Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Garden Veggies - Mid May 2016

Here's what's going on in the garden this week...

This bed is mostly garlic, with multiplier onions near the bottom.  Only you'll notice there's some gaps in the bed.  I don't know if something got to them over winter (does anything raid a garlic patch!?), or if I too heavily mulched them with leaves and left them on too long?  Clearly MOST of the bed is doing just fine.  Hm...


Just planted this past Sunday (5/22) - Tomatoes and peppers!  This is the second bed in from the south side (bed #2), which isn't something you care about but might help me in my crop rotation next year.  ;-)  This bed has all my paste/saucing type tomatoes - so Opalka, Amish Paste, Roma, etc.  I can only squeeze (VERY TIGHTLY) seven plants in to a bed, so I rarely get to plant more than one or two plants per variety because I plants so many different types.


This bed is divided up a bit more, and includes onions (not shown), leeks...


...and beets.  The beet seeds got washed together , and aren't very evenly distributed.  At least that's the story I'm going with.


Behind all the veggie beds at the very back of the yard is the massive pile of leaves I'm composting.  These leaves only just got set free from their lawn size garbage bags this weekend - they've been sitting on veggie beds or, before that, were destroying the lawn on the north edge of the house over winter.  Now that I'm mowing regularly and can get plenty of grass clippings, I decided it was time to rip open the remaining, I dunno, 30 bags?  They got dumped out in alternating layers with grass clippings.  Later I'll stir 'em up, adding more weeds and grass clippings.  The neighbors are even trying to clean some of the scum from the pond, so when I'm around I get that from them and add it to the pile!


Just to the south of the leaf pile is the bed that's got the trellis this year.  That bed gets started with peas, then it'll get cucumbers and probably gourds.  And maybe some runner beans.  We'll see, I have a love/hate thing with runner/pole beans.  (I think I'll love them, and most of the time I don't)


Here's bed #7 (yes, we skipped some of the beds) - farthest north.  It's the other bed that got planted with tomatoes this weekend - all my slicers.  Those include (if I remember right), Chef's Choice Orange, Black Krim, Brandywine, Green Zebra, Stupice, Cordova, and one other that I'm blanking on.


Uh oh - I just looked up the Cordova tomato because I didn't remember what it looked like (it was a freebie packet).  Turns out it's a paste tomato as well.  Bummer!  I mean, good for sauce making later this summer if it does well, but bummer that it cuts into my slicers.

I also need to find somewhere to tuck in two more plants that I didn't make room for - Ildi (small yellow grape tomato) and Black Cherry (sometimes called Chocolate Cherry).  I really don't eat many cherry/grape tomatoes, but they're fun to grow, handy to have when you do want them, and, um, well, normally produce a ton of tomatoes.  Plus I won't have any issues tossing them in the grinder/saucer when making sauce....

1 comment:

Sue said...

I've heard of folks that like to roast those little cherry tomatoes--might be worth a try. I grow a couple types of the cherry type for salads and snacking. Great little snack while weeding.

I had a big section of garlic "disappear" this winter as well and that's never happened to me before. Mystery!