Southern Maine Gardener

If you’ll allow me a momentary diversion from all things gardening, I’d like to pass on the link to a news item: our fair city has been named “Foodiest Small Town In America” by Bon Appetit magazine.  The author really captured the exuberance we felt as newcomers to Portland in terms of food.  It was like our taste buds were awakened after a long, long slumber.  Having fresh seafood available, good produce and chefs who are continually striving to cook clean and let the ingredients speak for themselves (rather than salting the crap out of a dish a la Austin TX) is what won us over and what makes this town stand out.  In addition, one can drive a half-hour north or south to towns like Ogunquit and Brunswick for some equally stellar restaurants.  We are indeed blessed.

Still picking beans, so they’re still producing, for as we know, they’ll stop if I stop.  Decided to pull my first four carrots.  A good till and picking out all the stones from the bed at the beginning of the season did the trick, they are as straight as I’ve grown them.  And my peas came back!

Beans, Peas and Carrots 8-25-09

Peppers are growing slowly but surely, though I doubt there’s enough time left in the season to get anything significant.

Bells Are Ringing

One broccoli plant laid low after its attack, came back and started a head.

Way to Go B

And I’m super excited about my beet!

One Is The Lonliest Number

Pulled the 4 ears of corn and barbequed them for dinner last night.  Note: leave corn unshucked next time when grilling – they got chewy and stuck in our teeth like a damn tootsie roll.  Squash and melons still flower regularly and are robust, but no fruits in sight.  Same with the tomatoes.

Tomatoes August 25

The thought of a summer without a homegrown tomato makes me downright emotional.

Howdy y’all.  My sister and her oldest daughter were in town the past 5 days, so not much gardening was done, which was a good thing.

The remaining potato plants died off last week and I pulled 7 more potatoes out of the bag.  We boiled them, ate some right away, then put the rest on a potato/asparagus/goat cheese pizza that we like to make from time to time.  For my first foray into potato growing, I can’t complain.  I can reuse the bags next year and cross my fingers the blight will miss my yard.

Beans!  Both bush and pole varieties, we’ve been picking ’em and eating ’em by the pound.  They are quickly supplanting tomatoes as my garden’s pride and joy.  The easiest to grow and the best producing plants I’ve encountered.    Speaking of tomatoes, it’s been hot the past 5 days with another hot 5 to come, so the toms are finally thriving.  They’re not anywhere near where I was at this point last year, but there are blossoms and not too many of them have subsequently dropped.  With any luck, we might be eating our first tomato the first week of September.  I should note that other Maine gardeners have already done this earlier in the month, but as mentioned in previous posts, it’s been a bad year for toms on the whole.

Mr. E surprised us the other day by empowering himself to pick my one big pepper (shown below).  It was a little bigger than a golf ball.  What do you say when your 4 year old picks something you’ve watched and nurtured for 3 months that wasn’t ready to be plucked yet?  You say “awww, thanks buddy.  Let’s not pick any more peppers, though. We want to wait until they get REALLY big, like this (make big bell pepper shape with hands) before we pick any more.”  I have 6 or 7 more fruits on the plants, but they’ve got a long way to go.  Sigh.

Lettuce has seriously bolted and is now about 4′ high, but I kind of like seeing them in beds, so I haven’t pulled them yet.  Still getting a few peas here and there.  Broccoli recovered, but quickly flowered and went to seed.  The wife and I plucked a few heads and they tasted fine to us, so we might eat it anyway.  Squash is producing many flowers, but no fruits yet.  Same with the melons, cukes and eggplant.  4 ears of corn showing, just waiting for them to get big enough to pick.  Carrots and my one beet plant doing well and I’ll probably start pulling those out in a week or so.

For documentation’s sake …

The remaining 2 potato plants next to the blighted plant succumbed this past Wednesday and I hauled out 6 spuds of varying sizes.  Steamed them all for a grilled chicken / potato salad yesterday.  The other bag appears unaffected so far.

We had two or three days last week that were intensely hot and hazy, which has seemed to help things get a move on in the growth department.  Lettuce is finally starting to bolt, so we’ve been picking and eating it every other day.  Peas are on their way out, but have been picking and eating between 10-20 pods a day as well.  Beans, corn and carrots coming in.  Broccoli formed a few heads and got attacked by something or other – probably going to pull it on Wednesday if it gets worse – no time for a diagnosis / remedy.  One beet seedling still going strong.  The tomatoes have doubled in size over the past 2 weeks, but I’ll be lucky if I get a single, edible fruit by the end of the month.

Thus endeth the farm report.

Back from a week on Mount Desert Island and a stay in Northeast Harbor.  I decided to leave the veggies unsupervised for the week and they did just fine.  We’d had a couple of salads from the lettuce and herbs before we left, but other than a handful of shelled peas, that was it.  Mr. E scoped out the situation:

Looks Fat Enough, I Suppose

Open ‘er up, Mr. E!

Excellent

Had about 25-30 of those guys and accomplished one of my to-dos this year, which was to, uh, grow more peas than last year.  What else?

One BP On Its Way

Lots of flowers on the plants, but only one fruit so far.  Weather is still fairly cool and rainy, so I can’t expect much more anytime soon.

Thigh-High!

Corn’s doing well.  And so are the squash, broccoli, carrots and aforementioned lettuces.

Quietly Producing

One potato plant had a visit from the blight while we were gone, so I pulled the whole thing out and took out the two potatoes it managed to grow

First Two Spuds

They’re headed for a frying pan tonight.

The excellent Gardener’s Supply Company in Burlington VT got me hook, line and sinker with an e-mail they sent earlier this year extolling the benefits of their potato bags.  I’d never grown potatoes, but knowing that much of the northern half of this state is dedicated to growing them, I put two and two together and that seemed to = me growing some taters on my deck.  I bought a couple of bags, some Prairie Blush seed potatoes from Wood Prairie Farm, read the instructions that came with the bag, and …

Potatoes, Bagged

So far, so good.  No pests and solid, continuous growth.  The process: on May 25, I filled the bag 1/3 full with soil, cut my seed potatoes into chunks with 2-3 eye sprouts per chunk, then buried them.  A week later, I had some leaf growth, so I buried that with more soil to 2/3 full to where only a few leaves were showing.  Another week or so later, more leaf growth that was buried to near the top of the bag.  Now I’m waiting for the payoff in … September, from what I’ve been told.  I wait for the foliage to turn yellow and die off, which is my signal to dig around with my hands and see what’s in there.

Finally stopped raining yesterday long enough to snap some photos of what’s been taking up my free time the past two months.  Behold:

Caselode Shelling Peas

Two bean varieties:

Provider Bush Beans

and

Fortex Pole Beans

Lessee … what else …

Lettuces, Broccoli and Squashes

There’s Elite Zucchini, Costata Romanesco Zucc. and a neat yellow/green hybrid summer squash called Zephyr.  And if you look real close, about 8 carrots.

Corn and Tomaters

I received a free sample packet of Dorinny corn from Wood Prairie Farm with my seed potatoes and put them in the ground on a whim when the lettuce went in.  Whaddaya know, they grew.  Tomato varieties: Brandywine, Red Pear-Piriform, Japanese Black Trifele, a hybrid cherry – the endearingly named BHN-624, Valencia, Dafel, Wonder Light, Wapsipinicon Peach, TC Jones, Pantano Romanesco, Bloody Butcher, and Thessaloniki, for my countrymen.  The one (1) beet seedling remaining is down in there as well.  Hope you enjoyed the 6 other ones, critters.

The deck has more action this year – I’ve got 3 tomato plants in containers along with 6 eggplants and 6 pepper plants  After zero (0)  fruit on my eggplant seedlings and only one pepper last year, I decided to put these guys where the heat is most concentrated to give them a fighting chance.  At some point I may have to accept that I live too far north (or lack the skills) to eat my own eggplant.

Eggplants and Peppers

I caught this guy buzzing around the top of the bamboo teepee where the pole beans are growing:

Dragonfly

Looks like some type of Skimmer to me, forgive me for not finding the scientific name.

Ah, summer.

Last day of June and the word is it’s the 5th wettest on record. Over 8 inches this month so far, and pretty cold as well. Very glad I waited to put my tomatoes out until last week, they might have a chance if we warm up soon, but it sure has to be soon because they are looking anemic. Most everything else is doing well and liking the rain.

Before I forget … for the record … on June 24, bush and pole beans, melons, squash, and tomatoes all went into the ground.  My 2 potato bags are filled to the top with soil now, so now we wait until the end of August (?) to dig out the spuds.  If all goes well, I may have my first heart attack from eating a metric ton of french fries.  One can only hope!

In other gardening news, our John Cabot rose bush has been almost completely defoliated. There are plenty of flowers, but no leaves left.  It looks bizarre.  I noticed the Japanese Beetles started munching on it last year not soon after we planted it. However, this year’s leaf devastation started in earnest a few weeks ago, way too early for the JBs. I’m guessing it must be either aphids or whiteflies. Made me mad enough to buy something from the Ortho line of products today. Yes, yes, I know, not very green of me, but dang it, the bush is far away from the vegetables and I sure ain’t going to eat my roses. I just hope I can get some new leaf growth before the summer’s out.

Edited to add a pic:

John Cabot, Defoliated

Though it’s June up here, the weather is still cool and unpredictable, so I’ve been very conservative with what’s in the ground at the moment.  Indeed, what is in the ground?  So glad you asked, Interwebs (all of you)!  Beets, Carrots, Lettuces, Peas, Potatoes and Spinach.  Like I said, conservative.  Seedlings in waiting: Bush and Pole Beans, Cucumbers, Melons, Peppers, Squash and about 10 Tomato varieites.  They are the gardener’s pride and joy, after all.

How’s everything doing?  Beets and carrots were sown directly in the ground a couple of weeks ago and about half are poking through OK.  Lettuces were bought as seedlings, doing fine.  Peas are reaching for the sky and entwining themselves around my re-purposed frame wonderfully.  Potatoes sprouting leaves and doing great.  And Spinach?  Well, the spinach is sucking hard.  Meager, slow as molasses growth and appearing to bolt already.  I’ve tried for three years to grow the stuff without success.  I need to get more serious about soil testing instead of attempting to grow it blindly.