I’ve been reading the Farmer’s Almanac, especially the bit about planting by the phases of the moon. With the twelve week lead time to the last freeze, yesterday and today are the best planting days for onion seeds. My next installment of the Garden Planning and Review, which will be about alliums, will have to wait. I have a busy day ahead… trips to the nursery and hardware stores, organizing the seed shelf, getting my hands in the dirt, harvesting vermicompost, fondling the seeds… Did I mention my seed order arrived this week? Woohoo! Time to play! Okay, so it’ only onions, but it’s a start. 
Have you ever noticed how lovely are the flowers of peppers and eggplants?
I planted six eggplants, last year. I think we ate one. The cold, wet weather had a lot to do with it. They’re not a family favorite and we don’t eat them year-round. I like them now and then, when I get a craving. Fresh from the garden, more would get eaten. I like them sliced, battered and fried, but only rarely. Mostly, I chop them up and add them to mixed dishes like chili, ratatouille, veggie lasagna, or a frittata.
The peppers didn’t have a stellar year either for the same reasons. In addition, I thought my home-grown seedlings were a bit sad looking, so I replaced about half of them with store-bought transplants that looked much better. Once the weather improved, my seedlings caught up and did much better overall. For both of the years I’ve grown them, the jalepenos have out produced all the other varieties.
This year, I’m skipping the larger common eggplants that take longer to ripen. I have seeds from last year of Japanese long purple. That will be enough. Peppers, well, I don’t know if growing them is an efficient use of my limited space, but I’ll give it another try. I have seeds left for mixed hot peppers and mixed color bell peppers. The only new seeds I bought are Marconi red peppers. If this year is better, maybe I’ll add more in the future.
Peppers and eggplants are heat lovers. They shouldn’t be planted out until the temps are consistently over 55 degrees F. That’s well after most things can be planted and quite late for a short season garden. I read about one grower building a frame around the pepper bed and enclosing it with old windows, leaving the top open. It’s worth a try. If it doesn’t work, they may not be worth the growing space in my small garden.
I’ve had a few newly developing violet plants under lights on a high shelf for several months. I water them regularly and feed them now and then, but there’s not much to look at. So, I don’t look much. By the time I discovered the aphids, there were quite a number of them. Perhaps not a full-blown infestation, but more than I could pick off of curly plants with so many hiding places for the little bugs. I did a search online to look for a cure. The standard treatment for aphids is simply knocking them off with a hard spray of water. That’s all well and good, but violets can suffer from a few drops of water and the buds seem awfully easy to knock off, too. Other sources suggested spraying with rubbing alcohol, either straight or mixed with water. I was hesitant, but had to do something. It’s almost time to start seeds for the coming season. I can’t have an infestation hanging around. So, I mixed some alcohol with water and sprayed away. I sprayed all the plants on my light shelf, and sprayed again a few days later. Interestingly, it seems to have worked. The violets don’t even look like they suffered much.
Welcome to One World One Heart, the brainchild of Lisa at A Whimsical Bohemian. It’s a wonderful event that brings people together from all over the world. Click on through to read all the details, but first, introduce yourself in a comment here to be entered in my giveaway. The winner will receive a set of twelve postcards with images from my garden.
For those of you that are new here, I’m Kate. Evolution of a Gardener details my adventures in learning to garden, with lots of photos. We bought our first home two years ago and thus began my crash course in gardening. My first project was creating a vegetable garden. I’ve prepared new gardens, altered existing gardens, and I’ve still barely gotten started. I have gardens in progress and gardens yet to be started. Currently, I’m in the process of reviewing last year’s vegetable garden and planning the garden for the coming season.
To enter the giveaway, introduce yourself in a comment. Include your email, so that I can contact you if you win. You don’t have to be a One World One Heart participant to win, but if you are, please include a link to your blog. After you’ve left your comment, take a ride on the magic carpet and visit the other One World One Heart participants. Entries will be accepted through February 14th. Winner will be announced February 15th.
The garden fairy loves cucumbers. She snacks on them like many people snack on potato chips. If I don’t cut them up fast enough, she’ll eat them like apples, just biting into them. Fresh cucumbers from the garden are the best.
Last year, I grew straight eight and lemon and only managed to harvest several straight eights. It was a terrible year for cucumbers. The weather was so cool and wet, they just couldn’t get off to a good start. Most of the seedlings were devoured by slugs and earwigs. I replanted several times with little success. A few vines managed to survive, but then suffered from another pest, probably squash beetles or cucumber beetles. None of the lemon cucumbers grew. Of the straight eights, about half of those harvested were bitter. I kept thinking I’d pull the vine and then the next one would be okay. So, I’d leave it and then get another bitter one.
I thought about growing the lemon cucumbers again, but decided not to. Last year, I bought all my seeds in the local stores. Lemon cucumbers were among the more interesting varieties and an heirloom. This year, I have catalogs and I’m getting organized earlier. There are many more varieties to choose from. I have on order little tyke cuke, which supposedly matures in only five weeks, miniature white, and painted serpent, which says it’s really a melon, but is listed as a cucumber. Depending on how much room I give cucumbers when I draw out the planting pattern, I may pick up a regular green variety closer to planting time.
Peas grown last year include sugar snap, mammoth melting sugar, and Thomas Laxton. The garden fairy likes to pick these and eat them right out in the garden. In the future, I’ll grow all varieties with edible pods and label them better. I used a fine permanent marker on popsicle sticks and they didn’t hold up to weathering. Does anyone ever remember what was planted where?
Beans grown last year included sequoia (purple), contender garden beans, fordhook 242 limas, dragon tongue, and cowpeas. The cowpeas were an afterthought and grown with other plants to add nitrogen to the soil.
The peas took a while to get started. I read something about planting them early and not filling in the planting holes. The idea was that the late snow and rain would fill in the holes and aid germination. Some peas sprouted, but the method was not very successful. I had much better results with a later planting of peas that were presprouted indoors. Several gardeners reported prolonged, abundant harvests of peas due to the abnormally cool, wet weather. I hadn’t planned for that, so my peas went to seed while I was on vacation.
The beans didn’t do well, at all. I started a few of the purple and green beans in peat pots. They were happy when I planted them, but were quickly devoured by slugs or earwigs or both. I also planted seeds directly into the garden, which were also devoured. The beans grew along the back edge of the garden, closest to a row of lilacs and a rock pile that harbors the insects. Mulch left in the garden from the previous year also made great housing for the pests. I did what I could to get rid of them without poisons. I armed myself with a spray bottle, loaded with soapy water, and hunted earwigs. Hundreds of them met their demise at my hand, and still, there were more.
I planted the dragon tongue beans amidst the corn. This was in a newly prepared bed, away from the pests. These beans did much better. I picked them young and fresh and steamed them. The family didn’t care much for the waxy beans. They’re okay once in a while, but not as often as the green and purple beans, which didn’t produce as much.
Leftover from last year, I’ll be planting mammoth melting sugar and super sugar snap peas. I didn’t order any new peas, though there is a blue podded pea on my wish list from Baker Creek Seeds. We’ll see. Beans leftover from last year include dragon tongue, sequoia (purple), contender garden bean (green), and fordhook 242 lima. New beans on order are purple trionfo violetto, vermont cranberry, and speckled calico lima. I also have some cowpeas from last year’s plants. I don’t care much for the growth habits of the bush varieties. The purple sequoia beans are small and decorative, perhaps good for containers. In the garden, I’ll try to stick to pole varieties, for now anyway.
My family is not terribly fond of squash. I like it. The garden fairy likes it. It grows quickly and summer squash is highly productive. I don’t remember gardening much, as a child, but I do remember growing zucchini with an aunt and making zucchini bread. That may be my only gardening memory from childhood. So, I grow squash. Unfortunately, it takes a good amount of space and my garden is small. As the seasons pass and I learn what works and what doesn’t, I need to be more selective.
Last year, I grew three types of summer squash; white scallop, yellow straightneck, and zucchini, and four types of winter squash; acorn and spaghetti that were purchased seeds, and butternut and carnival saved from store bought fruit. They were all basic varieties of seed found at stores everywhere. This was before I knew anything about exotic varieties, online or catalog suppliers, gmo, or organic seed. None of them grew well. I only harvested one tiny butternut, a couple white scallop, and a few yellow.
I started the seeds in five inch peat pots and then planted them into their garden spots. They got off to a good start. I was away on vacation the first two weeks in July. I use soaker hoses to water. Kirk set up a timer to turn them on every other morning while we were gone, but it rained. Not just a little rain, either. It rained excessively. One source I read gave an average rainfall of 3.4 inches of rain for July, but 17 inches for July of 2009. The plants suffered powdery mildew and squash vine borers. I tried pulling the worst looking plants and putting in new seeds, but they didn’t survive.
The rains left the garden overpopulated with slugs. It was such a bad year with slugs, they could be found eating my plants in the middle of the day. They devoured anything direct sown into the garden and many transplants. I tried beer traps, handpicking them, eggshells and coffee grounds. Nothing worked. I read that bran might help get rid of slugs. Apparently, they eat it and explode when it expands in their little bellies.
This year, I have some leftover seeds of fordhook zucchini and white bush scallop. I also saved seeds from butternut squash I bought at a local farm. I spent the weekend narrowing down my seed wish list. I had several catalogs to browse and wish lists from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Tinyseeds.com, and Pinetree Seeds. I placed my Pinetree order, last night. Tinyseeds offers Botanical Interests seeds at a discount, but in the end, I passed on ordering. There were only a few varieties that I couldn’t get from Pinetree and I have a local nursery that carries Botanical Interests. Baker Creek has some wonderful exotic varieties. I don’t know if the few items that made the final cut are worth the separate order, but I may order anyway if they restock the squash I want. Their shipping is very reasonable. Pinetree had most of what I wanted at good prices. Probably too good. I’m sure I will have way more than I have space for. I ordered cocozelle and bennings green tint summer squashes, and pink banana winter squash. I only hope I can find a way to thwart the borers.
Kate, the evolving gardener, nurtures her plants in coastal Connecticut, zone 6. 
