Organic Gardening on the Great Anoka Sand Plain.
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The Season Begins
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
We celebrated the day by doing “green” things…setting up our seed starting shelves, mixing up dirt in the bath tub, bringing in flats and trays from the garage, and digging out our endless supply of seeds. We set up the shelves and lights in the kitchen this year…usually we do that in the spare bedroom, but we no longer have a spare as a little guy moved in three months ago.
Chris started a whole lot of sea kale and some herbs. And probably some other things, though I wasn’t paying much attention to his trays. I started a bunch of tomatoes and peppers. A lot of the seeds were quite a few years old (2008 and 2009!), so we’ll see if they work.
On my list, so far:
Tomatoes – Amana Orange, Prize of the Trials, Prudens Purple, San Marzano.
Tomatillos – Purple and Green.
Eggplant – Snowy White and Green Raveena.
Peppers – Czechoslovakian Black, Hungarian Carrot, Hungarian Wax, Thai Hot, Marconi Red, Purira, Cayenne.
We’ll probably start cole crops in a couple of weeks.
Oh! And before I forget…here is Cedar, our little guy, and new star of the VEGarden Blog:
Happy Spring Garden Planning!
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Summer’s End
One of the odd things about gardening in Minnesota is just as the weather starts to change to fall, the signature summer fruit (watermelon) is ready to be harvested! My mom told me stories of growing up on the farm, sitting on the front porch in September wearing sweaters and eating fresh picked watermelon – because watermelon was a summer food, darnit, and you must enjoy it on the front porch!
We’ve grown cantaloupe and a few other smaller melon varieties before, but this is the first year we’ve had nice big watermelons in the garden. There are a half dozen or more of them out there, and from the looks of them they still have a couple of weeks of growing left. Actually, technically the watermelons are growing in the grass – I thought it would be a great idea to plant watermelon on the edges of the garden and let them trail out into the yard (since they take up so much space). So there’s a really nice section of un-mowed grass in front of the entire garden where the watermelon grows.
The rabbits have cleared out our beans, and the squirrels made sure that our sweet corn harvest came to a sudden end. So far, nothing has touched the watermelon yet – though every morning I walk out to the garden half expecting to see a juicy slaughter in the grass. Knock on wood!
Summer is winding down. It’s time to start pulling out plants, and getting the garden ready for winter. We have gotten very little rain this last month, so there isn’t much of a fall crop coming in this year. The tomatoes and peppers should still hang on for another month – maybe even two, depending on how low temperatures drop this fall.
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Leaps and Bounds
We went out of town for the weekend, and came home to incredible growth. Lots of heat, lots of rain – and lots of weeds.
So far, my tomato spirals are working well! I’ve had to tie a couple of plants to the stakes, and every week or so I pull new growth on the plants through the spirals. We had some strong winds come through over the weekend and last night, and so far they’re holding on well. They aren’t loaded with heavy fruit yet, so in a month or so we’ll know for sure how well the plastic spirals hold up. They are much more compact than the metal cages, and I really like them!
In the picture above, you can see a yellow pear tomato in the spiral on the right; lavender, thyme, butterfly weed, rosemary and chives planted to the left of the tomato. Behind, cole crops and sunflowers.
Speaking of cole crops – they take up about 1/3 of my garden.
The sweet corn is already knee-high. I have yard-long beans planted to grow up the PVC teepee, but they are growing slowly. We have a rabbit that enjoys them too, so that doesn’t help much.
Above: Carrots and peppers in the front, dill going to seed, another tomato spiral, and sunflowers…everywhere.
It’s going to be a hot, stormy week – keep cool!
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Garden Pictures
Just a few pictures from June 3rd.
Red Bell Peppers:
Cole Crops (cabbage, broccoli, brussels, cauliflower):
Sweet Corn:
The Garden, June 3rd:
The strawberries are done for the spring, but they look to be spreading, so hopefully next year we’ll have a better harvest. I need to mulch these (well, I still need to mulch almost everything) – I’ve been too busy with other projects and haven’t spent as much time outside this spring as I would have liked to.
Snap peas should be ready any day – they are flowering and the plants have nearly reached the tops of their trellises. In front of them are carrots and some hot peppers. I pulled out the spinach (finally!) and planted mung beans, black eyed peas, and a handful of fava beans in their place. It’s too late for fava beans, but they are a terrific cover crop (great for fixing nitrogen), and I’m curious to see how they grow. On the to-plant list for next year!
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Peter Pepper
I’m not quite sure this is what Peter pickled…but if it’s what I think it is, it will be quite the entertaining pepper.
Who wants to come over for stir fry later this summer?
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Growing Season
Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplant… Corn and Bean seeds are all neatly tucked in. I even picked up some virginia peanuts at 101 Market on a whim…I’ll post more about those later. We’ve never tried growing peanuts before, but I figure if they sell them at a nursery in Minnesota, somebody must have had luck with them here. It is officially growing season now!
In the picture above, you can see our abundant supply of spinach (behind the concrete bed, the entire left side of the front row), which needs to be picked and frozen. Also, snap peas to the right of the spinach and two rows behind. I planted those peas on March 17th, so I’m a bit surprised that they are still so small. They grow quite a bit every day though, and should be flowering within a week if we get some rain.
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Weeds & Seeds
One of the questions I get asked a lot about organic gardening is how I control weeds. The short answer… I pull them out. I find it therapeutic sitting in the garden on a warm sunny day, slowly making my way through the rows pulling weeds. Listening to the birds and the frogs singing, the occasional lawn mower or chainsaw in the distance…and of course the house behind us that always has KQRS playing. Our garden isn’t that big, and it only takes 10 minutes or so to get through an entire row.
The trick is to keep up on it – if you let things get out of hand, you’re going to end up with a nightmare. Last summer I ended up putting down sheets of black plastic in the rows to control the crabgrass, which had gotten really bad by mid-summer.
Also, I usually put down quite a bit of mulch once everything is planted. That helps a lot with weed control. I’m hoping to start mulching with grass clippings next week, after most of the plants are in.
This weekend is gorgeous, and the forecast looks to be warm for the next week so I decided to start seeding our summer crops today. Tomorrow we’re heading up to Gordon’s Greenhouse to pick up some tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. I decided not to mess with shelves and fluorescent lighting this year, so unfortunately we don’t have any of our own transplants. (I did start a few out on the deck when the weather was nice in March, but they never progressed to anything useful). I’m kind of sad to be missing some of our tomato and pepper favorites this year, but the greenhouse up the road has a terrific selection of heirloom veggies. Maybe we’ll end up finding something exciting and new!
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Let the Garden Planning Begin!
I should be working…but it’s a beautiful sunny day and spring is fast approaching. So, my inner dork is taking over for a few minutes.
I know some of you do the same thing (I’ve seen you admit it!), so hopefully this will be appreciated. This is a very rough first draft. I’m planning on planting sweet corn this year, which takes up a lot of space.
I’m also planning on cutting *way* back on the number of tomatoes that I put in. I love heirloom tomatoes, but we have had so many problems with blight, that I think this year I am just going to purchase some blight-resistant hybrid varieties at the greenhouse up the road. I’ll probably pick up my peppers and some of the cole crops there, too. I love starting seeds inside, but we have a lot going on this spring (and I have some big business development plans as well). It’s a lot of work starting everything inside.
One of our goals for the near future is to get a greenhouse set up. Something just big enough to start seedlings in.
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Tomato Season
In Minnesota, the tomatoes don’t really start to ripen until late July. This year, we had a lot of rain in July and I think that made the fruits take even longer to ripen. But once there are fresh tomatoes… nothing else in the world matters.
Our tomatoes are overrun with early tomato blight once again this year. It is at the point now where there are very few green leaves left on the vines; they are nearly all brown. Fortunately the fruit hasn’t been affected, but I’ve done as much as I can to try and manage it this year. I have some ideas for next summer – and I’m hoping to spend some time learning more about blight this winter.
That’s a giant bowl of assorted cherry tomatoes: Amish Mayberry, Prize of the Trials, and Yellow Pear. I’ve been working on our tomato varieties page, compiling a list of varieties we’ve grown over the years, seed sources, and a few notes. I’d like to put a bit more time into this, and also put together the Peppers section in a similar way. Maybe some day…
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Eggplant loves heat
Today’s pick:
Our eggplants are loaded with beautiful white and purple fruits. The white eggplant is a variety from Monticello – apparently one that Jefferson grew, and has been passed down through the generations. They are good sized, long fruits – nearly 12″ long, and each plant has at least 8 fruits on it. What a great find!
Temperatures have been consistently reaching the 90s this month, with a few streaks in the 100s. Pair that with 2″+ of rain each week, and you have the perfect weather for eggplants and peppers.
For some reason, though, our tomatoes are not ripening. We’ve picked a few small cherry tomatoes, and today I picked a couple of nearly-ripe orange tomatoes (Amana Orange). They both have pretty big cracks in them though, and look like they could start to go bad soon. Torrential rain is not great for heirloom tomatoes; it causes them to grow too quickly, and then they crack and are prone to insects and rotting.
In other news, I picked a Hungarian Carrot Pepper and, not thinking, took a bite out of it. The description on the seed packet just said “Great for frying.” No mention of heat. FYI – hungarian carrot peppers are HOT. Right up there with cayenne peppers, but it’s a different kind of heat. I’m sure they are terrific for frying… and I’m curious to see if they are more tolerable when cooked!
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