Radishes and Carrots and Lettuce, Oh My!

[Hattie the Hen]

Quote from Whitewater: " although it's 87' and windy and we're under a tornado watch . . ."

You are certainly having a tough year, I just hope that the weather improves soon & you can get out into your garden more. I too find it a calming place & chose to spend my 70th birthday,last Tuesday, alone & working in my garden (much to the amazement of my friends). I needed to be a bit selfish as recent weather here had prevented me from doing certain things & I just wanted to spend time with my chickens & my beautiful old roses. However I met up & celebrated with friend the next day as I had on the Monday......... I am getting to be a proper cranky old lady now.........doing it my way........

I too have got a few tomatoes on my plants & lots of flowers on my peppers of various kinds -- I even saw a minute pepper forming on one plant.

Today I am putting a few more squash & cucumber seeds in -- we usually have a good long autumn (it's called an "Indian Summer" over here) so I should get a decent crop.

Good luck to you for this difficult time. I hope your brother is recovering well.

:rose Hattie :rose

 

[digitS']

There was a wooden picnic table under the grape arbor, where Zelma sat all day when she wasn't actively gardening. She shelled peas there. The older she got, she said, the less she wanted to be inside. Following Zelma's model, I will age ungracefully until I become an old woman in a small garden, doing whatever the hell I want. ~ Robin Chotzinoff, People with Dirty Hands

 

[Hattie the Hen]

There was a wooden picnic table under the grape arbor, where Zelma sat all day when she wasn't actively gardening. She shelled peas there. The older she got, she said, the less she wanted to be inside. Following Zelma's model, I will age ungracefully until I become an old woman in a small garden, doing whatever the hell I want. ~ Robin Chotzinoff, People with Dirty Hands

Too right Steve.........!!

Great quote! Spot on, as usual !


Hattie

 

[Whitewater]

Yay, our tomato plants finally got with the program! Everything except the Mortgage Lifter (and I confidently expect to see baby tomatoes in the next couple days) and the two Mr. Stripeys has at least one tomato on it!

The Black Krim and the San Marzano currently lead the Tomato Stakes for 2010 because they each have two plants and they have 3 tomatoes total. However, the Early Girl and the Early Prairie Star have the *biggest* fruit right now, about the size of a shooter marble.

~2 Early Girls have 2 tomatoes on one plant.
~2 Early Prairie Star (otherwise known as Bonnie's Best) have a total of 2 tomatoes on one plant.
~2 Mr. Stripey tomatoes have no tomatoes, they barely have flowers.
~2 Black Krim have 3 tomatoes on 2 plants.
~2 San Marzano tomatoes have 4 tomatoes total on two plants.
~the single Cherokee Purple has at least one tomato on it, possibly two.
~ and finally, the Mortgage Lifter has a ton of flowers but no fruit yet.

I have a feeling I'm turning into one of those crazy tomato people I really enjoy growing tomatoes, we'll see if out of these half-dozen different varieties, there's one that I like enough to eat raw. I haven't eaten a raw tomato since I was a teenager, because they just were plain bad. But now that I'm growing my own . . . we'll see.


Whitewater (and there's more garden carnage, see my update in the Pests section!)

 

[Whitewater]

I have discovered, to my shock, that we are now a good 3 weeks behind, despite our early spring. At least, according to last year's garden records, which suggest that we were eating a ton of zukes and getting our first tomatoes and peppers at this time.

I am not really surprised, those 3 weeks of nothing but unseasonably cold, dark, dank, *snowy*, rainy, high of 45'F weather really did a number on crops up here, and I'm sure I'm not the only one in the same boat.

Because of those three weeks I actually wound up planting the week before Memorial Day, when I *should* have been planting right about Tax day. And in a normal spring I would have been planting everything right about Mother's Day.

When you have a short growing season, losing that much time is a big hairy deal.

It's nice today, though. I am considering breaking down and getting some started zukes from Home Despot, if they have any of the varieties I'm looking for.


And our carrots are beginning to show flowers, but they have no actual carrots under the ground. Having never grown carrots before, I have no idea if this is good, bad, or normal. Certainly they aren't showing anywhere near the amount of foliage as they do in the store.


Whitewater

 

[digitS']

The carrot is a biennial plant, Whitewater.

It takes two years to complete its lifecycle. In the 1st year, the plants should only produce roots and leaves. The following spring, if they survive the winter, they will flower.

I'm growing a new-to-me cilantro variety from Johnny's. While I was harvesting a few handfuls on Friday, I was thinking how much it has what looks like carrot foliage. It will be bolting soon enuf.

Could you be looking at the cilantro instead of the carrots? I've only had the very odd carrot plant bolt during its 1st year.

Steve

 

[Whitewater]

Nope, there's no cilantro anywhere near this house, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

It's carrots, all right. So if they're a 2 year plant, does that mean we get to pull them up and eat them *next* summer?

Inquiring minds want to know!


Whitewater

 

[digitS']

Usually, the tops of missed carrots freeze and begin to rot over the winter unless I've covered them with a thick mulch. When I've looked at those that have somehow snuck thru to a new growing season and begun to bolt - the roots have shriveled.

I assume that the plant is putting its stored energy into the flowering stalk. Nothing there looked like anything I wanted to bring into the kitchen.

Are you one of those people who think of cilantro as having a "soapy" flavor, WW? Seems to have something of a citrusy flavor to me. Makes me hungry just to smell it but I can almost understand some folk's aversion to cilantro.

Steve

 

[Whitewater]

Yep, that would be me. I also don't like rose water, either, it's just too soapy.

So, what do I do about my carrots that are showing flowers? Pick them and say 'Good Luck Next Year'? Leave them alone and hope that next spring I'll get actual carrots? Leave them until fall?

I have no idea how to deal with carrots. I thought they were like beets and radishes . . .

In other tomato news just about every plant has a tomato on it somehow, and the San Marzano plants are currently winning the Great Tomato Race of 2010, even beating out the hybrids for both quick tomato growing and prolific-ness. The San Marzanos have twice as many fruit as the other plants, which is cool to see, I was planning on making a lot of spaghetti sauce this summer!

The Mr. Stripey plants still are tomato-free, as is the Mortgage Lifter.

Yesterday I went and *bought* a Black Beauty zucchini plant to replace the one that got tore up, there's no way growing one from seed would have ever caught up, so, I bought a started plant that was almost the same size, just slightly smaller. I put it in the ground and I could hear it sigh and smile and be happy. The poor thing was so root bound, when I took it out of its pot to transplant it I couldn't believe it!

On the other hand I have no problems sowing another Patty Pan seed over the next couple of days (maybe more than one), the surviving Patty Pan squash that I had to re-plant after the kid tore it out is TINY, relatively speaking, and though growing fast, is still quite a bit smaller than the other squash plants, so I may need to sow more than one seed. I have no doubts that a seed planted now will easily catch up to the one planted 3ish weeks ago.

I am making more strawberry jam tonight, hopefully I'll get a full 16 oz but we'll see. This is just for us so there's no need to can it, it will go straight into the fridge. My harvest of strawberries today was a grand total of 2. That's right, 2 berries. Curse the rain, that created the mold that killed the rest of my early strawberry crop. I lost a good solid 8 oz of berries. *sigh* Oh well. Next year the new Cavendish berries will be up and running, so we'll finally have a good crop.

Oh, and speaking of waiting around for good crops, we got our first raspberry today! In total we expect 6-10 berries for our first (and probably only) raspberry crop (curse you, bunnies!) this summer. But we ALSO have a freaking TON of 1st year canes that are just shy of 4' tall, so NEXT year, we're going to have more raspberries than we know what to do with. I am very excited about that!!

I am having a hard time waiting on the zukes and beans. I want to have veggies from my garden! LOL! By the 4th of July, something should have grown enough to be edible, particularly if my squash plants have anything to say about it.


Whitewater

 

[Whitewater]

Am pleased to report that my Mr. Stripey and Mortgage Lifter tomatoes have finally gotten with the rest of the program and have produced a single tomato each, LOL! That might be ok for the ML, only being one plant, but I have *two* Mr. Stripey plants and really ought to get more than one tomato!

I saw my first teeny weeny zucchini today, on my oldest Black Beauty plant, and I am thrilled.

Also have two Anaheim Chilis too, about 3/4" long, one on each plant -- and yes, the poor plant that got knocked over seems to be doing ok, though not as prolific as the other.

All the other peppers have either flowers or flower buds on them, even one of my Rainbow Bells, can't wait!

The beans are all about a foot high now, the cukes about half that size. The cukes better get with it, we don't have that many more growing days left! Wondering when I'm going to start to get beans too. . . anybody know? They're Bush Lake Pole beans, if that helps.

I have 11 tomatoes on a single Bonnie's Best (aka Early Prairie Star) tomato plant. Wow!

We had a pretty bad thunderstorm here today/tonight, the freeway and a bunch of other roads flooded out, there was golf-ball sized hail, rain coming down every which way, high winds . . . tornado watches . . . and my new young chickens (they'll be 16 weeks old tomorrow, or rather, today -- when most of you will read this) STOOD OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT.

Dumb chickens! They were soaking wet, as was their run -- they had a warm, safe, *dry* hen house but did they go inside? No, they didn't. Not until their normal bedtime, which was just after the storm had calmed down some, though it was still raining.

I wasn't about to go out in thunder and lightening and driving rain to chase the chickens up their ramp into their henhouse. When I wake up I will check their food and water and see what needs to be replaced.

I'm starting to go a little nuts waiting for my produce to appear and then ripen. Patience is NOT one of my best virtues!


Whitewater