Photos

 Arugula

 Cinco de Mayo snow

New babies--dill, fennel, lettuce, etc.

 Other new babies--squash and melons

 The newly transplanted.

 Some of the greenhouse.

Spring, in the sense that temperatures ranged from the mid-20s to the high 60s

Monday--I did get some radishes planted.  So now from south to north it's radishes, chard, radishes, arugula.  The lettuce in the house germinated!  So rewarding to have an instant gratification garden.  In other news, Teri reports that I shouldn't blame the holes in the artichokes exclusively on earwigs.  Apparently some day while we were at work there was marble-sized hail.  Usually that doesn't make an impression until all of the plants are out and flattened.

Wednesday--Happy Cinco de Mayo!  Yesterday it was 29 degrees when we got up, and this morning there was snow on the ground.  So far everything's surviving in the greenhouse (although the basil is getting yellower by the moment).  I hauled the artichokes in last night; they really do look bad, poor things.  Tomorrow night it's supposed to be 25 degrees.  We may put Remay (ground cover) on everything in the greenhouse, or we may sleep with the thermometer next to our heads.  What's to be done about the peas, radishes, and arugula?  We'll see whether they survive that cold.  Not feeling so proud of myself for planting the chard and next batch of radishes any more.

Sunday--it did get down to 25.9 two nights.  We took no precautions (except bringing the artichokes in), and lucked out.  Despite everything the zucchini, watermelon, and cantaloupe all germinated.  Today was beautiful.  Shawn transplanted many of the rest of the peppers, got everything thoroughly watered, and fertilized the garlic.  I focused on the yard--mowing, weed-eating, checking on the birdhouses, etc.  The peas are this week's victim of the vagaries of the outside world.  I think quail are chewing on them.

I can't get the photos to upload; I'll try an all photos post tomorrow(ish).

Plenty of Rain

Last weekend was beautiful, but I had to drive to Seattle for work.  This weekend would be well spent driving somewhere; it's been about 40 degrees, raining and the wind blowing like crazy.

We did get the shallots weeded last weekend.

Also, Shawn created some attractive garlic labels.  We've usually worked with just a map, so until it's dug up usually we don't know which variety it is.  The plastic labels we put in in the fall are for some reason attractive to the elk, who pull them out, bite holes in them, and scatter them about.  We're hoping that these do better.

All progresses in the greenhouse.  The aphid scare that presented itself seems to have been somewhat neutralized by the soapy water.  Due to infestation, the artichokes were moved outside.  That seems to have controlled the aphids, but the earwigs have done way more damage.  The leaves are very holey (oops, forgot to take a picture).  I believe that earwigs are the most despised insect in our garden.

Teri and Shawn transplanted all of the tomatoes and the eggplant.  They look really good!  The greenhouse is filling up, but not overflowing yet.

Today, since it was too wet to plant things in the actual ground, we started more things for the greenhouse. They include fennel, dill, red basil, cilantro, parsley, and lettuce in the tiny cell tray and various kinds of summer squash in the root trainers.  (Shawn always likes to have the first zucchini from the Grande Ronde Valley at market.)  All the seeds have been dragged out again and sorted into yet more piles--things we're done with for the year, things that should go out into the actual ground ASAP, things that are going to wait until the soil warms up dramatically.
Saturday I researched pinching back the basil.  It's a simple enough concept when it's already a bushy plant, but I don't get how far to go when there aren't any branches yet.  While reading various non-helpful websites, I did come across the tidbit that when the temperature drops below 50 degrees basil leaves turn yellow.  That was good news as Shawn and I had earlier in the day been pondering what was wrong with some of the basils.  Was there some sort of bug?  Lack of nutrition?  It's good to know it's just because it was cold.  Sunday I just nipped back the growing tip of half the basil.  We'll see what happens.
Tomorrow we will hopefully fertilize--a delicious combination of seaweed and fish emulsion applied foliarly.  Then we'll have to stay out of the greenhouse until the stench dissipates.
I did get some chard planted in the ground.  We'll see if it comes up.  I'd like to get the next batch of radishes in.

April 24 Photos

May 2 Photos

 

 

 

 

Dick and Sandy were kind enough to give us their extra broccoli and cauliflower.  If we can prevent the flea beetles, should be yummy.

There will be at least one apricot!

Spring!

Incredibly warm this weekend!  Part of the weekend was dedicated to maintenance of the natural bug and rodent contol.  I cleaned out all the birdhouses and began the epic war on the wasps who also like to build their nests in the boxes.  The bluebirds and tree swallows have expressed interest; the wrens haven't arrived yet.  And we are a little worried about the hummingbirds, who are quite late.
The baby great horn owls are up and showing their fluffiness.  The barn owls on the other hand are in some sort of crisis.  Three babies have jumped out of their box.  Two have died.  We're working on a variety of theories, most of which we can't do anything about.
We've fertilized the garlic and greenhouse items.  We also worked on mulching the garlic.  You may say to yoruselves, "why, I think I would have mulched in the fall, right after I planted the garlic.  Then they would have been protected from frost heaves and the pesky leaves wouldn't be in the way."  I would say to you, we here at Arrowleaf Farms generally know when and what we should be doing, but that does not seem to mean it gets done.  For example, yes, we should have planted the potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, and likely other things by now.
Also worked on installing the irrigation for the garlic, who were quite thirsty.  But since we had a good thunderstorm last night, we didn't need to finalize or implement the system.

The peas are up!  Also some of the unlabled stuff we planted is progressing.  I remember planting radishes, chard, and lettuce.  I see what look like radishes and something that tastes like arugula.  Apparently I planted that as well!

Everything in the greenhouse and in the house on heat mats is moving along.  The soapy water spraying for aphids has begun--before we even saw an aphid.  Here is an instance where we actually did what we were supposed to before it was too late!  Below are the update photos.

Clean up and Transplant

This weekend was dedicated to removing last year's garden and getting some transplanting done.  Teri was a great help with all of it, and now the main garden is devoid of almost all of the dead vegetation and ready to be planted for this year.
Friday the focus was on basil; we plan to sell seedlings this year.  They are doing pretty well.  Also cleaned up the flower garden.  Looks like it will again be dominated by rudbekia and some other flower whose name I can't remember but it self-sows like crazy.

Saturday was miserably windy, but with Teri's inspiration we actually cleaned up all of the old tomato plants (yes, we reuse the twist ties), took down the support structures, picked up all the old gourds, and extracted the corn stalks.  I was pooped.  I thought we had finished to whole thing, but today it occurred to me that I still haven't dealt with the artichokes and a few of the zucchini. 

Today we transplanted about 140 pepper plants.  They moved up to the greenhouse from Teri's basement, where they had been living under lights and over a heat map.  They were a little overwhelmed by the actual sun, not to mention being put into big pots.  But as the sun went down they started to perk up (too dark for pictures by the time I got out there though).

 

Shawn and Teri also installed the irrigation for the garlic and put on some mulch.  Often we don't get the water in until the garlic are quite tall and it is a bit of a challenge.

 

Calling Mr. McGregor

I got down to the actual garden this week.  The first thing I saw was a little cottontail.  Luckily (for it if not for our vegetables) Andy did not see it.

I checked on the lettuce, chard, peas, and radishes we planted.  The chard and either the lettuce or radishes (problem with not labeling) are up and likely regretting it as it hasn't been much out of the 30s for quite a while and it's been snowing every day.

Someday I'll figure out how to move photos around on this thing!  The garlic is looking great, and was glad to finally get some precipitation.

Teri planted 136 peppers on March 14. Here's the list of what she planted (in the nice handwriting) and how they look. LY stands for last year and indicates the number we had last year.  The information below was the plan for numbers to plant, but was amended in the actual planting.

 

On Friday we planted the eggplant.  On Saturday the tomatoes and the remainder of the peppers went in.  See below for the schematic (which we usually lose by transplant time, so this year I scanned them) and numbers of varieties planted.  Hopefully they'll be up soon!