Garlic Harvest and More

The garden continues to grow at a breakneck pace, in this hot, humid weather. Summer of course continues to fly by, so this update is about a week out of date. As the garden grows, I have more pictures to share. By the end of the season, this segment might just be captioned pictures!

The garden is coming along strong. Tropical tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash and other varieties just love the heat and it shows.

On August 8th, I determined that the garlic was ready for harvest. The outer leaves were browning, and scapes were standing straight up. I grew hardneck garlic varieties, Russian Red and German Extra-Hardy, because both do well in my zone (5b).

In the center of this photo, note the upright scape. This is an indicator that garlic is ready to harvest. (Click on any photo to enlarge).



After harvest, these were the garlic plants that had scapes. Note the size of the bulbs - they are basically a single garlic clove. Looks like taking the scapes off makes a difference in bulb size, at least in my yard.



Some of the garlic started growing little bulblets at the top of the stem, even though I'd picked off the scapes. Our resident garlic expert said that this was another way for the garlic plant to reproduce, and that the wet summer may have spurred this behavior.



This is a picture of several of the largest cloves I got (bottom) with some "medium" ones on top. In previous years, I was lucky if I got a couple of cloves this large. Fresh compost and rain must have helped the plants this summer!



This year I got many large bulbs. I sorted by size, and small, medium, and large are in their bins from left to right. These are now in my uninsulated garage, curing in the heat. I'll have to bring them in before it gets cold out, so they don't freeze and spoil.

I canned pickles this past Saturday and picked out about a dozen of the medium bulbs - after cleaning and peeling, I had a half-pound of garlic cloves. We'll have plenty to enjoy this year, after sharing with family and friends. I'll also save some of the largest garlic for planting, as it is acclimated to my yard.



Now there is a lonely spot in the garden, but it will be ready for next year's garlic as soon as I add a bit of compost. I read that alliums do better planted in the same spot year after year, and if this year's garlic crop is any indication, that is apparently true!

Well, in my yard, anyway. I'm told by our resident experts that it is better to rotate crops, to prevent pests and diseases. However, this is the shadier end of my garden, and other plants would suffer more there.



We also picked our shallots - their leaves had laid down fully. They are also curing in the garage. Next year I should plant twice as many - I love shallots and they go quickly. It is so inexpensive to grow and store them, comparied to the exorbinant prices charged by the grocery store.



The onions continue to grow. This weekend I did notice some browning among the leaves, so we'll be harvesting them soon.



The tomatoes are growing nicely, and you can see that the eggplants have taken off of late.



Here are some ripening hybrid Tomaccio cherry tomatoes. You can see yellow leaves - these all had signs of bacterial speck. My tomato plants get bacterial speck every year, and it is a mere annoyance until late September, when the fruit start to get spotty. But they are still edible - we just cut off any really bad spots.

Here is a close-up of a leaf with bacterial speck. Of course, I've diagnosed it myself, so if you think it's something else, let me know!



Sungold tomatoes continue to grow and ripen on the "ringer" plant I bought. I'm never growing a garden without "ringers" again - so far they're my only producers!



The tomato trellis - they are growing, slowly but surely. In the back right of this picture (in front of the arborvitae trees) you can see oregano growing.



Rows of growing tomatoes - they're coming along.



Kellogg's Breakfast, a bright-orange beefsteak heirloom variety, coming along. Hopefully they'll be close to ripe before the f-word comes along. (I mean frost of course, what were you thinking?)



Tomato blossoms coming along - note the browning one toward the top. It wasn't fertilized in time, and will break off so the plant stops putting energy into it, and the others can grow into tomatoes. I believe this is Black Cherry.



I planted basil between my tomato plants. In addition to making my favorite summer caprese salad much easier to make, the basil is supposed to be a good companion for tomatoes, doing everything from repelling bad insects and attracting good ones, to making tomatoes taste better. (I originally read about this in an interesting book called "Carrots Love Tomatoes"). I learned that the two plants can get along, but the main reason I put the basil among the tomatoes is that I never watered my herb garden.

The herb garden (in the back perennial bed) now features a massive, self-seeding oregano bush (probably many plants but it is huge!) and chives. I also have some perennial vegetables back there - Jerusalem artichokes, rhubarb and asparagus - and strawberries. They are in a lot of shade so do variably well - I did get about a quart of strawberries from my two-year-old never-properly-trained plants this year.



I tied the tomatillos to their stakes so they wouldn't sprawl into the onions.



The husk cherries are coming along - we'll see if I get a crop this year. I hope I do - they are supposed to make nice jam.



The sweet potatoes are vining well - they'll be trained toward the garlic now. In the lower left hand corner of this picture, you can see the volunteer tomato plant that had come up with the garlic. I am fairly certain that it is a Wonder Light plant - the tomatoes are shaped like lemons, and when ripe, will look like them.



The squash are coming right along. I think I didn't clear away enough garden fabric for some of the plants to thrive, so next year I'll change that.



I have been training the pumpkins to climb the trellis.



I have some baby pumpkins coming along. I need to dig through the leaves to find the variety tags.





Cucumbers are along the trellis on the right, and in front of the tomato trellis, you can see several dill plants I put in place of peppers which died. Dill is supposed to be a companion for cucumbers, so next year I'll plant it closer (and further from the tomatoes).





More companion planting: nastirtiums apparently attract predatory insects, and repel cucumber beetles and squash bugs, among others. (Wikipedia has more info about companion planting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants). So they don't just look pretty!



The bean trellises are very lush.



The Red Noodle Beans are climbing to the top of the trellis.



The Fortex and Marvel of Venice beans have done very well. As of 8/15, I've picked 9 pounds from 24 feet of plants (about 24 plants). And they are delicious!





The edges of the leaves on the potato plants in the compost are just barely starting to turn brown.



The potatoes in the compost bin are still growing - they even produced a little potato fruit. Do not eat!



The peppers are blossoming, finally!



The eggplants have grown nicely, and have buds.



I can't complain about this summer. Despite the slow start, things are going great guns now.

 

What's New At The Farm? 8/12/09

It rained. It rained Monday afternoon, it rained early Tuesday morning, it rained and rained and rained.....................

So now what do we do? We work in the rain. We thin fall carrots, we weed, we do whatever we need to that can be done in the rain. We can work in the greenhouses, although there's not a whole lot going on in them now. We get equipment ready for harvesting. We install electric fences to keep the critters out of the corn and the pumpkins. We trap and relocate animals that are foolish enough to go into the traps; mostly raccoons and quill pigs.

The list of what we can't do in the rain is longer. We can't rotovate, we can't seed any ground down, we can't paint anything out in the yard and we can't prune tomatoes. Standing water in several fields makes working them impossible. Who would have thought we'd have standing water in the middle of August? Weeding is more of a challenge as the weeds reroot easily if left on wet ground. Last year we painted everything that didn't move and put in place everything that did so we're in good shape now.

We've got one field I've been trying to get a crop established for going on four years now and there's standing water out there now. The first year I planted sweet clover which winterkilled, the second year I didn't plant clover as I intended to plant the field in crop, the third year someone, (who shall remain nameless, and, no it wasn't me) forgot to put the clover seed in the grain drill and this year it looks like it's going to be too wet. Maybe I'll try for five years in a row. A local farmer asked me what my plan was for that field because all we ever do is plow, field cultivate and harrow it and I told him that's exactly what we were doing - a plot to just plow and harrow and field cultivate, period.

Late blight continues to be an issue here as well as across Maine. Northeast Ag. has come in with their sprayer to spray our seed productions for us. Their rig is 12 feet wide and six feet high with a ninety foot sprayer boom. This long boom allows them to spray our tomatoes without damaging the crops as they don't have to enter the crops at all. They can do in one hour what it would take us two days to do. With them spraying, we can concentrate our efforts on pruning and weeding and the other activities associated with running a farm. We've also got some additional help in the form of temps so that's helping out; some farm crew taking time off in the summer creates a shortage. Honestly, I don't know why anyone would want to take time off in the summer when you could wait until winter and spend that time cramming wood in the stove. Beyond me.

If summer is going to show up at all this year, it needs to hurry up. The temperatures have been great for working but not great for the crops. In a short six weeks we'll be thinking about our first frost. Bad word - frost - I know, but it's coming. So's winter. That's a cheery thought.

The crops are ripening well now. We've been harvesting cucumbers and summer squash for a couple of weeks. This week we'll see the first of the peppers, sweet corn and probably a few tomatoes, in the hoop house at least. Lots of greenhouse cucumbers being picked now.

Until next week, the sun is out and I'm going to get some rotovating done.

Brian

Why I Love Summer

Exciting discoveries abound in the garden, and the backyard becomes your grocery store. Before long, this hod will be full when I go out - things are coming on strong, despite the slow start!

Have a great weekend!

(From left to right, Zephyr summer squash; Marvel of Venice (flat, yellow) and Fortex (green) pole beans; Tomaccio cherry tomato.)

What's New At The Farm? 8/05/09

The critters continue to elude us and are sampling the squash and pumpkins. I think squirrels are mostly to blame but we've also seen a few rats and some very fat woodchucks. When these guys have an entire smorgasbord of fruit to eat in the field, a trap with apples and peanut butter doesn't sound too appetizing. Jeff did manage to get a half-grown skunk this morning, but with 12 traps out daily we're not getting much activity. I've got some granular repellent coming so we'll see how that works to deter them.

Late blight continues to be an issue here at the farm. Scouting takes place three times a week. Scouting is what it sounds like; walking through each row of each tomato crop and making notes about the spread of the disease. Susie and I scouted five crops yesterday and I did two this morning. You can easily tell how much the disease has spread by walking the crops frequently. If the weather breaks and we actually get some sun and heat we'll be done with late blight as it can't survive these conditions, but if it stays damp - look out!

Insects are pretty much controlled. Mike sprays the onions once a week for thrips, the Mexican bean beetles are dead and there are a few Japanese Beetles around. Flea beetles are foiled by row covers and the potato beetles numbers have been severely reduced by using Entrust.

The cover crops I planned on planting this year haven't been planted yet; just too wet to work the fields much. It's still possible to bury a tractor, quite easily I might add. Six weeks ago I planted about three acres of oats and annual alfalfa mixed and we mowed it today. The oats were starting to head out in pretty good shape and as I didn't want them going to seed, we mowed them. The oats will die but the alfalfa, now that it's established, will grow and thrive without any competition from the oats. Sure, the alfalfa will winterkill, but it'll get some really good growth this late part of the summer and into the fall.

Harvesting will start in a couple of weeks with the determinate tomatoes. Washington Cherry will be one of the first ones to be harvested. We have eleven tomato productions here this year so we'll be busier than last year for sure.

The crops are coming in just about on schedule; lots of summer squash and cucumbers right now. Early tomatoes are also starting to ripen. I had a couple from a seed production Monday this week and they were pretty sweet. The next big crop will probably be melons and that's fine by me. Nothing like field fresh melons!

Until next week, enjoy the weather.

Brian

Tater Blossom Time

This time of year, when it (FINALLY!!!) gets hot, the garden explodes. I took these pictures late last week, and worked in the garden this past weekend, getting rid of the few weeds there were, and trellising plants. I could swear that the tomato plants grew 3 or 4 inches last week, and there were a few baby beans on the pole bean plants. Even with the cold, wet July, there is hope that August's warmth will bring bounty to the garden.


I also checked my tomato, pepper, eggplant, tomatillo, and potato plants for late blight. (Luckily, all I found was the occasional dead leaf, and a bit of bacterial speck, which happens when mud splashes up on the leaves after a heavy rain.) They are all in the same family, and, while all might not be susceptible, I am a bit concerned about it, since I read an interesting article here about its prevalence this summer. If you weren't aware, late blight is the same fungus that caused the Irish Potato Famine back in the 19th century. These days we have fungicides and a good understanding of the disease's life cycle, but if you are a first-time gardener, it could be devistating, both to your plants and to your hobby. If it hits your garden, hopefully this article will help you to understand what's going on and what to do, and remember, life will go on next year! This is a bad weather year - they aren't all like this.





Garden on 7/29/2009.





The potatoes in their barrels, dirt has been added to the tops. They are looking terrific - it is a great year for potatoes, as long as late blight doesn't hit!





White potato blossoms on the Kennebec potatoes.





Purple blossoms on the Russian Reds or French Fingerlings (planted together).





Volunteer potato plants in the compost bin - last year, we got one that weighed a pound out of the compost. If my barrels don't work out, I might just dump my seed potatoes in the bin next spring!





Cherry tomatoes "Tomacchio" from the "ringer" plants - we've had a steady supply and have harvested about 2 pounds from them so far. They aren't as tasty as the heirloom tomatoes, but still tastier than those from the grocery store!





Brandywine tomato - ripened very quickly after this picture was taken. I hope this plant produces more. This was also a "ringer" plant.





Eggplants are growing, not as quickly as I'd like, but there is still time for them to catch up.





Peppers are also growing slowly.





The tomatillo plants are doing well and have many flowers. I need to trellis them better - I think I'll use rags from an old t-shirt to gently tie them to the bamboo stakes.





My pole beans have gone crazy. On the left and in the back on the right are Fortex and Marvel of Venice, both of which take about 60 days to produce, and in the foreground on the right are Red Noodle, which are 85 day producers. We ate a couple of baby beans off the vine on Saturday, and were they tasty.





Bean blossoms - I love the shape and promise.





One cucumber plant is starting to run. I'm lucky to work at a place that has an abundance of veggies, since my cukes never do too well. Working at Johnny's certainly keeps me in pickles.





I planted Nasturtiums under the trellises - they are doing very nicely.





The first Zephyr summer squash was picked on Saturday, and sauteed Sunday - delicious. I always plant this colorful variety.





One of the squash blossoms was just loaded with bees - a couple flew out before I snapped this shot. It's nice to see honeybees around again!





The garlic is just about ready to harvest. I spoke to Mike Brown, owner of a local farm and a product manager here at Johnny's, and he said a good tip for garlic harvest is to leave a couple of scapes on your plants - once they uncurl and point straight up, the garlic is ready to harvest. Saturday two scapes I missed were pointing up, but one was still curved over, so I think I'll harvest this coming weekend.





A volunteer tomato plant among the garlic. I never have the heart to kill them - and it has blossoms. It will be interesting to see what variety this is. I grow mostly heirlooms, so I am hoping its from one of those plants. Apparently this is the peril of not getting your compost bin hot enough (as are the potatoes growing in it!)





The shallots are ready to harvest, also - once their leaves lie down, they have stopped growing and are ready to pick.





The onions are growing strong. I'm hoping the get some size to them, but they might not, since I planted kind of late.





The sweet potatoes are vining - once the garlic is up, I'll train them over to that area.

What's New At The Farm? 7/29/09

As we approach the end of July I come to the unfortunate realization summer's end is but a few weeks away. And after what seems like an endless rainy spell that's lasted much of the summer we're finally getting some heat; better late than never.

Our crops here at Johnny's have survived amazing well. The tomatoes (and we've got lots of them) are looking good. Constant scouting for disease and pest damage, coupled with an aggressive fungicide program, has left them in pretty good shape considering the weather conditions since we transplanted them. The breeding workshop and the trials have all been trellised so that has helped them by getting them at least some air circulation.

We basket weaved a tomato for seed production; a first in memory. It's a cherry tomato, and with several other cherry tomatoes in production this year, I am concerned about how long it's going to take to harvest them for seed. Many years ago we did a cherry that had over 500 tomatoes in a bucket, and it was prolific (you could sit in one place and fill a bucket); so it takes a while to pick 500 cherry tomatoes. Couple that with the fact we have a half acre of these little devils... well, you can see where I'm going with this. So anyways, we did basket weaving so at least we won't have to be on our hands and knees for days on end picking these.

Other seed productions we have this year include melons, squash, pumpkins and cucumbers. Melons are probably the most fun to do. We wait until 90% of the fruits are in the "ripe to overripe" stage and then pick them, slice them in half and dump the seeds into buckets. While some of the fruit are well beyond eating stage there's always a few that makes you wish you'd brought a spoon. A lot of people can't stand to eat what we're harvesting, especially if they have a weak stomach, but some of us enjoy it. Nothing like a cool and sweet melon while working in the field on a crisp but soon-to-be warm day.

Critters are keeping Jeff busy catching and releasing. He started in earnest last week and has gotten a squirrel, two raccoons and two quill pigs (porcupines) so far; all within a week. The squirrel went home with him to get released into his new home up the road a bit, the big quill pig went down on the "bog" six or seven miles away, the raccoons went to Palermo on a back road and the baby porcupine went to the Wildlife Care Center in South China as he was pretty small to be on his own. Bait of choice this year, and yes I know it sound strange, is sliced apples in a shallow bowl of peanut butter. That combination works on everything except raccoons; they prefer canned sardines.

Until next week, enjoy the summer while it's here.

Brian

Photos from the Farm

Here at Johnny's we run a variety of different trials over the year. Depending on what we're testing, the process starts with planting seeds, growing out plants, harvesting fruit, then harvesting seeds from the fruit. Here are some photos from the trialing process for your enjoyment.

Start of Pepper Breeding Trials

Planting Out Pepper Breeding Trials


Planting New York Early Onion

Covering Squash Transplants with Row Cover


Tomato Trials

Basket Weaving Tomatoes


Lettuce Trials

Spinach Trials


Tomatoes, Peppers, and Greens in the Hoophouse

Plants in the Greenhouse


Flower Trials

Sluicing Squash Seeds

What's New At The Farm? 7/22/09

Despite the weather the crops are growing well. We started squash pollination just two days later than last year. The plants are responding with rapid growth to the day or two of sunshine we have been getting.

There's a fair amount of disease around this year; not unexpected with the weather conditions we've had, and are having, but not as much as we expected. Insect pressure continues daily with aphids and Mexican Bean beetles topping the list. I saw Japanese beetles yesterday for the first time this year. Luckily they're easy to kill but fly in as soon as their brethren die off. Some of their favorite crops include bush beans, raspberries and grapes. Rosa rugosa roses are a good plant to keep an eye on as they love the blossoms. Best time to spray Japanese beetles is first thing in the morning while they're clustered together in bunches waiting for the sun to warm them up. Of course you have to keep spraying them as new ones fly in routinely. Pyganic works well on them.

Mexican bean beetles will make short work of your bush beans if you don't control them. A couple of sprays of Pyganic should keep their numbers in check. Mexican Bean beetles are members of the ladybug family; one of the only members that don't eat other insects. The adults lay their eggs mid-summer on bean leaves and the larvae hatch out and they do the most damage. The larvae are yellow and fuzzy. Here again they're easy to kill and a couple of sprays ought to do them, but you've got to do it.

Onion thrips are out; by the time you see their damage it's too late. We scouted last week and found some so a weekly spraying of Pyganic has started. Thrips also damage gladiolas and iris so if you have them an early spray should keep their numbers on check. They will destroy or severely weaken the crops aforementioned and a couple of sprays a week to ten days apart will keep their numbers down. Monterey Insect spray and Entrust will kill them.

Aphids are out in force as they usually are. Certain flowers and crops seem to attract them in great numbers; they're easy to spot where they are heavily populated. A strong stream of water will wash them off the plants and they will generally not return. Safer's Soap will kill the remaining stubborn ones.

When spraying any insecticide it's important to avoid killing the good bugs; the parasitic wasps, ladybugs, mantids, ground beetles and butterflies. We use a "threshold" to determine if spraying and insecticide is warranted. A threshold is a number given to an insect population in a certain crop area. For example if we found one thrip in twenty onion plants that threshold would tell us we needn't use an insecticide as the numbers of insects in really small. If on the other hand we counted twenty thrips per plant spraying would happen sooner than later. The threshold determines when to spray based on whether the pest numbers will do economic harm to the crop. Low numbers usually indicate spraying isn't needed and high numbers indicate the opposite.

Until next week keep the bugs in check.

Brian


For more information, please see our videos on pest and disease controls.

We have the right pest and disease control product for your problem; visit our website for more information.

--The Webmaster, Johnny's Selected Seeds

What's New At The Farm? 7/15/09

I seriously wonder if we're going to get any summer weather. The temps seem below normal and the wet weather continues to hold on - hold on much longer than we'd planned on. If it weren't for these constant challenges it wouldn't be farming. Speaking of challenges this year has been more of a weed control challenge than the past few years. The constant showers and never ending days of cool, wet conditions make it ideal for weeds and diseases to thrive.

We rely primarily on mechanical cultivation for the majority of our weed control; it makes it harder when you can't get a tractor into the field for weeks straight. You can do more weed control on a good day than a crew can do in a week; that's why we like cultivation so well. Once the weeds are over a couple of inches tall they are really hard to kill; now other methods of weed control need to be used.

Methods like flaming - moderately effective on large weeds, small weeds are best. Organic herbicides like clove oil and vinegar are used with some success - thorough coverage is necessary. Hand weeding is a last resort as it's very expensive - good, but expensive.

We use mulching more and more each year. Last year we used 185 big round bales of hay mulch and this year we're looking at using 250 or so. To put it in perspective, 250 big round bales are equal to 5000 square bales. There are several issues with using so much mulch:

1. Expense of mulch
2. Labor to spread it
3. What to do with it once we're done with the field

Expense is one thing we can't do much about. We have a local farmer who bales what and when we want it and delivers it to the field. His bales are large and he's very accommodating to work with. I'm sure we could find some cheaper but we'd have to hunt around for it, may have to pick it up and may get some noxious weeds or unwanted additions to the hay. I know his fields and I know what grows there so I know what we're getting. We're also supporting a farmer right near Johnny's so we're doing the local thing.

Labor to spread it. Having a lot of people makes short work of spreading 250 bales of mulch hay. We will have invested around 160 man-hours in the spreading of 250 big, round bales in a total of about five acres. This may seem like a lot of hours but it's less than half a week for the crew. That's gives 5 acres of total weed control for the entire season for a minimal investment.

What to do with it once we're done with the field. Three years ago we left the two fields untouched until the following spring. The mulch protected the soil from fall and winter erosion. We spread compost and plowed it down. The tomato crop was short that year; the hay breaking down robbed the tomatoes of the nitrogen they needed. Two years ago we raked the mulch off and prepared our ground as usual. Seemed like a waste of organic matter, so this year we spread pelletized chicken manure on the mulch and plowed it down. In theory, as the mulch breaks down it will tie up the nitrogen from the chicken manure and not from our crops we planted. So far, so good.

Until next week, Brian