Holy Tomato!

Just a quick post to show off a tomato grown by my parents. A massive heirloom variety that weighed in at just over two pounds. As it grew it pulled the branch it had grown on to the ground despite my parents efforts to tie the branch up with a bamboo stake for support.



Mom with the tomato for scale

Just for fun (and to live vicariously) here's the first fruit on an eggplant I gave them to plant in their garden:

Lookin' good!

September bounty

Did a bit of harvesting from the garden yesterday. Production has reached a seasonal high and until the first frost it will only be a matter of keeping up with eating it all or finding a home for the extra produce. Tomatoes have yielded the best so far, and surprisingly, the beans keep on going. I was forced to cut down the sunflower head after I noticed that something had begun to nibble at the edges of the seeds. I later discovered a squirrel running down the stalk, dismayed probably at having his easy source of seeds taken away.

Also, to my delight, I realized all was not lost on the eggplant front. A separate plant I had hidden in the empty cold frame had survived the raccoons plundering and had reached a rather respectable size, now ripe for the picking. All in all a good day to be a gardener.

Autumn in the air

Like a scent on the breeze, autumn calls across August's divide. We've emerged from the past week's heat wave only to find fall's cool and overcast days waiting on the wings. The last string of days this week marked a rather sudden and welcome transition. Temperatures on average have dropped about 30 degrees from the week before. I'm sure the heat will be back in some respect before summer officially ends, but for now, this respite feels just fine.

One good thing about the advent of fall though: HARVEST! The first of the tomatoes are finally ripening. Each plant's vines are overflowing with fruit, but very little of it has actually ripened with the exception of a few cherry and pear tomatoes. Peppers and eggplants continue to flourish and swell in size; the first fruit from each should be ready within the next week.

I recently (finally) installed some 'pesticide free zone' signs in the garden, one for the front and one for the back. I received the signs from the green festival way back in March, and procrastinated putting them up for fear of sending the wrong message (greener than thou). Now that they're up I'm glad I got around to it.

Fall crops sprouted

The few rows of fall crops I planted a couple weeks ago are making full use of the summer sun. All three rows (carrots, leeks, and spinach) are thriving in the August heat. I tried a slightly different method when planting this time. After making a small furrow in the dirt, I lined the row with moist peat moss. Peat moss retains water well, so I figured it might be worth a shot to plant the seeds in the moss with the hope that it would keep them moist better than plain soil. Moisture and warmth are key to getting seeds to sprout. Hard to tell just how much it increased the rate of germination, and how much can be attributed to the heat. Regardless, the germination rate was a lot higher than I expected. I certainly had more carrots sprout this time than when I sowed them earlier in the season in only soil.

Carrots reaching for the sun

The eggplant planted in the cold frame has a nicely developing fruit and a couple blossoms ready to bloom

Cloche Removal

Nathan and I pulled the cloche today. The tomatoes have far surpassed my expectations, shadowing the peppers and eggplants in the process, and necessitating the prompt removal of the cover. A jungle of jumbled tomato vines greeted us and the full summer sun as we lifted the plastic off. I was pleased to see several of the peppers with fruit already set peering from beneath the massive tomato hedge. Keeping the tomatoes at bay required additional staking in the form of 3-4' lengths of bamboo hammered into the ground and loosely twine-tied.

Judging by how well the tomatoes and peppers heretofore grown in full exposure to the elements next door to the cloche have performed, I foresee no issues arising in the absence of cover. August is yet before us as well. At any rate the cloche has proven mighty successful. I plan on using it soon as cover for a few winter crops I'll be attempting.

A branch of Health-Kick Hybrid tomatoes from the former cloche


Jalapeno pepper coming along nicely


The first eggplant

Weeding

Summer's just officially begun and already the days grow shorter. A depressing thought I'll try to ignore as long as the garden's growing green and vibrantly. The pea harvest is in full effect; the plants have grown so large so quickly they're actually causing the trellis to sag! Today Aaron helped me tie the plants back to prevent them from leaning onto the row of beans, which are also growing rather fanatically. The northwest end of the garden has become a bit of a struggle to navigate through, in spite of (what I thought was) ample spacing. This is partly due to my reluctance to pull a volunteer pumpkin vine that sprouted near the end of the bean row.

From here on out we'll have all the peas we can eat and then some.

Aaron and I spent a little time managing the garden this afternoon. We piled some compost around the potatoes to encourage them to fill out with more spuds underground. The spinach and broccoli were also pulled from the garden. In the next few weeks I will be seeding the area where those plants were with crops that I intend to overwinter, perhaps leeks or kale, or some other hardy overwintering variety.

An important aspect of garden maintenance I haven't spent any time discussing is weeding. With proper upkeep this task will take only 1-2 hours a week. It's usually only when the task is neglected that it's a real chore. The main reason to weed is to avoid competition between your vegetables and the weeds. Weeds will use water and minerals from the surrounding soil that would otherwise go to your plants.

I try to break it up to about two times a week. The weeds are given little chance to reach any appreciable size, and the task takes less time. A regular garden hoe works best between rows, and saves your back. Last year I did all my weeding by hand, and definitely made the work much harder on myself and my back. A good hoe is definitely a must have for in-ground gardening. I still pull weeds growing near the plants by hand to avoid damaging them, but by doing this frequently it is a much less tedious endeavor. Here's Aaron demonstrating his technique:


Using the hoe allows you to keep your back straight and exert minimal effort.

And just for fun, a picture of the first eggplant blossom:

Dry days

Today the Seattle area tied the previous record for consecutive days without rain for this time of the year (May-June), with 29 straight days without so much as an isolated sprinkle. For the garden, it's a blessing and a curse. The long hot days have rocketed my plants into top form, with most blossoming or at least showing buds or getting ready to flower. It's only a curse in the sense that the water table is being continually lowered without the usual rain to recharge it. And really, it's not a curse, it just means I have to be adamant about watering. For once I'm actually hoping it will rain! Some pictures of the plants' progress in recent days:

These peas will be ready to pick tomorrow or the next day.

The quinoa is doing great! This is one experiment I'm glad I undertook. The plants are nearly two feet tall already. They should reach a height of about four feet and then will begin to produce seed clusters. According to the research I've done they won't be ready to harvest until after the first frost, at which time I'll cut them down and hang somewhere cool to dry.

The tomatoes inside the cloche are nearly to the top of it already, and readily blooming. Their cages are nearly hidden by the abundant foliage. The slightly hotter temperature the enclosure creates seems to be doing the trick.

Another cloche success story: black eggplant. This is definitely the largest I've ever got an eggplant to grow before, and it trumps the ones I grew last year (which hardly grew more than 8" tall and didn't fruit whatsoever). This one is over a foot tall.

A casualty of the consistently hot weather has been the spinach. I should have planted this crop much earlier than I did, as the high temps have prompted it to bolt (grow spindly and go to seed). I have been able to harvest a sizable amount of the leaves, however, and have been chopping off the tops of the plants in hopes that it will force the plant to shoot out more vegetation and cease flowering.

Cold frame reappropriation

Now that the growing season is in full swing I no longer need the cold frame to acclimatize seedlings, so have decided to conduct a little experiment involving peppers and eggplants. On the tall side of the frame (the back) I planted two peppers (of which are either jalapeno or lady bells, they weren't labled), a black eggplant, and an eggplant hybrid directly into the ground. The plants are spaced approximately 12-15" apart. Since we've had spectacular late spring weather these past few weeks I intend to keep the windows placed on top of the frame in a way such that they allow adequate ventilation but still help to transmit extra heat directly into the soil and the plants. Leaving the frame shut completely would surely spell disaster, as I would be unable to regulate the temperature at all and the plants would most likely get fried.

A picture of the newly planted peppers (left) and eggplants (right). As the plants grow I will probably have to remove the windows entirely to allow them to keep growing skyward, but for now they should reap the benefits of the additional heat that plants in the solanum family love so much.

There is a space between the windows about 8" wide and a strip along the entire front face of the frame to allow ventilation.

Cloche!

I spent nearly nearly 7 hours in the garden yesterday, transplanting, weeding, and finishing construction on the cloche. Rather than look up plans on the web I opted to wing it. The process itself was not overly complicated, once I figured out how to affix the front and back supports it was only a matter of fitting all the pieces together. Here's what it looks like:

The materials I used are as follows:

-7 pieces of 1/2" pvc pipe, 10 feet long
-4 elbow joint fittings with 1/2" openings
-4 1/2" 'T' fittings for intermediary connections
-1 roll of 3.5 mil plastic (measuring 10' x 25') to serve as covering
-4 2" wood screws
-1 4' length of 5/8" wooden dowel rod
-4 wooden stakes

Any hardware store ought to have all these parts. Four pieces of pvc pipe are first cut down to 9'. These will serve as the arches. To build the front and back arches, two pieces are cut from one of the remaining 10' pieces, each to 4'. These will lay on the ground and hold the arch in place and prevent flexing. Since the elbow joint fittings I found only have a 1/2" opening on two of the three sides, I was forced to get creative to determine how I would fit the 4' piece into the side with the slightly smaller opening. This is where the wooden dowel rod comes into play. First I drilled a pilot hole into the fitting using a bit approximately the same width as the wood screws:

A 3" piece of the dowel rod is fitted into the opening in line with the drilled hole. Trust me that a 5/8" dowel will fit into an opening that a 1/2" pvc pipe won't. It just takes a little persuasion. A 1/2" piece of dowel will be too narrow. The dowel should fit all the way to the back of the elbow. Now a screw can be drilled into the dowel. The dowel will protrude from the elbow about 1 1/2", like so:

Now the 4' length may be fitted over the dowel:

The same is done on the other side of the 4' piece, and is replicated for the remaining piece and elbow joints. From the remaining 2 pieces of 10' pvc, six 3' pieces are cut. These will serve as the flat lengths connecting the four arches. Connect 3 of the pieces using the 'T' fittings, then connect these pieces to the two 4' lengths. It should look like this:

The four wooden stakes are pounded into the ground at the four 'T' fittings to prevent the arches from flexing once they are inserted. After the stakes are secured the 9' pieces may be inserted into the fittings:

Almost done now!

Next a length of plastic is cut from the roll. The roll is 10' wide by 25' long. I cut a 15' piece so that I could use the extra length to somehow rig up a covering for the front and back, which I still have yet to refine. The plastic is tucked underneath the pipe against the ground and then duct taped to the pipe. This will probably be a temporary solution until I can figure out something better. It is important to note that there is nothing actually holding the cloche to the ground, it is simply resting there. I most likely will have to find some spare tent stakes or other scrap that can be driven into the ground and used to hold the pipes from being ripped up by a particularly strong wind. Once the cloche is finished it can be planted. I planted two rows, each about 10" from the edge, which will allow me to walk (crawl) in the middle of the cloche and provide adequate space for the plants to grow:

On the left, a row of tomatoes, and on the right eggplants and peppers. I will have to closely watch the temp inside the cloche, as I imagine it will be quite easy for it to scorch the plants if not closely monitored.