Tomatoes, Peppers, Celery and Mulch

After several cloudy but warm days, the sun has come out and we have a hot dry spell ahead of us.  It's time to give the tomatoes some TLC.

The tomato bed was prepared a couple of months ago.  Several wheelbarrow loads of SeaSoil were added and turned in.  The poles for the framework were put in place and holes dug by each pole - 10 in all.  Each hole was given a cup of homemade fertilizer which was watered in.  The bed sat like this and waited for the nighttime temperatures to be reliably 10C and a couple of weeks ago, that criteria was reached.  The tomatoes were planted in deeply and a week later were tied to the poles.

Today I trimmed off the lowest sets of leaves.  This is a prevention measure for when water splashes on the soil, carrying disease to the plant.  There won't be a lot of soil splashing on my tomatoes because they are mulched.

Every fall, we rake up the maple leaves below our house.  They sit in a pile getting good and wet all winter.  When spring comes, my husband puts them through our shredder and the resulting fluffy goodness is applied to plants that could use a mulch.  It's been very dry around here lately, but when I dug into the pile, the chopped leaves were nice and damp.

After trimming the tomatoes, I applied a good 3" of leaf mulch.  When the plants get bigger, I will probably trim off more bottom leaves.  The mulch keeps the ground nice and moist, which is an important thing for tomatoes.  They need a constant supply of moisture.  They don't want to be waterlogged, but they do need the soil to be consistently moist.

All of the tomatoes are forming flowers now.  My daughter, who is relatively new to vegetable gardening, asked if she should remove the flowers from her plants.  She was concerned that the plants weren't big enough to support tomatoes.  Leave them.  As the tomatoes form, the plant also grows.  If it has proper support, it will easily bear the weight of the fruit.  Since all the plants in this bed are determinate, I won't be pinching off side shoots either.  Gold Nugget (above) is always the earliest to flower in my garden and we love the little sweet yellow morsels.

I mulched 2 beds today.  The second bed to be treated was the one containing peppers, lettuce, celery and garlic.  The garlic has been mulched all winter, so this portion was fine.  As this particular bed was the last long one we built, it is also the one containing the least organic matter.  I've been finding that the top dries out quickly and water just runs off it.  Mulch will take care of this.  After weeding and watering, 3" of mulch was tucked in around the plants.

Mulching is an excellent way to treat celery, which wants lots of water.  I carefully tucked handfuls of mulch around each plant, burying them up to their leaves.

Commercial growers blanch their celery, and while I'm not planning on going to extremes to get pale celery, the mulch will do some of this naturally and keep the plants moist at the same time.

Working in this bed gave me a good look at the garlic, which is now producing scapes - yum!

And that brings me to another question my daughter had for me.  She was concerned about the uneven growth in her garlic.  I reminded her that she'd planted several different varieties - as have I.  Some of her plants are really tall and others relatively short.  She was concerned that perhaps some of her soil wasn't as fertile as other patches.  Not the case at all!  In the picture above I have 5 different varieties growing and it's easy to see that there are different growth patterns.  I have to stress that there are NO DUMB QUESTIONS in gardening.  We are all - even master gardeners, of which I am definitely not one - learning all the time.

Planting Peppers

We're in the middle of a mini heat wave.  Today the temperature got up to 27C in the shade, when normal for this time of the year is 15C.  I decided that the peppers could go outside as long as they were protected.

I've been reading up on peppers lately as I've only recently started growing them.  They are members of the same family as tomatoes and potatoes, so I've had to readjust where I was planning on growing them because I'd thought to plant them where potatoes had been last year.  Not the best idea, so I've moved their location.

I also discovered you can plant them up to the seed leaves.  I don't think they will produce roots on the buried stem as tomatoes do, but it probably gives them a bit more stability.

You can plant them quite close together, although I haven't done that.  Each plant went into the ground with a good half-cup of my fertilizer which had been mixed well into the soil.  Seven plants went into one space - 2 Jalapeños, 2 Ancho, 2 Salsa and one Hungarian Hot Wax.

You should keep hots and sweets separate.  Gypsy, which is a good one for the west coast, is going to go into pots.  There are 4 of them, and because they'll go into pots, I'm keeping them in the potting shed a little longer.  Apparently if you mix hots and sweets, the sweets will get hotter and the hots sweeter.

Today's planting of the hots went into a bed that had onions last year.  The bed is nicely fertile and as I said above, each plant got a good dose of fertilizer.  Also in this bed are Red Sails Lettuce, the celery and garlic.  I located a piece of Remay cloth which would just cover the peppers.  I'll keep it in place until June.  This will keep off breezes, provide a bit of protection at night and allow any rainwater to go through.  At that time, I'll give each plant the support of a tomato cage.

For now, they're tucked into their loose covering, which is held in place with a few rocks.  The heat we're expecting over the next little while and their Remay protection will give them a good start.

Elsewhere in the garden, things are springing up in the good weather.  The snow peas are starting to climb their zig zag fence and before you know it, will be sprouting flowers.  How I love the spring!

Experimenting with Tomatoes

Out in the stores and garden nurseries, tomato, pepper and squash plants are for sale.  It's much too early to put them out yet, but they're for sale because people want them.  Lovely warm days like today make you think it's safe, but you really need steady 10C nighttime temperatures for them to be transplanted outside.

We are in a nice warm spell and have more and better on the way so I thought I'd make a little experiment with my tomatoes.  Today I started getting my tomato bed ready and am planning on planting out the tomatoes in a couple of weeks if the weather is nice then.  The bed was turned over and I placed the 6' poles in the bed where each tomato is going to be seated - 10 in all.  Each pair was joined across the top with curved plastic water piping.  I dug a good-sized hole beside each pole and put a cup of my homemade fertilizer in each, mixing it in well with the earth, then watered each hole.

Planted and ready for its hotcap

I picked one of the bigger Health Kick plants for the experiment.  Another the same size will be the control and be planted beside it when the time comes.  I removed the bottom seed leaves and planted it fairly deep - just to where the seed leaves would have been - and then filled around it.  I topped it off with a hotcap which will stay on until the weather is reliably warm.

Protection in place for the experiment, the rest of the bed waits a couple of weeks

I've already performed this experiment once this year.  a couple of months earlier, I seeded celery which I'm growing for the first time.  Half a dozen plants were set in March.  The rest of the seeding remained in the potting shed until a couple of weeks ago, when I set out another half dozen seedlings.

Victoria Celery

The difference is very obvious.  The plants on the left were the latest to be set out, while the plants on the right, seeded at the same time, have been delayed by their cooler environment.

Totem Strawberries

In the rest of the garden, the strawberries are now flowering.  A week ago, I gave this bed a good watering with diluted fish fertilizer.  Next month we can expect to harvest juicy delicious Totem strawberries.

Looking up into the pink dogwood tree

Cherokee Chief pink dogwood is coming into full bloom.  This young tree has struggled against deer predation until a few years ago when we enlarged our fenced area and brought it into protection.  This year, it's going to be gorgeous!

Update May 12th - It's only 9 days later, but the weather's been so nice I decided to go ahead and plant the rest of the tomatoes.  Night time temps are above 10C.  The control plant in the potting shed is taller than the one planted out early, but the experimental plant is much sturdier whereas the plants in the potting shed are starting to get a bit too lanky.  If the weather turns cool, I'll cover the tomatoes with Remay cloth for protection.

The Winter Bed

This has been an awkward year for the garden.  Just when it was starting to kick into high gear, life got in the way.  What with one thing or another, there just hasn't been the time to devote to the garden.  And this year, the name Messy Gardener really applies!  The vegetable beds have not been weeded properly and I haven't been able to take full advantage of the produce.

Today, however, it was time to start thinking ahead.  Time to get the winter garden in gear!  The bed that had the onions has been designated as the winter bed.  After the onions were harvested, I turned over the bed - and discovered that the cedar trees around my garden have managed not only to find a way in, but have widened those cracks and taken full advantage of the lovely soil in the bed!  It took a lot of hard work to cut the roots away and pull them from the soil, but it was finally done.  The combination of a very dry summer and cedar roots had left the soil very dry, so I've been watering this bed to prepare it for the plants to I'd planned to install in it.  A lazy woman's purchase 6 Red Russian Kale and 6 Red Sails Lettuce were bedded in as well as multiplier onions from this year's crop.

Kale and lettuce plants for winter use

This bed was also designated for garlic.  I went in with my daughter to buy fresh garlic bulbs to augment three of the best bulbs from this year's harvest.  First the soil was prepared - a good litre of my homemade fertilizer was worked into the soil.  Then the cloves were planted with the new varieties - Spanish Roja, Leningrad and Czech - being labeled for future reference.  There are now 52 potential garlic bulbs nestled down in the soil.  Then the whole bed was mulched with what is left of the SeaSoil and watered well.

Bright Lights Swiss Chard

In spite of my neglect, a number of things are doing well.  This has been a good year for the Swiss Chard.  From only about a dozen Bright Lights and Silverado, we've had lots of meals and it should do well through the winter as well.

Cantaloupe

There's one enormous cantaloupe and a number of smaller ones.  I won't be growing them again, but we'll enjoy what we have for this year.  I'm not sure what I'll grow in the compost bin next year - perhaps squash.  The Waltham Butternut has been excellent this year and if it gets the benefit of a compost bin next year, it should be even better.

Liberty Apple

Now that we're in September, the apples are coming ripe.  Our favourite has always been the little Liberty tree.  Beautiful crisp, tart little apples with brilliant red skins.  This tree was originally nearer the house.  Overshadowed by big trees and well nibbled by deer, when my husband suggested moving it, I didn't give it much hope.  It's thrived, however, and every year is so loaded with apples that the branches touch the ground, even after rigorous thinning in the spring.

And finally, on the flower side, the autumn crocuses are in full bloom.  They are always such a surprise!

I'm hoping that next year's garden with be able to benefit from more care than this year's garden got.  And with gardening it's always, "Next year, I plan to......"  With a garden, there's alway hope.

Planting Garlic - Full Circle

It's hard to believe that a year has come and gone.  I started this blog last year on September 12th with the planting of garlic and today, almost exactly a year later, I'm planting garlic again!

Russian, Porcelain (I think!) and my own bulbs.

I had saved two bulbs of my own growing but wanted to get some new ones as well.  Long Lake Nursery in Nanaimo had garlic for sale grown on Gabriola Island - Porcelain and Russian.  Unfortunately they were all in one basket and not easy to identify!  I know that Russian has some red to  the skin of the clove and Porcelain doesn't, so I tried to get 2 bulbs showing red and 2 not.  When the wrapper came off, however, 3 of them look like Russian and the other looks like Porcelain.

Half planted

The bed was prepared several weeks ago by adding a couple of wheelbarrow loads of SeaSoil.  It had previously grown snow peas and they would likely have put some nitrogen back into the soil.  Today I marked out my rows with a good trowel full of homemade fertilizer.  I allowed a row for each bulb and placed the rows of what I hoped were the same variety together.  At least if each bulb has its own row I might have a better idea of which variety that bulb is.  But then, maybe not!  Each row has 6 or 7 cloves in it, gently pushed into the soil root end first.

Garlic all planted and waiting for the soil to settle.

Once the soil has settled with the coming of the fall rains, I'll add a mulch of chopped leaves on the top.  Garlic doesn't like competition and chopped leaves are very good at keeping weeds at bay.

Oregon Sugar Pod II

The snow and snap peas are planted in the bed beside this one and are doing very well.  I'm hopeful that this year I got them into the ground with plenty of time for some production.

Sugar Lace II

I planted 2 varieties, Oregon Sugar Pod II - which I had grown in the spring - and Sugar Lace II which is actually a snap pea.  Now that they are growing, it's very easy to tell which is which.  Sugar Lace has an abundance of very curly tendrils and apparently doesn't even need a fence to grow on.  I'm thinking they won't be as tall as the Oregon Sugar Pod.

Bright Lights Swiss Chard volunteers

And in between the zags of peas are the volunteer Bright Lights Chard, looking extremely happy and healthy.

Homemade Fertilizer

About 10 years ago I bought Steve Solomon's book, "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades".   It's a great book. Gardening on the west coast has very different needs as opposed to gardening east of the Rockies.  In the Gulf Islands (and Vancouver Island) we have quite mild and wet winters.  We don't get that hard freeze which is so helpful for killing off a lot of pest insects.  Our soil is also naturally acidic.  Steve Solomon says that we need to grow differently from how people grow back east.  He's very opposed to mulches as he says they encourage wood bugs and earwigs.  I agree, except I still put mulches on a number of crops once they're big enough to take care of themselves.  We have very dry summers here and our soil needs all the moisture-retaining tricks I can throw at it.  Plus the mulch is very good for the soil.

The most important thing I've taken away from his book is his recipe for "Complete Organic Fertilizer".  I make it up fresh every year.  It has quite a bit of lime in it, both agricultural and dolomite, which is important for our acid soil.  I believe he's changed the recipe somewhat from the one in the book I have, but I still use that original recipe.  The main ingredient in his recipe is seed meal and he recommends either cottonseed or canola seed meal.  I use the canola one because cotton is a heavily-sprayed crop.  Plus the canola probably comes from Alberta which is a lot closer to home than the southern States!

I scatter a quart of fertilizer on each raised bed (they're about 3'x14') just before I do the final turning of the soil and before planting.  Steve says that this lasts a couple of months and recommends side dressing as well.  A handful down each 4' row at the outer edge of roots scratched into the soil is his suggestion.  Longer-growing crops will likely require another side dressing or two.

So here's his recipe:

8 parts seed meal
1/2 part dolomite lime
1/2 part agricultural lime
1 part bone meal (up to as much as 2 parts)
1 part kelp meal (up to as much as 2 parts)