What's Eating My Broccoli?

It's harder to see in this picture than I had hoped, but this little bugger (ha ha) is a Harlequin Bug, and he's feasting on my broccoli! You can check out the link below for more info. No pesticides recommended - not that I would use them anyway. Looks like I'm going to have to pick them off and crush them like I did with the potato beetles. Yuck.


And the good news?

I do believe that these two little sprouts are some spinach coming up....

Learn a little about Harlequin Bugs (besides how pretty they are) here:

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/GARDEN/VEGES/PESTS/harlequinbug.html

A look at how fall is progressing...

Everyday I go out and look, and the tranplants are getting bigger and the little upstart seedlings are getting bigger, and if I look closely I can see that seeds continue to sprout. Suddenly we're having a LOT of rain, so the seeds are coming up all over the place, not necessarily where I put them. I think I may have spotted a few spinach seedlings today....

Here's the lettuce transplants.


Here's some Easter Egg Radish sprouts...

Daikon...

The red chard transplants getting big. I also have a TON of Swiss Chard seedlings coming up. Just a TON. I'm going to be eating and freezing a lot of Chard, which is fine with me.

The broccoli tranplants look nice and healthy and strong. I did notice that one of them had some bites of the leaves yesterday, and I picked a little black catapillar off of it.

I like this shot, because it looks so neat, and orderly, and you can't see all the un-decomposed grass. I want my husband to till next spring's patch now, so that all that grass can have plenty of time to decompose. As it is thought I think I'll have less trouble with weeds this fall than I did this summer...

Now these are either rutabega or Kohlrabi. Only 1 or 2 of each sprouted. I need to sow more seeds. Again, they may have all run off away in the rain...

Here's the biggest turnip plant. It's from the first sowing of seeds. I have a lot of turnip seedlings coming up from the second sowing. I think that all around I put the first sowing of seeds in too early.

Oh, and I had to show you this. Check it out. I am finally getting beautiful, unblemished, orange bell peppers!

A summer harvest basket. I'm still bringing in tomatoes and peppers. Soon I'll have nothing left out there in the summer garden but the sweet potatoes that are still in the ground.

I hope you’re comfortable, because I’m going to be long winded…

I’m in the mood to take stock.

Our summer is largely over. There are still sweet potatoes in the ground, and we’re still harvesting peppers, and it looks like we may get a few more tomatoes off the two remaining (half-dead) plants, but that’s it. I pulled up the yellow squash plants today, and we’re having the last squash tonight for dinner. The yellow squash did get vine borers, so there goes my theory about sparing it by setting it out in the garden late. The beans have had it, the nasturtium is gone, and even a few of the marigolds seem to be heaving their last breath; victims, I suspect, of a combination of weeds, sweet potato vines, and a few very heavy rains of late pounding the heck out of them.

This is OK with me, as I have other things to occupy me. But before I start blogging too much about the fall garden I do want to take a moment to reflect on Spring – largely to help me shape my goals for fall.

So, did I meet my goals this spring?

Pretty much.

Goal number one was to produce more food than I did last year; ideally so much that I am forced to freeze, can or dehydrate food to preserve it. Gosh knows I have done that. I should have made goal number one to have a blast, because I sure did do that.

I bought and learned how to use a hot water bath canner. I’ve made BBQ sauce:

Spaghetti sauce:

I've stewed tomatoes:

I've made salsa:

I've made pickles:

And relish - which I don't seem to have a finished picture of.

All of that, and I completely stopped ordering from my local organic produce source because I had all the produce we could eat and them some.

So I’m going to call number 1 an unqualified and resounding success.

My second goal was to not make the same mistakes I made last spring. My main mistake last spring was to crowd my plants in a small garden plot, and I definitely didn’t do that. And yet I still did have some plants crowded out this year. Remember how my once-robust zucchini shouldered this poor Ichiban eggplant right out of existance?

I also did things that I hadn’t even considered when I wrote those goals. I started some plants from seed, and got over my seed-sprouting apprehension.

I tried crops I’ve never tried before and they turned out great.

I met a few enemies....

And a made a few friends!

I’m ashamed to say that my biggest failure is the same as last year - WEEDS - and I can't even bring myself to show you a picture of that. :0)

My biggest lesson has been that a plant’s got to eat! By which I mean that they need certain nutrients in the right proportions, and if they’re not getting them from my garden soil, then as their host, it falls on me to oblige.

So here’s my arsenal – for fall, and for everything that is currently in containers. Left to right it's tomato tone, an organic liquid fertilizer, fish emulsion (most of what I'm growing in fall is greens), sulphur (don't even ask me what to do with that because I don't know, but I found it laying around in the shed), and bone meal. Up top, L to R, is the water meter, a couple of misters, and in the tray are a spoon and gardening gloves for myself and my daughter.

You’ll see I’m getting organized. I’ve had this little “lawn buddy” for years. I’ve just been moving it around out of my way, and lately my daughter has been playing with it. I didn’t even mean to buy it – I thought I was buying one that was much bigger, and when Lowe’s delivered it to me along with 25 evergreen trees a few years ago (yeah, you’ve seen shots of my yard. You surmise correctly. The trees all died.) I thought, what the heck is that? I thought I was buying a wheelbarrow. (In case you missed it, that was my “dumb blond” punch line.) Anyway, I bought fish emulsion the other day, and I assembled the various useful things I have around, and I’m ready! Bring it on!

So, with all of that said, I want to lay down some new goals for fall:

1. Acquaint myself with how to nurture everything that I have planted (nutrients, etc.). This is a MUST.

2. Keep out the WEEDS!!!!!! Another MUST.

3. Continue to fill my freezer – greens of all kinds, broccoli, Brussels sprouts – YUM!

4. Figure out how to “root cellar” vegetables, with or without a root cellar. (This goal being largely precipitated by all the beets and the few radishes that I didn’t eat fast enough and that perished in plastic bags in the bottom of my fridge before I figured out that I shouldn’t have washed them for long term storage, or stored them in my fridge that long at all.

5. Possibly get a pressure canner and learn to use it. We’ll see about that one.

Thanks for hanging with me through this spring and summer! I really did have a super time, and I am SO grateful to Cindy and to The Tasteful Garden not only for feeding us this summer but for the opportunity to grow more, and more quickly, both as a gardener and as a person, than I otherwise would have thought was possible. Moving on to fall! NO FEAR!!!!!

Deck Check

The eggplant is still cranking. I have five or six fruits coming along nicely. I have my eye on that one in front. I'm just WAITING for it to get big enough to eat!

I owe a lot to this eggplant. Not only am I extremely proud of it (I started it from seed!!!!). But it also taught me that all-important lesson (DUH) that I have to feed plants in containers; and hey, maybe if that's the case in containers the ones in the garden would do a little better if I fed them too....

Go figure. More on that tomorrow!



And here's the serrano pepper plant I pulled out of the garden seeming no worse for wear. White spots are going away, peppers are turning red, there are blooms all over it....I hit this with the tomato tone when I brought it up on deck too. Plus, with them both so close by it's really easy to peep out at them every day and give them a drink if they need it, which they frequently do. They've had an almost daily mid-afternoon droop, which has been easily corrected with the aqua.

And as for the fall garden...

Well, I am getting some seedling action, though not as much as I had hoped. It has been SO HOT. I think that this is either turnip or daikon (of course). My first project for the upcoming weekend will be to take my map out there and take stock of what is coming up and what isn't and resow.

Here's my new babies set out. The kale is all the way in the back corner. The yellowish green stuff to the right is lettuce, and the darker green stuff in the same rows near it is cabbage. The little ones with red stalks are chard. And the ones in front are collard greens. I don't seem to have a picture of the broccoli and brussels sprouts handy.

I beleive that this little guy - one of two making an appearance this week in the same bed, is chard. If I'm right, this same seed came up fine last year. But it doesn't look like much is coming up (yet) so I may poke a few more seeds in this weekend.

You know what I really want, and which doesn't seem to have come up at all, is spinach. I love spinach. I want a LOT of it. I want to fill my freezer with it. I may try to resow that, or may wait another week and try again.

Try again!

Try again!

Pepper Update

The tomatoes may be waning, but the peppers are still going gangbusters. I had so many anaheim and carmen peppers ripening at the same time that I felt sure that they were going to be a one shot deal, and that I would get one bumper crop all ripe at the same time and then that would be it.

But, we've been establishing since April all the ways in which I don't know everything, so it'll come as no surprise to you that these beautiful and healthy plants are putting out new peppers as we speak, and they show every sign of keeping on coming.



So my baskets these days are mostly peppers and green tomatoes, or tomatoes that have barely started to ripen that I am picking to let finish ripening inside.

I made a batch of green tomato relish this past weekend, and you know what? It was SCRUMPTIOUS. Google the recipe on Cooks.com (I think). I didn't have any celery seed or mustard seed left (all those pickles I made....) so I actually put a tsp of thyme and a 1/2 tsp of turmeric in instead. The only thing I will change for the next batch is that I will include more hot peppers, as many serranos and jalepenos as I have on hand. I hope to make more this weekend. I have eaten one 1/2 pint jar (I canned them all in little jelly jars) as a relish with sausage, and honestly I could just eat that relish out of the jar with a spoon. It is GOOD.

I decided to stay local with my plants this fall, unless I can't find any local cauliflower. I may order that from the Tasteful Garden if they still have it, specifically because it's self-blanching which is one less thing I will have to figure out this fall. I suspect the cauliflower I planted last year, bought locally, died because I didn't blanch it, since I had no idea what that was or that I was supposed to do it. If you don't know either, I believe this means that you have to tie the leaves together around the new head and let it develop inside this little cocoon. My guess is that the cauliflower that TG sells will kind of naturally wrap its leaves itself, and I'm real interested to see that. So I may do that at the last minute.

All of which is to say that while I'll be looking for plants locally this coming spring too, and hopefully doing a better job of starting seeds inside myself for as much as I can, I think I'm going to get heirloom tomatoes and peppers from TG again because they've really just been wonderful.

My Sous Chef

My daughter is a regular helper in the kitchen now. For awhile she's been getting good at scooping and measuring and counting. She put the spices in the pickles, and in the relish we made as week or so ago, and she sets up the coffee pot every night. But when she asked me this weekend if she could help me to trim the green beans, I was skeptical. Would her three-year-old hands be steady? Would her toddler knife do the trick?

She did a GREAT job! Together we got this pot ready to steam blanch and freeze.


I'm still picking beans, but I can't imagine it's going to go on for much longer. I am about wrapping up my tomatoes. The plants are on thier way out. Much as I know it's too soon, and as guilty as I feel, I have to also admit to a little bit of relief. Whew! A breather!

For now...I expect to be doing a lot of freezing this fall, and I MAY spring for a pressure canner too....

Water, Water Everywhere...

You know what I really hate? I hate it when my husband gives me advice and I ignore it, and he repeats the advice and I ignore it, and then he reminds me good-naturedly and I still ignore it…and then he turns out to be right.

I really hate that.

All of which is to say, at least one of my tomato plants is dead dead dead and I suspect that it’s my fault.

Sigh.

The advice I refer to is the perfectly serviceable water meter that he gave me, so that I could check and make sure that the plants in the garden were getting enough water. And did I use it? Um…well…not really. And come to think of it, it hasn’t been raining here much. And it’s not like I don’t have a hose. And a sprinkler. And a soaker hose. And buckets and pitchers and bottles and coffee cups…I mean, if I had known the poor thing was drying out so badly I could have gotten water out there some way. I could have done something about it and now it’s too late. But no, I was too busy canning tomatoes like they were just going to keep on coming.

Shame on me.

So yesterday morning I went out with the hose and the bag of tomato tone and I gave the still living (but possibly also on their way out) plants a few spoonfuls and a good, luxurious soak. We’ll see.

But that’s only part of our ongoing water saga.

I mentioned that I had started some broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kale seedlings in the house a few months ago, and after popping up quickly and looking initially quite happy, they all shriveled up and died. I didn’t understand this, because I had them under the grow light, and I used a really good, clean seed-starting medium, and I made sure the soil stayed moist, and they still seemed to be drying up.

Well, check out what I learned yesterday.

I also said a post or so back that I was looking for a local source for my fall transplants, and the perfect place finally came to me. There’s a nursery not too far from me where my husband and I used to buy saltwater fish back when we kept tanks. I never really bought plants from them, but I remember from our trips there to get fish that they were a pretty knowledgeable and committed group of people there, so I thought I’d check them out. And I found BEAUTIFUL transplants. I got broccoli, Brussels sprouts, red chard, kale, collard greens, cabbage and lettuce. I got a whole flat in fact, 48 individual plants, for twenty bucks. You can’t beat that. And that’s not even the best part.

I was commenting to the man who helped me that they were really beautiful little plants, and he said thanks, that he had raised them himself. I told him about my seedlings that didn’t make it, and then he imparted his secret. “You have to mist them,” he said.

Aha!

This makes sense to me, since, as I said, I kept watering them, and the leaves still shriveled up and dried out.

So now I know. Mist them. I’ll do better when I try again to start them for next spring. So yesterday when I was at Lowes for manure compost I bought a mister.

Who says I can’t be taught?

Welcome to your new home...

I mentioned on Wednesday that I'm hoping to find a local source for my fall transplants. I stopped in at a small garden center in Alexandria VA yesterday on my way home from work and as I was wandering around looking at the plants, I found the vegetable table that was covered not with the broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts that I was looking for, but with 30 or 40 peaked looking pepper plants that I guess never sold this spring. The owner (?) walked by, saw me looking, and said, "If you want any of those they're free", so I brought a couple home and repotted them. They looked like they would have been healthy and fine if they weren't so unbelievably root-bound. I actually had to cut the pots off, leaving some of the black plastic on the very bottom so as not to damage any of the roots that had grown out of it. It's two tabasco plants on the left, and one habenaro on the right. Maybe we'll get a few peppers out of them. I may go back on Monday and grab a few more!!!! She did say she was expecting to have the fall transplants next week....



With fall in mind, I moved my serrano pepper up out of the garden, where it was getting buried in weeds, and up into a pot. I am hoping I might be able to keep this alive for awhile in the house once the weather turns. It has developed some white spots on the leaves (before I moved it). Not powdery...It looks like sunburn, like my un-hardened off zucchini and cucumbers did earlier this year. I've been doing some web surfing trying to see what's up. It might be sunburn...we had a few really hot days here (101 degrees) much hotter than we usually get, so maybe that's it. I'll keep an eye on it.


And here's the eggplant this morning, getting really big! compare this picture to less than 48 hours ago in my last post. They grow so fast!!!!

Checking in.....

The eggplants are getting big - I swear once these things get going they seem to grow 1/2 inch or more a day. You can almost see them growing!

I made and processed 5 pints of salsa last night with tomatoes and peppers from the garden. This weekend I hope to try a recipe for green tomato pepper relish that I've been hanging onto. All my peppers will be ripe red and perfect at the same time - at least a dozen, maybe more, so I'm going to have to do something with them quick as I doubt we can eat them fast enough.

I planted some seed this week - red and gold beets, daikon, turnips, rutabaga, kohlrabi, carrots, spinach, kale, chard, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. I suspect I'm getting a late start. It's also been topping at about 101 degrees in the afternoons here lately, probably not ideal germination temperature for most of these things. I have been trying to keep the soil a little moist so they don't all fry out there. I'll see what's up a week or so from now and try again if I have to. I am also going to look into some transplants. I would like to find some at local small garden stores if possible, if not I'll order some. Particularly broccoli, brussels sprouts and cauliflower. I'm pretty sure that I can get everything else to come up from seed, as I have done almost all of this stuff from seed before. Last fall the chard came up from seed just fine. I want to concentrate mostly on compost and straw, in hopes that my fall garden won't turn into the jungle that my spring/summer garden is now. It ain't pretty, but what the heck. It feeds me.

To the left here is a shot of today's garden beauty!