Beauty in the Garden

Hi Everyone,

Today's Harvest 25 lbs.        YTD 444 lbs.

We had a good day today, getting our work done before it got really hot. Our great crew today consisted of Susan, Jamie, G.A., Karen, and first timer intern Cindy Forman.

Bountiful tomatoes.

We harvested tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, okra, squash, beans and a bouquet of zinnias. Not all of the tomatoes were weighed, as we took the unripe ones home to ripen and will be included in Wednesday's harvest. The tomatoes that are just starting to turn get picked to refrain from tempting the raccoons with red ripe things. All was delivered to the halfway house ministry.

'Jade' bush beans with a few Burgundy beans.

As I said before, the 'Jade' beans are just super...beautiful beans and so prolific. The okra is starting to put out nice little batches, especially for the small size of the plants. Our peppers certainly aren't as bountiful as last year, but I've noticed more blossoms lately, so there is still hope.

Okra, Cavelli zucchini and banana peppers.

Today we experimented with the squash, first spraying Bt on the stems and then dusting the stems and ground area with diatomaceous earth to deter squash vine borers and squash bugs. The squash bugs are not nearly as bothersome this year, and G.A. de-egged the only plant that seemed to have any squash bugs. The vine borers seem to be at a minimum also. 

Quite a few tomatoes on rather sickly vines.

As you can see by the photo above, there are tomatoes on the vines but the foliage on the bottom half of most of the plants has turned brown. There appeared to be something that looked like black spot, so we thought it was a fungus from all the rain. We are hoping for another flush of tomatoes since the tops are nice and green.

Grafted tomato.

Above is a grafted tomato started by intern Al Hayes. It is a 'Big Rainbow' grafted into a 'Celebrity.' You will notice that it has none of the diseased foliage at the bottom. Grafted tomatoes are supposed to better withstand disease. No tomatoes yet, but some blossoms. I hope that with the predicted nighttime temps in the 60's next week, that this and all our tomatoes will set some fruit.

Caterpillars eating the dill.

Other chores that got done today....Jamie weeded and worked on the compost. Karen also weeded, clearing our front entrance and a bed. More pole beans were planted. We have to keep in mind where we will be planting our fall crops, planting things that will be ready to come out when the fall/winter crops are ready to go in. 

Zinnia bouquet was a big hit with the ladies.

Speaking of fall crops, the cabbage and broccoli will be started this week, aiming for a late August transplant date. Kale, mustard and kohlrabi will be direct seeded, but we will have to be diligent in watering when direct seeding while the weather is still hot.

I am looking forward to cooler temps next week to get a lot of garden work done, and hope you can do the same.

'Til later,

Dianne

Breaking in some new gardeners today at Davies PAR.

Hi Everyone,

HARVEST TODAY 43 lbs.          YTD 362 lbs.

There was a good group of gardeners today with some new folks and two long lost friends...Virginia and Bob. Also present were Joyce Carter, Dianne Campbell, Jeanne Courtney, Steve Brown, Martha Montesi, Greg, Susan, Melba, Rita and myself.

Marilyn and Jeanne weighing in the produce.

Harvest today included fennel, tomatoes, strawberries, beans, eggplant, squash, beets, peppers, cucumbers, okra, carrots and herbs.

Two more fennel bulbs this week, with more to come.

We were surprised that we had okra already on tiny plants less than 2 ft. high! What is going on? In the meanwhile, the peppers are slow, slow, slow. This year is certainly quite different from last. We got a nice tomato harvest today, and have not been bothered by raccoons so far....also unlike last year.

Maters.

Susan and Greg planted a bed of beets (two varieties), and Virginia and Bob planted three rows of potatoes. The seed potatoes were given to us, and we used as many as we could. As long as we have 90 frost free days, we can plant a late crop. I am concerned, however, that the insects/disease may pose a bigger problem at this late date...in addition to the voles. We hated to turn down something free.

Susan and Greg planting beets.

The squash were sprayed with Bt. The cantaloupe, squash and cucumbers were sprayed with the insect deterrent witch hazel mix. The butternut squash were full of squash bug eggs, which Greg squished. The other squash are relatively clean. The Minnesota Midgets are looking good. I believe it will be a good idea to start putting bird netting around them within the next week as they start to ripen to deter the raccoons.

Two of the biggest Minnesota Midget Cantaloupes with many more smaller on the vines.

Tomatoes were tied up and cucumbers trained on the trellis. No more horn worms were spotted on the tomatoes. Our pretty yellow Italian Pole Beans were few because of the voles getting so many vines, but those we got were beautiful.

Yellow Italian Pole Beans.

Rita pulled scads of carrots and also planted sunflowers. Our zinnias are looking great, and we sent a bouquet along with the delivery today. They love getting the zinnias, and we should do another planting so we can have zinnias all summer long.

Zinnias planted under the muscadine vine.

The garden is looking pretty good at present. I'd like to see more peppers, but I guess we were spoiled last year with our super abundant pepper harvest. Everyone worked hard today, and we were glad to see all the new folks.

'Til later,
Dianne

Carrots are finishing up and tomatoes just beginning at PAR Davies.

Hi Everyone,

HARVEST TODAY 67 lbs.       YTD 319 lbs.

Today consisted of harvesting, planting and fertilizing with gardeners Greg, Susan, Jamie, Bob, Martha Montesi, Dianne Campbell, Cathy, Mary Elizabeth and myself.

The big harvests today were onions and carrots. We have just started getting tomatoes. Two of the fennel bulbs were big enough to pull, and I sent three recipes using fennel and onions along with the delivery. We got a few more beets, zucchini, peppers and herbs of parsley, sage, basil and mint. We picked the last of the kale and cleaned out the kale beds. Cathy delivered all to the women's shelter.

Greg planting 'Jade' bush beans.

Jamie added compost and made two beautiful rows to plant bush beans. We were able to fill in empty spots with cucumber towers and a variety of bush beans. Bob picked all the rest of the onions and fertilized the cucumbers and squash with Comfrey tea.

Martha and the 'Midgets'

Martha trained all the Minnesota Midget Cantaloupe on the fence, and transplanted a few more to fill empty spots. Tomatoes were tied up; they seem to be putting out more nice green growth after the rain. Many of the yellow Italian pole beans were eaten by voles, and Susan replanted those and also Camilla cukes.

Peanuts

Two crops not bothered by the voles so far are the peanuts and sweet potatoes. I figure they know if the roots are left intact, there will be more to eat later on. We may have to thin the peanuts when they start putting out their pegs. We purposely planted thick in anticipation of some disappearing.

Sweet potatoes with zucchini at the far end.

The squash bugs are starting to appear, and we had to take out one big plant today. A few more squash were planted last week, and then we will wait until mid-to-late August to plant another crop in anticipation of fewer SVB's.

I hope we can report that we harvested many pounds of tomatoes next week.

Until then,

Dianne

A Tale of Two Raised Beds

Some of you followed along as Dianne built and planted her raised beds.  I used her method when I built some raised beds last fall.  Unfortunately, the place where we "planted" those beds was deemed unacceptable by the contractor who is renovating our house.  So early this spring, we moved them to our next door neighbor's yard.

When we transported all of the fill, we were able to put all of it into one of the frames, due to the natural decomposition that took place over the winter.  That meant that one frame was empty, of course.  I didn't have time to go through the method that I used in the fall - layering shredded newspaper, shredded leaves, topsoil, and manure - because I wanted to be able to plant for this summer.  I remembered a mix from Square Foot Gardening, looked it up, and filled the second bed with it.  The formula is 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 compost mixture.  For the compost mixture I used cow manure, composted chicken pellets, some fish emulsion - basically all the different kinds of compost I could get my hands on one Saturday morning!

In mid-April, I planted tomatoes and herbs in Bed One (with the original fill) and yellow squash, zucchini, zinnias, and cucumbers in Bed Two (with Mel's Mix.)  The difference is astounding.

Can you believe it?

As it happens, I got a soil test on Bed One that showed a pH of about 7.4.  That's on the high end of what is recommended for vegetables.  One of the symptoms of a higher than desirable pH is chlorosis, where leaves turn light green or yellow, but veins remain green.  This is what is going on in the tomato bed.  The soil test also recommended that I add nitrogen as the plants became established.  What with trying to finish up the renovation, I haven't been paying too good attention to these beds.  So last weekend I added aluminum sulfate (to lower the pH) and nitrogen to the bed.  I also sprinkled some Epson salts around the tomatoes, per Dianne's advice.

I'll take another photo in a few weeks so that we can see if there's any improvement.

P. S. - Dianne is amazed as well and plans on changing her recommendation re the fill for raised beds!

So much happening at PAR Davies

Hi Everyone,

HARVEST TODAY 45 lbs.       YTD 221 lbs.

What a great day we had. MUCH was accomplished with Mary Elizabeth, Karen, G.A., Jamie, Trisha, Maxine, Susan, Nancy, Martha, Janet and myself. With all we did this post may be longer than usual...at least with more photos.

Mr. Stripey is much taller than all the other tomato varieties.

G.A. started out the morning by mulching our tomatoes. We couldn't mulch them until they were bigger and the roots were tougher. Voles love to get under mulch, and we waited longer than we would like, thus allowing the possibility of disease splashing on the plants from the soil beneath. Only one row of tomatoes seem to be susceptible to aphids and a disease causing leaves to spot and turn yellow. These are the Roma VF, which will not be planted again because of this. These were sprayed with Neem for the aphids.

We are starting to see lots of tomatoes.

However, the one variety that is excelling is Mr. Stripey! They are by far the tallest in my garden at home too. I remember at the Tomato Tasting last year that we really liked the flavor of these.

We had a nice varied harvest of squash, onions, peas, cabbage, kale, lettuce, a few strawberries, herbs, mustard, beets and chard, and Martha delivered all to the women's shelter.

Rainbow and white chard.

The last squash plant was uncovered, and the stem had been invaded by the squash vine borer. None of the others has been bothered yet, and no squash bugs seen. All areas around the stems were sprayed with Bt and the stems of the Cavelli zucchini and yellow summer squash were injected with Bt. We harvested three squash that formed under the cover, telling us for sure that these are self fertile.

Marinade injector used to inject Bt into the squash stems.

We harvested all the cabbage and kale in Bed 6, and prepared the bed with some of our beautiful compost for planting of the peanuts. Since no one had ever planted peanut 'seeds' before, we hope we did it right. The variety is 'Tennessee Red.' There were a few seeds left over in case there were some mess-ups. Tall sunflowers were planted at the end of the peanut bed.

Check out the picture below for the great compost sifter Bob made. The compost is full of earthworms, and after being sifted, almost has the consistency of earthworm castings....very rich and black.

Compost sifter and final result.

Some of the beets from the in-ground bed were harvested. They seemed to get larger than when they were planted in the raised beds! They were big and beautiful. We really need to quit planting them in the raised beds with results like this.

Detroit Red Beets.

We have harvested all of the Japanese Red Mustard and left one stalk to harvest the seeds for a fall planting. This was really some great mustard--large and pretty, and tasted good too. When we plant again we will know to space them just a little closer together, especially since the voles 'thinned' these out. So remember workers, don't pull this one out until we get the seeds. This will have to be checked on often to make sure the pods don't open and scatter the seeds.

Japanese Red Mustard plant forming seed pods.

We are harvesting the onions as they mature, however, we still have lots of smaller ones left, which will stretch out our harvest over the next month at least. The white and yellow onions are maturing much faster than the red ones.

Red, white and yellow Dixondale onions.

Martha picked a nice bunch of herbs to send along...Chinese celery, basil, chives, parsley and mint. Along with these we sent Nasturtiums, the flowers and leaves. We knew that the flowers were edible, but Martha told us that the leaves can be added to salads too. We taste tested the leaves and they were quite good with a nice bite. We are so glad the ladies at the shelter are as adventurous as we are...they stated that everything we send them is used. But we may have reached the limit with Nasturtiums! They are pretty even if they don't want to eat them.

Nasturtiums

One last prize specimen...the artichoke. There is only one remaining and it seems to be thriving. I have a few more started from seed, and hope that they reach a good size so they can be transplanted to the garden before it gets too cold. I have seen a whole field of these that were in the ground for four years in Memphis. However, I don't know if they survived last winter.

'Emerald' Artichoke

The leaf lettuce is still looking pretty and not bolting yet, but this may be the last harvest. There was more weeding done and cardboard put down in areas. Cabbage was sprayed in addition to spraying the cucumbers with the witch hazel mixture. Carl Wayne at the Victory Garden has been using this as a bug deterrent, so we are trying it too....2 oz. witch hazel to about a liter of water and a few drops of plain dish soap.

I apologize for the length of this report, but there is just a lot going on now--and this is good! We do have pest and disease problems, but are so thankful for our many successes. We learn something new every week.

'Til later,
Dianne

Memphis' Newest Arboretum

From the June, 2014 issue of Branching Out, the newsletter of the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council:

International Place, a campus of three 10-story towers on Poplar Avenue in Memphis, is a new Level 1 arboretum.

The global headquarters of International Paper has a 1.5-acre front lawn with 34 species of trees, including specimen oaks up to 36-inch caliper. The courtyard has a meandering stream feature, a small waterfall, and several understory varieties of trees.

Check it out!

Garden Contest!

The Commercial Appeal and Graham's Outdoor Living are sponsoring a garden contest with $2,192 in winner takes all prizes!  The deadline is June 13, so submit your photos now!