May 2nd - Cold Again!

Its been a pretty strange spring, we've had unusually cool weather at times.  Last night an unusually strong cold front blew in and its been in the low 50s all day, and will get into the upper 30s tonight.  Its also been really windy, and my poor snow pea plants,which are really tall, were blown over, so when I got home from work, I had to tie some rope along the fence to support them.

Its been a great spring in the garden.  We've eaten lots of cabbage, lettuce, collards, turnips, and spinach so far. Lately, we've also had tons of snow peas. Here is some of the harvest in the kitchen ready to be prepared.

We've also picked a few carrots.  Here is a really fat carrot we picked. Some have been real short but fat.  

I had my first Hubbard squash blossoms a few days ago. But strangely, they were female flowers! So since there were no male flowers around, I picked the flowers and used them in a salad.  Usually the plants put out a lot of male flowers first.  My theory is that the cooler weather, and cold blasts we've had this spring has made the plants think they better start making fruit quick, cause winter is coming.

This blossom opened yesterday morning.  There were a few males open, so I was able to hand pollinate this one. (in case the bees dont) I hope it sets, so I can have my first squash of the year growing.

Garden Update for 4/28/13

Nice warm day today, in the lower 80s.  We got back from a camping trip this weekend, at Cedar Hill State Park, with some families from church that homeschool. (we also homeschool). Got home around 2PM, so this afternoon, and was interesting in seeing what my garden looked like after being away a few days. I worked a little on expanding my fenced in area to accommodate the growth of the Hubbard squashes.  

Here is a pic of the 2 Hubbard Squash plants.  The main vines are probably about 3 feet long, and there are a couple side shoots on each that are getting pretty long themselves.  So those side shoots that showed up real early ended up developing well.  One strange thing is that I am getting female flowers even before male flowers.  I have 2 large female flowers that will probably open up tomorrow morning, but unfortunately without any make flowers, nothing will come of them.    I have mulched the vines with grass clippings.   No signs of SVBs yet. I have checked and found no eggs on any of my cucurbits yet.

Below is a pic of my Rouge Vif D'Etampes (cindarella) pumpkin plants. They are starting to really pick up some steam now, and this one is about to start running.  Its growing among some spinach and collards/broccoli plants, that will probably be harvested the next few weeks, just in time for these plants to start taking over.

Here are the California poppies my son is growing.  They have a really bright orange yellow color and are pretty stunning.  The plants are beautiful too, with the frizzy leaves.  And next to them on the upper right are some of the mustard plants.  Right above them is a sugar pie pumpkin growing among them.

I still have cabbages going strong.  This head is getting really big.  Its the biggest one I've had so far.  Not sure if I should pick it soon, or see if it gets bigger.  It will be in the mid 80s this week, so I am concerned it might start splitting.  We'll see...

Here is a look at the most of the garden. The snow peas are huge, but the bottom of the plants are starting to yellow off. I wonder if this is natural, or maybe the warm weather is affecting them?  But in any case there are plenty of nice pods to pick from them.  Should have enough for a number of good meals.

Mid April Update

April's a roller-coaster month in terms of weather.  Last week it was in the 50s and 60s for highs, and now its warmed up pretty good again.  The past few days, its been in the mid 80s and pretty muggy.
So at this point, my garden is in a transition state from cool weather plants to warm weather plants.  I still have many cabbages growing at various stages, and we've eaten lots of them so far.  Here is a picture of some of the remaining ones, with the snow peas in the background.

The snow peas are huge. They are just about as tall as I am now.  We picked a few yesterday and ate them with a salad... all from my garden, including lettuce, spinach, radishes, and even a carrot.  I have a few carrots growing, but the funny thing was that when I pulled it, it was very fat but short.  I think maybe since I transplanted it, it didn't grow well afterwards, and grew fat instead of long.  

My older spinach is starting to bolt unfortunately.  Hopefully some of the younger batches I planted of the spinach will still have a few more weeks before they bolt too.   I also have a few bolted collards and cabbage plants that I might keep until I can get some seeds from them to save.

The squash is loving the warmer weather.  The Hubbard squash are really starting to take off now.

The vines are starting to run now, and there are tiny flowers starting to form.  I was really suprised to even see a couple of tiny female flowers forming already! I marked them in the picture below.  

Their vines are really thick too, and the leaves are starting to shade the small lettuce plants underneath them pretty good.  I have been mulching them really well.  I have also begun looking for squash vine borer (SVB) eggs, since I am expecting them to arrive any time now.  I am still trying to decide if I will cover these soon, wait, or just spray the neem on them and see what happens first.  So far I have not seen any eggs or moths.  

The Table Queen Acorn  squash next to them is also starting to vine now.  They look small next to the Hubbards. I also see tiny male flowers on the vine forming.  I will need to start encouraging them to grow the other direction, so they don't grow the same direction as the Hubbards

Besides my main bed, I have couple other areas in the yard with things growing.  I have some ball zucchini seedlings growing in 2 hills.  Here is one of the mounds.

And along the back of the yard, here are some sunflowers that seeded themselves from last year.  Next to them are the Sugar Pie pumpkins that I mentioned last post.  This are growing pretty well too.
I expect a battle with the squirrels with the sunflowers. Last year, a squirrel chopped all my sunflower plants down when they were beginning to flower. I found that spraying hot pepper on the plants repels them, so I will probably have to do that to these plants as soon as I see the flower heads forming.

April 6th, Beautiful Day

Very nice day today, with highs in the upper 70s, and sunny skies.  Spent the most of the day at church,    (Watermark Community Church) attending a Training Day event.  We had a great afternoon session listening to Frank Turek, from CrossExamined.org , presenting his lesson titled I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. 

Got home in the late afternoon, and worked on planting some more seedlings that I had started in pots. Planted some more spinach seedlings and mustard.  We'll see how the spinach does, it being rather late, and not long until we start getting pretty warm around here.  

That's probably the last of the cool weather plants I put in, until late summer.  I planted some beans, both pole and bush beans, and the seedlings are starting to come out ( in the back behind the small fence section.)   The Cinderella pumpkins (below) are growing a bit more.  

Here is the Table Queen Acorn.  Its doing nicely,   I have mulched it pretty well with glass clippings.

 The  2 following pictures are of the Hubbard Squash.  They are getting pretty big, as as you can see in the pics, they are even developing side-shoots.  I even saw a tiny flower starting to develop on once of them.

I intend to cover most of my squash, but am waiting until probably the end of the month, as I heard the SVB should not come out until maybe early May.  I have checked for SVB eggs, but have not seen any yet.  So as of yet, the battle has not begun.


The peas are doing awesome. The plants  have gotten huge, and have beautiful white blossoms.  They are about to outgrow their tomato cages I am using as a trellis.  Here is a picture of them, along with some of the cabbage and collards.  The cabbage has been a huge success, especially for being the first time planting them this winter. We've harvested at least 10 heads, and have enjoyed making cole slaw, boiled cabbage, stuffed cabbage, and even egg rolls. Will definitely plant them again this fall.  

I also planted some Sugar Pie Pumpkin seedlings at various places around the yard.  My daughters were playing with a bunch of seeds from last year's crop, and put a bunch of seeds in a bowl with some mud (I think they were play-cooking).  Well the seeds sprouted, and I felt bad for the seedlings. so I planted a bunch of them.  So that side of my back yard may be totally overrun with squash vines if these make it.  We'll see!  :)

My Plants Survived!!

I was worried about my Hubbard squash, acorn squash, and Cinderella pumpkin seedlings, but they survived the cold snap we had the past two nights. I covered them up at night with big glass bowls, and a blanket.  It was in the 50s during the day, and low 30's at night.  

Here is a picture of the Hubbard squash:

 As you can see, its developing its secondary leaves now.  Its  a pretty big seedling, as you can see compared to the gallon plastic jug next to it.  There is another plant on the other side of the jug, and its doing well too.

 The Rouge Vif D'Etampes  pumpkins seedlings survived too.  Here is one of them

Our pea plants are getting big too. They didn't mind the cold at all, and I didn't bother covering them either.

Here is a picture of the Table Queen Acorn Squash.  I also had this one covered well the past 2 night.  Its also developing its secondary leaves.

I had mentioned before that my son Joshua is working towards his gardening merit badge.  Last week we pulled out all his remaining turnips.  They were really nice size.  Here is his bumper crop!!

With it almost being April, I am pretty sure we had the last freeze.  Now things will be growing like gangbusters.  My garden will begin transitioning to more warm weather plants, such as green beans, squash, okra... and whatever else I have space for!

March 16 - Spring is here for good (so I hope!)

Its a beautiful day, with temperatures warming into the 80's today,  after a nice week of 60s and 70s.  Next week should be in the 60s and lower 70s all week, with lows around 50. Just awesome weather!  Maybe we've had our last freeze?!?  We'll see...

First Squash and Pumpkins go in

A couple weeks ago, I planted a few Blue Hubbard squash, Cinderella pumpkin (rouge vif d'etampes) and some Table Queen acorn squash seeds (all hierloom varieties I got from Sustainable Seed Co.) in some pots, to see if I could get a real early start on some of them.  Well 2 Hubbards came out, and 1 acorn squash, but the Cindarella pumpkins didn't germinate.  I started bringing the pots outside last week during the day once the seeds sprouted.

With the great weather and no freezes in the forecast, I decided to go ahead and plant them in, and have a tarp ready in case we do get real cold.  But being that April is a few weeks away, I think they will be fine.

Here is a pic of the freshly transplanted Blue Hubbard seedlings

I read about putting an old milk jug with holes, so I can deeply water the plants without getting the leaves wet. (to help prevent the dreaded powdery mildew), so I am giving it a try with these plants.   I put a lot of compost in the mound I made for them, so I hope they take off and have a good start.
In a few weeks, I will probably start putting some tulle netting over these plants, to keep out the Squash vine borers.  I'm not sure when they will arrive, but am expecting them to start showing up mid-April, especially if it stays warm.  Once the plants get real big, we'll see...  I'm still drawing up a battle plan, which I will detail later, but will involve a combination of tulle netting early, neem oil, and heavily mulching and covering the vines as they spread out.

Here is the Table Queen Acorn squash.

   Since only one plant has come out, I soaked a few more seeds overnight, and planted a couple more.  One in this same hill, and the rest in another hill.  
The reason I choose Table Queen this year for Acorn squash is because I really liked how my Sugar Pie Pumpkin last year were so good at putting down roots. That helped a lot in getting the plants more resistant to bug damage.  The hybrid acorn squash plants I grew last year were semi-vining, and were not very good at putting down secondary roots, so when the main vines got some borer damage, they would not recover very well.  Table Queen is a full vining variety, so I hope it produces good strong plants.


I also soaked some Rouge Vif D'Etampes (Cindarella) seeds overnight, so I could plant them today.
I made a couple mounds towards the other side of the plot, and put them in, among the cabbage,collards, and spinach I have growing.

You can see the 2 small mounds I created there at the bottom of the picture.  My plan is that they both grow up towards the top of the pic, and spill out onto the back of the yard. By that time, the peas, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, and everything else back there would already be done, and the pumpkin vines would have free reign.   I have read how big C. Maxima vines get (both the Hubbard and Cindarella are C. Maxima) so I am anticipating this, and will have to steer the plants as they grow.  I will have the Hubbard spill out towards the other end. (bottom of this picture)

Cool Weather Crops Still Going Strong

My cool weather crops are still doing very well.  This past fall/winter was really good for cabbage.  We've picked many heads already, and have eaten quite a bit of home grown cabbage.  

About a month ago, I started the last batch of cabbage and collards.  I put them in, and they have been growing pretty well.  You can see some of them below, along with the peas that we planted about a month ago too. Those are taking off pretty good too.

Interestingly, much of the collards we planted in the fall have bolted.  I'm not sure if that means I should pull them out, or just cut off the flower heads, and keep them going... That's what I am doing currently. I guess when we cook them we can see if they still taste good.   The brocolli has all bolted, and I've cut down much of it, except one plant that has a lot of seed pods. I intend to save some of the seeds.


Flowers too

Joshua, my son, is in Boy Scouts,and is trying to earn his Gardening Merit Badge. He's met many of his requirements, including vegetable ( he planted spinach, lettuce, radish, turnips from seed, and cabbage transplants) but still has to get flowers.  So I helped him make a plot, and he planted some German Chamomile,  and California Poppy seeds that I had.  They have also come up, and are doing real well too.  (upper right part of the picture.)

Its early February, but it sure has felt more like early April the last week or so.  Its been very nice, in the 70's this week, but today it was only in the low 50s.  The long term forecast doesn't look to bad either, but that can change in a hurry.... who knows?  Maybe we'll have a snow or ice storm in the end of the month... very possible.

The big thing I did today was to further expand my garden area again. Since we knocked down the tree, now I have a much bigger area to expand into.

The picture above shows where I have expanded the garden since early January.  Today I added about another 5 x 6 area.    The lettuce I had in pots I decided to plant in that area, since they were getting too big for the pot, and since we are leaving next week for Haiti with a group from our church, Watermark Community Church, I didn't want to burden my parents with having to water them when they came over to take care of our dog, Maggie.   I also planted some more lettuce seed, carrots seeds, and radish in that area.
The celery plants I had in pots, I also planted, for the same reason.  So I am hoping we don't have a strong cold spell while we are gone, otherwise I'll probably lose a number of plants.  We'll only be gone for a week.

A few weeks ago, we sowed some peas, in the newer plot, and as you can see in the back, they have come up already.  I also planted a few collard and cabbage plants I had started in small pots.  On the left of the picture you can see a headless cabbage. (meaning, I harvested it)  I've been leaving the plants in the ground after we pick them because I read you can get smaller heads from the side-shoots.

Here's a picture of some of our cabbage plants.  The one on the lower left is pretty much ready to eat.  You can see on the upper right, if you look closely you can see a headless cabbage, whose side shoots have started growing pretty well.

And below is  a picture of the garden looking at it from the end.  The yellow flowers in the middle are broccoli that has bolted. I have kept it around because the bees really like it, and I want to keep the bees happy.  Plus I might get some seeds from it.