Tomatoes and Cucumbers A Plenty

Can't resist sharing zinnias.
Brown Turkey Figs - yum yum.
2011 garlic harvest - replant the LARGEST heads for next year late Sept/Oct.

The tomatoes are finally ripening so that we can't eat them all in a day. The cucumbers are probably the best crop I have ever had. I pick 6 -8 perfect straight fruits each day and growing on the trellis most of them hang down inside and are just perfect. I wish the tomatoes were as healthy - Septoria is on quite a few plants and tomorrow I plan to leaf prune them off. I have already cut most of the tops out of the tallest plants. No need letting them grow so tall as most of the fruit developing now is what will be ready before frost. Any fruit that is just in flower may not make it with the days getting shorter. Unfortunately I seem to have more determinate plants than I expected. I don't like them because of their habit of branching makes cutting out suckers tough. Along with the fact that all the fruits usually come ripe at once - these are great plants for ketchup or other canning or freezing.
The pole beans, food and home for the Japanese beetles, are finally ready to pick. I like the Roma type pole beans but this years main corp is a snap bean ( Fortex )that's not too bad just slow in production. The first figs are ripe on the Brown Turkey and they are such a treat. The garlic has all been dug and is drying in the tool shed. We have had roasted garlic from the grill twice this week and I am taking some on my fishing trip. I cut the top off the garlic bulb, give it a shot of olive oil and wrap it in foil and put the bundle on the back side of the grill. In less than 20 min they are done and ready for bread. Great eats.
Happy Gardening

New Varmint Arrives on the Scene!

Yukky - Nasty eating machine!
Can't mistake those white spots on the sides of the wings -Japanese beetle!
Lets look as something much better - quick before it gets eaten!
Zinnias are, I guess, my favorite garden flower.
These little yellow ones are really much brighter than the picture can show.
Tomatoberry - good little salad variety.
The peppers in the "EARTHBox" planters are starting to produce
The little black fig tree has a respectable crop.
Fair entries at the Door County Fair seemed to be down this year. But blue ribbons weren't.
Some entries were just too tempting.
This has got to be the largest kohlrabi I have ever seen - can't comment on its taste.
Black Australorp rooster - fills his cage.
An Australorp hen with egg. There must have been over a dozen examples of this breed.

I knew that Japanese Beetles had been introduce to the west side of Green Bay maybe about 10 or more years ago. We have been monitoring their expansion annually. Unfortunately, they have migrated into my garden this week! I found 28 of them feasting on my pole beans on Thursday and have found a few more each day since. Needless to say I was most unhappy. These eating machines could be worse than white cabbage butterflies or even rabbits. The Extension office said that they had been discovered on the UWGB campus last year - that's less than 5 city blocks away and it did not take long for them to spread farther north. As grubs in the lawn and adults on my garden plants these critters will initiate constant monitoring in the garden from now on. I dreaded this event and now it has happened. A big UN-thank to the commercial landscaper who brought them into the city on nursery stock those years ago!

I still did not get my garlic dug as we had some rain and I just ran out of time. I see from the comments that others have done their harvest and had great results. I was in Door County judging the Junior and Open classes at the fair this past week and they had great garlic too. General entries were down this year - for example we had no potato entries in any class! The best thing at the fair were the chickens. I had wanted to see adult Australorp chickens and I sure did. There were rooster, hens, and pullets and those are big chickens. The roosters at the fair were HUGE. As a reminder, Australorps were the variety that I got as chicks and had to give up on this year.

Cucumbers and more tomatoes (slowly) are on the menu along with a few heads of garlic and some of the shallots. The broccoli should start to head up and at last the melon plant in the greenhouse has set female flowers. So I pollinated as many as have bloomed this week. I hope they take.
Happy Gardening

Tomatoes Finally

Sunflowers brighten the garden at last.
The first of the 2011 tomato crop.
Evil purslane that would cover my entire garden if I did not fight it.
This is a small plant - some stems on other plants are twice as big.
Cucumbers on the trellis and the lettuce below benefits from their shade.
Lettuce is hot summer is hard to grow that is why its under the cucumbers.
The garlic crop look ready for harvest next week.
The kayaks are ready for a float trip.

I harvested the first tomatoes for breakfast eggs today - Tomatoberry came in with a half dozen ripe salad sized fruits. I have plenty of mature green fruits that should turn soon. The weather has been tomato hot and we have had enough rain to mostly avoid watering. Remember that to avoid blossom end rot you need to make sure your plants do not go into moisture stress. That is why it is vital that you mulch your crop. Mulched plants have cool roots and you can better regulate the moisture they get. That goes for potted plants too - keep those roots cool and don't let them dry out - wilting in potted plants is a "bad thing."
The purslane is still a problem and I pulled plants again today. All those weeds go into the compost because they have trapped my garden nutrients and I want that good stuff back! The compost bin will get a new addition today, some more dirt on top of the layer of weeds and a good watering to hurry the decay along.
The cucumber crop this year has started and we are getting 3 - 6 cukes a day. (And my wife says YES we are eating them all ourselves.) I think the thinning process is working. I have been taking off the side shoots just like with the tomatoes so as to devote the growth to one main producing stem. Some of the plants are at the top of the trellis and I am getting good fruit set. I think I will try this with the watermelon and cut out the side shoots and just leave two main producing stems growing up the trellis. I have seen female flowers on the watermelon but nothing on the melon plant in the greenhouse. Whatever I choose this year for growing in that space has been bad - Telegraph Improved cucumber was terrible and this melon Savor Charentais hybrid is equally as poor - no melon set just tons of male flowers. Oh, well that's was experimentation is all about...
Also this week I finally got my kayak trailer fixed and the boats on it. A great big THANKS to my fishing buddy who has welding skills. Now maybe I can get a little fishing in along with my gardening.
Happy Gardening

Wow! Is it HOT!

This is the flower for this summer.
The parsley that has gone to flower attracts all kinds of insects.
And for some reason Wasps like these flowers too - maybe for the pollen protein.
Telegraph Improved is not my choice for greenhouse cucumber - not enough fruit set.
This is the seeded water cress that is growing in an aquarium - nice peppery taste.
This is my white milkweed plants grown from seed - insects like this one too.

Summer heat has arrived with a vengeance - in the high 90's and dripping humidity. Something that cucumbers and tomatoes love. I have snapped thumb sized suckers and I did that job last week too. I am also trying to limit the growth of secondary cucumber vines on the trellis system. I have been cutting out the side shoots in the cucumbers just like snapping tomato suckers. This is a test to see just how productive I can make the main vine growing on the trellis.
The "Telegraph Improved" cucumber in the greenhouse has been a disappointment. We have harvest the first fruit but the plant has set mostly male flowers that the literature says must be removed to avoid bitter cucumbers. But the plant has only set 2 main fruits and 2 secondary and that's not enough in comparison to the abundance of fruit from last years plant. I planted seed today in hopes of raising another plant that will produce much better. As the seedlings get along I will get rid of this plant. I have already cut the terminal buds on both vines to force the energy into the small fruit set.
Purslane is the dreaded weed of hot weather and it has tried to take the open space in the garden. I pulled plants today and they are destined for the compost bin as they are full of the nutrients of my garden soil and I want it back. I should be able to fill the compost bin to a foot or more in depth with all these weeds.
The hot weather has brought the return of some sun scald to some of the bagged apples. This seems to happen to one tree in particularly and to one variety on that tree - sorry but long ago I lost the names of the original grafts on this tree. The tree was a 5 in 1 dwarf tree that I got a local nursery. The fruits might be Gala because that was one of the varieties on the tree that I remember form long ago. But whatever it is some of these bagged fruits, when just right in the sun, will scald. I just remove them so as not to waste the energy to an apple that will drop off later.
I left a few parsley plants go to flower because native bees and wasps seem to be attracted to the pollen that these plants produce. I have left a few of the arugula and some mustard plants go to flower to. Native bees need food sources and several accounts have indicated that these are good sources for these critters. Try leaving a few for them in your gardens.
This is the summer of the Zinnia and mine has just started to bloom. They are just such a great flower and perfect for a quick bouquet in a Mason jar.
Happy Gardening.

Summer Warmth at Last

I have had this miniature geranium for so long I can't remember and of course the name is gone too.
I make new plants every year to keep through the winter and grow on like this all summer.
The EarthBox peppers are planted, finally.
One set has sweet peppers and one set has hot.
My new little black fig is doing the figgy thing.
By sometime next week I will have to use the shade cloth on the green house to cut down, not so much on the light, but on the heat buildup.
This "tea cup" hosta is prefect for my maple bonasi and has been in this pot for 3 or 4 years.
Robin-proof white alpines.
The tomatoes will not do this by themselves like pole beans, you will have to help them.
Rub or snap out the suckers inside each leaf junction. June 28, 2010 has more pictures of snapping suckers and a video at the end of the post - take a look.
Carpet pads for the broccoli will keep the root maggots out of your plants without chemicals.
This is what's left of the old pole been variety that I am trying to save.

Hot. Nice and hot for the last few days - makes one feel that finally summer is here. The tomatoes are growing nicely and having them mulched makes them happy and me too. They were finally at a stage for snapping suckers and starting them up the strings - something that is now a weekly chore. I snap the suckers because I want only one main stem producting fruit not multiple stems making leaves and fruit as one gets with cages. Yes, you can train to two stems in a cage, but the few gardeners do that. And without care and some restricting, the tomatoes in cages go wild. Snapping suckers is easy and effective and you will not be removing fruiting spurs because, on tomatoes, suckers grow out of a leaf node and fruits are on the stem at another point. I notices that as my plants got bigger the larger suckers were occurring higher up on the plants. Little, easy to rub off, smaller suckers were lower on the stalk. I wont get any ripe fruit soon but I have flowers developing on many plants. I also tend to snap suckers late in the day as the plants are less rigid then instead of early in the morning when the cells are full of water. I do this because occasionally you might accidentally snap off the terminal stem winding the stalk around the twine and then you have to wait till another sucker starts to take over. Thus I wind and them snap, so that if I do break the top of the plant I still have suckers to take over. Unfortunately I did just that very thing with one of the grafted plants and set it back till a sucker could take over.
I have planted out the pole beans and have two more pole sets to plant; one is for my old bean variety that hopefully I can get my seed stock back with these plants. Once they get planted they will not be for harvest but I will keep all of them for seed stock. Another variety is a "Christmas Lima" bean that I want to try again. The peat potting method allows me to have the beans well along and place them at the base of the poles when the soil is warm which is what beans like.
Garlic scape's seem to be the new vegetable. Last week I talked about the harvest of them. Well this week I not only found my Master Gardener newsletter contained a recipe for a Scape Soup but Friday we went out for dinner and my Tenderloin came with a very lovely sauteed portion of garlic scape's. I sure hope you didn't throw them away. Google them for recipes and good eating.
The broccoli was put out late but it should make. I use old carpet squares to keep the root maggots out of the plants and this has been effective in the past. The carpet lasts for many season and expands as the broccoli plants grow and amazingly returns to its original shape even after the stem expands the carpet during growing.
The green house cucumber is well on its way and we should start a harvest soon. The biggest issue with this plant is keeping a water reservoir filled as the plant grows. Even with the 5 gal bucket soaked in every morning by noon the plant is thirsty. The quickest way to limit production is to put the plant under water stress - so I see that I need a bigger saucer for that plant.
The white alpine strawberries are fruiting nicely. Robins and strawberries don't mix. However my local robins have yet to figure out that my white alpines are strawberries. They know where the few red berry plants are but I have replaced most of those with whites, and I have over 36 seedling plants growing in the greenhouse for planting out as a runner-less edge in the front flower bed. Whether you get plants or grow them from seed, alpine strawberries will give you a handful of berries most of the summer and they are sure good.
Lastly, I want to wish a very 'HAPPY RETIREMENT' to Linda Blondine who retired from the Brown County UW Extension after over 36 years of helping people and answering every manner of question, especially bug ones. Everyone will miss you. We certainly wish you the very best in your new life adventure. Your answering machine rightly says - Gone Fishing!
Happy Gardening

Mulch ThoseTomatoes

Last year's parsley is going to seed but some Black Swallowtail caterpillars have taken up residence so the plants will get to stay as their home - share for beauties sake.
The greenhouse cucumber is off and growing nicely.
This is the newly mulched tomato patch.
The twine that the plants are trained on is the best material and it composts easily too.
Down on the floor of the greenhouse whats left of the grafts are struggling.
Garlic flower stalks are curled and need to be cut to allow the garlic to make large heads.
But these are the first harvest of your crop so put them to good use.

The rain finally quit after Wednesday to allow for a bit of drying out. The tomato patch was finally dry enough for me to put the straw mulch down between the rows. Tomatoes are best grown with a nice deep mulch that keeps them with constant moisture which will best of all eliminate the dreaded black spot. Yes, calcium is important but even if you add calcium, which you really don't need to do, if the plants go through water stress you will get blossom end rot. Mulch, however, is the key to eliminating this problem. Keep your plants evenly watered and mulched and tomatoes will be happy in your garden. The same is true for potted tomato plants. Keep the pots cool by covering them or putting other pots in front of them to keep the soil temperature low. Potted plants usually need to be watered twice a day morning and evening and in real hot weather maybe even more. As soon as you stress potted tomatoes you will develop those black spots on the underside of your fruits - its the lack of water getting to the cells of the fruit with the suspended calcium in it. So mulch and water are your friends for your tomato crops.
The garlic is making flowers so its time to cut those off. They are edible and I cooked some tonight mixed with onions to garnish our hot dogs - yum yum. Garlic flower shoots store well so you can cut them, put them in a plastic bag and into the vegetable bin in the refrigerator for at least 2 week of use. Mince some into your scrambled eggs. You can cut them off and toss them but they are your first garlic harvest from your growing crop so why not eat them.
I am still working on bagging the apples. I want to get that job done before the coddling moths start laying eggs at the ends of the fruits. Looks like I will be at it now that the tomatoes are done.
The pole beans have sprouted and will need to be planted this week. I plant them all in peat pots because then I can place them at the bottoms of the poles and know that they will start to climb right away. I planted two kinds but the white variety germinated poorly - variety Helda. The brown variety, Fortex, sprouted much better. This week I will clean off the poles, set them out and plant the bean plants around them and hope this year we do not have another ground hog incident. I have seen immature ground hogs that soon will be out on their own looking for territory to move into - not my garden, I hope.
I did some vegetable grafting last week and I find this to be a VERY challenging process. The tomatoes grew together but they have declined again about the time I want to introduce them to more light. The cubits are even more difficulty so I think I need more information and some better directions; plus I might have to build a real mist chamber to get this to happen. Grafting apples is not nearly as difficult and the success ratio is much better. Oh well, we will just have to read, research, and experiment so more.
Happy Gardening

Apple Bagging Process

Apple bagging in full process on this tree. I have been plastic bagging apples for over a decade.

I first started with these Japanese fruit bags in the 90's/ Stem at top, wire closure at center.
Then I went to plastic. Nick the bottom edge of the bag on the corner or both corners.
Thin your fruit clusters to one apple every 6 to 8 inches.
You can start bagging as soon as your fruit sizes to larger than a nickle to quarter size.
Partially open the bag and slip it over the fruit - these bags do not have the top edge stripped off as I did with all my bags this year.
Zip the bag closed and staple though the zip to keep the bag closed.
The finished fruit will grow nicely in this bug free environment till maturity.
Apple bagging produced this fine harvest. Nice, hey?

I have been bagging my apples for over 10 years in an attempt to avoid using pesticides. In the past I did a full spray program but that was a lot of work and the need for protecting yourself from the spray begged the question - why spray? So I tried to eliminate all but the first spray to protect the early developing fruits from Plum curculio which as you saw last week can damage the young apples quickly. For the last few years I have been getting my apples bagged before the Plum curculio get at them but this year that just did not happen. I am still in the process of bagging the rest of the fruit and for the most part the damage seems to have stopped. But the next pest is on the way- the coddling moth - so I have to get the job done soon.
In the June 14, 2009 entry I have videos of the complete process but this season I will just go back over the highlights.
I started bagging apples a long time ago with Japanese paper apple bags. This was an interesting process because no one really knew how to apply these highly engineered bags. My wife, who has taught origami, suggested that we think folding in that method and so we did. The bags folded into the neatest pyramidal shapes that easily protected the apples and took windy days well. But getting the bags was a problem and they took much longer to apply than plastic. So on to the next level of extermination.
Regular zipper bags - store brand is good enough - have worked the best for me so I usually buy around 3 to 4 hundred bags and figure on a weeks worth of bagging to get the job done and then I walk away from the trees and wait for harvest.
I nick the bottom of each bag with a blade making a small slice less than a 1/4 inch on the bottom corner. You can do both sides if you want and then avoid having to cut a water filled bag later in summer as rainwater gets into the bag, fills them up as the drain just happens to be on the other side. I stuff my pocket full of bags and go to the tree. I have gotten to wearing my scissors and stapler on a rubber band around my wrist so they are easily accessible as I will need them for working each cluster of apples. The stapler is one of those small types that seems to have been made for this job.
I strip the top part of the bag off - I started doing this on every bag this year because some of my apples have real short stems and the extra bag just gets in the way. If you pull fast the top part usually comes off.
I cut away all but one apple per cluster and bag that apple. You have to get rid of fruit to allow your tree to continue to produce annually. An apple tree will naturally bear heavy on alternate years. But prune a back yard tree correctly, and the apple clusters managed will allow for a good crop every year. Prune to the largest apple in the cluster - that may not be the king fruit. Picking the largest one should ensure that there are enough seeds pollinated in the fruit to allow it to grow to maturity.
Open only one end of the bag. This allows the bag to be zipped closed easier than if the whole bag is opened. Slip the bag over the apple and zip the bag tight to the stem. Staple through the zip closure to make sure that it stays closed for the season. I have sometimes placed an apple in the middle of the bag and stapled on either side but this is extra movement and is not necessarily better bagging. I can usually bag 50 to 60 apples an hour if I am really getting it done.
Once the tree is bagged you should expect some June drop but I bag fruit clusters every 6 to 8 inches and this usually means that any drop should not really affect my crop results.
I like this process, it produces good fruit and is no more time consuming than a bi-weekly spray process and I harvest almost organic apples and recycle the plastic so it's pretty green for me.
Happy Gardening