Snap That Sucker

This is the first part of the garlic crop - these flower buds are really "garlicky"
Time to take out the suckers on the tomatoes
Leaf node suckers are not the same as fruit porduction growth
Removing the suckers allows for a single stem to be encouraged



With the apple bagging done the garden again needs attention. The parsnips have all been thinned. At least two of the hills did not sprout well but because the seed is all gone I can not plant again. We have plenty of lettuce but the radish crop is done. I want to plant some of the daikon radish seed but will make hole similar to the parsnips because of the size these radishes can attain. One bed of garlic started to flower and I disbudded that crop so that the growth will go into the garlic cloves and not be squandered on seed production. The flowers are good to eat and we use them in cooking to get a jump on the garlic harvest. There are more potatoes to plant in the towers but the main job is to pinch off suckers and string up the tomato crop which has really jumped with the arrival of much warmer weather.

The tomato stakes need a top string to anchor the growing plants to. I loop the vertical strings to the bottom string that runs the length of the row and then prune off the leaf node suckers to make a single stem on the plant. The plants are then wound around the vertical string and that is tied to a top string that runs the length of the row too. I will continue to pinch off leaf node suckers as shown to encourage a single growing stem on the plant. The stem is wound around the vertical string. I find this method provides me with a good crop of tomatoes that get plenty of sun and fall clean-up of the crop is simple.This is much easier than working with caged plants.

All I am waiting for is a good rainfall and then I will mulch the tomato planting with straw and we will be on the way to a productive crop and an excellent way to manage the need for constant moisture that tomatoes require to avoid blossom end rot.

Happy Gardening

2009 Apple Bagging Complete

This fruit has been rejected and pruned to make room for the bagged fruit.

The 2009 crop of apples has been bagged. Approximately 520 apples are in bags protected from pests for the rest of the season. This may be the largest crop I have ever bagged as it has taken me a day longer than I expected.
Happy Gardening

More Bagging

The bagging process is in full swing. I have added another 100 bags to the trees with one more tree to bag I should be done sometime this week hopefully by Wednesday. Any Questions? be sure to ask in the comment section.
Happy Gardening

Apple Bagging Time

The peas mulched for the rest of their growing time
Parsnips sprouted
Parsnips thinned for the first time
The lettuce with the onions that we are harvesting now
A full compost bin that will need water and care to make the black gold
The pepper planting
The potatoes transplanted into towers were stated in flats
These potatoes have adjusted to the tower and started to grow
This tower was planted with three more plants on the top
Apple cluster before thinning
Bagged fruit after thinning with one staple
This tree is bagged for the season


My fishing trip was great fun. I had two 50 fish days and one was with my fly pole so that was most exciting.
The garden did well in my short absence but has jumped ahead with warmer days. The peas have been covered and mulched. Radishes are a good crop this year. Most of the spring planted spinach has not been too successful compared to the fall planted corp. The parsnips have sprouted and need to be thinned. Lettuce is abundant in the garden and the spinach and arugula winter crops are done and in the compost bin. The bin shown in a previous entry is now full and I will soon need to start another bin.
The space where the spinach was has now been planted with this seasons peppers - thirty plants went into that space. Most of this years varieties are bell type with only a few hot varieties. I planted three of each type and have peppers that are rated from 56days (Frank's pepper) to 78 days (Pasilia Bajio). Lettuce seedlings need to be planted this week to continue the goal of garden lettuce all season.
I planted the basil crop in a variety of spots but I am trying the main planting in between the tomato plants in the front part of each row. I had problems with some basil last year and so I am not planting any basil in the same location this year. We will see how they get along with the tomatoes.
One of the potato towers in full and I have pictures of it in this entry. The potatoes were planted in the tower in a sandwich of sifted compost and straw. In the top of the tower of sifted compost I put three potatoes called Peanut Fingerling. this vertical potato crop is the garden experiment of this season. With the potatoes not in a ground row it will be hard to steal new potatoes as they grow but that is why I topped off the tower with the fingerling variety to be able to get new potatoes from the towers.
The tomatoes have adjusted to the garden and are ready for stringing up so that will be part of this weeks activities.
However the major job is bagging the apple crop. I have been bagging apples for almost ten years. In 2006 I did research on the concept and presented my findings. There are many ways to bag apples but I will briefly go through my process and will include a couple of videos to help.
Key to this process is to get the apples bagged before any plum curculio damage. This pest appearance is related to degree days but usually I prevent the damage by a single spray with Sevin right after petal drop. I have used other orchard products in the past and had bad problems - mainly leaf burn - even with exact spray mixing and application. So I only spray once and then as soon as the apples size, about the size of a nickle to quarter, I bag them using a zip closer type of bag. I use whatever is available and cheap, at less than 3 cents a bag.
The bags are prepared by slicing a drip hole in the bottom ( video ) so that condensation will not accumulate in the bag, and if rain water gets in it will drip out. On the tree, the apple clusters are prepared by removing all but one apple per cluster (usually the king fruit since it it normally the strongest developing fruit). I space my developing fruits to about six to eight inches along the branch. I do not fully open the bag the whole way as it easier to re-close the bag around the fruit if it is not fully opened. Once the fruit is bagged, I zip the bag tight to the fruit stem and staple one staple across the zip to ensure that the bag will not open. I staple only to ensure that the bags will stay closed as some baggers do not staple but just zip the bag closed and move on to the next fruit. I usually can trim clusters and bag 40to 50 apples in a hour. I am not done with my trees as of today but intend to be done with the bagging by Wednesday. So far I have put on about 200 bags -a hundred just this morning on one tree.
I like this process. The fruit matures nicely in the bags insect damage free, and I usually pick and store the fruits right in the plastic as this maintains the moisture level and prevents shriveling of the harvested fruits. Sun scald has never really been a problem. I guess the most disturbing issues are finding a bag that does not have a drip hole in it and the bag collecting water or finding the occasional earwig in with the fruit. Both problems are easily fixed.
My Wolf River apples have been known to split the bags at the end of the season but other than those few problems this process provides a nearly spray free method to harvest clean apples from my back yard tree. And with all the different grafts on my trees, I have many different varieties on my three trees. The time spent bagging the fruit is much better than the old method of applying fruit tree spray every ten to fourteen days the whole growing season. Try bagging instead and I am sure you'll like the results.
Happy Gardening

Bag Preparation

Home from Canadian fishing

While I was gone to Sioux Lookout, Ontario fishing the garden did not advance much as the weather was rainy and cool and still is. This week or next week I hope to begin apple bagging as soon as the fruit sizes. Look for directions and a set of videos to assist you in this process.
Happy Gardening

Just wanted to share the shore lunch sounds but sorry no smells or tastes :)

Tomato Time

A potato tower and the first planted potatoes

The sprouted beets and the radish markers
The parsnips pushing up
The future tomato crop
Pole placement
Pole pounding - tough and noisy
Rows ready for anchor twine

I planted three each of my fourteen varieties.
Here is the finished planting with some repeats and our favorites in the last row.
Time to cover peas with soil to keep their roots cool
The compost bin is filling with leafy garden refuse.


A very busy week. Many planted seeds are sprouting nicely. The parsnips broke ground and the beets have too. The spinach crop is almost over. Last falls planted spinach has provided us with a harvest since March and we have been eating it at least five times a week. I hate to make it into compost but I need the space for a pepper crop. Radishes and lettuce planted this spring are also part of the our harvest along with the sorrel which is bolting so that those seed stalks need to be removed to keep the plants producing edible leaves.

This years tomato crop is in the ground. I have five rows of twelve plants per row for a total of sixty tomatoes - yes sixty! We will enjoy every one of those tomatoes as fresh, juice, frozen, or dried. I added another row this year because the plants I grew were so good I hated not to give them space. I gave a fair number of plants away at garden club on Wednesday and still have few more that I will pass along if I can. Everyone has space for just one more tomato plant. As the photos show we do a post and string method to keep the plants growing vertically and use our space efficiently. As I go along I will show each step of the process. For now, the rows have four iron posts with twine secured on the bottom to act as an anchor string for the vertical strings that will later support the growing tomatoes. As I add more strings and wind the tomatoes up the strings, I will show you how I do that; along with the way to remove the suckers that the plant produces. I stopped using cages years ago. I did not find that method near as productive as this string method and even with pruning to two leaders per cage, I still did not like the production. Additionally, I had all those bulky cages to store in the garden all winter. This post and string method works so much better for me.

We are also attempting to grow potatoes vertically this year. I have started two towers and will keep you posted as to how that is going. I developed the tower by making a sandwich of straw and compost and as I add potatoes I intend to add more layers of straw and compost. I think each tower will have eight to ten plants. We have, I think, six or eight varieties of potatoes to go into our towers. This weeks planting is Princess LaRatte Fingerling potato.
The apple flowers have all fallen and so I did my first and only spray application this week. To attempt to foil the plum curculio I sprayed my trees with Sevin. I will begin bagging the fruit as it sizes in another week. Three of the grafts seem to have taken but a few more weeks will be needed to see what really has happened. I always hope for the top graft to take but that is not always the case.

The bagged of the apples will be the subject of one post with a video to help you see how we do the selecting of the fruit and bagging of the apples. One spray application means our apples do not qualify as organic fruit. But as the fruit is bagged to prevent other pest damage, I feel it qualifies for what could be called an ECO-apple. The process is as close to pesticide free as I can make it in my garden. I have been bagging apples for the last eight to nine years and have had good success with this process. In the next two weeks it is very important to keep the plum curculios off your fruit so that you can bag the best fruits that have been pollinated. This might mean a single spray application. But, if you bag your apples, that will be the ONLY spray you will need. Traditionally, home-grown un-bagged apples have been subjected to bi-weekly spraying during the growing season. I feel the "spray once and bag" method works far better for our family.

This week I am off to Canada so I will have a skip in the blog as I will be - GONE FISHING
Happy Gardening

Beets and Broccoli and Compost Bins

Compost Bin in the making

Make the notch to fit the board you are using
Planting board to make beet rows
Beet seed and radish marker seeds

Covering the seed with potting soil for easy germination

Back side of carpet showing hole and side cut
Top side
Barriers in place in planted rows of broccoli


Our spring is moving right along. The second crop of bunnies is out and about and the season's first mosquito found my arm yesterday and had a quick snack. What little rain we had this week really did not make much of a difference to growing plants. A good soaking would be appreciated.

Planting continued this week with beets, a white and a cylindrical variety, and I also positioned the cucumber trellis so I could plant around it. Cucumbers will not be started for a while yet but having the trellis in place marks that spot in the garden and I can plant lettuce in that space. Broccoli raab transplants along with lettuce were also transplanted under another trellis and with the spinach and arugula fast approaching maturity it is time to set up a compost bin.

The compost bin will be filled with any and most vegetative materials and because of the way it is built will grown as it is filled. The boards are three feet long and notched so that the bin stacks like "Lincoln logs" (to date myself). I usually have several bins and will sift the material from last year and re-compost the materials that did not completely break down. Six foot fence material is good stock to use to make this kind of bin.

Beets were planted in short rows, 6ft., and I mark the rows again with radish seeds. I also cover the seed with potting soil to allow for better water retention and an easier way for the seed to break through as my soil has a tendency to crust and make seed eruption difficult. The pictures show my procedure. Some thinning will be necessary after germination. The radishes will be allowed to grow to maturity as they are much faster than the beets

I also planted broccoli. We removed carpet from one of the bedrooms and it was just perfect for making root maggot barriers for my broccoli transplants. I cut 6 inch squares and punched a hole in the center and cut from the hole to the side. I place these around the stem of the transplants and they do a fine job of protecting from root maggots which are hard to deter now that a range of pesticides that dealt with them is no longer available. I have used this method in the past with good success and the broccoli plants don't seem to mind the pads. The pads are tough and will last a long time. However, no sooner than I got the row planted but a white cabbage butterfly was observed hovering around the plants. That's when the butterfly net is hung in the garden. It is tough to net all these pests but each one removed is a whole generation of eating machines that will not be around to feast on my plants. This week's video shows the planting for the broccoli and the application of the carpet root maggot barrier.

Tomato planting time is fast approaching as the ground warms. We use a post and string method to grow the tomato crop vertically so look forward to that process in the next post.
Happy Gardening