An Update on Trellis Plantings

Pole beans have finally started vining. They do seem to take awhile, gaining some size with their first true leaves, before shooting straight up to overtake their poles while on their way to the sky. The dry pole beans seem to have faired better, germination wise, than the snap/green pole beans which had to be re-seeded in places.

I'm growing 3 types of dry beans: Old Mother Stallard which are a beautiful burgundy and white swirled bean, Spagna Bianco a very gigantic white Italian bean, and Lingua di Fuoco a Borlotto type bean.

This is a bitter melon seedling, very pretty with its bright chartreuse coloring. These have been seeded since May 1st, but it took two days in the 90s (32 degree Celsius) before they decided to pop out of the ground. The young green fruit can be shockingly bitter, but as they ripen to yellow/orange their insides sweeten. Eventually the ripe ones will split open showing their vivid scarlet insides and spilling their seeds to the ground.

Most people eat the bitter green fruit cooked. I've seen it scrambled with eggs but my grandma stuffs it with ground pork, mushrooms, and glass noodles before boiling it.

Luffa seedlings look just like cucumber seedlings but on steroids. Their vines are rampant but I just let them run on neighboring trellises or fences, and their fruits can be huge.

The true leaves on loofa even look like cucumber leaves. And their fruit are just scrumptious. One of my favorite vegetables ever. Just lightly sauteed with garlic and salt, it's just so good. I haven't had much success growing it, so am trying for a third year. I usually only end up with a couple fruits by the end of the season, I have a feeling they're fruiting is daylight sensitive.

I used up some ancient cucumber seeds while planting the trellises, and of course the oldest seeds didn't germinate. Only 3 out of 6 varieties decided to sprout, so I purchased some more cucumber seeds and replanted a couple trellises. Fresh cucumbers are one of the pleasures of summer, right up there with green beans and tomatoes for me.

The plants don't last long because of the various viruses spread by squash bugs that always infest the plants by the end of summer. But its always a joy when they're around.

A few of the snap beans are starting to vine as well. I was afraid Rattlesnake had rotted in the ground but after those two 90 degree days they've decided to come up. I had even started replanting the trellis with Greasy Grits beans before I noticed.

The other two varieties I'm growing are Meraviglia de Venezia a yellow type which is supposed to be very early, and Smeraldo a green romano type. I do like my fat snap beans.

There's beetles that feed on bean plants in this area. They come out at night. Mostly.

I've also seen little holes around the bamboo poles and little foot prints which could be squirrels.

Between tomatoes and broccoli I've had to replace 32 destroyed plants. Almost 20 tomatoes. Just today I replanted 5 tomato seedlings and one broccoli, although there's another broccoli that probably needs replacing. It's a good thing I have so many extra plants.

There must be a different flea beetle that bothers tomato plants. Luckily tomatoes grow fast enough they seem to be less affected by the damage, compared to eggplants.

Half of the broccoli seedlings have been replanted. Big sigh. My husband cut some bamboo poles for me so I'm going to be setting up floating row covers in the next few days.

But the Brussels sprouts are doing really well. They're much bigger than last year upon being set out. Last year was my first time growing them and it was a big bust. Sad sad water deprived plants. They're right next to the broccoli this year so I'll be keeping them well watered.

Aphids and flea beetles have found my seedlings so I've been dusting with diatomaceous earth. I spent some time today repotting pepper plants into individual containers. You can see how tiny some of them are to the left of the tomatoes. I had to re-seed a bunch of them due to low germination. A few of the plants have weird crumpled leaves, distorted by aphids feeding most likely.

Tomato, Broccoli and Brussels Sprout Seedlings Planted in the Garden

A tomato plant nipped at the stem, most likely by birds.

The tomatoes, broccoli, and Brussels sprout were planted in the garden on May 5th and 6th. And immediately birds and animals started doing their thing. So far I've lost 17 plants: one Brussel sprout, 6 tomatoes, and 10 broccoli. Maybe it's a good thing I started so many plants from seed to begin with.

These are the 3 tomato beds. In the back I hung aluminum pans from the bamboo trellises in an effort to ward off critters with noise and reflected light.  But yet the devastation continued.

A broccoli bed on the right and Brussels sprout bed on the left. I've been replacing the plants as they get destroyed and today I went and bought a bunch of pinwheels and stuck them around the beds. If this doesn't help, they'll have to be covered with Agribon row cover till the plants are big enough to withstand larger animals.

The 21 broccoli plants were spaced 2 feet apart (0.6 meters). I was reading a garden forum and they talked about spacing broccoli a foot apart which resulted in more main heads but little side shoot production. I might try that for fall planting and see how that goes.

21 Brussels sprouts also got planted with the same two foot spacing. Online they were saying sprouts need to be spaced 3 feet apart which sounds like a lot to me. I just can't imagine them needing more space than broccoli plants.

There are 6 rows of tomatoes with plants 18 inches apart within each row and rows are 2 feet apart. I did a major goof, after planting half of the first bed I realized I'd forgotten to add crushed eggshells and coffee grounds to the planting holes. So those tomatoes weren't amended. I'll also be top dressing with epsom salt.

I was talking to a friend who actually farms on shared family farm. Last week every single one of his tomato plants were eaten down to the nub by deer. He had to replant them all. And then he strung up an electric fence.

Tomatoes and Brassicas All Potted Up

Since the ground has been too soggy to do any planting, I spent the weekend re-potting the tomatoes and a few tiny eggplant seedlings into individual containers. Hopefully the garden will dry out by the end of the week and I can get some planting done by Thursday and Friday. I've been saving eggshells and coffee grounds all winter, so there should be enough for each tomato, pepper, and eggplant to get a nice sprinkling in their planting hole.

I found this grocery store sweet potato sprouting in the kitchen, so it's spending time outside suspended in water. Once some roots form, the starts will get planted in a couple big pots in front of the porch. My sister in-law said she did this last year and got 20 pounds of sweet potatoes from a single planter.

There's a couple Crimson Sweet watermelon plants a friend gave me hiding behind the sweet potato.

I've been re-using these styrofoam cups for years. The plant labels are made from yogurt container lids, rubbing alcohol should take the permanent marker right off so I'll be able to re-use them too.

The broccoli and Brussels sprouts got re-potted last week. I still have no idea when's the best time to plant Brussels sprouts. My friend keeps telling me they need to be started in June or July to ripen in November, but they're just so slow growing. And the winter light is so weak, I can't imagine them growing much once fall hits. But I'll go ahead start a few in early summer just incase.

That's eggplant and peppers in the back-right, I had to re-seed a few varieties which are still sprouting.

Today, I started some Italian basil, Siam Queen basil, cinnamon basil, kohlrabi, Simpson lettuce, Chinese leek, mizuna, tatsoi, mibuna, pak choy, choy sum, gailaan, and Korean melon. I usually plant basil in the pepper patch, peppers are just so well behaved they don't seem to over-power other plants.

My husband has been giving me a hard time about the number of tomatoes and broccoli I started. He's right, but a lot of the seeds were ancient and I wanted to make sure there were at least 2 of each variety. But unless I want on a garden made up entirely of tomatoes and broccoli, a lot of them will have to be re-homed.

Tomorrow my partner is installing a dishwasher. In the 17 years we've been married we've never had a dishwasher, except for a small on-the-counter one which lasted just over a year. I'm so excited!

I wanted to mention. This year has been the year of the clover. Clover is carpeting the ground and blossoming everywhere with their pretty pink or white pompom flowers. The last time this happened I had an epic gardening year, tomatoes and peppers abounded and eggplant plants grew 5 feet tall. I am very hopeful.

Garlic Planted in Styrofoam Containers and Bamboo Trellises

Bamboo trellises planted with pole green beans, cucumber, pole dry beans, luffa, and bitter melon.

The garden is huge. I didn't realize how much my husband had expanded the garden until I started putting up the trellises. It was actually my husband's idea to put the trellises alongside our neighbors garage. The neighbor tends to have lots and lots of outdoor parties where they sit outside and watch sports on t.v., and this will shield our backyard from view so I can garden in relative privacy.

And that's an alley running along our backyard perpendicular to the bamboo trellises. Okra will be planted along the alley side, which will shield the tomato beds from passersby. It looks like I'll have ten long beds, each about 4 feet wide available for planting.

Garlic. I had planted 4 styrofoam containers with different varieties of garlic. Two were planted with unknown grocery store garlic and the other two were planted with garlic I had purchased from a seed company. All of the unknown grocery store garlic died during the winter, only one thin waif-like stalk remains of those doomed garlic.

But as you can see the 2 varieties of fancy garlic I purchased online are doing ok in their separate styrofoam containers.

Pole Bean, Cucumbers, and Luffa Varieties

A squirrel dug out most of pepper/eggplant tray that was on the porch. Seedlings and just germinated seeds were flung about so there's no telling what is what. Ah well. At least most of them survived but I'll take it as a sign, and will get them in the ground as soon as possible.

I got the pole beans, cucumbers, and luffa seeded under their trellises right before some rain hit yesterday. The way the wind picked up and thunder clouds rolled in, made me immediately think tornado. But luckily it was just a fast moving thunderstorm. Ten trellises were seeded which leaves only 2 trellises to be planted with more loofa and bitter melon. The way it works out there'll be 3 trellises devoted to dry pole beans, 3 trellises for cucumbers, 3 for pole green beans, and 3 for luffa.

I was hoping to get more planting done today but it rained buckets and buckets till the whole backyard flooded. Since it'll be awhile before the ground can dry enough to plant the broccoli and Brussels sprout seedlings, I went ahead and potted them up into individual containers so they'll have more room to grow.

Dry pole beans:
Good Mother Stallard
Spagna Bianco
Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco

Cucumbers (using up ancient seeds):
Straight Eight
Japanese Long
Sweet Success
Sweeter Yet
White Wonder
Suhyo Long

Green pole beans:
Meraviglia di Venezia
Smeraldo
Rattlesnake

Loofa:
Chinese Okra angled luffa
Bonanza angled loofa
Extra Long angled loofa
Smooth Boy, smooth luffa
Summer Cross, smooth luffa

Bitter melon:
Green Giant