Blog - VEGarden

Recent VEGarden Posts

volunteer sunflower

Volunteers

One of my favorite things to shop for in the winter is sunflower seeds (usually from Johnny’s). I bought 6 or 8 varieties for the 2011 growing season, and they are making a comeback this year. Seeds the birds missed are now producing flowers much different from those I planted last year. I’m pretty sure the flower above is a “Sunny” variety – as are the flowers with dark centers in the last picture below. The flower below is most likely a second-year Big Smile volunteer – from flowers we first grew in 2010. (I prefer the look of the dark centers, so haven’t planted any yellow-centered sunflowers but those, which arrived as a replacement for their Sunny Smile variety)....

Cabbage Worms

Snow Crown Cauliflower

Cauliflower is one of my favorite vegetables to grow. I’ve always had good luck with it, and we usually get larger heads than you can find at the supermarket. I just pulled this one out of the garden today – Kallie is more than happy to show how large it is. She’d actually eat this after it’s cooked (if we gave her some); our dog loves cauliflower straight from the garden. The biggest downfall to growing cole crops are these pesky worms: We still have cabbage butterflies flying around the garden, laying eggs. The worms can do a lot of damage – this time of year, all of the leaves on our cole crops are full of giant holes. I...

Puck checking out the Sweet Corn

Dog Days

Puck enjoys the garden more than we do some days. Here is a video of him munching on some snap peas. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo08i4htAiQ[/youtube] Unfortunately, the peas are now done for the season and it’s time to pull them out. I’ll be putting in another planting in a couple of weeks for this fall. Luckily for Puck, though – there are many other good things coming up in a few weeks. Quite a few of the carrots are ready, tomatoes are green and should be coming in a couple of weeks, and we have heads of broccoli just about ready to pick. Another of Puck’s favorite treats is well on its way: Sweet Corn. He is perfectly content spending some time basking...

And my favorite - sunflowers coming soon!

Garden Flowers (and more Monarch Caterpillar pictures)

Sweet Corn

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...

Monarch

Hello!

A monarch caterpillar, hanging out in my perennial beds.

Calla Lilly

Calla Lily

As the garden tag says…this is supposed to be a “Black Forest” Calla Lily. Apparently there was a mix-up when stuffing bulbs in bags. Kind of too bad, because the black lillies cost about twice as much as the pink ones. I put in gladiolas two years ago, and dug the bulbs to replant the second year. It worked well – only last fall I didn’t get around to saving the bulbs for a third season. There are a bunch of little gladiolas coming up again this year though – they won’t flower (you can tell they’re first year tiny shoots, from the little corms that the bulbs make). I have a couple of Zone 9 lilies in the garden...

VEGarden June 10th

Sunny days

A view of the garden from the deck: Nothing too exciting to report. We started picking peas last week – I put them in on March 17th, so they took 83 days (23 days longer than peas normally do – perhaps this is just Minnesota growing weather?) We can seed another planting of peas for fall in a few weeks, too. Chris has a bunch of potatoes (as always), and the cole crops are giant. Of course, crab grass is creeping in too – and there is a rabbit who insists on breaking off and eating my sunflowers 🙁 Puck helped me finish mulching this morning in 85º heat. Strong storms are expected tonight, so I’m really hoping for a...

Robin

Mourning Cloak Butterfly (caterpillar)

I found this neat guy (girl?) hanging out on one of our screens. I moved him into the hostas (I’m sure he’ll enjoy snacking on those) and snapped a couple of pictures. Insect photography may be my next new hobby…hah. I can get much closer to these things than I can to other yard animals. This robin, for example, hung out with me on and off for a half hour yesterday. He never let me get close enough to get a clear shot, though.

Red Bell Pepper

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!)...

Red Romaine Lettuce shaded by cole crops

Lettuce Update

Our lettuce did really well this year. Pictures don’t really showcase it as well as a stroll through the garden does, but we have about 7 supermarket-sized bunches of green romaine lettuce ready to be picked, a dozen or so red romaine lettuce plants not far behind, and a few random patches of leaf lettuce. Green Romaine Lettuce Red Romaine Lettuce (partially shaded/kept cool by cole crops) Leaf Lettuce in concrete blocks Also planted here…King of the North Grapes, a Red Cabbage, Lavender, and Rosemary.

Moth

More insect close-ups

Just playing with my camera this long weekend. We got another 1.5″ of rain. The garden is growing by leaps and bounds…but so are the weeds, so I’m holding off on posting more pictures until I have some time to clean things up a bit 😉

Honeybee on a chive flower

Honeybees & Butterflies

I was about to cut the chives down, as they are getting kind of messy, and took a beating from the recent rains. But they bring so many beneficial visitors to the garden, I decided to leave them for now.

Lettuce, Onions, and Peas

5″ of rain in 24 hours

While a nice downpour is always welcome, torrential rains like this tend to do more harm than good. We had a rainy July last year, and my uncle’s farm took quite a beating. They are open every fall for pumpkin season, and the kid’s corn maze was completely flooded out and destroyed. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again this summer. We did get 5″ of rain in a 24-hour period Wednesday afternoon into Thursday. The cooler temperatures have made this perfect weather for peas and lettuce – though I don’t know that they appreciate quite that much rain. I had seeded the rest of my sweet corn on Tuesday, so hopefully the seeds didn’t all wash away. Above: green romaine...

Spinach Harvest - May 20th

Spinach Harvest

So, we picked a lot of spinach this weekend: I’m not kidding…we picked a lot of spinach. And that isn’t even half of it. Putting that into perspective…we got 2 gallons and 3 pints of frozen spinach, after blanching. Pretty amazing how much greens cook down. I noticed this just starting to bolt on Sunday, so we cut it all back. I didn’t pull it out yet, just to see if it will come back and allow for a second picking. But it’s starting to get pretty warm during the day here, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s done for the season.

Yard Long Red Noodle Bean Sprouts

Yard Long Red Noodle Beans

We got nearly 2.5″ of rain last night. Most everything is off to a pretty good start. I have two more succession plantings of corn to put in, and also some bush beans. I’ve been slowly working on mulching with grass clippings, but we’ve had a dry couple of weeks so there wasn’t much to mulch with after mowing. I decided to modify my $5 Bean Teepees from a couple years ago. They worked pretty well, but the twine at the top didn’t stay in place and I found myself readjusting them all summer long. For a couple of bucks, I picked up some PVC couplings to hold the pipes together: I only bought one variety of pole beans this...

tomato spiral

Tomato Spirals

We received these tomato spirals for our wedding: They are basically curled plastic, which you attach to the top of a sturdy stake. As the vines grow, they use the plastic for support. I put 6 of these in this spring; the stakes stand about 7′ tall. I’m anxious to see how they perform this season!

strawberries

Strawberries

These are planted in one of my perennial concrete beds. They are small, but super sweet. Chris has a patch in his half of the garden too. In a couple of years we’ll have enough for strawberry jam and pies…right now, most of them don’t even make it into the house before they are long gone 😉

Peter Pepper

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?

Chives

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...

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