Andrea Meyers » Gardening

Weekend Gardening: Volunteers

Andrea — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 10:00:00 +0000

This year the biggest surprise in our garden was the volunteers, which is much better than the bunny surprise we got last year. Apparently some of our compost didn’t cook long enough because we have volunteers aplenty.

The volunteer cantaloupe vine is winding its way around the rhubarb, horseradish, cherry trees, lavender, and thyme. We got our first fruit this week, and it was perfectly sweet and delicious.

There are currently five more fruits on the vine so far. I’d say this was a very fortunate volunteer and I’m not sure I could get results this good if I’d tried to plant them. In fact I said in the spring we probably couldn’t grow them due to the problems we have with certain pests. I’m so glad to be proven wrong on this one.

Some tomatillos are climbing the side of the house next to the chili pepper patch. And yes, there are some little tomatillos on them, along with the hoards starting on the four plants on the other side of the house.

Though I adore cantaloupe, this has to be my favorite volunteer this year, a monstrous butternut squash vine that started next to the compost bin and is spreading and growing in the grass right in front of the tomato bed. It’s about 10 feet long now and has huge blossoms and several squash growing on it. Though the squash vine borers made a determined attack, this plant seems to scoff at their attacks. It’s amazing. And like the cantaloupe, I probably couldn’t have grown it if I tried.

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Weekend Gardening: What’s Surviving the Heat

Andrea — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:08:15 +0000

Like much of the country, the heat has been brutal here in Northern Virginia. When we went on vacation at the beginning of the month, we made sure to set the irrigation system to run daily since the temperatures were forecasted for the high 90s with little to no rain for the entire week we would be gone, and it’s a good thing we did. We moved all the container plants down to the tomato bed so they would get water, and almost everything survived, though the potted basil took a beating in the heat and we lost about one-third of it. We’ve found that the potted basil needs twice daily watering during periods of extreme heat, and as long as we do that it holds up well. We reseeded to replace the lost basil and it’s coming back nicely. The rest of the basil is starting to flower, a signal that it’s time for a first harvest and time to make pesto.

The tomatoes are going gangbusters this year, a pleasant change from last year, and we’re convinced that our composting efforts have paid big dividends in the tomato bed. We began harvesting tomatoes this week and have brought in about 7 pounds so far, a mixed bag of Early Girl, Roma, cherry, sungold, and grape tomatoes. The Early Girl plants are almost bursting with tomatoes, a sign of good things to come. I’m eager to pull a pile of those green tomatoes off and fry them up!

The peppers are looking very good, also an improvement over last year. The sweet peppers are all heavy with fruit and the hot peppers are coming along nicely. My new favorite is a container chile, the spicy Numex Twilight, which starts green and then turns purple, orange, and finally ripens a deep red. It’s quite a showy plant and perfect for containers.

The lemongrass is a wonderful surprise this year. I’ve tried to grow it in pots over the years, hoping to bring it indoors in the winter so we can have lemongrass year round, but I’ve not had success with transitioning indoors, so this year I decided to just stick it in the ground and see what would happen, and it’s doing very well. We made a Thai grilled chicken today using some of our lemongrass in the marinade, and I can’t wait to share that recipe with you this week.

The blueberries are done for the season and the dill and lettuces bolted, so it’s time to reseed those, which I can do now since we tackled the weeding this weekend. The weeds in our area seem to thrive in the heat, and it took a couple solid hours of work in miserable heat to clean out the squash and lettuce beds on Saturday morning. There’s a few stray weeds still in there, tucked under and between the squash, but we managed to clean out a lot. As we prepare for fall planting—yes, August is nearly here—we’ve decided to experiment with seeding plants much closer together to hopefully crowd out the weeds and provide a better home for the beneficial insects.

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Weekend Gardening: Protecting Fruit Trees

Andrea — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:16:28 +0000

Last fall Michael decided we needed to cover our fruit trees with netting to protect the harvest from the local wildlife, and after seeing similar techniques on fruit trees while on a trip to Okinawa, our collection of net bags grew. Now that the apples and plums are starting to ripen and the squirrels have begun showing an interest, Michael took some of the net bags and tied them around clusters of fruit.

The netting may not keep the insects out, but hopefully it will deter the squirrels and birds.

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Weekend Gardening: The Mixed Bed

Andrea — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 05:00:36 +0000

Our garden beds all have a mix of things in them, but this has to be the most mixed up of them all.

This bed is the scene of the The Great Zucchini Squash Disaster of 2009, and we took some measures to improve conditions and hopefully avert problems with the dreaded squash vine borer. In the fall, we turned over the soil a lot hoping to expose any vine borer larvae to cold temperatures. Then we planted two rows of garlic around three sides of the bed in November. In early spring we turned the soil over again and planted icicle radishes on both ends, which are supposed to be a deterrent. As the weather warmed up, we added a pile of fresh homemade compost and planted the squash directly in the compost, and planted a few marigolds, which are also a good companion and deterrent. You can’t see the marigolds because of the garlic and radishes, but they are there, hidden sentries among all the tall green leaves.

So far this year is a major improvement over last year. The squash are big and tall with lots of stalks and plenty of flowers. We check the squash daily for signs of the vine borers, and so far we’ve only lost one small plant to the pests. There are several squash on the plants now and hopefully we’ll be able to write about our homegrown squash next month!

The only problem with our plan is we can’t really narrow down which one thing might have had the most impact, but after the total destruction of last year we didn’t want to take any chances. Next year we’ll rotate the squash to a different bed, and probably will take the same measures to protect it.

And speaking of homegrown squash, we hope you’ll join us for this month’s Grow Your Own event. You can send your post information to me at andreasrecipesgyo AT gmail DOT com by June 30.

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Weekend Gardening: Tomato Updates

Andrea — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 14:17:50 +0000

We planted our tomatoes three weeks ago and so far they are doing very well. The plants all took readily after transplanting and they’ve grown like crazy; in fact half of them are already at the top of their cages.

We set 19 tomato plants and 4 tomatillo plants, then had to add more tomatillos when one of them keeled over. The purple tomatillos are in this bed in the back left corner, and the green tomatillos are outside the frame on the far right of the bed. We have learned that the tomatillo plants need plenty of space, so their cages are a little larger around and substantially taller because they’ve always grown at least 9 feet tall, and we usually end up tying them to the top of the deck rails about 5 feet above their cages.

We also planted some marigolds among the tomatoes and peppers, then seeded Genovese basil along the front of the tomato bed between the marigolds, and it’s starting to sprout. Basil and tomatoes are good companion plants for each other, and the marigolds act as both a trap and a deterrent for certain pests.

This year we have a couple of tomato plants in containers on the deck, and we specifically chose a variety that does well in containers, the Husky Cherry. The plants don’t get very tall and they are good producers, in fact both have some little green fruits now.

Monkey Boy has already shown interest in these little green tomatoes, his favorite color, so we’ll have to see how many go missing before they ripen.

References

Great Garden Companions: A Companion-Planting System for a Beautiful, Chemical-Free Vegetable Garden, by Sally Jean Cunningham

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Weekend Gardening: Early Summer

Andrea — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 16:07:35 +0000

Over the month of May we gradually planted all the edibles around the garden. The blueberries moved to their new location in a high spot in the yard that will allow for better drainage so the bushes don’t succumb to the spring floods, and they’ve taken well to their new home. We have early, mid, and late season bushes, so hopefully will have blueberries throughout the summer.

The honeycrisp and gala apple trees have fruit on them, which we will try to protect from the squirrels. The Granny Smith didn’t flower this year, but it’s still a young tree, so maybe in a year or so.

The basil started sprouting this week, bringing thoughts of caprese salad, pesto, and many other delicious things to come. This year we planted Genovese, Thai Siam Queen, Lemon Dani, and Amethyst (a purple Genovese), and hopefully we’ll have a better harvest than last year.

Last year we experimented with eggplant in containers, which didn’t work so well, so this year we are trying some small tomatoes and peppers that make small bushes which should be perfect for containers.

This week we also saw the first tomato and pepper blossoms. This one is a hot pepper that’s great for containers, the Numex Twilight, which is a piquin-type pepper used for spices. The fruit starts purple and turns yellow, orange, and red. These take 120 days to ripen so it will be a while before they are ready.

We planted two husky cherry tomatoes in containers, which we hope will give us some early salad tomatoes. Both have blossoms now.

We began harvesting radishes and snow peas last week and the sugar snap peas started coming in this week. Sugar snap peas are one of my favorite little snacks, and eating them fresh off the bush make them taste even better, I think.

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Weekend Gardening: Rhubarb Growing Tip

Andrea — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Of the three rhubarbs plants we put in last spring, only one survived the flooding, but it is coming up very nicely and this weekend we’ll plant two or three more.

As soon as the leaves sprouted we inverted a large planter over it, a technique that encourages longer stems, and so far we are very pleased with the results.

And of course we’ll be very happy to cook with those long tasty stems, especially with the fruits of these little plants growing nearby.

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Weekend Gardening: Planning for Spring Flowers

Andrea — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 17:51:50 +0000

After the long cold winter we’ve had, seeing the crocuses and daffodils last week was a welcome sight. The crocuses only lasted a few days, but their bright purple and white blooms made a beautiful splash of color in the flower bed.

The daffodils took a few more days, then they burst into color. My favorite is the yellow daffodils because they look like sunshine welcoming spring at last. We noticed fewer blooms this year and new plants sprouting, so once the flowers dry we’ll dig up the plants and divide them.

The Johnny Jump Ups (edible) started peeping up in their containers last week. Their dainty little purple and yellow faces are a favorite of mine. They reseed themselves every year, sometimes completely filling the pots, and I sprinkle in a few more seeds about every other year. They look beautiful in front of the porch steps until the weather turns hot.

This beautiful pot of violas (edible) was at Costco, and I couldn’t resist sitting them at the top of porch overlooking the steps.

Since the crocuses, daffodils, tulips, and daylilies have all sprouted, now is a good time to assess where the garden has bare spots and could use a some filling out. I’m actually behind one year on this because I had planned to do it last spring, then forgot and kicked myself last fall when I didn’t know where to plant, so I postponed the project. The big bare spot above will be great for more crocuses, which we love to see in the early spring.

This part of the bed will get a few more Notting Bells (unsure of the correct name, still researching) to complete a border of them along the front edge of the bed. We like the little white bell-shaped flowers that bloom in spring. Other bare patches will get some more crocuses.

We’ll add more crocuses in that bare spot next to the existing crocuses.

This big bare area in front of the rose bushes and crepe myrtle needs some spring color, so we will plant bunches of daffodils and tulips all along the border, and maybe crocuses. The rose bushes fill out and burst with pink blooms in the summer through autumn, so we don’t need to add summer color to that spot. We will also add some tulips behind the daffodils.

This sad looking spot is the site of several failed gardening experiments. The long thin green leaves are saffron crocuses that have never, ever bloomed, and the three barely visible bushy things are miniature rose bushes that are, well, too miniature. I’m still trying to decide what to do here, maybe a mix of tulips and daylilies. The front bed is filled with stella d’oro daylilies, which bloom continuously throughout the summer, providing a gorgeous show of golden color. I recently found out about the purple d’oro daylily, which also blooms continuously through the summer and into autumn, and those would coordinate well with their yellow cousins. We haven’t decided yet, I’m still looking around to decide what we want for this spot. The idea is to get lots of color on plants that don’t grow too tall so they don’t block the boxwoods.

And now we have to finish spring planting in the vegetable garden…

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Weekend Gardening: A Cheap and Easy Way to Compost

Andrea — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:15:26 +0000

If you peruse garden sites and catalogs, you’ll find an abundance of products to help you compost, and frankly the prices can be pretty ridiculous. In our opinion, $200 or more for a compost bin plus another $40 for a pretty crock to store your kitchen scraps until you have time to take them out to the compost bin hardly makes composting worth it, so we MacGyvered a simple and relatively inexpensive solution for composting using plastic storage bins available at any home improvement center.

Michael bought three of these bins and drilled some holes for ventilation, then we began filling them up. In our kitchen we keep a gallon plastic bin that collects the daily scraps, then we empty it each evening into the compost bin. We don’t use chemicals to treat our grass, so grass clippings go in the bins along with fallen leaves, fruit and vegetable peels and scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds, tea leaves, nut shells, saw dust, hair clippings, dryer lint, wood chips, and other assorted organic materials.

During the summer we keep our grass clippings in a pile next to the compost bin and add a layer of grass every time we add kitchen scraps to the bin. The layer of grass on top seems to help keep the scraps underneath a little warmer, which helps with decomposition. After filling a bin, we keep it closed except for occasional turning and start filling the next one, so we have three bins in constant rotation. This compost is about four months old.

The method seems to work pretty well and gives us fresh compost every four months in the warmer half of the year. In winter the compost doesn’t heat up as easily, so it takes longer for the compost to mature.

Once a bin is mature and has nice dark brown earthy material, then we spread it around the garden, rinse the bin, and start anew.

Last spring I attended a presentation on kitchen gardening by Rebecca Bull Reed, Associate Gardening Editor for Southern Living magazine, and she shared some tips for starting your own compost:

Healthy compost is composed of 1 part green (the stuff you save in your kitchen) to 2 parts brown (dead tree leaves, healthy leftover soil from repotting, etc).
Add to it and turn it over regularly.
Cut your vegetables scraps small so they break down faster, or you can even run them through a blender.
Good compost takes 2 to 6 months to create, but your patience will be rewarded with nutrient-rich compost to add to your garden.

Composting is not a mystery, it’s something anyone can do and your garden will reward you for it.

More Information on Composting

EPA.gov: Composting

Garden Fork – How to Compost Your Leaves

Kitchen Gardeners International

Weekend Gardening: Transition from Summer to Winter

Andrea — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:17:48 +0000

Summer to winter sounds like a big jump, and that’s how it felt around here for a couple weeks. We hit a cold snap in mid October that caught the garden and us by surprise. Daytime temperatures dropped into the 40s, and though we didn’t have a frost the tomato and pepper plants stopped production. We pulled all the ripe tomatoes and left the green ones on for a little longer to see if they might ripen. After the hard frost on November 7, all the tomato and pepper plants drooped and we gathered the remaining tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos.

We brought in about 20 pounds of tomatillos, about 5 pounds of green tomatoes, and about 20 peppers, including a plethora of poblanos.

The white habanero plant finally kicked in last month and we have a bunch of tiny yellow and white habanero peppers which managed to survive the frost. The chiles start out green, turn yellow, then finally white.

Michael cleaned out the plants and we gathered all the tomato and pepper cages from the three beds. They look so empty now.

The blueberry bushes have turned red and are dropping their leaves. We had a small crop this year, not bad for the first year, and we look forward to seeing the leaves return in the spring and perhaps a few more blueberries next year.

The chards were overtaken by the monster turnip (far end), which we finally dug up. The scallions (left) have continued to thrive in the cool weather, and we are digging up the last of the summer lettuces and waiting for the winter crop to sprout. We have some cold frames we’ll put over the lettuces to keep them going through the winter.

We harvested the ginger which had been growing in a pot on the deck all summer (photo taken in July).

We only planted two small nubs of ginger and were pleased with the amount we got in return. Since the experiment was a success we will grow more ginger in pots next year.

With the cool Autumn season our garden is still producing. The cilantro is happily sprouting in both the beds and the pots and giving us flavorful leaves, and the sage, mint, thyme, and parsley will continue throughout the winter.

The garlic crop was a great success and we planted more this year. Last year we planted about 20 cloves, this year 80. Raised bed #4 (below) has 60 cloves planted around the perimeter and we put the other 20 in raised bed #1 after adding more compost and soil and raising up the herbs. We got the garlic in the ground a little later due to the sudden attack of winter—they need to be planted in mid October to early November—but they should sprout soon.

We are much further along than this time last year. The beds are in place and we have cold frames and floating row covers all set to go, so hopefully we’ll be able to keep some winter lettuces and other things going until spring. And in the meantime, we’ll start planning for the next summer garden.

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Andrea Meyers » Gardening

Weekend Gardening: Volunteers

Weekend Gardening: What’s Surviving the Heat

Weekend Gardening: Protecting Fruit Trees

Weekend Gardening: The Mixed Bed

Weekend Gardening: Tomato Updates

References

Weekend Gardening: Early Summer

Weekend Gardening: Rhubarb Growing Tip

Weekend Gardening: Planning for Spring Flowers

Weekend Gardening: A Cheap and Easy Way to Compost

More Information on Composting

More Gardening Posts

Weekend Gardening: Transition from Summer to Winter