Hay

Plot on October 22

I went to Agricultural Hall yesterday afternoon and had a nice little chat with Bill about garlic, bees and apple cider. I got half a bale of field hay to spread on my garlic. It has been very rainy in the past few days and it is supposed to be a wet week. I hope the garlic I planted three days ago will be okay with all the water.

I still have quite a few things going on in my plot: squash, chard, leeks, onions, fall greens (mostly arugula and mustard greens), some last tomatoes, herbs and still some dahlias.

Planting Bulbs

Tulip, grape hyacinth and Anemone blanda bulbs

Today I planted my garlic (2 rows hardneck – saved from my harvest in July – and 3 rows softneck – Inchelium Red from Johnny’s) in the community garden and flower bulbs in our front yard. I bought the bulbs a few weeks ago from K. van Bourgondien: two types of tulips (Blushing Apeldoorn and Ronaldo), grape hyacinths and Anemone blanda. Can’t wait for them to bloom in spring!

Garden Work Day

Fall bouquet – dahlia, Jerusalem artichokes, parsley flower, pokeweed

We had our fall work day in the community garden this past Saturday. We mostly weeded, cleaned and got the garden ready for winter. There was a big patch of Jerusalem artichokes in the flower bed we adopted and we needed to take them out. Some of them came home with me and made it into this small bouquet.

Parsley
These are the last green beans. (The bell peppers and the black hot peppers are from another gardener’s plot who recently moved away)

End of September

I watered the garden this morning and harvested 2 pounds of green beans and a handful of tomatoes.

The plot is looking pretty good. The beans are still growing strong, I have twelve butternut squashes going, and a jungle of Swiss chard. Still some tomatoes. Sadly, only one dahlia came up, and the leeks are still small for the most part (too much shade from the chard). The fall greens are being eaten by flea beetles, they have tons of tiny holes in the leaves.

Vandalism

Today’s harvest

Good news first: I harvested more green beans, which will be part of dinner tonight together with the ones I harvested a couple of days ago.

Bad news: our community garden was vandalized last night by a drunk/high person. I talked to neighbors from across the street who saw the man hurling the lids of our compost bins around, confronted him and called the police. The officers questioned him but let him go whereupon he continued to destroy our garden. Several plots were damaged, mostly by destroying trellises and tomato cages, tall plants were snapped, our (very heavy) table in the patio area was toppled as was the water barrel.

I filed a report with the police. They promised to send more patrols into the area over the next few days. I hope this was an isolated incident.

Destroyed tomato plants
More destruction
Destroyed tomato cage

Late August

This morning, I spent an hour in the garden weeding and harvesting. My plan was to harvest the potatoes but alas, I got only a handful of small fingerlings. Most of the potatoes I had planted never became a plant and I suspect those pill bugs that are so abundant in my soil are responsible :(. This is the second year of no potatoes and I think I will not plant any next year. Very sad as I was looking forward to some roasted fingerlings.

I did however harvest some huge cucumbers, a bunch of tomatoes and my golden beets.

Some things to look forward to:

My huge butternut squash patch …
… a lot of green beans, both bush and pole, and …
… purple cauliflower.

Summer Plot

The squash vine is everywhere. I will have at least five butternut squashes from what I can tell. The Swiss Chard is doing well (has some leafminer damage though), the cauliflower is “fruiting”, the tomatoes are blushing and the cucumber plants are providing . The beans came up nicely, I will need to stake the pole beans very soon. I planted the beans late because I wanted them to be ready for harvest after I come back from my trip in August. The first dahlias are starting to open.

Squash and Beans

Butternut squash

It has been warm and humid these past days and we are in the middle of a heat wave now (temperatures will be 100 tomorrow and Sunday), so things are progressing fast in the garden. The squash is growing very nicely and the beans I planted just five days ago all came up and are looking strong.

Kentucky Wonder pole bean, 5 days old