2022 Garden Thread

[Dan Freeman]

I guess with your short growing season, everything needs to be near-perfect, and that's a hard thing to pull off. I guess there is always next year. What type of tomatoes will you be canning?

 

[EatenByLimestone]

its possible that spacing them out will help too. Since tomatoes mostly self poinate keeping them apart will let more wind in between them and dry out the leaves. This is probably more important with your watering schedule.

 

[Dan Freeman]

its possible that spacing them out will help too. Since tomatoes mostly self poinate keeping them apart will let more wind in between them and dry out the leaves. This is probably more important with your watering schedule.

I agree. Spacing further apart will help. The past few years I have started spacing my tomato plants further apart, and I prune heavily. I now prune to a single leader and as they grow, I take all the bottom growth off up to 2 feet above the soil. I will even prune leaves above 2 feet if I think the plants are too thick. It may have cut down somewhat on my tomato production per plant, but where I used to grow about 24 plants, I now grow about 30 plants, so I am still getting about the same number of tomatoes per season, and I haven't had any disease problems since I started doing this.

 

[begreen]

Sorry to hear about the leaf mold Pointdexter. Early Girls are a good bet. I have been growing them for years. They produce early, taste great, and have good disease resistance. Legend, Oregon Spring, and Stupice are also early varieties. I would forget the Amish Paste and try Territorial's Pomodoro Squisito for good, disease-resistant paste tomato. You might also try the Taiga that Duae Guttae grew. They were developed in Canada for short-season growing and appear almost seed free, though I have not read up on their disease resistance.

 

[Dan Freeman]

Agree on the Early Girls. You might also want to look into Early Treats. They are disease resistant too and get ripe earlier than the Early Girls.

Today we delivered 128 cases to a u-pick-it farm up around New Paltz, NY. They have been one of our customers for 16 years. We had to take 2 vans. It was about 5 hours round trip.

When we got home, we had to water everything. I picked a gallon bag of string beans, a gallon bag of peas, and 3 cucumbers for our neighbors. Also, gave them a dozen eggs.

I can't believe how fast the clover has spouted and is growing where I planted it just last week.



I bought a 2lb bag to plant in the area of the backyard where we used to have our raised beds since we have moved all of our vegetables down into the Food Forest.

 

[Dan Freeman]

Today, we picked some of our onions (about 1/3). Here is a pic of them with our garlic (still drying) in the background.



We also picked the American Purple Top Turnips and the Detroit Beets. We placed them in large totes with pine wood chips to preserve them down in the cellar.

We are going to plant another round of onions, beets and turnips. When we dig up the 3 raised beds of potatoes...probably another week or so...we are going to plant lettuce, spinach and cabbage in those beds.

Beets


Turnips

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I’ll be finishing up some fencing and bringing a couple empty beds back into production. I have kale and bok choy plantlets ready to go. Hopefully I can sneak some bean plants in too.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

@Poindexter, I’m sorry to hear about your tomatoes, but I admire you for harvesting wisdom. I have a hard time knowing when to call it quits and have been wondering whether my continued watering of many of my garden plants is foolishness this summer. I did prune back most of my tomatoes to just a few suckers to reduce their needs and let them get a new start for the fall.

I transplanted six little amaranth starts yesterday in an attempt to grow them for greens not grain. I started these inside on cotton balls, and these were the most developed starts. I gave the raised bed about 10 gallons of water, and they held up during the day. We got a huge blessing of a rainstorm last night, so I didn’t have to water today, and the temperature has only hit 95 so far. The amaranth was looking happy. I have more on cotton balls outside, but I want it to get some more root development before I put it in the ground.



I checked on my cucumber cuttings this morning. They had no trouble with the storm for which I’m thankful since it was pretty strong with wind and rain, but the bottles remained upright in their corner. There are definitely roots forming on most stems. They tended to be higher up, so I trimmed the stems to let them get lower in the bottles and moved them to more sunshine. You can see the large leaf looking a bit droopy in the heat.



These are the roots on the cuttings of my Alibi Hybrid, then the roots on the Jibai Shimoshirazu slicer.


I actually placed a seed order yesterday from Sand Hill Preservation Center. They don’t do online ordering and don’t really advertise their seeds with marketing and hype, but they can be a great source if you know of a particular variety you want to try. I wanted to try a fall planting of bush beans, and they had the type I wanted, so I ordered other thing from them as well. I did add two varieties of cucumbers to my order forms, so I may try some from seed in the ground in the next couple of weeks.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Today, we picked some of our onions (about 1/3). Here is a pic of them with our garlic (still drying) in the background.

View attachment 297047

We also picked the American Purple Top Turnips and the Detroit Beets. We placed them in large totes with pine wood chips to preserve them down in the cellar.

We are going to plant another round of onions, beets and turnips. When we dig up the 3 raised beds of potatoes...probably another week or so...we are going to plant lettuce, spinach and cabbage in those beds.

Beets
View attachment 297048

Turnips
View attachment 297049

Those are looking great. Do you eat your beet and turnip greens? I loved those growing up, and most of my kids appreciate beet greens. They’ve never had turnip greens because I’ve never grown them.

Looking at the beautiful greens hanging down from your onions, I think I’d be out there with scissors cutting some off to dehydrate for onion powder. Ours that we made earlier in the season has been a huge hit, especially when I add it to homemade mayonnaise.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

I’ll be finishing up some fencing and bringing a couple empty beds back into production. I have kale and bok choy plantlets ready to go. Hopefully I can sneak some bean plants in too.

Yum. Those are all favorites of mine. The kale that I was growing inside in our Aerogarden seems to have survived its abrupt relocation to an outside planter. I’m hoping to get a harvest off it before the the cabbage worms find it.

 

[Dan Freeman]

Those are looking great. Do you eat your beet and turnip greens? I loved those growing up, and most of my kids appreciate beet greens. They’ve never had turnip greens because I’ve never grown them.

Looking at the beautiful greens hanging down from your onions, I think I’d be out there with scissors cutting some off to dehydrate for onion powder. Ours that we made earlier in the season has been a huge hit, especially when I add it to homemade mayonnaise.

We gave all the greens to the chickens.

 

[begreen]

Garlic Harvest #2 today. Mostly white softneck, but also some rioja that I missed. We have a lot this year.

 

[Poindexter]

Appreciate the kind words. I knew going in I might be growing the most expensive compost ever. Having to take my leaves and stems and dirt to the dump so as to not contaminate my compost pile with leaf mold wasn't actually on my list as a worst possible outcome; so I have actually spent a lot of money and still failed to meet my lowest expectations. I really do appreciate the support. My wife has left town for a week because she knows I hate to be thwarted. As in HATE to be thwarted. I am really trying to be equanimous about this, but baseline I am pissed.

On sale for $8.46/ pound was wild caught sockeye today, I cleaned out the case on that one and brought home 15 pounds of potato to can as well.

From a nutritional standpoint, the most valuable things I can can that we will eat is antioxidants and fats.

All the local game meat is very lean, moose and caribou have like zero marbling. Bear, even in the autumn when they are fat, have fat deposits here and no marbling in the muscle over there. Local salmon ( I am about 360 air miles from salt water) have swum at least 400 river miles (fasting), when they get here with their fat reserves pretty well used up. They can still make fertile eggs, but not nearly as nutritious as they were a week ago when they left salt water to start swimming upstream in freshwater. For salmon wild caught in salt water with all the Omega 3s and so on still in the meat, $8.46/pound is a steal, local.

Local we can grow leafy greens, white potato with white/yellow flesh, white potato with red colored flesh and white potato with purple colored flesh. For optimal nutrition you want as many different colors as you can get on your plate when you come back from the salad bar, and many of you are growing exactly that. I am not going to go all Poindexter on the various antioxidant chemicals that make the various colors. I am, with extremely low expectations, going to can some Kroger hothouse tomato in the next few weeks.

I am going to grow a good harvest of canning tomato in Fairbanks. I don't know what year it will be. I don't know what variety it will be. It seems like, on average, our last frost is earlier, our first frost is later and our summer is hotter year after year since I got here in 2008. Whether it is my increasing skill or the warming climate that gets me over the line is yet to be seen.

/highjack, I will be in the canning thread.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Why are you canning potatoes? They can last in a cool area just fine all winter long. Do they have better freeze protection?

Last week I was on a road trip. As I drove around Glacier NP, I saw lots of huckleberry plants and wondered if they’d survive where you are. Given the altitude, glaciers, etc, it may be the closest the lower 48 is to your climate.

 

[Dan Freeman]

Today's tomato harvest:



And we harvested our potatoes in one of the three raised beds. The Russet and Red Potatoes aren't ready yet, but the Yellow Potatoes were, so we dug them up today. 54 pounds from an 8 x 4 raised garden bed. As we do with all our root vegetables, we have them drying on the front porch.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I got my fence finished and then planted my kale and bok choy plantlets. I noticed my oldest bok choy plants were starting to bolt. I didn’t know they would do that. We’ll see how they handle topping.

 

[clancey]

Freeman--everything looks wonderful and does anybody grow those great big potato's for baking? Looked up bolting Lime and my lettuce has bolted..Here is a article on it..clancey

Gardening Basics for Beginners

If you're new to gardening or just need a refresher, this is the best place to find advice on everything from how to plant seeds to what is propagation.

www.thespruce.com

 

[Dan Freeman]

Freeman--everything looks wonderful and does anybody grow those great big potato's for baking? Looked up bolting Lime and my lettuce has bolted..Here is a article on it..clancey

Gardening Basics for Beginners

If you're new to gardening or just need a refresher, this is the best place to find advice on everything from how to plant seeds to what is propagation.

www.thespruce.com

These potatoes are best for things like mashing or roasting. We do have a raised bed of Russets that are for baking, but they won't be ready for a couple of more weeks.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

We like to grow Yukon Gold potatoes.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I was shaking the vanilla extract that I made last Thanksgiving and glanced over at my wife who was making pesto. I got to thinking, I wish she used more garlic.

Then it hit me, I could probably make garlic extract like I make vanilla extract.

A couple of drops could really up the garlic taste on pesto, pizza, toast, your kids cereal when she isn’t looking…

We’ll maybe not the cereal.

What do you guys think? Crazy idea? Worth exploring for the cost of a head of garlic and some vodka from the basement?

 

[DuaeGuttae]

I was shaking the vanilla extract that I made last Thanksgiving and glanced over at my wife who was making pesto. I got to thinking, I wish she used more garlic.

Then it hit me, I could probably make garlic extract like I make vanilla extract.

A couple of drops could really up the garlic taste on pesto, pizza, toast, your kids cereal when she isn’t looking…

We’ll maybe not the cereal.

What do you guys think? Crazy idea? Worth exploring for the cost of a head of garlic and some vodka from the basement?

I’m really glad you didn’t get to thinking about adding vanilla extract to the pesto!

Why not just press a clove of garlic into your serving of the pesto, or on your slice of pizza or toast? (We’ll just pass over that whole kid’s cereal thing.)

I have no idea if garlic would work in Vodka. I’d try it on a small scale if I tried it at all since a whole bottle of Vodka is expensive. (We make our own vanilla extract, too, and we do it a whole large bottle at a time.) I’ve made small quantities of garlic oil by infusing garlic in olive oil. We don’t keep that long-term, though.

I now have a hankering for garlic bread. Oh well. There’s no bread in the house at the moment.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Yesterday our forecast high was significantly lower than it has been (and we indeed only got up to 96). I also had plans to do a regular watering of the garden, so I took the opportunity to transplant the rest of my amaranth as well as a few very small tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings. I hardened them off still in the Aerogarden, and they went straight from there to soil. It’s not, perhaps, the best practice, but it’s hard for me to keep little tiny potted up seedlings from drying out in intense heat and sun, so it’s what I judged best for now. They survived their first day out, and I gave them another good watering can watering this morning. They’ll get watered every day for their first week at least; then I’ll see how they do going a bit longer.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

It’s watering time here too. The heat is *only * high 80s /low 90s, but it’s tough on plants. I see the peppers go from looking great mid day to wilting a bit as the sun bakes them. They must be happy though. They’re bigger than most of the gardens I see at work.

 

[clancey]

I feel for you in Texas--what a "hot stage of temperature"--hope you all find a way to keep cool. Today here it was 91 degrees and hot weather "on the way"...all next week so they say...clancey

 

[begreen]

Final garlic harvest.


j/k- that's in Italy