June 2014 tour of my kitchen garden

Here's the latest video tour of my kitchen garden:

Planting squash and a snake sighting

I began to put my plans for a better squash season into action last week.  First I built a small structure from plastic tubing and covered it with Remay fabric. Then I planted two 'Tigress' squash seedlings inside, cosy and protected, I hope, from cucumber beetles.


Here's my little hoop house:

And inside before planting:

A view from the other end of the garden:

I've always been very comfortable with snakes, and enjoy meeting them in the garden. They are great eaters of small insects. I found this one under some lumber I moved to hold the Remay in place. I hope it sticks around to eat any cucumber beetles that show up!

Fighting back -- my plan to have a successful zucchini crop this year

Every season in the garden is a bit different, and I enjoy the challenge of adapting to  the many variables and still producing a good harvest.  Despite my best efforts, every year there is  at least one  easy crop that doesn't produce well.

In 2013 that crop was zucchini.  Not just for me, either, but for everyone I talked to who gardens in the Northeast US.  OK, I know all the jokes about leaving bags of baseball bat sized squash on doorsteps, but most summers I enjoy the exuberant output of my half dozen or so zucchini plants. 

Last year there was no exuberance, and all my zucchini died young,  victims of  fungus and the crowd of nasty little cucumber beetles that transmitted it. 

This year I am fighting back!  I bought two disease resistant varieties, Tigress (I grew this for years, but not last year) and Emerald Delight.  I am also (for the first time) starting all my squash in pots inside. They won't go into the garden until they have at least one set of true leaves. This means that beetles will not consume them before they have a chance to get to a fighting weight.

 I am also going to cover the young plants with a super light spun row cover until they flower, to further protect them from beetles. I'll have to uncover so they can be pollinated, but I hope by then the plants will be big and strong, and able to survive some chewing.  

And finally, I have some Neem spray that may help control the cucumber beetles. I use spray as a last resort- it's expensive, and even organic formulations can kill good insects too, throwing off the predator-prey balance in my garden.

I've also decided to start my winter squashes inside this year. I'm interested to see if this will make a difference in the final total of pounds of squash I store next fall.

Here's a pic of the zucchini seedlings just getting their first true leaves,  and the winter squash (and Brussels sprouts) planted but not yet showing:

Early harvest dinner ingredients

Here's a pic of last week's pasta ingredients-- fiddleheads, asparagus, last fall's final garlic head, and a sprouted red onion. I made a delicious pasta with sherry butter sauce.
No I did not eat the daffodils! These are a fragrant mini that came with the house-- I put them in a small vase on the kitchen window sill to sniff while cooking.

'so much depends on a black wheelbarrow'-- hardening off tomatoes

Sorry, I could not resist the paraphrase! My old black wheelbarrow has a flat tire and is cracked and leaky, but works great for holding tomato seedlings I am hardening off-- I just wheel it in and out of the garage morning and night. If the forecast holds and there is no sign of frost in the 10 day weather report I will plant on Wednesday.

May 2 video tour of the garden

Here's the first video tour of the year:

All the crops are a bit later than last year, but spring is definitely here. I f there are no frosts in the forecast for next week I will plant tomatoes.

My big tomato seedlings, and what to do with them

As I feared, my tomato seedlings started in March are big! Here's a pic:

And here's a comparison between Early Pick, started in March, and Sugar Lump, started 3 weeks ago:

The good news is that by using several strategies, including pinching back the main stem to encourage branching,  blowing on them with a fan to build strong stems, and feeding with dilute fish fertilizer every two weeks,  I am keeping the older seedlings strong and healthy.  I don't  even need to to stake them yet.
Early next week I will start hardening off my biggest tomato plants by carting them in and out of the garage in a wheelbarrow for steadily increasing daily exposure to wind and sun.  There are 3 varieties: Mortgage Lifter, Early Pick, and Rutgers. Around May 5th I will put a few into the garden. I'll either have really early tomatoes or lose them to frost... It will be an interesting experiment.