Mid Summer Happenings

This has been a strange summer in regards to the weather.  It just keeps reminding me how little control we have with our growing environment.  May was warm and everything got an early start but then June turned cold and rainy - but mostly cold.  Most of what I had in the garden just went into a holding pattern.  Then end of June and July has been very dry.  No rain for weeks.  Most of my gardens have drip irrigation, so that hasn't hurt us too much.

The basil!  Boy do they love the hot, dry weather.  I have never grown basil so successfully.  I have made pesto twice and will be able to make more or use it a different way.  It seems that in the past I was only able to make a decent amount of pesto once.  I love my pesto!

My lettuce has been a total bust at my house but I am growing it at another location.  I tried starting lettuce multiple times and I have one lettuce plant.  I had three at one time but two of them got devoured by something - I'm sure it was slugs.  It is very weird to only have one lettuce plant, but it works for a single family to harvest some of it about once a week.  I have lots of other greens, so that's why it works.  One lettuce plant wouldn't be enough without the other greens.  My bok choi, and arugula are doing great.  My kale, mizuna and mustard greens seem to go to seed regularly, but we eat them anyway.  The squash plants have been very weird this year.  My yellow crook neck is beautiful and huge but only now just starting to flower.  I'm not excited about pretty squash plants.  I want pretty squash fruit.  Doing a little research, I figured out it is most likely a unbalance in nutrients.  Too much nitrogen, maybe.  So I fed them with a seaweed/fish plant food and that seems to help. I'm getting flowers now and not just male ones.  My magda cousa is ahead of the other plants and I should be able to harvest some of that real soon.  I also have a zucchini at the other location that should be ready soon.  Everybody else has been harvesting their squash for awhile now, so I am very behind others.  Once they start, I should be inundated - I hope.  I have been craving summer squash like crazy this year because last year with all the rain it was a horrible squash season.  I'm harvesting beans and just finished with the peas and we have raspberries we can't keep up with.

I took a video and made it into a movie to show how we build tomato trellises.  I've attached it here and then  added two snapshots of what they look like today.  I hope people enjoy and learn how we do things.  I find the trellis system we use to be successful. There have been  many years of tomatoes falling down and breaking off and other disasters.

Movie of Building Trellises:

Cucumber Trellis

Tomato Trellis

We Make Some Changes Down On The Farm . .

Over the years we have tried various methods of vertical growing but weren't completely satisfied with the results.  A method of supporting our annual crop of tomato plants seems to be a challenge every year. Various other crops that can be grown vertically (beans, cucumbers, squash, zucchini) all need supports of some kind but our rocky soil doesn't lend itself to just driving a few poles into the ground where needed. In fact, it was the rocky soil and a desire for an easier way to build support structures that prompted us to consider a major rehab of the growing beds at the Murray Hill Drive location of Lake City Farm.

We sat down in the early spring and hashed out a plan. We would convert the growing space in our backyard, which comprised in-ground beds, into a system of raised beds. This would allow us to have deeper (rock free) growing beds with better drainage AND give a convenient means of installing support structures for various crops by attaching frames and poles and trellises to the beds themselves. We would maintain about the same square footage of growing space but gain much flexibility in how it was utilized. Yes, a lot of work and not insignificant expense but we felt it would be worth the effort in the long run.

Meanwhile the garlic is coming up in the front yard.

Front yard garlic bed