Onions are up, it’s Spring!

Onions started peeking up their heads yesterday.  And I officially have no place to put them.  I’ve been sketching out an idea for a windowbox greenhouse, but it would take some doing.  I have some storm windows salvaged from work that I think would work well, but I have to think a lot about how to frame the thing up so it doesn’t damage the house.  I live in a rented apartment and I could take the sashes out of a window, but I can’t really fasten my window box to the house, inside or outside, for fear of upsetting the landlord.  Sketches to follow, I just wanted to get the note in about the onions..

It begins… with starting onions…

I planted my onions today! Looks like a full week earlier than last year, great! The run down:

80 Cippollini Onions
60 Prisma Shallots (this year’s)
72 Prisma Shallots (all of what was left over from last year – hoping for 20 to germinate)
80 Clear Dawn Onions (this year’s – from Bountiful Gardens)
160 Clear Dawn Onions (most of left over from last year from Fedco – hoping for 40 to germinate)
87 Southport Red Globe Onions from Bountiful Gardens – excited about trying these, alleged to be good in storage)
40 Evergreen Hardy White Bunching Onions/Scallions.

I planted those old seeds as an experiment. Onions are supposed to the one seed that really doesn’t last from year to year, but I’ve had mixed results. Last year I tried planting some old Scallion seed, and not a one came up. But the Florence Red onions I planted, also a few years old, came up like crazy. I’m hoping for a 25% germination on my last year’s Clear Dawn and Shallot seed. Basically in my experience I’ve had between 0% and 100% germination rate on old onion seeds. Clearly, more research will be necessary. Hopefully I don’t get much more than 50% on those old ones or these are going to be some unhappy onions.

I’m planning on tightening up my onion spacing this year. Last year I gave each one 6 or 7 square inches. This year they get 4. I don’t know if I can bear crowding them that tight, and I don’t know if my roommates will let me take up a whole garden bed with just onions, but I would need both those things to happen if I wanted all these onions to make it in the ground.  If I can plant a 3 1/3′ x 12′ bed with onions spaced at 9 per square foot, that gives me room for 360 onions.  Right?

The plan for 2008

This year, like last year, my gardening ambitions have just about doubled. I already couldn’t really keep up with the space I had last year, and this year I’ve got twice as much. We’ll see how I do with this.

The rundown on my gardening spaces, in order of appearance (in my life):

* Community Garden at Oakdale Street – I have had this garden plot for three years now I think, and I have not been impressing my neighbors over there very much. The first year, which was my first vegetable garden, I grew exactly one thing: a gourd that you can cut in half and make into two bowls. I got as far as drying out the gourd and cutting it into two bowl-shaped things, but they are still sitting in my pantry unfinished. My second year I did pretty well growing beans, basil, and I can’t really remember what else. The third year was last year and it’s pretty well documented here. This year I’ve got a mind to really use this space well and give my fellow community gardeners a better opinion of me. The space is pretty shady, so I’m putting all my cool-weather stuff in there, and leaving all the hot stuff for other places. I’m planning spring and fall gardens there: in the spring, snap and snow peas and early legumes: chick peas, fava beans, and maybe even some lentils!. In the fall, I’m hoping for my first real success with cole crops: broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, etc and maybe some beets and spinach to fill in the holes.

* I haven’t really pulled it together to help much in the Oakdale Street orchard, and it’s in sorry shape. The concord grape vine is still badly overgrown and unruly, the brambles (thornless blackberries, golden raspberries, and red raspberries) are tangled up with bindweed, knotweed and hops, the plum tree didn’t produce any fruit last year (I think it was too stressed by bugs), and the old peach tree needs to be cut down and the younger one moved into its place. There’s also administrative stuff I should be helping with: we’re trying to get city water to the garden, the ownership of the garden is still in question, and some very large trees need to be removed to let some light in. I am also supposed to be building a picnic table for over there.

* The Southwest Corridor Community Farm (aka BUG garden) – my plot over there is so dreamy – all big and sunny. I’m trying to practice some rudimentary crop rotation. So I put my garlic in the place where some beans grew last year (I planted the garlic kind of late and the weather got cold very early so I’m worried about them), and tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants will go where there were onions last year. Still not sure what will go against the back fence there.

* BUG Garden orchard and common spaces – again, there’s a huge amount of work to do here, but not as much as the other orchard, and with more people to help. One thing I’d like to do here is figure out what’s going on with the supposed kiwi vines. There haven’t been any kiwis so far (I think they’re supposed to be male and female and only produce after 3 years or something). Another thing is to keep the grass mowed. The long-time gardener who used to keep the grass mowed passed away last year, and the rest of us will need to pick up that work.

* My new backyard! I moved in September ‘07 and my new house has a very sunny big garden, as big as my plot at the BUG garden, plus room for another one that size. There’s a lot of work to do preparing the soil, though. And also there’s a chance the landlord will sell the building and kick us all out, so we might do a lot of work preparing and planting a garden, only to lose it all! Oh the suspense, can you stand it? The plan for the moment is to put the onions and beans in the existing garden, and squashes on the little hillside garden-to-be. I’m sure the plan will evolve, as I share this space with at least 2 other people, and we’ll have to work out who wants to grow what. I’m also thinking about trying some millet and quinoa there (hippie).  Also there’s a corner of the garden that’s designate for herbs, and we’ve got plans to put in just about all the herbs a person will ever want there…

* Shady backyard areas – My roommate Dee is planning on planting some shady things in the mostly shady part of the yard in the back of the house. There’s also a strip of dirt in full shade, and I’ve ordered some plants for there, and have some seeds (that may not be good any more) that I ordered last year from the New England Wildflower Society. So shady plants for eating: ramps, wild ginger, horseradish, fiddleheads. And flowers for shady places: trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit, and solomon’s seal.

* Front yard weaver’s garden – Ah! What a fantasy! But I went ahead and ordered seeds from Sand Mountain Herbs of fiber flax (Regina), Woad (for blue dye), Safflower (for yellow and red dyes), and soapwort (for, you know, soap). The fantasy is to dig up two big beds in the front yard where now there’s just grass, and try out growing plants for spinning and dyeing linen. Nice fantasy, right? We’ll see. I think I’d need permission from the landlord and probably won’t get it…

* Container garden – last year I invested heavily (and I mean heavy!) in a lot of big containers, because my old house had no sunny garden space, only a rooftop. This year I don’t really need those containers, and don’t really know yet what I’m going to do with them.

* Wilett NY!! Last year my mom bought 60 acres of land in New York State, kind of near Ithaca and Binghamton. She’s got visions of retiring there and is planning her homestead. She wants an orchard and vegetable gardens. What she’s got is a whole lot of hay field with about an inch of topsoil, a clay hardpan, and a big big drainage problem. Yikes! She wanted to plant trees there this year, but I’m advising alfalfa and red clover instead, to break up the hardpan, draw up nutrients from deep down, and fix nitrogen. Maybe we will also do some small test gardens, just to see how they do in the climate, and with gardeners who only visit once a month or so.

So there you go, my hoplessly overambitious plans for this year’s gardens. I can’t wait to get started….

I’m sure you’re dying to know how it all turned out…

My strong suit has always been in the planning and starting of projects, not so much the completion bit.  And so August is usually the month when my season kind of falls apart in the garden.  It was the same this year, except I have done enough work that the falling apart meant there’s still some produce produced in the garden this year despite my neglect, which is nice. 

The rundown on how it went:

Porch roof: well, the porch roof became complicated in late August by my moving away from my house with the porch roof.  I moved 5 doors up the street, which was a blessing and a curse.  The blessing was that I could take my time moving my stuff, including my vast collection of gardening equipment and supplies.  I think I had just as many belongings outside the house as I did inside.  I pushed everything I own up the street (uphill, of course) on a little four-wheeled hand cart, which at times felt like the legend of Sisyphus, at times like being a monk walking barefoot through the Himalayas on some kind of spiritual journey, at times like an ant carrying pieces of food three times my size home to my little maggots to eat.  It seemed like every time I decided to move some stuff, it was over 90 degrees out.  I guess it was that part that was the curse.  In terms of gardening, that meant I could only take those rooftop plants with me that would fit back through the bathroom window and down the stairs, meaning the peppers.  I left the eggplants and tomatoes behind.  But I still have access to the porch roof and have been going back to water them and harvest what’s left there.  So!  The peppers have done pretty great – I’ve got a great harvest of cayenne peppers,


and a more modest but still exciting harvest of paprikas.   My two rosa bianca eggplants have been weirdly different – one is giving fruits that stay green, while the other gives fruits that look like the pictures in the catalogs.  I’m roasting both kinds tonight to see if there’s a difference in taste.  I kept one fruit from the green plant out on the counter for a while, thinking it just needed more time to ripen, but it didn’t.  Then I thought it needed sunshine to ripen, so I put it outside in the sun for a while, and it promptly turned bright yellow, not the white and lavender it’s supposed to be.  The other fruits on that plant are also not turning white, only green.  I thought the plant just needed more sun so moved it out from under the shadow of the tomatoes, no dice.  The plant just makes green eggplants.  Anyway, here are some of the good-looking rosa bianca’s: I have been roasting these and blending them together with roasted garlic for a really awesome spread on toast…  Aren’t they cute?

The run down on the tomatoes goes:

Black Krim, the ones I was most excited about, were a little bit of a flop.  I had two plants, and both didn’t stand up very well to the neglect they suffered.  I didn’t get any really great tomatoes out of these, but might try them again anyway. 

Blondkopfchen – I really underestimated these early on.  I was complaining that hardly any of them got pollinated (I was paranoid about the bees) but it turns out that they just ripen gradually over the course of the season, which is probably even better in the end.  I don’t think a single fruit of this plant even made it inside off the roof – I mostly just ate them while I was watering the others.  I will definitely grow these again, the plants were very healthy and are still making fruit, even after a frost or two. 

Yellow zebra – these also did well, and were plenty delicious.  Seemed to produce good fruit even when suffering from wilt.  Especially delicious with dukkah, to which Andrea will attest. 

Brandywine – I can’t seem to grow good brandywines, which is sad.  I did get some decent looking fruit, but inside they were hard and ribby, not delicious.  They seem to have suffered from my neglect as well…

Hillbilly – I actually wouldn’t know because apparently I mislabeled my seeds, and grew a great big Rose tomato plant that I thought was a hillbilly, right up until it made pinky red smooth fruits instead of bright yellow ribbed ones.  Too bad, because I was excited about the hillbilly.  The rose tomatoes stood up better to my neglect than the brandywine or the black krim, but were otherwise unremarkable, in my opinion, which is probably why I got them as a freebie in my seed order.

The basil I grew never made it out of its three inch pots.  But those two big plants from last year have come with me to the new house.  I’m letting them flower and plan to save their seeds for next year.  The thai basil died a long time ago, just like every year. 

My herb garden recovered really well from the great landscaper’s massacre of 2007.  Sage, thyme, and oregano plants are looking great.  Chives aren’t looking so good at the moment, but maybe it’s just the time of the season.  They’ll be back next year.  The tarragon I’m not so sure about…   it was looking great for a while but now’s a little scraggly.  I tried to take cuttings of everything but chives to take with me to the new place…  I took parts of the thyme and oregano plants that had sprawled and rooted again, and those are potted up happily in my living room window awaiting planting in the spring.  I also took cuttings of the tarragon and sage which I have been trying to root in water in my kitchen window with not much luck.  The chives I’ll come back for in the spring.   I never got around to growing any cilantro (which is dumb because that’s the herb I buy the most of).  The parsley I planted has been long-suffering in a window box on the ground, wilting in the heat and drought, perking back up again when I turn up to water it, and wilting again the moment my back has turned.  Right now it looks pretty good and I might even harvest some of it. 

The peas, I already wrote about.  Next year I will plant them more and closer, and screw that window box shit. 

The garlic, as you already know, went very well.  As a crop, they were a pretty good size.  100% of the cloves I planted made new plants.  Even so, some came out small, but some were pretty big and awesome looking.  Some of the awesome ones I gave away, many I saved to plant for next year.  What we’re eating is the little ones, and they’ll be gone probably by the new year.  I saved 120 cloves to plant next year (this year I did 80), and also put aside some I got from the Long Island Farm for next year (hardneck, they look like the ones I got from Chris Yoder, but redder). 

The beans, what a mess!  Here’s what my harvest looks like:


Which is basically a big pot of swedish brown beans, a smaller pot of black beans, and enough of soybeans and jacob’s cattle to plant next year.  The scarlet runner beans were still developing in the BUG garden last time I was there (which was way too long ago).  Basically, I got fewer of them, the Jacob’s Cattle, and fava beans than I planted.  Soybeans were weird – I apparently have two different varieties of soybeans, one that’s green when dry, the other yellow/tan.  The yellow/tan I think are the ones I got from Seeds of Change a long while ago, the green ones I think came from Chris Yoder.  They yellow/tan make bigger pods and seeds and I think I like them better.  I thought the green ones were just immature, but not so.  I didn’t eat any of my soybeans for edamame this year, I wanted to save them for making tempeh.  As you can see, there’s not really enough for that.  I was hoping for 3 lb. of swedish browns, which didn’t happen.  Even so, I was pretty happy with the yield.  The black beans were amazingly prolific, for how many I planted.  I think I got those originally from High Mowing, a long time ago.  I’ve still got a bunch of beans over in the garden.  I was leaving them there to mature and dry out (it’s been dry for all of August and September), but then it started raining, so they’re probably all rotting.  Lessons learned about beans: if you pick them off the plants when dry, instead of pulling up the whole plants like I did, they will usually make more beans.  I harvested my swedish browns in the dark one night when I was afraid of soggy weather coming, leaving any plants that seemed to have immature beans on them.  Those few plants then took off and produced a lot more beans.  Maybe I should have been more careful and not done my gardening in the dark.  Overall, my problem with beans is I can’t commit to one variety, I still keep trying to grow 6 different kinds in less than 100 square feet. 

And then there’s the onions!  My pride and joy were supposed to be the clear dawn onions.  But those ungrateful little bastards never got big, dammit.  Fedco says they should average 9-10 oz, but my biggest ones were only about 4, and plenty were just little runts.  What do I have to do to grow great big onions?  I really want to know.  The shallots, on the other hand, did fabulously.  They were a hybrid from Fedco, Prisma.  They’re bigger than my yellow onions, and real pungent.  And those red onions I didn’t even mean to grow?  They did great, of course.  I still have a ton of them over in the garden to bring home. 

The corn, sadly, amounted to not much more than something for the scarlet runner beans to climb.  They were all eaten by animals (I thoughtfully planted the corn next to a picket fence to make the corn easier for them to reach), but it probably didn’t matter much, because the ones that survived the animals weren’t even pollinated anyway. 

The backyard plants – I already gave the report on the broccoli (not so good).  The beets I planted ended up doing real well!  The golden beets survived onslaughts of leaf miners, cold weather, hot weather, drought, neglect by me, and the move up the street, and still managed to be delicious.  The ones I planted for spring waited patiently in the shade of other plants.  Once given a chance (when I pulled up the broccoli and the larger, earlier beets), they’ve all grown big and beautiful.  I also have one little bok choi plant I missed in my spring harvest that survived in the shade of other plants through the hot weather, and is now looking all delicious and ready to eat.  I never got around to planting fall brassicas, again.  I also never did anything with the wildflower seeds (ostrich ferns, ramps, flowers), but will give them a belated try anyway once I’ve got my shit a little more together. 

In the front yard of my old house is a tub of sweet potatoes that hopefully have sweet potatoes growing in the bottom.  I guess I should turn it over soon and see.  And my Oakdale garden is pretty over-run with Sunchokes, so maybe I’ll get around to digging them up, too.  And I think that will be about it for the garden…

Late-season news from the orchard – Oakdale raspberries kept going well into fall, thornless blackberries were ripening through September, (white) champagne raspberries in the secret garden also… 

Stay tuned for prospects for gardening at my new house (which are awesome!)

The news this week

News from the garden… 

I’ve got some ears of corn developing, that’s news!  I tried hand-pollinating them to be sure they turn out well.  Not sure I’m really doing it right, though.  Fava beans are all done, killed off by the wilt or something.  Swedish browns are coming along, although some look kind of yellow with mosaic virus.  I’ve pulled up some shallots and onions – the smaller ones have died back already, and those are the ones I pulled.  So at home I have a bunch of puny little onions, and some hearty looking shallots.  Those did awesome.  Haven’t eaten any of the red onions yet, but those are looking pretty good too.  Although not too big, like the yellow ones.  Drat. 

Here’s the sunflowers and zinnias in the secret garden.  Wow. 

Over in the Oakdale garden, things are coming along.  Beans are doing OK last I looked (actually I haven’t been over there in a minute, but it’s OK, it’s been raining).  Something crazy happened – all the peaches disappeared off the peach tree!  Every single last one, even the ones in the highest branches that a person couldn’t even reach with a ladder.  I’d say the animals obviously ate them, but there are no pits or half-eaten peaches on the ground either.  They were just there one day and gone the next.  Alien abduction?  It was so disappointing, as this is the last year for that tree (it’s on its way out and we’re cutting it down this fall), and it’s my favorite.  Plus, the blueberries haven’t born well this year and the plum tree didn’t make any fruit at all!  So sad. 

Check this out – these are last year’s basil plants, the ones that sat in my bathroom all winter.  A couple of weeks ago I chopped every single little leaf off them and made pesto.  Plan was to just kill the plants and use the pots for new pesto plants.  But I didn’t get around to it fast enough, and these determined plants have gone and leafed out again!  I’m getting convinced that I should keep them and save their seeds. 

Now for some pretty produce pictures:

the first of my yellow beets…

And a rosa bianca eggplant, hooray.  With a rose tomato in the background…

the wilt, the wilt, enough with the wilt

Aren’t hobbies supposed to be relaxing or something?  I’m kinda stressed out about these tomatoes.  The wilt is gaining ground.  Tomatoes are ripening, but I want them to go faster so they ripen before the wilt kills the plants.  The blondkopfchen cherry tomatoes are ripening – they are so delicious, just as good as sun gold (but open-pollinated). But about that pollination – I’ve only got one of these plants.  But I’ve never seen so many blossoms on one tomato plant.  If each one had produced a tomato, there would be enough from this one plant to feed the whole neighborhood.  But they didn’t set fruit, due to disease, or the bees, or whatever.  There are not so many.  The black krims are getting some color on them, but I’m ready for ripe tomatoes.  The venerable Kathy Clancy from the BUG garden says to try epsom salts for wilt, so I did.  I sprinkled some on the tomatoes and also on my sad fava beans.  The interweb doesn’t seem too encouraging about epsom salts helping with wilt, though.  Apparently it helps with blossom end rot, which is not what I’ve got.  Not this year, anyway.  But apparently epsom salts don’t hurt and are also useful for soothing baths and constipation. 

So yeah the thing killing the fava beans looks to probably be the same wilt, and it looks like beans in the BUG garden have also got mosaic virus.  My swedish brown beans show signs of both, but they are healthy and vigorous anyway, and making lots of beans, hooray!  Other people’s tomatoes in the BUG garden do look like they’re coming down with the wilt as well, although not as bad as mine.  Now I think the difference is probably the temperature (it’s hot up on the roof) and the varieties.  They are probably growing more disease resistant tomatoes than me, is all.

It’s hot.  hot.

Hooray! I actually grew something!!

Check it out, it’s my garlic harvest!  I pulled up the garlic today out of the Oakdale garden, and none too soon.  I think this is the first time I have actually brought home anything out of my garden in any real quantity.  There are a couple of runts in here, but more real big head of garlic, most of them are not quite as big as the ones I get from the farm, but big enough to make me happy!! I braided them (a good trick, as they are hard-neck garlic) and hung them under cover on the front porch. 

The fava bean harvest has been a little less successful:

This is basically my whole harvest of fava beans.  I picked and ate another handful, smaller than this one, today (the first one was 7/12).  Even though the plants were big and healthy looking for a while there, now their leaves are getting yellow and brown.  There were lots of flowers on them, but they didn’t make beans, they turned black and shriveled instead.  The beans that did develop are often misshapen and covered in black spots (although the beans inside the pods were still OK).  So sad!  There are still aphids on them, and those tiny little jumping cricket like things.  I actually wonder if I could have damaged the flowers by spraying for the aphids.  I sprayed them with a solution of Dr. Brommer’s soap, and I remember they had flowers on them when I did, but I didn’t really try to avoid the flowers. 

In other news, the onions are looking OK – it will be my best effort yet for onions, but still not quite up to my expectations.  The greens on my onions never did really get big enough – maybe too much time in the small pots, too late going into the ground.  They are forming bulbs now, and some are pretty healthy looking, but none look like they’re going to be really big, and some are still teeny babies.  The shallots look good – actually I’m wondering if I should pull them.  But their tops aren’t brown yet and I’m assuming you treat them the same as onions.  The swedish brown beans are doing well in the BUG garden.  Hopefully that will be a success.  The corn is growing, and it’s just barely ahead of the scarlet runner beans, which some of them have found a will to live and have started vining up the corn plants.  Hopefully something good will come of that. 

In the Oakdale garden, I now have a crazy mishmash of all kinds of beans.  I’ve been planting them over and over again, and the squirrels have been eating them relentlessly, but each time I plant them again some survive, and now it looks like the space will be reasonably full of beans.  In addition to a lot of soybeans (the original planting was from seeds I saved from plants I grew from seeds I think from High Mowing, the later plantings were of soybeans I got in the CSA last year), there are just a few survivors of Jacob’s Cattle beans, which were the ones I really wanted to grow, some black turtle beans, and a new addition, some speckly cranberry beans.  Those came from my friend Anne’s farm in Asheville – she gave them to Arik last year for Christmas.  Since then they’ve been sitting in a cloth bag in our pantry, and the other day he pulled them out to find them infested with bugs.  I mean really crawling with bugs.  They were definitely not salvagable for eating, almost every bean had maggots in it, but I managed to find some I was willing to plant.  Not many, it was gross.  But the ones I did plant are coming up pretty well.

Around the house, the herb garden is recovering.  I still haven’t sowed new plantings of cilantro and parseley, gotta get around to that.  And my basil is still in 3" pots, eek.  The tomatoes are showing definite signs of disease, but I’m hopefully they will cough up some fruits for us before they go.  Eggplants are not as big as they should be, but they’re making flowers.  I wonder if I should hand pollinate them to be sure getting fruits.  There are a lot of flowers on the tomatoes not making fruit, and it could be the disease they’ve got, or maybe the bee blight that’s going to kill us all if the oil peak doesn’t first….  I ate the very first cherry tomato off the blondkopfchen plant – really good!  Not unlike sun gold, as promised.  Peppers are also small – the plants haven’t got much bigger, but they’re making peppers, which is nice of them.  The paprika peppers are making bigger fruits than it even looks like they can support on their puny little bodies.  Cayenne peppers, not so much.  In the backyard, the broccoli is over.  I managed to produce a couple of measly, tiny little heads of broccoli that didn’t taste that good.  Even so, it has been my best year yet for broccoli.  It’s a little late, but maybe I’ll still try a fall crop.  Yellow beets back there are actually looking pretty good.  Apparently the thing to do about leaf miners is to wait them out.  I should sow another crop of those too.  Beets, not leaf miners. 

And on the fruit watch:  gooseberries are done, some raspberries are done, others are still working.  Peaches, apples, and grapes are ripening.  The backyard blackberries are just getting started – there is a going to be a huge crop of these this year.  There are a lot more berries than most years, but they’re a little smaller than usual. 

peppers in, finally, good looking tomatoes and last year’s basil

Finally potted my peppers up into their bigger pots, really late.  They weren’t too badly rootbound, but they’re way behind now (I started these the same time as the tomatoes!).  Now we wait and see if they will get any bigger and/or make any peppers.  The smaller ones are cayenne, the larger ones are paprika.  Grow, babies. 

Now check this out!  So far, success with the tomatoes!  They look better than in any other year….

And I finally chopped down the last of last year’s basil.  The one on the left has just been shorn, the one on the right is about to get it.  These two scraggly plants made a lot less basil than I thought they would!  But they had a good life. 

Herb garden massacre

Stupid landlord.  I used to do the landscaping for my house, they even used to pay me.  But my stupid next-door neighbor, who pays thousands of dollars for professional landscapers to do her "property" (stupid "property") complained that my landscaping was not up to her standards.  So my landlord fired me, and now he sends around the very cheapest workers he can get, same as he does with all the house maintenance, to mow the lawn and trim the hedges.  I live in fear of what they might do to my plants.  And yesterday my fears were realized.  A landscaper was here with his two kids, one with a leaf blower, the other with a weed-whacker!  And they weed-whacked my herb garden nearly straight down to the ground.  Grrr. 

Bat poop, and waiting for the wilt

So I replanted my beans in the Oakdale garden – half black beans, and half soybeans.  Hopefully the squirrels have lots of other things to eat by now and will leave them alone.  It has not rained significantly in a good while and my re-planted black beans have not had enough water since I put them in.  Only a few are up. 

I dug down deeper next to the garlic and found that yes, they are bulbing, thank goodness.  I think I will actually have some garlic. 

Sour cherries are just barely past their peak.  I really wish I liked cherry pie, because there are enough cherries for about 200 cherry pies.  Red and champagne raspberries are starting to come out, they are awesome.  The blackberries in my backyard – oh my god I have never seen that many berries before.  Most years we manage to just eat the berries fresh off the bush, but this year there will have to be jam.  And cobbler. 

I harvested the main head off my one surviving broccoli plant in the backyard.  It was a pretty puny little head for such a huge plant.  And kind of bitter.  I fed it to my roommates in the salad at our house meeting.  I’m hoping for side shoots.  Also I harvested the bok choi because it was about to bolt – right now it’s just in the fridge, not eaten yet.  Yellow beets are mostly concentrating on being devoured by leaf miners, not making beetroots at the moment, maybe never. 

I finally pulled it together to get those sweet potatoes planted:

Very late in the season, we’ll see if I get any potatoes out of them.  Check out my planter!  I have always been on the lookout for big pots, but have not come across anything big enough for potatoes.  So I tried going down to the big Super K-Mart in the South Bay strip mall.  And found out that the South Bay strip mall has like quintupled in size and there is no more Super K-Mart.  But there is a Target, and there I found this enormous bin, meant for storing all your other shit you get at Target.  It’s the biggest shit bin they had, 45 gallons worth.  I got two, they were like 13 bucks each, same as the 20" pots at Home Despot.  I cut some drainage holes near the bottom, and put some bricks and rocks down there, with some seed trays on top to hold the dirt up off the soggy bottom, and filled one of these up with the best potting soil ever.  If these poor abused sweet potato slips are going to make any new potatoes, they’re going to do it here. 

The wilt is coming….

So far my tomatoes look great.  They are up on the porch roof, all leafed out with lots of green tomatoes forming.  The Brandywines, as usual, are the canaries in the coal mine.  Their lower leaves started to get yellow and brown edges, and I pulled them off – not because I really think that will halt the wilt, but because I get depressed looking at it.  But basically the whole plant has got these subtle purplish-red spots on the leaves, which I expect will develop into full-blown tomato-killing disease, same as every year.  My strategy this year, and so far it’s looking pretty good, is to grow plants to healthy and vigorous that they manage to make some tomatoes before the wilt gets them.  I’m trying to race the tomato diseases.  So far, my drought-protection measures are working really well!  The 20" pots seem just the right size, and I think I’m becoming a big fan of the Terra-Sorb.  Some combination of those two things, plus perhaps some more attentive roommates than in years past, has made this the best looking crop of porch tomatoes yet.  If I can actually eat some tomatoes off the plants this year, that would be huge. 

Peas are producing about the handful I predicted of each kind.  They are very delicious, just very few.  I have started planting parsley where they were supposed to be. 

I finally got the eggplants potted up into their big containers and up on the roof – ditto a couple of cayenne peppers (they and the paprika peppers were starting to flower already in their little pots).  Still a lot of potting up to do!  Yesterday Arik and I went to the BUG garden and absconded with what I hope will be the last batch of compost I’ll need to fill the rest of those containers.

And speaking of that compost!  Tonight I was at the BUG garden feeding my spindly yellow-looking corn with some bat poop I found tucked away in one of the many nooks and crannies of my larger-than-life house (it’s been sitting there since before I moved here 4 years ago).  I was talking with Susan, who was telling me people in the garden were saying it’s possible to put too much compost on your garden, since it may not be quite finished decomposing, and if it’s not, it can actually subtract nutrients from your plants, not add them.  Well, that made a certain amount of sense to me, considering I just added about 8 inches of that very compost to my garden, and the nitrogen-loving plants, the corn and beans, are looking a little yellow.  So I gave them some bat poop and we’ll see what happens. 

And with that little cliff hanger, good night.