What didn't Turn Out Well

[digitS']

@Pulsegleaner , nearly every year, I have black bearded wheat in the garden. Sometimes, there is foxtail millet and hulless oats. This year, none of that ...

I think that they do well but there is so little, it's hard to tell . This is wheat country and it is grown by the thousands of acres.

Steve

 

[Pulsegleaner]

What few oats I tend to wind up with are the wild kind (fatua, I would assume). Only one plant of those this year and very tiny (only two oats) And alas, pretty much all the barley is clothed (or whatever they call it when it isn't naked)

This years real grass success was the mystery grass that showed up in the barley, it made a beautiful head. Now if I could just figure out what the heck it is! (imagine a head of Italian ryegrass except that, where, on a ryegrass head there would be those little sub spikelets of tiny seeds, there are instead groups of three very large (for a grass) seeds, that look eerily like half sized rice grains (hull included)


I think it was probably a bad year as for grains in general here. Normally, over the course of a year I bump into literally dozens of feral wheat patches (it always baffles me that those patches, which grow with no care from anyone) tend to wind up far healthier than my coddled material. This year there were two (and one turned out to be more barley). The Golden shoulder ( a feral patch along the highway) utterly disappeared (and that patch was 5 miles long) Ditto the weirdo patch by the computer repair place, with the wheat with the multibranched heads (either the ground there has serious heavy metal/nematode issues or someone supplying the roadworkers (that's where I think most of the feral wheat around here comes from, roadworkers putting down straw that isn't 100% seed free.) is playing around with Poulard or Vavilov wheat.

 

[Lavender2]

Onions were disappointing this year. Maybe my own fault and not the weather. Neglected soil, should have had a fertilizer boost to go with the 2 months of rain we had in spring. Then, I didn't mulch them like I usually do. The tops fell early. I got a few medium sized and a whole bunch of small. Not a complete loss though, we had enough for a couple double batches of salsa... everything from the garden this year except for the garlic. I will be trying my luck at growing that again this fall, hopefully.

The only other disappointment was the poor tomato harvest, about half of what we normally get. THAT was the weather, with a bit of help from racoons.

 

[bobbi-j]

I wonder if aphids are attracted to plants with too much nitrogen ... might be. Once the aphids are in good numbers, there goes any benefit all that nitrogen might have had! "Dig it all out, @bobbi-j ?? Turning it wouldn't be good enuf?


Oh, I guess I wasn't very clear on that. I meant dig out all the plants, not the soil and fertilizer. I'm hoping it mellows over the winter so things grow better next year.

 

[digitS']

I picked all the pods off the sad-looking soybeans.

There were only a few healthy looking plants, still green. We had a nice bowl full of edamame and that will be "it" for the year. I guess it's time for me to really look around for the soopermarket product!

Many of the plants had rust-colored leaves. I looked as carefully as I could for spider mites but found none. The leaves didn't have the look of tomato leaves when I suspect blight. There was no real yellow patches, just red and dying leaves.

There has been nothing that looks like disease in the green beans in the next bed. Last year, the soy plants just didn't grow. This year, they seemed to sicken.

Steve

 

[Pulsegleaner]

It's probably a dumb question to ask, but did you check that the type of soybean you planted matched your zone? That's what basically sunk my soybean crop the year I did them. Not knowing there WAS such a think as day affected soybeans. I simply spread my ground with some small black ones I had picked up by the bag in Chinatown. Big mistake. I turned out they were from a zone higher than mine (I'm 000, the highest soy zone) some of the plant made pods fine, but the pods never ripened (and I was after seed the first year) they just stayed green (turns out some soys need a day length sign to begin the final ripening process). I think the only one that more or less gave me re-plantable seed was the speckled one that was in the "select" pot (where the more unusual beans went) and since (like most of the speckled) that one also had a genetic predisposition to make "knife" soybeans it wasn't any use to me as a food line ("knife" soybeans make seeds that are very long and very, very flat. Sort of the shape of tiny limas. Lousy for edamame as they're too flat to be able to pull out of the pod with your teeth.

Then of course there was the big surprise, that whatever kinds of soybeans were in the bag included some that were climbing soybeans! so what I had assumed would be a bunch of easy to harvest upright plants turned into a massive vine snarl, so I couldn't GET at the pods even if they HAD been ready.

Ironically, I now SEEK OUT bags of those pain in the a** soybeans in Chinatown. Not only does it turn out climbing black soybeans are rather rare (and desirable for some of the people on the other Garden forum I frequent, who have bad backs and like to not have to bend over). But only they seem to have the wrinkled beans I need for my long shot breeding idea (I have this theory that some soybeans may have the same recessive wrinkled trait that English peas have. If they do, and I can get a strain that has it, it should result in a sweeter tasting edamame bean (since the wrinkling is caused by impediments in the process that converts sugars in the developing seed into starch) The stuff is already ridiculously diverse (besides the bush/climbing thing the stuff makes at least three flower colors, white, lavender and on rare occasions, bicolor. And both yellow and green inside are present ) Alas it is also falling out of favor in the Chinese commodity soy market. Nearly all the Chinese dry goods companies that sell bags of dried black soybeans have switched over to a different type of black soy; bigger and with a duller black skin (the small ones are actually less black and more "graphite" or "hematite" in color, they are so shiny.)

 

[digitS']

I had no idea that there were specific zones for soybeans, @Pulsegleaner !

How I got into this was that I received about 7 different varieties from a gardener in Wisconsin. Some had names like "Manitoba" which seemed appropriate for this northern location. I narrowed it down to 1 variety which had the simple name "Bei" on the package.

It wasn't the only one that would grow and mature seed. It was just far and away more productive. This selection process took about 3 or 4 seasons.

Victory Seed sells a "Bei Liang 11" which may well be the variety. The picture looks right.

Those first 5 years or so, were good ones for my Bei. I hope they get back to that in 2015.

Steve

 

[Pulsegleaner]

How I got into this was that I received about 7 different varieties from a gardener in Wisconsin.

Let me guess, C.R. "Zeedman" Hoetschl. I've also traded seeds with him (he's as interested in non-red strains of adzuki beans as I am).

If it was him, you probably got beans for the right zone, Zeed is pretty careful about that.

 

[digitS']

I start my brussel sprouts indoors. September 1st we lob off the tops to make the sprouts grow.

I also grow things I'm not crazy about. The best way to enjoy brussel sprouts (for me) is to par boil them, and then pan-fry in butter until the leaves caramelize and turn all dark and crispy. Delicious!

50% of the Brussels sprouts are now "topless!"

Some of the plants kept up the pace they had early in their season. A few look like the summer heat really beat on them. They need some rain and cool; that's my thinking, anyway.

I always seem to be trying to grow something that doesn't like our hot, dry, and sometimes, windy summers. Or, they don't like our cold, cloudy, and usually, windy springs.

We are supposed to have blowing dust soon! Not terrible winds forecast just wind out of the "Evergreen State's" desert. This often happens and may signal the end of the summer.

Steve

 

[buckabucka]

@digitS' , do you ever look at this weather site?

http://theweathercentre.blogspot.com
DH is always making announcements about weather way off in the future after reading this blog. I call him "the wacko weather guy", but he is so often correct that I'm starting to read the blog too.

Back in late July, when I made a camping reservation for August 15th, DH announced it would be unseasonably cool. It was. I guess he studies storm systems that are way off, and predicts what effect it will have here in the future.