We still do not have water in the garden. It is supposed to be turned on this season but not until the governor lifts the stay-at-home order, which is currently scheduled to expire a week from today. So, not much is going on in the plot. The radishes are coming up and I transplanted some Chiogga beets (a gift from another gardener) and some head lettuce today. I also resowed peas today, which miraculously have been disappearing over the last few weeks. I suspect the birds. This is my third (and last) attempt.
Not much happening in the garden yet. It has been a cold and wet spring so far, we even had snow on April 18 and night frost just a few days ago. The radishes are beginning to show, but none of the carrots and only a few of the peas. I reseeded sugar snap peas and rainbow carrots yesterday. The previous carrots were likely washed out, and my guess is that the birds got the rest of the peas. Fingers crossed for this batch. It is supposed to warm up to the sixties in the next few days.
Arugula and lettuces on the back porch
Meanwhile, the porch plantings are making progress, the spring greens are coming in nicely. I also have growing radishes (and hopefully mache), and I sowed chard, kale, cilantro and chives. Of those, only the kale is coming up. Very slowly.
Grape hyacinth on back porch
The seedlings are looking good. Pictured above are tomatoes, lettuce and basil. Under the grow light I have going: tomatoes, lettuce, parsley, kale, hot pepper, eggplant, cucumbers, zucchini and winter squash (butternut and delicata).
Today I re-potted my tomato seedlings and sowed cucumbers (Longfellow and Tokiwa), zucchini, butternut squash and Delicata squash indoors (two each). I also set two of my lettuce seedlings outside on my porch. Might have been a bit too early as it will be cold the next few days, but I needed the space under the grow lights.
Kagran Summer in her new habitat. Newly sowed curcubites and re-potted tomatoes.
It is snowing today. A cold and wet day in the middle of spring. The forsythia bloom is almost over as are the daffodils. My seedlings are doing well under the grow lights and with the heat mat underneath. I currently have going: 4 tomato varieties (2 each), 2 basil, 2 parsley, a dozen or so head lettuces in different stages (half of them sown two weeks ago, the other half four weeks ago with the majority of the seedlings), 5 Tuscan kale, 2 hot Thai peppers, 1 eggplant (reseeded two weeks ago, only one of those plants came up and there may be a second one just poking out).
Above you see some garlic from my plot today as it is much more photogenic than sowing seeds in pots on your porch. Today I direct-sowed Swiss chard (Bright Lights), Tuscan kale, cilantro and dwarf peas (Dwarf Grey Sugar) in containers on the porch. The radishes and spring greens are coming in nicely.
Spring greensCurrent (indoors) seedling situation.Front porch plantings (from left to right): peas, Astilbe, some other flower, and the future home for lettuce. And the summer home for the palm tree.
Today it will be hitting 60 degrees here in Boston. Spring is in the air. I repotted some seedlings, namely basil and head lettuce. My seedlings are doing fine, everything sprouted except, sadly, the eggplant. I reseeded some a couple of days ago, but the seeds are from last year so maybe that was the reason. Under my grow lights, I currently have basil, tomatoes, lettuce, hot peppers, kale, parsley (it final sprouted!). On my porch I sowed spring greens, arugula, radishes and mache. The spring greens are coming in nicely and some growth is starting to appear in the pot with the radishes/mache. Very exciting. Also, this is happening right now on my back porch:
I also went to the community garden to plant more peas, radishes and carrots.
Today I sowed peas (Sugar Snaps) and radishes (Early Scarlet Globe) in the garden plot. All of them are old seeds, I just finally managed to place my seed order with Sand Hill Preservation Center today. It rained hard yesterday and the ground was a bit muddy, which should be fine for the peas, but I am not sure if it might have been too wet for the radishes. No rain in the forecast for the next few days, overcast and in the 40s.
Spring greens on the porch
Five days ago, I also sowed some old spring greens mix in two large containers on my porch. It is a mix of lettuces, spinach, chard, arugula, mustard and wrinkled cress. It looks as if at least some of the seeds have germinated.
It is close to the end of March and I am starting to plan the gardening season. We had frost last night and will have more tonight and I am planning to get my peas in the ground in two days when it is a bit warmer again. I also started seedlings yesterday with my daughter. So far, so normal. However, the schools here in Boston have been closed for a week now because of Covid-19. The governor declared a state of emergency five days ago, restaurants are closed or do take-out only, people are encouraged to work from home, grocery stores now only allow a certain number of shoppers inside. The world is a very different place than just a week ago. Everyone is asked to stay home, which is hard for my two teenagers. My 17 year-old daughter copes with exercising, reading and asking me to teach her how to bake bread and how to grow your own food (she never showed much interest in gardening), and become more self-sufficient. So, we started by sowing seeds. For now, we started two types of lettuce (Bronze Beauty and Kagran Summer), eggplant (Ping Tung), Thai hot pepper (should have started those about a month ago, but alas), flat parsley (should also have been started earlier), basil, four types of tomato (Break O’ Day, Dr. Wychee Yellow, Green Zebra, Eva Purple Ball). We set them up under grow lights and with a heat mat in my bedroom.
We will need to adjust our community garden season as well. We will of course not have our annual spring meeting or our spring work day this year. We will need to think about disinfecting shared gardening tools and other surfaces.
So far, gardening has not been restricted by the city or the state, but should there be a “shelter in place” order in the future, we will likely not be able to tend to our plots. On the other hand, growing some of your own food will be more important this year than ever. The borders are shutting down, and migrant workers who pick most of our produce will not be able to enter the country and we will likely experience some sort of food shortage.
I will try to move as much as I can to container gardening at home, as this seems a feasible and safe option. For now, I am planning to grow herbs, tomatoes, lettuce, kale, chard, eggplant, hot peppers.
We are in that slow time between Christmas and New Year’s when people reminisce about the year that was and make plans for the year to come. Time for me to recap 2019 in my garden.
Tomato harvest, August 25
Tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, eggplant: I had a good (not great) and long run of tomatoes from my 6 plants. I loved the varieties I selected (in particular the new-to-me Pineapple tasted delicious) and will plant the same or similar ones next year. Mixing early (Paul Robeson, Cosmonaut), mid-season (Dr. Wychee Yellow) and late varieties (Pineapple, 2 Green Zebras) worked well. In hindsight, I think the home-grown Paul Robeson (labeled Poll Robson by Sand Hill Preservation Center as they were not sure) was a different tomato as it produced heavily but only small and very even fruit, so I think it was some sort of hybrid. The porch tomato (true Paul Robeson) sadly died because I think I over-fertilized. The blossoms just shriveled and fell off. I got a total of two tomatoes of it. I had one plant each of pickling and slicing cucumbers. They both did very well, the slicer more so than the pickling. Sadly, I never got around to pickle them and we just ate them like is. I will need to rethink my preserving goals for next year. The peppers in my plot did not do very well (I think they were shaded out by the tomatoes), the Jedi jalapenos on my porch on the other hand took off. I will either need to plant peppers in a fully sunny spot in my plot or plant them only on the porch. The baby eggplant on my porch did very well. I’d like to repeat that next year with a not-so-baby variety such as Ping Tung.
Porch fingerling potato harvest, September 15
Potatoes: Super disappointing. For two years in the row now, I harvested only a couple of handfuls of potatoes. My back porch experiment failed as well. I had high hopes for that one as there are no pests in the soil that I could have blamed for a meager harvest.
Butternut squash, August 24
Squash: Exceptional! One plant of butternut squash gave me 14 (34 pounds total of) squash. A great side effect was that the squash foliage completely covered the soil inhibiting weeds without hindering the growth of the other well-established plants. A great success.
Pole beans “Kentucky Wonder”, September 25
Legumes: Great year for pole beans. I also planted them late, which was a good idea as I was able to harvest well into the fall and the beans did grow a bit slower, which prevented them from ripening to fast. The bush beans were okay. I just don’t like the flavor as much and will not grow them again next year. Peas did well.
Lettuce, June 7
Greens: I had a great harvest of butterhead lettuce. The leaf lettuce did not do as well and my fall greens mix was sown too late so I did not get to enjoy the greens. I had a great Swiss chard harvest despite the leaf miner problem. No kale this year, which will need to change in 2020.
Golden beets, harvested August 24
Root vegetables: This year, I planted radishes, carrots and golden beets. The beets were great, the radishes were eaten by something. They showed a lot of bite marks and were woody, the carrots were an absolute no-show. Very disappointing.
Garlic, harvested July 26, braided August 22
Alliums: Good but not great garlic harvest. I harvested a total of about 40 heads, half of them softnecks (Transsylvania), which I braided and the other half hardnecks (Red Russian). Such a difference compared to store-bought garlic. They are very fresh and juicy and have a much stronger taste. The leeks stayed small this year. I think they did not have enough sun, as I planted them too lose to the chard. I decided to overwinter them. I still had volunteer onions and shallots all over the garden and enjoyed them throughout the year.
Brassicas: I planted purple cauliflower but it bolted and had bug issues so I sadly had to compost them. Never had much luck with brassicas.
Thyme on my porch
Herbs: In my plot, I planted parsley and basil. The parsley died and the basil never took off for some reason. It stayed tiny. I heard from other gardeners that they had a very bad basil year as well. I also had a ton of volunteer mint and lemon balm. The herbs on my porch did much better except the basil, which also never took off. The parsley was great as was the sage. The thyme was great in the beginning and then grew leggy and dry despite watering. I also had mint, lavender and rosemary on my porch.
Perennials: My rhubarb looked very weak and small and I did not harvest any this year allowing the plant to recover from whatever ailment it is suffering. The asparagus did well given the small amount of plants I have in my plot.
Grapefruit, mini eggplant, parsley and basil, chard, August 30
Porch containers: This year I grew potatoes, mini eggplant, tomato, lettuce, jalapeno, chard and herbs on my porch. The eggplant did very well, the tomato did flower but did not set fruit (I probably over-fertilized), the lettuce and jalapeno did great. The chard was sown too late I think and the container too small, so it stayed small. I harvested almost no potatoes. The grapefruit had a lot of health issues from a mealy bug infestation to black spots on the leaves. I decided to get rid of it.
Flowers: Of the four (or three?) dahlias I planted, only one flowered. Luckily it was my favorite one. On the porch, I grew Astilbe, osteospermum, lavender and mums. It is nice to have flowers on the porch, definitely will do more of it next year.
My plans for 2020: Tomatoes: I am going for 6 heirloom plants, a mix of early (such as Paul Robeson) mid-season (Dr. Wychee Yellow) and late (Pineapple, Green Zebra). I will likely also plant two hybrid tomatoes and make to prepare and monitor the soil better this year. Cucumbers: One plant of slicers is enough for my family, and I will rethink the pickling cucumber. Peppers: I will plant hot peppers on the back porch again, maybe two different varieties – a jalapeno type and a Thai hot pepper. I may plant a bell pepper as well. Eggplant: An Asian variety on the back porch. I will likely not be able to grow any of the fruiting plants from seed so I will keep my fingers crossed for the Neighborhood Farm seedlings from our farmers market come May. Potatoes: None in 2020. Squash: Two types, butternut and delicata. Legumes: I will plant pole beans again late in the season. No bush beans but I will definitely plant peas again. Greens: Mix of head lettuces and leaf lettuces. No spring greens, no arugula etc. because of the flea beetles. Maybe fall greens. Definitely two or three kale plants (I missed having kale this year) and a row of rainbow chard. Root vegetables: I will order different carrot seeds and/or test my existing seeds. I had not a single seed germinate in the soil, so there may have been an issue with my seed batch. I will plant golden beets again (more than one row), but probably no radishes. Alliums: I will plant a couple of rows of leeks again. I planted 2 rows of hardneck garlic (saved from my biggest heads of Red Russians of 2019) and 4 rows of softneck garlic (Inchelium Red from Johnny’s). I will definitely plant garlic in the fall again and maybe shallots. Brassicas: Not sure if I will grow cauliflower again this year. Herbs: In my plot, I will plant parsley and basil. I will also very likely have some mint and lemon balm. On the porch, I will have parsley, basil, rosemary, thyme, sage, lavender. Perennials: I will monitor the rhubarb hoping it will make a recovery. Fingers crossed. Porch: Hot peppers, one eggplant, one cherry (or small-fruiting) tomato, one or two pots with lettuce, plus herbs and flowers. Flowers: More in the plot and more on the porch. For the plot, I will go with dahlias and try sunflowers and Zinnias again. On the porch, I will have one or two flower pots. Let’s see if the lavender comes back.
