End of Summer and My Garden

Hello All,

I have not blogged too much this year due to long hours at work and the lack of production from the garden.  I have to agree with Lynne Sullivan, the Indiana Organic Gardeners Assn. President, when she wrote in this quarter's newsletter, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm glad that Summer is over!"   Man, what a dissappointing season!  Everything started so well, too.

Anyway, I cleaned out the garden last weekend.  Funny thing is, the tomatoes plantes looked great and were starting to have little tomatoes everywhere.  Same thing with my tomatillo plants.  Too little, too late, though.  I have emptied the rain barrel but I still need to winterize it.  I also emptied all of the plants in the containers, and stored both trellises that I used for cucumber and sugar baby watermelon plants.  I'm still deciding on what to do with the garden box.  You see, Miss 38th Street and I could be in a transition in the next three to six months.  The house is for sale and we're determined to be out of the house soon.  We'll hope for the best!  So, I don't want to spend a lot of time and money in the garden, yet.  Ahh!  I might have to change the name of my blog!  Who knows, I might not be an urban gardener anymore.  We could be out in the country.  We could be 20 or 30 blocks north of here.  We'll see.  Either way, we will continue to garden and I will continue the garden blog.

Speaking of gardening blogs, check this one out!    Skippy's Vegetable Garden   I really like her blog.  It's wonderful.  I've got to step up this blog, and the GARDEN so I can class this joint up!

The recap of this year's 38th Street Garden is this; the gardening season started out great, summer was brutal and not a lot to show for all the hard work and money we put into the ol' garden.
My seedling operation, which I stepped up this year, went well.  I had a lot of seedlings.  Too many, really.  I gave a lot away.  My greens and radishes were fantastic!  They were successful early.  I transplanted my seedlings successfully.  I have only a few plants die or I had to remove.  Then Summer, as we all know, was too hot!  I had only a handfull of tomatoes from 10 tomato plants.  Sad.  Even the cherry tomato plant, which are pretty prolific, gave me very little.  No tomatillos, no green beans, very few peppers of any variety.  I did get some cucumbers.  They did ok.  Not as good as last year, but decent.  I got two watermelons, which was the same as last year.  The herbs were fine.  I love fresh basil and mint.  Oh, the garlic was pretty awesome, I have to say.  I got twelve good bulbs.  I think I will plant these again.

I won't have much to write about for a bit, but I think I'll have to post some ideas and options for the 2013 garden.  I have no idea where that garden will be located, but it will be fun regardless.

I hope everyone had a good garden and enjoyed the experience this year.  Till next time!

Rafael

Long Over Due Post

Hello,

It's been a really long while since my last post.  Simply put, I work too much.  Anyway, the update on the garden is...  eh.  As a whole the garden is not doing well.  Everything is pretty much surviving, but that's it.  I think my basic problem is my soil is not good enough.  It just doesn't have the good organic goodies everything needs.  I've picked up the fertilizing.  I'm using mainly water soluble fertilizer.  I'm using a 2-2-2 fish fertilizer which i'm spraying on the plants' underside in the evenings or mornings, Botanicare Pure Blend 1-0.5-1 organic compost solution on the plants, and Organicare Humega soil conditioner.  I picked most of this stuff at Worms Way around Bloomington.  Man, that store overwhelmed me!  Cool store, though.

The veggie rundown:

Very few tomatoes this year.  Much like last year, actually.  The difference from this years' to last years' tomatoes it that this year, I have no blooms.  Last year I had lots of blooms, but they didn't turn to fruit.

Peppers are fairly non-existant.  I have one Aji Limon Pepper in a pot that's doing fine.  That's it.  No Green Peppers, no Serranos and the Scotch Bonnet Pepper I thought I ordered wasn't a Scotch Bonnet!  It was a Cherry Pepper.  No biggie, other than I only had one that survived.

The cucumber variety that I planted this year is ok.  Miss 38th Street doesn't really care for it and I'm not too fond of it either, yet.  We've only had a couple.  Boo!  Cucumbers are one of my favorites!

Green Beans.  I got eight.  Eight!  All of the beans were eventually reduced to skeletons and died.  I'm sure a little yellow beetle with four black spots on its back is to blame, but I can't prove it.

I already told you about the Blueberry situation.  None.

Carrots I'm not sure about.  They're still growing, so that's good.

Sugar Baby Watermelons are not giving me much.  I have one melon per plant.  Just like last year.  One day, I will have these watermelons figured out.

The Tomatillos are just starting to fruit.  It took a while, but they are finally coming around.  The plants are getting huge.  I need a picture of the biggest one.  The bees like it, too!

Now, the garlic, which we harvested in June, then let cure for a couple weeks, is pretty awesome.  They are potent!  Very happy with the garlic.


Yesterday, I added some homemade compost, Garden Tone and some Fish Meal to the garden's vacant areas.  I watered it and let it marinate for a day.  Today I planted some more greens for a fall crop.  I think I'll get a fall crop because the all greens did well this year.  I planted Baby Spinach, Red Winter Kale, and Baby Leaf Lettuce (Heirloom Mix).  I planted them where I could.  They're kinda scattered, but it's cool.  Wish me luck!

No picture today.  I'll have more for the next post.

Good luck in the garden!

Good night, everyone!

Thinking Ahead

Happy July 6th!

I hope everyone is enjoying sweating their behinds off as this heatwave rolls on.  Right now, I look outside and I start sweating!  Hopefully, this heatwave will break this weekend.  

I started thinking ahead this week about canning the future bounty from the garden and about starting a fall crop.  I have not done either of these.  I want to try both, if I can afford it.  I definitely want to get the canning operation going.  Hey, I've come this far, I might as well do everything associated with home garden, right?  Right.  I am optimistic that I'll get a lot of tomatoes and tomatillos this year.  I can makes some sauces, some salsas and whatever else I can think of.  

I started looking at canning options today.  We have the boiling water bath method and the pressure canning method.  I'm trying to keep this operation real, so I'm going for the pressure canning method.  I like to have as many options as possible and the pressure canning method looks to let me can just about anything I would want.  Pressure canning is all about killing the Clostridium Botulinum microorganism, which is the bad guy responsible for spoiling low-acidic foods.  You'll have to research the list of foods that are low-acidic on your own.  There is a brief article about canning one the American Seed Alliance site.  Anyway, it looks like I'm going have to drop about $150 to get this started.  I think I can swing that.  If anyone has any opinions or suggestion on the canning topic, I would love to hear anything you have to say.  I love advice!  

I also started looking into cold frames.  I don't know if this is doable where I'm at, but I'm going to investigate.  I was telling Miss 38th Street I was interested in doing the a cold frame this year.  It depends on getting some scrap wood and an old window, as well as finding a good spot on the property that Miss 38th Street approves of.  Or I could just put it in and ask for forgiveness later? (lets see if she reads this post).  I found this link about cold frames today.  Very Nice.  It's from the University of Missouri so I'm giving it a read.  I also speaks about hotbeds, which are heated cold frames.  I'll stick to the cold frames, for now.

On a sad note, my six blueberry bushes, which were doing well this year, are not going to give me what I wanted.  Mainly because the BIRDS ATE ALL THE BLUEBERRIES OF THE BUSHES!!!  Ahhh!  They were looking so good, too.  I have 3 Jersey Blueberries, 2 Elliot Blueberries and 1 Blu Ray Blueberry bushes.  Well, next year, I'm putting a net about the bushes.  Because next year, I'm going to have this:

OK, if anyone has any advice or stories about these subjects, I would love to hear them.


Stay cool!


Seriously, stay cool.  It's hot outside.  Margaritas help.


38th Street!

Happy 4th of July!!!

Happy 4th of July!!!

No personal firework display this year.  Banned in our county.  Too dry.  I have a feeling that this heat will be the norm from now on.  Anyway...

I pulled the Garlic yesterday.  It had went to seed, but I waited until there were only 5 to 6 green leaves.  I've heard a couple different things about harvesting Garlic, so I'll just try this first and see what happens.  Miss 38th Street is braiding the Garlic now, which I think is pretty cool.  Funny thing is, I planted the Garlic upside down.  So, all the garlic plants look like a "J" when I pulled them up.   Chui is assisting in the Garlic clean up.

Luckily, Mimi is not interested in the Garlic.  She just wants to play with the frisbee.  She's a little hot, so back in the AC for her.

I did have one garden casualty today.  I had to pull up the Roma Tomato plant out of the garden box.  It was diseased.  It was wilting and all of the green fruit had black bottoms.  It's out.  I might have to pull out one more.  We'll see.

Everybody stay cool today!

We're off to downtown for some fireworks.

The End of June

The end of June is fast approaching.  The garden is doing well.  Some things are starting to take off and some are coming to an end.  Today,  I pulled all the lettuce out of the garden box.  The Romaine, Simpson and Freckles lettuce are all out.  Most had gone to seed.  There were two plants that hadn't, so harvested both.  They are washed and are drying right now.  Miss 38th Street and I will have a nice salad for lunch!

Now I have to decide what I'm putting in these empty spots in the garden.  A couple weekends ago, I pulled all the spinach out.  It had all gone to seed.  In it's place, I added a Valencia Tomato, and three Serano Peppers.  Although, I did put the Seranos next to the Bell Peppers.  We might have some hot Bell Peppers.  That happened to us last year when I didn't put enough space between the Anaheims and the hot peppers.  The later rounds of he Anaheims were HOT!  Well see.

I'm thinking Cabbage, Kale and more Lettuce and some Baby Spinach.

Oh,  if anyone has some experience with Garlic, let me know what you think.  My Garlic has gone to seed and it look about ready to harvest.  I had someone tell me I couldn't use the Garlic after it had gone to seed.  Then I read something on the interawebworldwide that you should let it go to seed.  I did see where I messed up, in that you should stop watering the Garlic a couple weeks before you dig it up.  Whoops.  We're going to dig some of it up tomorrow.  See what it looks like.  I pulled one up a couple weeks ago, and it was surprisingly small.  I hope the Garlic is still good.  I've heard that home grown Garlic tastes better than the store bought.  If the Garlic is not edible, then I might turn into this:

Or maybe I'll just be Vincent Vega.

Ha!  Keep it 38th Street!  

Garden Video?!?!?!

Are you ready for a Garden Video?!?!?!

Too late now, cause here it comes!!!!!

Check it out!!!!

http://youtu.be/ps96OK7rkL4

Wow.  I was...

was expecting more.

Thanks, anyway.

State of the Garden

Hello,

I haven't written in a bit.  It's been the usual.  Busy, busy, busy.  The garden has been busy, too.  It's been steadily growing.  Most everything is doing well.  I took some pictures to share with everyone.   Let's see what we have here.

The blueberries are looking good.  I didn't know what to expect from them.  I didn't get any berries last year.  

My Fukushu Kumquat Tree is doing well.  No flowers yet, but it's rebounding.  I thought I finally killed it earlier.  The Scotch Bonnet and Aji Limon Peppers are slowly getting bigger.

Here are 3 Tomatoes in pots by the front steps.  Two are going great.  One, not so much.  I think it's slowly dying.  

 Here is a couple more Tomatoes in the garden.  

The Garlic is looking fantastic!  It's going to seed.  I'm supposed to wait until there are only 5 to 6 green leaves left, then harvest.

Ahhhh, yes.  The Sugar Baby Watermelons.  I'm hoping they do a little better then last year.  I got two watermelons last year.  I'm hoping for 4!

I have two cucumbers.  One is blasting off!  One is waiting for it's morning coffee or something.  

Here is one of my Tomatillos.  Something is eating my Tomatillos and Green Beans!  

I hope it they live.

Here are a few shots of the Garden.

 I need to mow.

Ok.  Nothing fancy on this entry.  Just pictures.  

I hope everyone's plants are doing great!

Until next time,

38th Street Gardener