Starting to Wither - Late August

It's been a while since I posted because we have added a new addition to the farm. 'Captain' the Vizsla puppy has joined us and has settled in quite nicely. He's high maintenance and I have had to watch him closely in the yard, but so far, he has not torn up any of my pants, or Stella. He did make it behind the tomato vines once, but that was a fluke.

The garden is looking ok. The heat of the summer got the best of some of my younger plants, while the BLASTED WHITE FLY and Potato/Tomato Psyllids (Nymphs) enjoyed destroying some of the foliage on my 8 foot 7 inch tomato vines this August.

There is significant damage to the tomatoes, starting from the bottom, up. The vines are still surviving and producing the sweetest fruit though. At first, we used the Neem Oil, diluted with water and a little dish soap to keep it mixed up. After my homemade remedy proved to be less than perfect in the height of the infestation (it was gross) we went for a concoction that was store bought. I had been growing these flipping plants for 9 months! I was dammed if I was going to lose them now, right at harvest. We still went with an organic pesticide, Captain Jacks Bedbug Brew, ironically, my dogs name. After applying an entire 8$ bottle to our plants, it seems to have halted the infestation. I still see some flys kickin' it, but for the most part, the plant seems to be healthier. I hate bugs. Bees are cool.

New Addition: 'Captain',  garden dog

We have been getting lots of cucumbers from our vines. I've been pickling them in Vlassic brine and making the most wonderful crispy pickles. This is my new favorite thing to do this year. We are actually growing the pickling cucumber variety so it works out perfectly.

 2 zucchinis (left), 2 pickling cucumbers (right)

Here is a glimpse of what's been going on in the garden.

Standing on a standard height chair, measuring the Tomato vines @ 8 feet, 7 Inches tall

Largely still healthy, with the exception of the lower interior of the plant. Almost 9 feet tall!

My Brandywine Heirloom got over the blossom drop and started making LOTS of tomato

Visible pest damage from white flies and tomato nymphs - they eat the leaf, not the fruit

8 feet 7 Inches!!!! Healthier at the top

New sunflowers getting munched

Brandywine Heirloom (from seed)

Perfect crop to grow with tomatoes, just need a cow to make cheese

Lettuce gone to seed

Yummy sugar snap peas

The FIRST Brandywine Heirloom of the season, I ate it like an apple

Red onion from seed

Watermelon Vines

Pumpkin Patch, I dunno about this one, not seen one Pumpkin yet!

Captain enjoying his garden

Filling in the holes

The patches of dirt left bare between the seedlings are beginning to fill with new life as the baby plants stretch out their new arms to compete for the sunlight. Watching a garden grow is such a rewarding experience for me. Every morning, I walk down my back steps, let Stella out, and examine all the growth that took place the night before. Then I go to work. When I return, I water the plants that look stressed from the heat of that day using Stella's pond water and examine the changes that took place that day. Maybe over the course of the week visitors may see some differences, but to the gardener, we see them every day and night. 

 The Zucchini plant is healthy and has gotten huge. I had to take down the little white picket fence aka "duck barrier" in front of the plant because this huge Zucchini grew right into it. Technically, you should not let your zucchinis get this big because they become fibrous and woody, less juicy and not as sweet, however, we are going to let this one go, and go, and go, and see how big we can get it. We might make zucchini bread, or a roasted zucchini boat out of it. We have plenty of others that we will be eating. It was a good thing I tool the picket fence down when I did, because it's been growing an inch a day.

The zucchini leaves get bigger every day

Remember the first pics of it??

Watermelon vines

Flowering cucumbers and summer squash

 I don't really know what is going on with the leaf at the very bottom on the pic below. It seems to be a healthy green leaf, but the veins are turning white. To me this indicates a deficiency, a disease, or a pest. I'm going to do more research to find out what it is. We did just have a heat wave, so I'm hoping it was just the result of extreme heat, but it might be low in iron or something.

Cucumbers, one with white vein (bottom)

Kohlrabi

There are a lot of advantages to successive planting. Unfortunately I do not do it as often as I would like. The nice thing about successive gardening or planting, is that not all your crops mature at the same time. It is the best way for a home gardener to have a continual harvest, its just hard to remember. I also have a hard time hold back on seeding my entire plot!

Below is a pic of my radish crop that I am successively seeding. I planted some 1 month ago, and the others 1 week ago, and I still have some fallow dirt.

Successive planting of radishes 

My worm bin, started last year sometime

My little red friends

More worms in the bin

My pumpkin patch 

Stella loving her new pond, she gets in herself 

Midget melon flowering, can't wait for this one

Huge tomato vines

Like, huge, like probably 5 feet

GARLIC!!!

Laura's red onions

Bolting lettuce. I need to eat this stuff.

Peas Starting to climb

Thriving in new soil

Here is what the garden is looking like about 3 weeks after the first batch of compost tea. We have lived in the new house for 6 weeks exactly. Our plants have been thriving in their new soil and sunshine. I have brewed 3 batches of compost tea total so far; the first 3 weeks ago, and the second and third  last weekend. My goal is to fertilize with compost tea every 2 weeks until the end of harvest in October or so.

I made 2 last weekend, about 3 days apart, because I forgot to de-chlorinate my hose water, however with further investigation discovered that Oakland does not chlorinate the water. So all three batches should have been full of that beneficial bacteria that I'm looking for that comes from the 'live' compost.

I also pruned my tomato plants to ensure that all their energy goes into fruit production, rather than leaf production. This has spurred the plant's main stems to grow faster vertically rather than produce a lot of low lying foliage. Also, as you can see, I finally mulched my garden now that my babies are big enough to not get squished by the straw.

Pea vines and trellis

Peas starting from seed at the new place

Lettuce so, so good.

New batch of arugula, more to come

 The elephant garlic below started growing these beautiful edible flowers, which we snipped off and ate like garlic in our stir fry. Once you remove the flower stem, the garlic starts putting all its energy into bulb production, rather than flower production. I could have let one go to seed, but I only have 3 and wanted to eat them all. Also, garlic is a biannual seed, meaning that once you let your plants go to seed and you plant those seeds, the first year, you only get a clove, the second year, you plant that clove to get a bulb. Its a 2 year process. I think I'll just buy more bulbs next year, and lots of them, as garlic is my favorite thing in my garden, and something I use quite often. 

Elephant garlic

Laura's Onions

This side is sweet cluster tomatoes

3 Brandywine tomatoes on left, 2 sweet clusters on right

Housewarming heirloom gifts, forget the type

Potted heirloom, same variety as above

Giant pumpkin variety, started from seed 2 weeks ago

3 kinds of cucumbers and summer squash

2 watermelon vines

Zucchini taking over

Lots of zucchini fruits emerging from the stem

Beautiful sun flower that has grown 3 feet in a month.