Year in Review: 2011

It might not be obvious, but this is actually only the third year we have had any type of garden.  In 2009 we had a single 4 x 4 bed that we filled with way too many plants from a big box store, almost all of which died from the blight that swept through that year.   In 2010 we dug up the first few areas in the front yard and had a decent harvest, but we were able to nearly quadruple our output for 2011 by learning from the previous year's mistakes.

Here are the hits, misses, and things I've learned that will hopefully make 2012's garden even better:

1)  Screw indoor seed starting.  Eggplant, tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos will all be bought as seedlings from the fantastic organic city farm Garden Dreams.  There are just too many factors working against having tiny little plants inside my house that waste my money.  On top of that, I was able to get the kids interested in veggies that they would NEVER eat from the store by choosing all sorts of weird varieties.  When I have room for 6 eggplants, buying 6 different seed packets and the dirt and supplies to grow them indoors is more costly than just buying the plants from people who know what they're doing.

2)  Rabbits are no longer welcome.  In 2010 we had barely any rabbit damage, but now they seem to know where the garden is and visit it daily.  Hopefully some short fencing will suffice since my options are limited.

3)  Fruit!  We have a fenced off sunny area in the back yard that will now be completely dedicated to fruit!  I'm hoping to have ground cherries, strawberries, grapes, raspberries, blackberries and possibly melons growing there.  In the fall we cluster-planted 3 dwarf pear, 2 dwarf plum, and 3 dwarf peach trees after taking down the old half-dead apple trees and may even plant some blueberry bushes along the side of the house in an area that otherwise fills up with weeds.

4)  Moar carrots!  Carrots in buckets were a HUGE success!  Radishes, by contrast, were a total failure AGAIN.  I hope to add a few more buckets of carrots (right now I have 4) to the front yard and will only grow short-season carrots to allow for multiple harvests.  We'll try radishes again in the ground but only because they won't waste much time if they fail.

5)  Cull the herd.  There are some vegetables that are just not worth the space to grow.  We go through 10 to 20 pounds of onions a month, for example, and there is just no where to grow that many.  By contrast, we could easily stock the freezer if we took the 5 x 5 bed that was used for onions and grew multiple crops of bush beans and trellised peas.  Onions (even organic) are so inexpensive compared to peas and beans that eliminating onions from the garden just seems like a no brainer.

6)  Better short season brassicas.  Many of our brassicas did pretty well this year, and we will buy the same variety of broccoli and red cabbage that we did last year.  I will be trying new varieties of green cabbage and kohlrabi while adding some cauliflower. We do much better with short season veggies because there is less time for bad things to happen.

7)  Disease resistant squash.  Our summer squash and zucchini was attacked by every single thing that can possibly harm it.  Since I do not have the luxury of planting too far from the diseased ground of last season, I will be looking for varieties that are specifically resistant to as many mildews and pests as possible.  This will come at the expense of being able to plant compact varieties, but since they will now have the larger hillside that was previously occupied by melons, it shouldn't be a problem.

8)  Screw straw mulch.  My garden was a weedy lawn not 2 years ago and the weed varieties tend to be the type that send out horrible strong vines that are impossible to follow through straw.  I'll probably just rent a chipper and make mulch out of the giant pile of sticks we have in the fruit garden area.

9)  No peppers in containers.  They are just too finicky when it comes to wet weather, and things are so screwy that we can't bank on the sky cooperating.  Peppers produced so fantastically in the ground this year that it just made the ones in containers look that much more pathetic.

10)  No volunteers.  I let about 10 tomato volunteers grow this year, and had an amazing harvest of red grape tomatoes and some big meaty types from them.  Unfortunately, several plants produced complete duds due to uncontrolled cross-breeding.  I had three plants that never produced a single fruit without blossom end rot (even when growing right next to a plant producing healthy fruit) and another few that produced bland, boring tomatoes that were probably descendants of something store-bought.  I'd much rather pick up some yummy clearance heirloom varieties late in the season and plant them in any spot large enough for volunteers.

There is also the issue of being better at using and preserving the harvest, and timing my plantings, but those are issues that will probably just get better each year.   I planted some hard neck garlic this past fall and will be starting some early veggies this year, so hopefully it won't be too hard to watch everyone else start seeds indoors. 

The way of the garden...

The zucchini dies out from Squash Vine Borers and Downey Mildew...

Just as the new crop of zucchini across the yard sets it's first fruit.

New things are germinating in every corner, like this replacement crop  of cucumbers.  White Wonder, Burpless Hybrid, and Lemon.

Fall carrots will soon need thinned.

And icicle radishes are growing strong.

Spring pests like aphids and flea beetles are growing fewer, while the fall plague of stink bugs is  finally here.

The dominant colors in our harvests have shifted from all shades of green to orange and red.

And eagerly awaited tomatoes like this pineapple variety are ripening daily when just a month ago a single grape tomato was cause for celebration.

Some veggies pulled through after they were given up for lost, like this little eggplant.

And a few surprising volunteers are finally letting us know what they are.

Fortunately, for little boys who get bored easily, nature keeps things exciting for us!

A little bit of "Wow that's cool!" and a whole lot of "WTF?"

Baby Tomatillo (purple I think).

A very weirdly formed Gypsy Bell.  There are a few like this.

First ripening Mr. Stripey.

Heart-shaped tomato.

Siamese tomato twins.

An as-yet-unidentified affliction of my banana peppers.

First ripe Yummy Bell.

Something tunneled through this Black Krim.

A Celtic trinity knot tomato (also Black Krim).

Fall planting time!

It's a little late for fall planting in Pittsburgh, but I still feel pretty accomplished since this is the first year I managed to get a fall crop in the ground at all.  Getting everything planted meant pulling a lot of what was there, even some things that might have produced more if left in the ground.  Ultimately, I pulled anything past it's prime, diseased, or too crowded to really be worth the space.  Things I removed include:

1)  All bush beans - The yellow Arikara beans CAN be picked young and eaten in the pod, but we found them to be pretty fibrous and unpleasant.  We didn't plant enough to shell though, so I decided to pull them and plant the space with fall broccoli.  The other bush beans were past their prime, though it seems like the purple might have produced again if allowed...I decided to try and get a fall crop from new seeds instead.  We'll see if this gamble pays off.

2) Yellow Squash and one of the Pan Patty plants - The yellow squash were just covered in disease and the last few fruits had rotted on the plant.  The pan patty seemed generally healthy but was HUGE and showed many signs of Squash Vine Borer damage so I pulled it in favor of planting beets.  The area taken up by the plant can double the planting space for beets, plus I have 3 pan patty plants left.

3)  All cucumbers - These were pulled due to the unlikelihood of getting any kind of solid crop.  The leaves on many plants were wilting and several vines were killed by some type of bacteria.  The vines were also all clumped together on one end of a chicken wire trellis because I didn't properly direct them at the beginning.  There are several free buckets in which I will be planting cucumbers to possibly get a fall crop and I'll use the now vacated trellis for peas.  I have seeds but it might be a better idea to swing by Garden Dreams to see if they have any seedlings left.

Anyway, today we planted 3 buckets of carrots, 3 types of bush bean, 3 types of beet and 2 kinds of pea (snap and snow).  I also did a general clean up of the garden, pulled a bunch of weeds, and moved some things around.  I'll have bigger post after the fall planting is done tomorrow, but here are some of today's sights:

A mini watermelon cut from the vine by a bunny...a bunny that should be living in fear of me ever catching it.

The nest over my composter is now empty, but this little birdy was roaming among my hay.  It seemed young so I think it's one of the chicks, but I have no idea if this is normal bird behavior or not.

Okra!  No idea when to pick it, but I don't think it's ready yet.

This little yellow lemon cucumber was left behind after I pulled the plants.  I have to cut it out of the wire.

This weeks CSA box and garden update.

Our CSA box is now bringing us tomatoes each week!  Woo hoo!  Of course the kids end up eating them like apples the minute they're ripe enough, but I'm not complaining.  If you look closely you'll see a container of blueberries that was half eaten before we took the picture...we made blueberry pancakes for dinner that night, and even the two year old ate them, which is a feat since 90% of his diet is peanut better and jelly sandwiches.

Our amazing Kretschmann Farm CSA box this week.

The lady bugs on the eggplant...hopefully they'll go eat that flea beetle.

I have a few tomatillo flowers on each plant, so we should have purple and green tomatillos soon!

The broccoli is setting out side shoots, though I can't imagine them getting very large in this ridiculous heat.  

The mystery melon is getting larger.

A baby watermelon starting.

These volunteers look nothing like any of the tomatoes I've ever grown or bought.  They're probably some hybrid of a roma.

Those two had blossom end rot so I picked them.  Look how weirdly long and skinny!

I though I saw squash vine borer fracas there, but now I'm not sure.  The plant is definitely sick but it seems to be more of a leaf issue.

That is another volunteer that is an obvious hybrid of last years Black Prince and some other tomato.

Sweet Mother of God.  I should have pulled these all last week...look at all the powdery mildew.   This is the worst case of it I've ever seen, and it's bizarre because the weather has been super hot.

My black beauty eggplant was looking very sick so I picked the two little eggplants  pretty small.  

A tour of garden pestilence and disease.

Yesterday I posted some pictures of our completely barren apple trees, along with the spotty leaves covering them.  Today I thought I'd lump as many of my other gardening problems in to one post as I can.  I have not actually figured out what to do about all of these, but the first step is taking my head out of the sand.  

This is how the leaves look on EVERY SINGLE eggplant I have.  The flea beetles have had a feast this year.

This is what smashed flea beetles look like.  Next year the plan is to manually crush them  each day.

I believe this is downy mildew.  One squash has been pulled and the other three are looking sick.

I think this might be Septoria Leaf Spot.  It could also be early blight.  I've been battling this for months and every single tomato has it to some extent.  I just keep cutting off the infected branches and hoping for the best....not sure that's working out too well.

Another angle showing the issue with my tomatoes.  I've begun letting volunteer tomatoes grow all over the garden  as insurance against possibly losing all of the properly planted tomatoes.  

There are MANY tomatoes on my Early Girls.  But also many dead branch stumps.  I just hope the plant survives long enough to ripen them.

This is a jalapeno plant in a container.  I have no idea what is wrong with it, but my guess is mineral deficiency or bad drainage and over watering (or both).  I pulled it because it was pretty sickly looking with no flowers.

This is the only pepper we'll be getting from that jalapeno.  It had some black areas on it, which might mean nothing or might be part of whatever killed the plant.  I really have no idea if this is normal since it's my first year growing jalapenos.