2020 Garden Update: June 20

June has been a busy month even though we're still staying at home due to the pandemic. With the hot weather settled in to stay until the fall, watering and harvesting have become daily tasks, but the plus side is that we're getting to eat plenty of fresh produce grown in our own backyard!

The garden this year hasn't taken off the way it did last year, as my photos from June 2019 remind me. Last year we had more squash than we could eat and a lot more tomatoes coming in by now, too, but the spring weather had been very warm and wet last year. Everything grew like crazy! This year I'm contending with new beds, new soil, and a number of new types of plants. The problem with a new house is that our "dirt" on the property is basically solid clay with a lot of rocks/concrete bits mixed into it, so only the most determined plants thrive in it (the daylilies don't mind it a bit). I've also got several different brands of potting and garden soil thanks to pandemic shopping issues, and some of those are clearly doing better than others.

In spite of the problems, the cucumbers (all growing in pots) have really done gangbusters, and the larger tomato plants - the Husky Cherry Reds I bought as starts - are providing a steady little stream if not a raging river of tomato goodness. We have yet to harvest any of the heirloom varieties, but they all have green tomatoes on them, so hopefully it won't be long now. I am hand pollinating the squash to ensure that we get a few to eat; so far we've had the best luck with the lemon squash, but I harvested two of the white scallops this week, and they were pretty tasty.

The raised bed with cow peas and corn is coming along quite well, although the pea vines are growing faster than the corn, so I don't know if the vines will get the support the corn was supposed to provide. I hope the corn will catch up because I'm out of stakes and cages and can't find more at the local garden centers when I do make my rare visits to them.

The daylily bank and pollinator patch are full of color and bees now, and I'm already thinking about how to expand on those areas next year with new bulbs and better organization in the small space that we have. It's exciting to see the bulbs we planted months ago sprout and finally flower! The glads and liatris have been especially fun to watch. Next year the daylilies and other perennials should be even bigger and more robust, but they're already putting on a good show this first time out.

Keeping my fingers crossed that I get a bigger squash harvest before the vine borers make their destructive appearance!

The Summer Bounty Begins!

It's early June now, and the heat has definitely arrived, along with the summer staples of the vegetable garden! This week we're eating cucumbers, tomatoes, and the first of the summer squash (finally!). We've got blooming flowers for the pollinators and herbs in full swing. Welcome to summer!

I have pulled up the bolted lettuce and the green peas, which were lovely while they lasted, and replaced them with glass gem corn and cow peas, both of which have already sprouted in their raised bed. I'll be planting more cow peas once the vine borers bring their usual doom to the squash beds, probably by early July. This will be my first time growing corn, and I have chosen glass gem just to do something really different and provide some support stalks for the black-eyed and purple hull peas.

The heat and rain have given the other summer vegetables their rocket fuel boost after the cold spring. So far the lemon cucumber is the champ of the garden. It's 8 feet tall and loaded with flowers and baby cukes. The dragon's egg plants are the slowpokes - will we actually get to eat dragon's egg cucumbers this year? We'll see! Both the DAR and Salad Slicer are producing, so we don't have a shortage even if the dragon's egg disappoints us. The lemon cucumbers are fun with their round shape but taste just like regular cucumbers. They're very mild and add a nice crunch to a dish.

Husky Cherry Red tomato plants are producing a slow but steady stream of fruit. It takes a few days to get enough to make a meal, but we do get there. The heirlooms are growing quickly; I hope by July they will be yielding. I love a big dish of different colored cherry tomatoes! Right now we are eating the red ones with pasta or in tomato cucumber salad, both summer standards at our house.

I was super excited this morning to pick the first of the lemon squash, two little beauties with gorgeous color. They look like Christmas ornaments. We'll be eating them tonight to find out how they taste. So far I have been hand pollinating the squash in an effort to ensure some yield. The zucchini is finally taking off, though, so I might soon have all the squash we can eat with just the pollinators taking care of it. I'm hopeful that the white scallop now has at least one pollinated blossom going, so maybe next week we'll get to harvest the first one.

The flower garden is also taking off, with more daylilies blooming and lots of color in the pollinator patch. Liatris is in bloom, too, and I am seeing a lot more pollinator activity during my daily garden checks. The flower areas are more chaotic this year than I had originally intended due to the pandemic, but we're letting it be a little wild with more clover and less mowing to help the pollinators while we consider the long range plan for the beds.

Next week I hope to check in with more cucumber and squash progress!

* Just this week found out about Baker Creek Seeds' crazy attempt to invite Cliven Bundy to be a speaker a while back. I'm not throwing away seeds I already bought but won't be linking to them or buying from them in the future. There are plenty of other places to buy seeds that are more in harmony with my values as a consumer!

2020 Garden Update: April 29

The lettuce and green pea bed is doing great!

With the end of April we're moving into the real growing season here in Zone 7, although we've continued to have rainy, cool weather and a few cold snaps. I'm hoping to see the heat loving vegetables put on some serious growth over the next few weeks! The pandemic continues to affect the usual round of garden store errands and supply runs, so we are mostly making do at home. We made one trip to the local nursery last week with masks and hand sanitizer and picked up some much needed potting soil along with several more plants, but I think it will be quite a while yet before I venture into Lowe's or any more crowded store. The future is far from certain, but at least the garden gives me something to look forward to each morning when I go out to check on everything and see what has changed.

Lettuce continues to be the champ of this year's garden; we get several salads a week out of my crop, which I'm still using as cut and come again to get the most out of it. Alas, I once again failed at growing carrots. Only the Little Fingers germinated, and while they produced big, promising green tops they only grew runty little carrots. We ate them, anyway, and cut the greens up into our salads. I think this will be my last attempt at carrots; I don't actually like carrots enough to keep struggling with them!

Runty carrots again. Sigh.

The green peas are blossoming beautifully with many little pods starting to form, and I'm keen to eat those again because they were a big hit with the family last year. I just hope the critters don't make off with them! We had plenty last year without a net, but the chipmunks here at the new house seem determined to wreak some havoc. I will probably find out soon if I'm going to need to cover the peas with a net, but I hope not! The vines are growing really tall now, and once again I wish I had planted more of them, but this year is a learning curve with the smaller space and raised beds. Both types of green peas have come up just fine, but at this point I can't tell any difference between them.

The squash and zucchini are not nearly as big as I would like, but they are starting to have flowers, too, and I hope the warmer weather ahead will help them grow. I'm not sure they are getting quite enough sun where they are, but we'll see how they do over the course of May. It might just be the cold weather that has held them back, and I did plant them out pretty early this year. The lone survivor of the original cucumber seedlings - a dragon's egg - has also produced flowers, even though it is still a puny runt of a plant. It just won't give up! I admire that and potted it up even though my second round of seedlings is growing much better. The store bought tomatoes all have baby fruit now and lots of flowers, but the heirloom varieties are slow growing (as they were last year). I haven't been able to find the determinate cherry or yellow pear types because of the pandemic and not going to larger garden centers, so we're working with what we've got for now. I expect the darn chipmunks to make off with the lowest hanging tomatoes as soon as they get at all red, but the plants should soon get too tall for them to reach.

Astilbe is doing really well.

The shade garden has filled in quite a lot with hostas, astilbes, ferns, and coral bells. Most of those were bought as bare root plants in mixed bags, but we added several coral bells on our recent nursery run. I would love to have twice as many! I really like the colors, especially the lime. It's a tricky bed to plant in because of the drainage tube, buried pipe, and cables, but we're getting there.

The sunny flower beds are also coming along, especially the irises we moved from the old house. The first one bloomed today! I can see scapes on the Stella D'Oro daylilies and hope to have the first daylily blooms soon. The regular lilies have been doing well, and the tall glads all came up, but I think the mini glads are proving to be a disappointment. I also found out that the chipmunks dug up and ate all of my replanted tulip bulbs from the Valentine's Day pot! At least they didn't get the tulips we planted in the fall.

By this time next month I hope to have lots of flowers and some real vegetable success stories to share!

Time to Start Seeds!

It's February, which means it's time to get several garden projects started for 2020. Luckily we had a beautiful sunny day and warm weather this weekend, perfect for trips to the garden center and some time outside. A few hardy cool weather crops can be planted in Zone 7a right now, while others can be started indoors from seed. I've got big plans for the new kitchen garden this year, so I've got both outdoor and indoor seeds ready to go!

We have a lot of work to do in the kitchen garden this year because it's a new space with the disappointing soil you'd expect in a new construction area. We'll be adding garden soil to the raised beds as the spring progresses, but today we only needed one box ready for the green peas and lettuce. Last year I started both much later than I should have, and the hot weather arrived early, so we had less time to enjoy them. I've got green pea seeds planted in the back half of the garden box and three rows of lettuce (one row of each type I have) in the front half, with a concrete block in the center to serve as a stepping stone. Ideally I'd have access to the box on both long sides, but the small space and sloped yard mean the boxes have to be against the fence (we've also found at least two cables barely buried by internet providers, etc., so we have to work around those, as well).

My lettuces this year are Salad Bowl, Little Gem, and Meveille des Quatres Saisons, the last being the freebie I got with my Baker Creek Seeds order. I grew Salad Bowl last year but hope to have much better luck this time because I'm getting it started on schedule and won't have to worry about the heat so much. My green peas are the Lincoln variety from Baker Creek. I have some left over from last year and might plant them a little later. Everyone at our house loved the green peas last year, and I know we'll eat as many as I can grow!

I also got my indoor seeds started today. I have 26 Jiffy pots with a variety of squash, cucumber, tomato, and sunflower. I've set up my seed starter space in a sunny upstairs room where the cats can't knock the cups over (assuming we keep the door closed!). For most of the seeds I planted 2-3 seeds in each cup, with two cups per variety. Because the new garden is small I will have to choose the best seedling to plant and give the runners up to gardening friends. I don't really need to grow the sunflowers from seed indoors - they'll grow just fine from seed outside in April - but I like the morale boost of sunflower seedlings, and I have several kinds this year that I'm really curious to see grow.

Seeds started indoors on February 2nd:

Green Bush Zucchini (Baker Creek)
White Scallop Squash (Baker Creek)
Lemon Squash (Baker Creek)
Straightneck Yellow Squash
Hartman's Yellow Gooseberry Tomato (Baker Creek)
Purple Bumblebee Tomato (Baker Creek)
Purple Russian Tomato (Baker Creek)
DAR Cucumber (Baker Creek)
Dragon's Egg Cucumber (Baker Creek)
Dwarf Teddy Bear Sunflower (Ferry-Morse)
Dwarf Sunspot Sunflower (Ferry-Morse)
Gold Coin Sunflower (Baker Creek)

I'm using Jiffy pots because I'm trying to use less plastic going forward, and they're easy to label clearly, so I should be able to tell which plants are doing the best from each category. I'll post updates as the seeds sprout!

Garden Wishlist for 2020: Squash

Harvest early and often!

In my last post I tackled the massive topic of tomatoes, but squash is much less complicated for me. While there are many, many varieties out there to choose from, I have to be practical about squash because my small family can only eat so much of it. Last year I definitely went overboard with six plants - 3 yellow squash and 3 zucchini - that produced so much my kid was actually relieved when the vine borers appeared. For 2020 I'll be sticking with a smaller quantity of squash that we'll enjoy until the pests inevitably take over.

Yellow Squash

The first year I grew squash I chose the most traditional Southern version, the yellow crookneck squash. This is the yellow squash I remember from my grandfathers' gardens when I was a child; it was usually destined for a casserole. I never liked them as a kid but was tempted by the starts at the garden center and brought a few home. Boy, did they grow! We found a couple of recipes we all actually liked and ate lots of squash for several weeks before the vine borers showed up. I had to learn the hard way about the predestined end of all Southern squash, and eventually I pulled up the riddled vines and called it a day.

Squash plant in May 2019

Aside from the pests, the only problem I had with the yellow crooknecks was their shape. That crook was always growing around a vine or otherwise getting itself caught so that picking the squash proved tricky. So, in 2019, I chose the Early Prolific Straightneck Squash from Baker Creek Seeds and planted three hills in my raised beds. They grew quickly and produced abundantly, so much so that we had soon eaten as much squash as we could handle and had run out of friends who wanted more. This time I planned for the vine borer arrival and pulled the plants once their presence was obvious so that cowpeas could grow in that space instead. Changing out crops turned out to be a great tactic, and I will definitely do that again now that I have a smaller garden.

This year I still have plenty of Early Prolific Straightneck Squash seeds to plant, but I think I might have just one hill instead of three.

Zucchini

Monster zucchini!

Last year I opted for the Green Bush Zucchini from Baker Creek Seeds and had good luck with them, although I think we ultimately got more yield from the yellow variety. For 2020 I'll be sticking with the same type because I still have quite a few seeds in the packet. My family actually seemed to like the zucchini better than the squash, so I might plant two hills of zucchini and just one of the squash. We'll see if my smaller space has room for these fast growing vines! I did find out that these zucchini will grow into monstrous baseball bats if you don't keep an eye on them; I came back from a vacation to find that a friend had missed a few of them when checking my garden. They were huge but not worth eating by then, so they went straight to the compost bin.

Squash and Zucchini 2019 Record

2019 planting date - March 24
2019 sprout date - April 3
2019 first harvest - May 14 (yellow), May 26 (zucchini)
2019 pull date - July 1 (vine borers)

We'll see how the weather does here in North Alabama for the 2020 planting. Our last frost date this year is April 2, but we might well warm up before then!

Do you plant squash in your garden? How much and what kinds? I'd love to try some different varieties once I figure out the spacing in the new garden and find spots for everything, so let me know what you recommend in the comments!