A Crucible IV

Coming to an end...

(Post too long for email)

Happy Memorial Day.

This crucible is coming to an end soon. A few highlights of late.

Tomatoes and peppers…

36 tomatoes to be exact. Twelve Roma, which are determinate (a set size) so I will be using tomato cages, while the rest are indeterminate (vines will continue to grow until the freeze) so they will all be trellised. Most of the tomatoes were ten inches tall with few branches, good for burying the stem in trenches for stronger plants. All the hairs on the stem will become roots.

Though, there are six cherry tomato plants, three different kinds that I haven’t grown before - that is a lot of cherry tomatoes, three of which I intended to give away, but then I ran the map of the plantings under lights through the washing machine so I’m not certain which are the cherry tomatoes (after that I have been writing in the journal and putting signs in every 6-pack.) Also, there are six (I think, though I might have only grown three) Cherokee Purple tomato plants which are my favorite for fresh eating, but they are not very useful for canning as the inside turns to mush when they are put into high temperature water to release the skin; they often break up and release their contents into the water.

The core of planting here: tomatoes, carrots, onions, potatoes, cabbage.

Upper trellises background, lower trellises foreground.

This is the hall of melons. Nine trellises for melons, squash and pie pumpkins. Watermelon will be on the other side of the tree on the right.

The fourth tray is the watermelons (their bed is not yet finished, so I didn’t bring them.)

A long line of three different kinds of winter squash in three different beds. My father is fond of squash, and it is my intention to see how much food I can put away for next winter.

This area needed attention. I found Ganesh the Remover of Obstacles in the garage. L the landowner is something of a collector of oddities.

No sheep compost, no additions, just digging up the turf, removing all the grass and rhizomes while leaving the soil, keeping an eye out for interesting plants. I tried to save some sunflowers. There was a curious root with stems and leaves sprouting from it, so I replanted the two I found to see if they continue to grow and I can find out what it is.

Two lupine on the other side, a cat mint this side and one between the lupine. There is a Winnipeg Parks rose I planted to the left of the lupine.

I needed another potato bed. I bought way more seed potatoes than I have room for. The three beds on the right are late season potatoes - Genesee, Russet Burbank, Katahdin and Snowden. The little potatoes on the left are called Upstate Abundance, an early season potato said to produce a lot of golf ball to racquetball sized potatoes all summer and fall. My parents eat about 5+ potatoes a week, each. As do I, of late.

Canadian thistles have taken over much of the sheep pasture on the other side of the fence, so there are plenty inside the fence. I can remove them with a hand spade, but I spent an hour one day piling them up and only removed maybe a quarter of them. They are a good reminder how gardening is much like a martial art practice (if you treat it like that): precise, efficient movement, diligence, dedication, stoic attention to the task, knowing well and anticipating your enemies offenses and defenses. Some of these basal leaves are two feet apart tip to tip.

Nothing left of the thistle but pieces (and the rhizome under ground and a few million seeds in the soil, likely.)

Here is another area that needed some attention. These day lilies do not belong here. That and the brome grass and their rhizomes. Beets in the bed behind the day lilies. My mom loves beets.

More potatoes, both in the Y and in the ditch to the left, though I ended up removing the potatoes in the ditch to the left and planted zucchini seed. Four peony center right, basil and dill to the right of them. The little island of day lilies were embedded in an old stump so I left them and will maintain a trench around so they don’t spread. There are some flowers too I don’t have a name for, a Queen Elizabeth rose, tomatoes, brussels, broccoli, onions and artichoke to the left, cabbages and celery on the other side of the wall of rhubarb.

I might harvest half the rhubarb for homebrew wine. It goes well with strawberries especially.

I built a fence around the watermelons. If I don’t dig another post hole for awhile I will be ok with that. And there ends the first round of infrastructure for the garden and orchard.

Radishes on the left and kohl rabi on the right, with onions in between. Radishes will be done in a few weeks, kohl rabi in July, onions in the fall. Packing things in tight, but everything is an experiment.

More radishes, with onions and peppers in between.

Right to left, beets, kale, onions, carrots, tomatoes.

The thing about planting so much beet seed, one can have a baby beet salad every day for a couple of weeks. With whatever else is available. (Unlike big box which throws it’s excess plants in the “compost”, I eat them.)

Salad greens in between the cabbages. The cabbages in the background were grown under lights, the cabbages in the foreground from seed.

These brussels, along with the cabbages, have doubled in size the last few days with the 80+ heat, sun and daily watering. It was winter until May 01 and now we are in summer.

The peppers seem happy.

I saved these flowering plants when I dug up this bed. Glad I did. Like a phlox, but I’m not sure yet.

I was at the orchard to water. My pond is already drying up. There has been very little rain the last three weeks, none in the forecast for several days and then only a slight chance. I might have to fast track the sand point well and the drip irrigation system. But that was always part two of the infrastructure.

Next up, a crucible resolution, and hopefully more regular and varied posts.