Calendar!

Here's a new feature. You can see what happened in the Chief Weeder's garden on this calendar:




Let's see how this works!

Starting another season

Had some snow on a trip to New York a week ago Friday (March 8) and I'm hoping that's it for winter. Because I've started planting. The garden is relatively weed-free, thanks to my new toy, the cultivator.

Here's a view of the garden. Not much to see, but there is garlic over on the left-hand side, if you look carefully.

I've already put in some early plants:

Swiss chard
Broccolini
Spinach
Lettuce
Kale
Kholrabi

The spinach and lettuce are in a row that will eventually go to cucumbers and squash--hoping the leaf vegetables are ready early enough. Swiss chard and broccolini  are  new this year.

I also put in the onions. This year I'm trying them from plants.

I assume the idea is that they will awaken from dormancy when they get wet. I watered them, and am now waiting for rain. It was supposed to rain this weekend. What happened?

End of the tomatoes

They were still getting ripe, but more slowly. Still, I thought it was time to put them out of their misery, because I'm going to have to clean up the garden sometime. There are also still green beans. And I even picked a few raspberries. This is surprising because everything has usually come to an end by mid-October, but I guess the weather has been warmer this year.

But it's really time to leave the garden. The garlic is sprouting well, and I anticipate lots next year. Critters don't like it. The herbs will reach an end with colder weather which is bound to come soon. So, like the Nationals, I have to say "wait till next year."

Still harvesting

For the past few weeks, I've been getting about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of raspberries every couple of days, some tomatoes every few days, and quite a few green beans. I think maybe the last zucchini has finally given up...but maybe not? This is surprising, and will also push off my final garden clean-up for a while.

And I planted lots of garlic---a double row. It's coming up and getting ready for the winter.

Garlic planted...and lots of green beans

I planted the garlic last weekend. It was time for it to go into a shortened row (I try to rotate), so I am trying a trick from the Internet---two rows eight inches apart. If it works, I'll have an awful lot of garlic next year. I got such great garlic this year (every head was large and fat) that I find it hard to believe it wasn't just luck.

And then I went to pick the beans after having left them for a few days. Got about 1 3/4 pounds! Not that we needed any, so I used a few in a salmon salad and blanched and froze the rest.

What happened to the evil squirrels (or racoons)?

A couple of weeks ago something odd happened. Whatever was eating the tomatoes as they ripened, and stripping the bean plants, suddenly went away. Now I have a few end of summer tomatoes turning red with no harm done, and handfuls of green beans.

Good...but strange.

Grapes, figs, and more racoons

Monday: Picked some edamame. Had them for dinner. Very nice. Determined to pick the rest on Thursday, blanch them, and freeze them.
Tuesday, Wednesday: kept checking the edamame. Looked good.
Thursday evening. Went out to pick the edamame. And they were all gone. Stripped from the plants. Finis. I have to assume it is racoons.

Plus, I've been forced to do some experiments with peas. I planted pea seeds on Saturday. Sunday morning, here' what I found:

Yep. Something dug into the ground and got all but one of the 90-some peas I planted. Since then, I've tried replanting (gone the next morning) and bird netting (gone again). Tonight I put down half-inch hardware cloth held down with staples. Anything that wants those peas is going to have to move that hardware cloth.

Good news: the fig tree is going to give me a dozen figs in its second year! And I picked some grapes:

These are Seyval Blanc grapes. They are supposed to be good for eating as well as wine. I tried some--not bad. Some are brown in the picture above, I think because I waited too long before picking them (but I wanted to be sure they were ripe). There are a couple more small bunches as well. Not bad for the second year.