Current Garden Events

There has been a bit of activity recently. We harvested and removed the last of the peas, broccoli, and beets. In the resulting void, we planted a special variety of popcorn most people use as Halloween decoration. The tiny dark red cobs of corn that are sharply pointed. It's a favorite treat of ours and easy to grow (if the birds will leave the germinating seeds alone). A few current events in the photo collage:

Top left: Onions. Set these out when they were about the size of individual blades of grass.

Top center: Garlic. Can't tell from a photo this far away, but onions and garlic are easy to tell apart, plus there's always the smell test. Bruise a leaf and you'll know which it is.

Top right: Kiwi. A new experiment this year. We'll see how they do. Looks like they are suffering a bit from iron chlorosis which is caused by pH chemically locking up iron in the soil. This causes leaves to turn yellowish and in severe cases white which is quickly followed by death of the plant. An iron spray should take care of this.

Bottom right: Frontenac grapes that have just set in the last few days. These can reach over 26% sugar when ripe - you can almost pour the juice directly on pancakes instead of syrup.

Bottom center: Onions under a bench. These got a little tall and started coming up through the seat. Between the two patches of onions shown here, we won't need to buy any at the store for the next year.

Bottom left: Wonderful Pomegranate blossom. These are now in full bloom. We have been spraying for fungus every two weeks for the past couple of months trying to ward off a fungal infection we had trouble with last year. Once the fruit is set these just need water until November.

Center: Current view into the center of the garden. The bare spot is where peas, broccoli, and beets were removed last week and (hopefully) red popcorn will soon be growing.

Watering Systems

Drip irrigation is the way to go for the garden, trees, and other landscape plants. Aside from an occasional plugged emitter, it is essentially maintenance free and the automatic timer doesn't forget or go on vacation. We did have a problem recently with plants along our back fence, which faces south. It is always hotter there due to reflected heat. First we doubled the drip lines, and it was still dry. Then we added a soaker hose and that seemed to really help. A couple years later several grape vines died and after searching for a cause I finally dug a hole found the soil barely moist. The soaker hose wasn't soaking any longer, and so we added more drip emitters. We have two rows of grapes in the back, one next to the wall, and another about eight feet away next to the garden. The grapes next to the garden always do better because they get more water and don't have to fight the heat... big surprise. So the point here is that you should check the watering system at least every six months, and if plants are in an area that gets lots of sun or reflected heat, they will need more emitters or should be on a separate timer so they get water longer or more often.

Grapes

For those who keep grape vines, many interesting things are taking place at this time. Depending on the variety, they are blooming or getting ready to. You might have seen a pesky dark blue moth flying around which is indicative of a problem about to begin. These moths lay eggs on the leaves that left to their own devices can defoliate the entire vine. There are simple remedies available. Pick off the leaves that have eggs on them (requires lots of attention). Spray with BT worm killer. This is a bacterium that infects the gut of the worms. There are also systemic controls (key ingredient "imidacloprid") which means one treatment about this time of year takes care of it. We use the latter.


Black Monukka grape - much larger cluster than below.

 Black Monukka is an old variety from the middle east. It doesn't mind our heat and we've never had issues with pests or disease of any kind. Most grapes are fine with heat but you have to be aware of the acidity levels of the fruit as heat will tend to remove this characteristic, leaving you with a flat sugary juice (we don't make wine). They are vigorous, and will grow 20 feet or so in a season, and require cane pruning. If you want to cover an entire block wall, this is the ticket. If you want to harvest juice though, you might consider other varieties as the skins of these grapes is quite astringent/bitter and that flavor comes through in the juice. Beautiful burgundy red juice and they are nearly seedless.


Valiant grape in bloom

 Valiant grapes make a wonderful dark blue juice. The clusters are small and compact, and we have had less trouble keeping pests (like the western grapeleaf skeletonizer - a blue moth) under control. These have limited growth so they won't take over the entire yard, they bear a lot of fruit, and are early so you will harvest in July most years. It's actually a very cold-hardy variety, but we've found that it does well here because you can harvest before the worst of the summer heat sets in. Valiants require cordon pruning to spurs of three buds each. This is our favorite variety thus far, of those we have tried.


This year we are experimenting with two new grape varieties - Steuben and Baco Noir. Both are vigorous, high in acid, and have large grapes. We want them to cover the back wall of the yard, and are hoping the heat of summer takes down the acid levels enough to make a nice juice. When grapes ripen, what is actually happening is acid levels are falling off while sugar levels are rising. You want to harvest at the right time to get the best flavor - too early = tart juice, too late = pure sugar with little flavor, just right = sweet juice with wonderful flavor.

For those interested in grapes as a backyard adventure, we have much information to share. We have grown the following varieties:

Black Monukka (no pest issues but skins have bitter flavor)
Valiant (very sweet, dark blue juice, few pest issues, mild iron deficiency)
Frontenac (mildew issues, very sweet pink/magenta juice)
Concord Seedless (removed when we discovered they will not ripen evenly in hot weather)
Thompson Seedless (pure sugar flavor, birds love these and they are best eaten fresh)
Christmas (supposed to be like Concord for hot weather, but ours never ripened properly)
New York Muscat (on third year of this experiment, may be too warm for them to color or have any flavor)
Sunbelt (could not tolerate our soil pH and suffered severe iron deficiency)
Flame Seedless (issues with mildew and skeletonizers, we removed these in favor of Valiant and Frontenac)

Beet Harvest

We pulled all the beets last Friday and pickled them. This is an old family recipe of vinegar, sugar, allspice and cinnamon. Very easy to do and we tallied 31 jars of beets at the end of the day. One of the best harvests in many years.

Beets are ready

It was a perfect morning today. For those who were up early there was a wonderful fresh breeze as the sun came up. It was cool but not cold, with gentle gusts reminiscent of springtime in other parts of the country that have four seasons. This week we'll be pickling beets. They have been mostly forgotten while peas, carrots and broccoli were the focus of attention. The beets are quite large and ready to harvest. Tomato plants have grown so they cover the ground which is good because it prevents reflected heat off the soil.

Tomatos, carrots, broccoli and peas.

Beets are ready to harvest.