Spring Dinner Salad

A combination of spinach, romaine, mixed greens, and chard. Chive flowers aren't just a garnish... they have a fresh chives taste when you first bite into them with a spicy onion kick at the end. Yum! :)

Bolting Bok Choi Batman!

After a week and a half of dry, reasonably warm weather, all of my Bok Choi has bolted. Very sad.

Doing some digging online - I've found this is not an uncommon problem, particularly for newbies like me.

One forum on gardenweb.com had this issue as a subject, and had this post:

"I am Chinese. I know the answer! We eat bok chai in two stages. One is when they are young like a transplant (preferred) and the other is when they grow much bigger ~1/2 lbs. If you need big chai you need to transplant the young ones around september, october and you will get big ones in the spring time. If you plant them in spring just harvet them when they are young. All of them will go flowering in april. It dill well for me when I was in New Jersey."

So one aspect of this is that it seems we should have harvested this round of bok choi when it was still small. The good news is that bok choi sounds like a great over-wintering (year round) crop!

There was also a post on the same page about being mindful of the varietal of bok choi one uses- with an eye towards heat tolerance (There are lots of southern Asia brassicas). I found a great site that specializes in Asian vegetable seeds for future reference. (Lots of potential there)

The other thing is that I think I planted the bok choi in the wrong location.... it's a cool weather crop, and this location gets nearly perfect full sun. I've got a location in mind that gets allot more shade for the next try. So the first round of bok choi has been a failure - but I've learned allot and I've found a new seed source!

Since full sun was part of the 'problem' here... once my helpers pulled the bok choi out and I amended the soil with compost, we planted a lemon cucumber.

Potatoes - first mounding

Of two potato boxes, only one has really taken off in any meaningful way; the other box does have some green finally coming up - so I'm hopeful it'll come around.

Mounding with Cedar Grove compost... I mounded when they were 4-5", and I've left about 1" of growth as per my Growing Potatoes in a Container Guide.

The Annual Role of Dice - Tomatoes

It's mid-May, the weather is warming up, and the tomato starts have been hardened... into the ground they go!

Following the advice of my boss, Bruce (always listen to Iowa farm boys); I snipped the two lowest branches off of the tomato plant and lowered it as far down into the bed as I could, while making sure the next lowest set of branches and leaves did not touch the ground. He told me that roots will shoot out of the stumps where branches once were, and having the additional stalk in the ground improves the vertical strength of the tomato as it grows upwards.

The irrigation system I set up has one drip irrigation port for each tomato plant. I've read that over-watering and over-feeding tomatoes is a common newbie mistake to make, so I'll be keeping that in mind. Engineer the automated irrigation system is proving to be a skill set in it's own right - it's a work in progress.

RainCity is definitely a cool climate for growing tomatoes, so picking the right variety is essential. I've been told that Romas are usually a solid bet; My father-in-law was mindful of this when growing the starts - so we have some variety, but all of them are short season varietals.

Leaf Miners

First it was the weevils, and now, leaf miners.

Amaya informed Amber that the leaf miner bugs

put their babies inside the leaves, and then the

when they hatch they eat the leaves. This is true

of course, what I can't figure out is how she knew

that.

You can see on this chard leaf the damage they do.

If I let them get out of control, I can expect they'll

jump to my beets soon enough.

We have a bunch of magnolia trees in the area - and

we've seen evidence of their eating on their leaves

as well, which unfortunately means they have an

abundant natural habitat all around; and there are

probably millions of them.

I went to Sky Nursery to see what they had -

Originally I was looking for some kind of pheromone

trap (they didn't have one for leaf miners).

However, I did see that the capsicum spray they

were selling indicated it worked on leaf miners.

Perhaps the mama leaf miners don't much care for penetrating a leaf that's been treated with

pepper spray. I sure hope so- because that's about the only mitigation I've found. Other than

that, the only recommended treatment is to cull the infected leaves at first sign of infection, and

hope the little &^#@!*%$ don't find the rest of your crop.

We were able to actually see the leaf miners eating away when we put the leaf under the

microscope. Two that are in focus are on the left. There's more movement in the upper right,

which I'm sure are more of them, but the field of focus is limited.

Weevils and Me, Pas De Deux

Yup.. that's him. The little *!@)$&*^ that's been eating my snap peas and bush beans.

The kids have learned that we find leaves that are damaged, and then we pull out The Vegetable and Herb Expert to make a diagnosis. Once we have a firm idea about what we're dealing with... we gather more data. Capturing a specimen for analysis under the microscope so we can see get a visual is key. Ugly furry ^%!@#$. He's at x40 in this photo.

Here he is at x20. The top of the image is dominated by a penny for perspective of scale.

I only applied the tobacco tea mixture to the ground around the snap peas once. I've applied the hot pepper/soap mixture to the snap peas twice - and only twice due to rain (Rain may have washed off the first round. I'm trying to keep my response proportional). The snap peas that made it out of seedling stage have taken off and the new growth is unadulterated so far. Very few bush beans made it through the war. The mounds in this photo are the second round of bush beans. I've also done a second round of snap peas. Now that I know what to look for, I won't be caught unawares. I know the enemy, and I'll be ready with the appropriate response next time.

Basket of Gold

Flowers are not a primary interest of mine. That being said, I *am* interested in flowers that complement a garden - particularly ones that are highly rated in terms of attracting beneficial insects. Last season I found a great PDF that lists various plants that attract beneficial insects; and I started planting 'Basket of Gold' in the rock wall between two garden segments. Besides being beautiful, the main benefit of this one is that it blooms in early May, attracting bees and ladybugs at the earliest opportunity.

Another good link: Flowers for Benefical Insects

Evil Weevils

Both my bush beans and my snap peas are getting ravaged. Grrr....

Using one of my favorite books "The Vegetable Herb Expert" by Dr. D. G. Hessayon. I figured out that I've got a serious weevil issue. (This book is the ultimate resource for diagnosis).

Also called "brown beetles" or "pea & bean weevil", it munches up the leaves of your snap peas and bush beans (bastards!).

These little $@!*ers have been chewing up the leaves on my plants so fast, the seedlings die.

After learning that they were nocturnal, I had to go out to the garden and see them with my own eyes.... I realized that I'm officially in need of a gardening 12-step program after crawling around in the garden with a mag-light at 12:30am.

With visions of one of my favorite crops disappearing for the year, I asked my father-in-law for assistance... he created two different sprays for me. One is a mixture of hot sauce, mouthwash, oil soap, and 'tobacco tea'. It's "for ground use only". I need to do more research, but it's my understanding that pretty much nothing survives that mixture.

Is this earth friendly? Um... I don't know, but I'm thinking that the probability leans towards 'NO' (research pending.... I want to nail this down). That said, it's now in the arsenal when desperate times call for desperate measures. The other spray bottle he hooked me up with is a bit more simple - a mixture of hot sauce and (bio-degradable) dish soap to be used on the leaves directly. I'm inclined to think that one is probably OK - but I still have to research that as well.

In any event - since I started using the sprays the new growth on the snap peas *does* look a whole lot better. I treated the ground (once) with the tobacco tea mixture, and I've been making sure the leaves always have a fresh coat of the chili sauch/soap mixture. I won't save this entire rotation of snap peas, but I think the damage control has been effective,

Chamomile

Last year I built a garden path that I wanted to fill with flowers between paver stones (something to attract more bees)... but I planted a bunch of annuals, and then this spring it had over grown with weeds. I had to weed it and effectively start all over. That's not exactly what I was going for. I decided I needed a perennial - so I wouldn't have to do this again.

I discovered Roman chamomile (also called English chamomile). It has an cousin, German chamomile, which is an annual and favored by tea makers for it's robust flower production. But Roman chamomile has a long tradition of being a ground cover for paths in English gardens! :)

I discovered that chamomile seeds are *small*; too small to easily manage by hand. I ordered 5000 seeds from outsidepride.com and you can see in the bowl picture, 5000 chamomile seeds doesn't look like much. I read a posting on gardenweb.com that suggested mixing the seeds with sand in order to make them easy to manage by hand. I thought this was a great idea. Once they were mixed, the kids were able to help me plant them. "We're planting flowers with seed-sand."

I'm looking forward to having the path covered with a nice looking perennial... but having an herb that has been recognized for centuries as having medicinal qualities is definitely a bonus.

"The Camomile; The more it is trodden on, the faster it grows."

- Shakespeare's Henry IV, part 1

Spinach Sprouts

This shot is part of my ongoing effort to improve my repository of what various sprouts look like... (so I don't accidentally weed them). =P

What we have here is this seasons 2nd round of spinach.

Spinach looks nearly like grass when it's first coming up (in my view). In this instance I planted it in a row-like fashion, but I think that like most leafy greens, spinach would be well served by planting in a square-foot-garden approach.

The bok choi (backround), and the broccoli (foreground) and doing great.

Likewise, the spinach and mixed greens are coming along nicely. We'll be able to enjoying the first round of the spinach crop quite soon.

Spring Sage

The sage is among the herbs that have come through from last season looking just beautiful.

I love the taste of sage... saute it in butter and serve on top of fresh pasta or pork chops - yum!

I plan to experiment a bit more with it this year....

There's a couple ideas I've found that look promising:

Fried Sage Leaves look delicious and easy to do.

Another idea is to try to create a sage pesto. My personal favorite right now is a 3/4 parsley, 1/4 basil pesto. It seems the sage could bring some pizazz to the flavor, but I'm not sure if I'd want it to be the dominant leaf.

The Chives Forest

In my ongoing quest to have too much of everything, we split up the chive plants (dug them up and sliced them apart with a spade) and re-planted them underneath the grapes.

The bed directly underneath the grapes were proving to be a challenge... last year I realized (when I accidentally dug up a root) that the grapes had become so large that their root system had spread throughout the bed (duh- out of sight, out of mind.) So that effectively takes those beds out of action. What to do? Herbs is the answer. Once planted, if the herb stays healthy there no need to disrupt that section of bed every again. It's easy access from the kitchen, so it's a good spot for them anyways. Once all the split mature, we'll have *allot* of chives.

Corn seedlings!

Planted the first squash in the 'Three Sisters' bed - a couple of starts for butternut that Amaya got as a present on her 6th birthday.

The corn seedlings have already broken through! :)

I double planted each location with Quickie Hybrid (Sugar Enhanced - 64 days); I'll thin back to just a single corn plant per position once there's a little more growth.

Bush Bean Seedling

My initial planting of of bush beans (Jade - 60 days) hasn't gone too well.

First thing - a majority of the seeds that were planted haven't germinated.

Second thing- the seedlings that have come up are pretty sad looking.

The seedling on the left is representative of what I'm getting... the leaves are a pale shade of green with yellowed tips. At this point I think the most likely reason (for both problem) is that the soil temperature

is still too low. We were having lots of warm days when I first planted, but since then we've had quite a few stretches of where the nights were in the 40's and the days haven't broken 55. The lowest temperature I've seen listed for germination is 60 degrees - but a more typical range is 65 - 85 degrees.

Beans are great companion plants with for nearly everything thanks to the fact that they create their own nitrogen, so I'll just keep planting them. I've got plenty of seeds, and I want staggered crop production anyways.