocks, but they are still pecking each other to the point of baldness.  I think we only have one or two girls who remain unpecked, and we've given up on trying to protect them from each other.  They're laying very well, producing 12-15 eggs a day, but they certainly aren't much to look at right now.