With More Rain Things Are Growing - Weeds Too!

The first of the greenhouse cucumbers.

The squash plants covered to keep the vine borers out.

The cotton crop is moving along.

The beans are finally climbing and note the purslane!

The tomatoes are always mulched - important for  happy plants.

This is the whole patch - can't wait for that first fruit.

The Black fig has a nice crop set.

The Goldfinches love the seed heads of Bachelor Buttons.

We have had some nice rain in the last week and the garden has responded well.  Unfortunately so have the purslane seeds - dormant weed seeds are amazing things.  I have hoed the garden twice and still new seedlings appear some places really thick.  Purslane is my most dominate weed and its all because many years ago I accidently brought the seed home from another garden and it has survived annually for over twenty years.
Last week I had to cover the squash plants because I saw Squash Vine Borer adults on the wing around my plants - I had noticed the Chicory blooming already on the roadside so I expected them to be out but I do think they are way early.  I used some spun polyester cloth I had and covered them.  I also covered my Alpine strawberries because a pair of robins has discovered what white strawberries are - too bad for me!
The tomatoes were ready to be strung up so I got that job done too.  The plants had grown in nicely and they are ready to begin training.  My wife helped by cutting all the strings to length and I kept busy tying plants up.  We were done in less than two hours - that's 75 plants!
Most of the apple bags that were going to drop have and I guess I had easily over 100 bags of the 800 drop and there may a few be more - but we still have a nice fruit set for this season.  My only concern is these 90-plus degree days may result in some sun scald.  I had watered the trees once because of the lack of rain but the last week we got nice amounts so I think the trees and fruits will be fine.
I am having some problems with this new posting system and still have not figured out the picture order - but I will keep working so the pictures get in the order that I want them so that they follow the text. Oh well...
Happy Gardening

Finally Some Rain

Beans planted next to the poles.

Beans are planted out of the peat pots.

 

 

 

The planted bean patch.

The planted tomato patch - all 75.

We finally got some rain on Saturday.  I really cant remember when it did rain the last time!- it has been that long. 
The tomato patch is planted and in the next few days I will start to string them up - I have 75 planted so stringing will take some time.  The pole beans are also in the ground.  I needed new pole so I found some nice 8-10 ft aspen poles in an abandoned field close to home. Wednesday I cut pole and Thursday I planted beans.  The beans were in peat pots so I could plant them next to the poles after I had sunk the poles.  My Grandfather George planted only pole beans and used old stick - i think they must have been Sassafras poles because they grow in groves in Southern Indiana and would have been a logical choice for his beans.  ( The pictures are a bit out of sequence but this new blog system is still a problem!!!)
The apples are all bagged and we are experiencing a drop but so far we have had less than 100 bags drop so this is good. The hot weather we have been experiencing is not good but hopefully not too much scald will occur.  I have only had apple scald happen when we have had really hot weather early in the bagging process - like June and like now...
Garlic scapes have been harvested and we are eating them in scrambled eggs with tarragon - really good.  Don't let the garlic waste energy making flowers harvest those scapes and eat them as the first crop of garlic.
Happy Gardening

Apple Bagging Time

Chives are great food for native pollinators.

Plum curculio has attacked these apples.

I cut  both corners of the bag for drainage.

Once bagged I staple close to the stem.

 

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I use a mini stapler to do the job - handy.

Some bagged fruit does not need stapling

The black fig tree has made good progress.

I use peat pots for my pole bean seedlings.

I usually soak the beans at least four hours or more.

Four beans per pot seems to work well.

I have looked back in 2009 and 2010 and 2011 and most of the apple bagging was done in June and sometime the second or third week.  But this year the Plum curculio is already at work attacking the fruit and so bagging needs to start now - in May.
I have looked at video and blog entries in the past and June 14th of 2009 and June 19, 2011 are blog entries that focus on the skill.
Apple bagging with plastic zipper bags of any type keep the normal apple pests at bay.  They can't get at the fruits and lay eggs.  I usually try to get the bags on before the Plum curculio attacks the fruits but this year we did not succeed and I will bag the fruit with eggs crescents as most of the time the apple will grow and crush the egg.  I will get a blemish on the skin of the apple but only a cosmetic effect and nothing that we cannot accept.  In the past I would spray to deter this pest but I have stopped doing that. 
I will prep the bags with a drainage cut in the bottom corners of the bag and pull the excess plastic off the top of the bag as I put them on the fruit or pull them all before I take the bags to the trees.  Normally I can bag 50 to 60 apples in an hour.  That time includes thinning fruit clusters to one apple for every six to eight inches on the branch.  A commercial orchard will thin fruits with chemicals.  My fruit thinning is with the snips before I bag an apple. Watch the video below for thinning, pulling excess plastic off bag ( it a quick move) and then bagging.  I have my snips and stapler on rubber bands so they are handy on my wrist and I usually have a bunch of bags in my pocket.
We have a nice fruit set even though I was concerned about bees again this year.  Native pollinators help so I have left as much blooming parsley, cabbage and radish family plants in the garden as long as possible.  Plus I let the chives bloom as long a possible as an early nectar source for growing bumble bees.  Even those seem to be in short supply this year.
I will be bagging on and off for the next week until the job is done and then the apple trees are no-care until the early fruits are ready in August.
We finally got some nice rain in the last two days, filling the rain barrels and softening the garden soil so that I can get planting.  I have moved the tomato and pepper plants outside into the cold frame.  One of the fig trees in out already and the new Chicago fig will get out soon.  I was waiting for new shoots to sprout on the stem.
I planted the pole beans this week per pictures.  Why in peat pots?  This makes planting out the pole beans much more efficient against their poles.  One or two pots per pole make for a good crop and then I can place the poles where I want and bring the bean seedlings to them and not try to make the beans grow after I have placed the poles.  I have three different types this year and I finally think I have recovered my old favorite variety after almost loosing it several years ago.
Happy Gardening

Apple Bagging Procedure

Rain, Travel, and Repairs Complicate Gardening

There is a reason my crab apple is called Snowdrift.

The garden ditch was important with all the rain we had.

This tulip blooms this pretty yellow and as it ages -

It changes color until they are all pink - Great flower.

I am growing my own dandelion greens but these I found at a market in Chicago this week.

I also found these too -

Do you know what they are?  I have never eaten them at this stage.

We have had some wet weather and after over 14 days of waiting I finally got my lawnmower back from the shop - and have cut the grass twice since its return.  I guess I should have tilled a while ago because the rain has postponed that job for a while and so the weeds and grass are really growing.  Plus my seeding schedule had to be adjusted while I went to Illinois to  help move my parents and returned twice in the last month to get other jobs done.  Hopefully the garden and yard can get back on the work schedule.  I did get the west bed tilled before it rained - that was where we cut out the big cedars from last season.  Not too many roots to contend with and now that area is getting some dirt from where I am digging out to extend the kayak trailer cement pad.  I want to put bricks in the space next to my fence so I have a nice landing for my trailer.  The dirt I dig out, to make room for the brick pavers, is going into the west bed.  That spot should be good for squash, sunflowers and maybe the sorghum too.
The spinach in the hoop house is on its last but the lettuce will replace it soon.  The inter-planting of radish is making for a good crop but the warm weather earlier made some of them taste hot.  I have moved the seedling tomatoes and peppers out into a cold frame and have started another run of crops in the greenhouse today - cucumbers, herbs, and cotton.  I have not grown cotton for a while so with and area by the house that will get nice heat I decided to plant some brown cotton again.  I have started some cucumbers to grow in the greenhouse instead of out on a garden trellis. Last year I picked a poor variety for greenhouse growing so this year I got some that are supposed to be grown indoors hopefully they will be like several years ago when we had a great greenhouse crop.  I also want to try melons in the greenhouse, and will start them later after I am done with my seedling bench work.

I only have a few apple blossoms left and the fruit on the trees is starting to swell.  I am concerned that Plum  curculio will be early this year because of the warm spring so I will have to ready to bag fruit soon - I think.  There is video and explanation on a previous years post so when the job starts I will refer to those to help any new baggers understand our process.
Happy Gardening

Apple Blossoms in April?

A collection of later tulips.
I like these multi-stemmed bloomers.This is my favorite French Sorrel - good taste and strong grower
This is also a sorrel but smooth leaves. I am just not as fond of this as the other.
The hoop house is really producing.
The apple trees are very close to FULL bloom in April.

Double Daffodils have one main problem - the flowers are too heavy for the stem and so even without rain they fall over...
One of three bulbs to bloom - hope that the others will make their show next season after they grow. These are really out of their zone here in Wisconsin.

This weather is strange. The apple trees are close to full bloom and we are a full week away from May. Finding honey bees on the trees is close to impossible and my draw is my Snowdrift Crab apple in my front yard that is 20-25 plus feet tall and will bloom this week. However, I will probably be able to count on one hand the number of honey bees that come to it and likely never find my three fruit trees in the back yard. Sure hope those secondary pollinators show up.
All the flowers will have bloomed and we a ways off from Mothers Day too. Lilacs used to be the flowers of choice for end of year assemblies at schools but this year they will be a month gone by that time as I have one blooming already and the others are soon to follow.
The hoop house spinach is in its full glory and we have salads daily. The tomatoes are up in the greenhouse and the peppers should be next. I have been having some difficulty with the pelletized onions - getting them to sprout - so I tried a small tray instead of individual cells and hope that will make some difference. I also tried radish in a seed flat with the intention of growing them to maturity, if it works in a cold frame - maybe I can foil the root maggots and slugs and get crops all season - that's what the experimentation is all about.
Tulips and late double daffodils are in bloom and I succeeded in getting a fritillaria
to bloom for me - now if I could only grow turf in the front lawn!
Happy Gardening

Compost Bin Plans

Bi-color species tulips and crocus - Happy Easter
Compost bin plan -6'x6"x/5/8" Cedar fence board - Cut them in half - 3 ft
Measure for your notch - 3 inches in from end first mark to start knock out notches.
Make the notch the same size as the thickness of the board used - here the cut is 5/8inches. Cut both sides on the inside of your mark and...
Punch them out - because this is cedar they break out easily - your helpers can do this.
Do this on both ends of your boards so that you have a "Lincoln Log" system board that will be the sides of your compost bin and will allow air into the heap.
Stack them together and fill with your garden refuse and start your compost. Remember to keep the composted materials watered in the summer. Turning is your option.
This is an 8 board bin and I will be screening this soon and any material not broken down will go back into a newly started bin in the bottom as the starter layer.
I have planted lettuce and more radishes in the hoop house - Note another great garden tool is the planting board. (plans for it are in April of 2009 blog entry) or Goggle "planting board" and the images will come up.


I remember Easters of the past when snow covered the ground and Easter egg hunting was all in the house - well not this year. The grass is green and getting ready to cut so hiding eggs would have been easy.
The species tulips are in bloom and buds are visible on the apple trees. The frost several nights ago - 28 degrees- took its toll on the yellow magnolia buds so I may not get many flowers. Other plants seem to take it and the spinach in the cold frames and hoop house were fine.
I put my display cold frame back together in preparation for having a place for hardening off seedlings that I have been starting in the greenhouse. The beets, dandelion greens, and onions have sprouted and I re-seeded more onions and lettuce yesterday. Tomatoes and peppers are not far off, but because I had to cancel my May fishing trip to Canada, I have a bit more time in the seed starting calendar.
If you haven't built a cold frame yet there is still time to get the job done and have the space for seedlings. The plans are on the web ( Google - "cold frame manual") and back in the blog in April of 2009). A season extender is a great thing to have in your garden array. Also, this week I was talking about compost bins and thought I need to post mine which is easy, movable, and simple enough that children/grandchildren can help in making one.
6 foot by 6 inch cedar fence boards - dog eared do perfect - are the basis for the bin. You cut them as the pictures above show and stack them as high as you want. 6 0r 8 broads will make a nice size bin and its very portable. I have two in the garden and usually turn them once a year by screening the compost I want out of them then tossing the contents that need more time into an empty bin that I will start for the next year. The fencing material is inexpensive - mine were less than $2 a board so for less than $20 you can have a nice natural compost bin. I now have three and will start the new one in the space where I took the trees down last spring.
Happy Gardening

Busy Weekend

Flowers everywhere this week.
The garlic is ready for that first shot of fertilizer - the key to large bulbs, so I am told.
The fruit trees are really near flowering - too early for comfort.
Today's salad came from these hoop house plants
Our French tarragon is so good in salads and of course in eggs. Make sure you get real tarragon and not the Russian variety from seed that does not taste good.
This is the best of the several clumps of sorrel we have - good rich flavor.
Pellitized onions were planted today - should make transplanting easier.
Two seeds per cell - so much easier than the old way - of multi seeds per inch in a tray.
Storage onions from last year are used as sets for this year.
Shallots saved from last year planted for this years corp - I sure hope they work.

Parsley seed ready for the hot water treatment before seeding into flats.

Most of this weeks activity was in the last two days. Saturday I was part of the Garden Expectations Conference in Kimberly WI sponsored by the Outagamie County Master Gardeners and the UW Extension. There was a great crowd of enthusiastic gardeners and I got to talk about vegetable gardening - what fun. I also was part of the panel of "experts" that answered questions at the end of the conference. I got a "best tomato question" and really did not answer it - like how can you? But I guess in thinking maybe "Sugary" would be a great inclusion to any tomato patch and then" County Taste" might also be a good selection - but best tomato - I am still looking for that too.
Warm weather continues and so I got some onions and shallots planted in the garden. Both were left overs from last year that kept quite nicely in the garage during winter and looked ready to go into the ground today. One row of shallots and one row of yellow onions - variety's from last year.
I also planted seedlings. I planted red stemmed dandelions along with pellitized onions seed from Johnny's that are pictured above. I also planted curly leaf and Italian leaf parsley. I did the hot water treatment to the seed. I heated water in the microwave and poured it over the seed before I sowed the seed into flats. Last year this hastened germination so I am trying it again to see if I have the process correct.
I harvested both arugula and spinach from the garden for salads today and also have a tray of sprouted sunflower seeds, so some of them ended up in the salad today.
Cool weather is predicted for tonight and as you can see the fruit trees are really far along for this time of year - sure hope we don't get hard frost on them. However, living as close to the bay of Green Bay as we do, the bay warms quickly and then helps moderate the weather for us, so maybe frost will not bother us.
Happy Gardening