today's harvest

daddy long legs - a garden beneficial

I love to see these amazing creatures. This Daddy Long Legs is on my potatoes. Maybe that's why the Potato beetles aren't proliferating as fast as they sometimes do.

I had to look up some info on these spiders-that-aren't-spiders.

They're not spiders, they're Opiliones. And they're more accurately called harvestmen.

Harvestmen legs can exceed 6 inches! They molt every ten days and their legs have seven joints. The embryos also apparently have one or two "egg teeth" to help them get out of the egg sac. They really are good guys in the garden:

Harvestmen are garden predators and scavengers and eat a wide variety of food, preferring insects and other arthropods (dead or alive), though also eating vegetable matter and juices. Adults usually begin foraging at twilight. Food ranges from aphids, beetles, caterpillars, earthworms, flies, mites, small slugs, snails and spiders, to fecal matter and fungi. After each meal a Harvestmen cleans each leg, drawing them, one at a time through its jaws.

sideyard garden

It was evening when I took this photo from the upstairs window. Earlier in the day I caught the thermometer at 106*F! The sensor is located in full sun in the middle of my open cold frame. With the adjacent house walls and the stone path, it gets really warm. If I move the sensor a few feet to the shade, its a good 10* cooler.

As I am posting this photo I notice a squirrel in the far left bed. What is he doing!!? I spent the day working in this bed. I pulled the peas that were there, added fresh compost from my tumbler, and spread and worked it in. I then planted 3 blocks of plants: Teddy Bear sunflowers at the front, Blue Scotch and Winterbor kale in the middle and zinnias at the back mixed in with some feverfew volunteers. The squirrel is back near the zinnias. I think he has probably found something tasty (to him) in the fresh compost.

I also worked on the little paths between the beds. I spread a good layer of newspaper and covered this with brown wood bark mulch. I have finished the two rightmost paths so far.

The coldframe is filling fast with growing plants. Along the back are cucumbers and a couple watermelon plants. In the middle are eggplants and a tomato. At the front are rosemary, parsley, oregano and basil.

The beds at the left have mostly green beans and soy beans (edamame) in them. (Also some tomatoes, mustard greens, alpine strawberries, y0ung blueberry bushes, sage, chives and parsley.) I have trouble with beans at my community plot because of rampant bean beetles, and trouble with soy beans because of the chipmunks. No beetles or chipmunks here and beans do pretty well in the less than full sunlight.

I've been sowing bean seeds every two weeks all June. They haven't been sprouting well. I think partly because of cool damp weather we had early June. But also my seeds were old. I ended up planting handfuls of the old seeds thick in a little trench. And I bought some new seeds. And the weather got warmer. I have lots coming up now.

At the far right, I have another bed of peas to pull and replant when I have time. I am planning to put in summer crisp lettuces here. Am hoping in this shadiest bed, lettuce will do well in midsummer.

garlic harvest

The garlic in the back side of my garlic bed (Music) is ripening early. I have been picking lots of scapes and they have been delicious. As leaves yellow, I have been pulling the garlic. I like to pull them when 2 or 3 of the bottom leaves are yellow or brown.

I've started underplanting the garlic with small bok choy and summer crisp lettuce seedlings. So hopefully, as I pull the garlic, the bed will gracefully turn into a bed of greens.

I also have a couple rows of garlic in the front of the bed that are ripening much later. This is a "variety" that I've saved for years now. I've selected the biggest ones for replanting from my mix of garlics, some from the farmer's market, some Duganski. I don't really know what variety it is now.

truth or myth? you can't transplant carrots

I heard you can't transplant carrots because the roots end up crooked. I thought I'd just be very careful to dig a deep hole and straighten the root as I transplanted. Hmmm. No such luck. I had to learn the hard way. I threw out my second batch of seedlings without transplanting them. I will go back to direct sowing. I think carrots (and parsnips) are the only crop I don't transplant.

today's harvest

The garden has grown an amazing amount in the past week!!! I was in awe as I walked through and harvested.

more rain

We're alternating between hot humid days and rainy days. The thermometer in my side yard garden registered up to 110* F in the sun this weekend. Today, temperature is down but we have had rain all morning and evening. The slugs and snails are very happy about this. I bought some Sluggo yesterday. It says it is "organic". In the past I've used a more aggressive slug poison, but will try this. I spread it around my zinnias, marigolds, cabbages and eggplants. I did not like hand picking an squishing the slugs.

I'm starting to worry about tomato fungi, though I haven't seen any yet. I was looking at the copper sulfate sprays and powders the other day, but did not buy one. After today, am thinking I really should do this. Geno recommended a combination of rotenone and copper sulfate. It seems I will need a sprayer device for this too.

I'm looking forward to my first harvest of beets tomorrow - if the rain lets up. I have a new recipe to try for my Chiogga's.

I harvested garlic scapes last Friday and am planning to make a batch of garlic pesto soon ( tomorrow?). Everywhere I look at Farmers' Markets and local food sources this week, there are are scapes. Last year I made my first batch of scape pesto and I look forward to another this year. I need to see if I can find the same recipe again.

I placed a seed order last night from Johnny's for green beans, summer crisp lettuce and a couple of fall crops. I always love to pick out seeds.

summer solstice weeding

I am amazed at how fast the weeds are growing this year. But then, bet I say that every year.... I start weeding at one end of the garden and by the time I finish, there are big weeds at the far side again and I have to start over.

As I remember, this weed phase is a late June/early July thing - the summer solstice weed race. Soon the vegetable plants will be big enough to shade the weeds. In late July/August, the weeds will wind down their growth spurts as all of the plants move to making seeds and fruits.

But I think this after photo does show a fully weeded summer solstice garden (except for that far right corner). (snap quick) Thank goodness for photos!

grape flowers

As I was photographing flowers today, I started wondering about the grapes. I've never seen a grape flower. I looked close and one of my vines was in bloom! This is a Cabernet vine. Very small flowers with little fruits forming in the center.

My Catawba vine has well formed fruit clusters. I'll add a photo here tomorrow.

flowers in my garden today

new bluestone patio

Here's the new patio I made from bluestone I salvaged from the trash. Just a little surface for my garden chair. For now, the stones are just laid out on top of the salt marsh hay. Later, I plan to pull back the hay, flatten the area and set the stones so they are flush with the dirt of the path.

solstice celebration at the community garden

HOT, HOT! But a fun get together of gardeners. A dozen of us shared garden dinner dishes under the apple tree in front of our community garden.

The dishes included Catherine's vegetarian casserole of brown rice, broccoli, onion flavored with dill, mint and chives from her garden, a salad of greens from Judy's garden, Ali's couscous croquettes, very fresh snap peas and arugula from Malachy's garden and lots of rhubarb: Christina's rhubarb crisp and my rhubarb pie.

My rhubarb pie recipe is from the Epicurius website: Deep-Dish-Rhubarb-Pie-with-Crumb-Topping
Instead of decorating with pastry leaves, I used cut-outs of the summer sun.

the day before the solstice

We are going from cool to HOT!!!

Today was a lovely 70 degree day. I was lucky to be able to spend the day in the garden. Though I forgot to bring my camera, I did photograph my harvest of garlic scapes, spinach and lettuce.

Last night I found a couple of nice old chairs that a neighbor had left out for the trash pickup. I snagged them and brought them to the community garden. I left them for others and the first gardener in commented how nice and brought one to her plot. Another great find was that the truck that came to pick up a load of our garden trash had a whole stack of cut blue stone in the back. They were very happy to unload it for our use!! I took a bunch to my garden and now have a little blue stone patio under my garden chair.

I weeded and watered today. I squished a few potato bugs. Was really pleased to see that what looked like an infestation starting last week (about 50 potatoes larvae last week) is petering out (I hope - only about 20 bugs today).

The warm weather crops are taking off finally. Today the basil looked markedly better. It looked actually quite happy. The tomatoes, sweet potatoes and squashes are taking off. My potatoes are in full bloom. Small summer squashes and cucumbers are forming.

Tomorrow is predicted to be 97*F here in the Boston area. And quite humid. We haven't been above 80* since last August.

Tomorrow is also the summer solstice. The longest (and best) day of the year. We are planning a potluck gathering to celebrate at the community garden. We will all bring a dish made with at least one of the vegetables harvested from our gardens. I am planning to bring rhubarb pie. I made a good version last week and look forward to making it again to share.

bumper crop of bok choy

I harvested 16 heads of nice big bok choy today. Much more than I could eat, thought I do love bok choy. I washed it all, boxed it up and donated it to a local shelter for battered women. They were thrilled to get it. They varieties are both from seed from Johnny's. Win-win choy and Mei-qin.