Monthly Archives: June 2016
Friday PhotoEssay – June 17, 2016
Wow, it’s hot. I don’t know about your gardens, but in our garden the plants are definitely struggling to keep up with the heat. Because we had so much rain, many of them don’t have the developed root systems to deal with so much heat and evaporation. That said, our warm season veggies are starting to grow quickly.
One change that you can see is that we have mulched our peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant. We only had two bales, so the straw isn’t very thick and there are areas yet to be mulched. Straw mulch helps cool the soil and maintain even soil moisture. It helps prevent evaporation, which I’m all for during a hot spell like this!
Most of our tomatoes have started to set fruit. This is ‘Tiren,’ a roma tomato. It has a really odd shape, which is kind of interesting. You can also see that one of them is starting to show signs of blossom end rot. This is very common on early season roma tomatoes in particular, but we’ve also had a little trouble with the drip system on the tomato garden. We will be watching to see if any of the other varieties also develop blossom end rot.
The purple cayenne pepper is also starting to set fruit. The flowers are purple, the stems are purple, and the peppers are purple. Eventually, the peppers will turn red when they reach the fully ripe stage.
The ‘Islander’ bell pepper is also setting some fruit, and this one is getting large enough that it is developing some of the lavender coloration. This pepper will also turn red eventually, but it is purple at what would typically be the “green” stage for a bell pepper.
The ‘Iznik’ snack cucumber is starting to flower a bit. It has fairly small fruit and a supposedly compact plant form, so we will be watching it for productivity and how much space it takes as it grows.
Last but not least…our semi-regular look-in at the pollinator garden. It isn’t filling in very rapidly, but we have some great flowering going on!
Have a great weekend!
Friday PhotoEssay – June 10, 2016
With a week of warm temperatures and no rain, everything is growing quickly. The end of the spring crops is almost here and the summer veggies are starting to set fruit!
It’s hard to see from this overview photo, but I know that in a few weeks the tomatoes are going to be most of the way up the trellises and the garden will look completely different yet again. We did remove one of the quilt block lettuce gardens, since the lettuce was bolting. The other is holding on for a little longer.
The ‘Rainbow Treasure’ strawberry on top of the pallet is blooming a bit and fruiting. The plant is still very small, but the colors are great.
Let’s just say that watering the pallet garden is every bit as challenging as I expected it would be. We have the PVC tubes, but they don’t get the edges watered. We ended up putting the watering wand on the upper corner at a slow trickle to soak in. Still not ideal.
I keep trying and trying to capture a picture of the ‘Black Beauty’ tomato plant, because the stems have a purple cast to them that is striking and in contrast to the other plants. But with the sunlight, I can’t get it to show up the same way in a picture. You’ll have to come see it! As you can see, this plant (and most of the other tomatoes) are starting to bloom and set fruit.
Our ‘Himrod’ grapevine is starting to fill out the fruit. It has quite few bunches this year, despite the vines not being overly large last year. Hopefully we don’t have any major insect or disease issues before harvest.
This is the ‘Patio Plum’ toamto plant. It is maybe 8 inches tall, but showing tiny flowers. I keep wanting to think there is something wrong with it, but it seems perfectly healthy. Just super tiny!
Have a great weekend!
Friday PhotoEssay – June 3, 2016
It seems as though the recent rainy spell has come to an end, and we had a lot of catch up to do in the garden this week.
The tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, and peas have been growing well despite the rain and cool temperatures. The peppers and eggplant are languishing a bit, and some of the vine crops haven’t come up well.
Despite the fact that it hasn’t been that warm, some of the lettuces have still started bolting, particularly the oakleaf varieties. We harvested heavily yesterday, leaving these “lettuce trees” behind. Normally the main lettuce stem stays squat and near the ground. These are bolting (going to seed) and so the stem has lengthened out to put on the flower stalk. We will probably remove the lettuce from this bed next week. The lettuce in the other quilt block is more heat tolerant and isn’t bolting yet.
When we planted the Black Scorzonera seeds, we were a little bit concerned because it was supposed to take up to three weeks to germinate and the soil needed to be kept moist. Thankfully, the soil staying moist wasn’t an issue at all! We also had very quick and high germination. I’m excited to see how these do.
The tomatoes took advantage of the weather to get a little bit taller than I might have preferred before the first tie on the stake & weave. We did that yesterday. We also removed the lower suckers from the plants. If you’ve never seen a stake & weave system in person, come out and take a look over the next few weeks as the plants grow.
The tomatoes on the cattle panel trellis have also been growing well. We removed the larger suckers on these as well and used plant clips to attach them to the trellis.
We harvested a bunch of the purple kohlrabi this week, leaving just a few of the smaller ones for another time. They have done very well!
The K-State Purple garden is really showing off right now…we also harvested a nice amount of purple snow peas from the trellis.
Last but not least, a quick check-in with our Pollinator garden. It’s doing well, although hasn’t filled in much with the cool weather.
Have a great weekend!
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