Fruits of Thy Labor

Here it is, the very first harvest of the new garden. I mistakenly forgot to put something next to this strawberry for scale, but lets just say that if there was a dime on the table next to this strawberry, it would be bigger : ) However, it did not stop us from each taking a little bite out of it to get a small taste of whats to come. Guess what? It tasted like a strawberry.


A little surprise when I went to the garden last night. There was a pretty sizable bell pepper hiding in the middle of this pepper plant. It seems as thought the bell pepper plants have turned the corner in the last two weeks as things have warmed up. Most of the plants in the main garden have doubled in size in that time. Whats more interesting is finding the way the fruit grows out of the flowers. You can see above that the bell pepper seems to somewhat "absorb" the flower that it grows out of. This is contrasted against the tomato where the flower seems to stay at the bottom of the growing fruit until it dies and falls off......


See that, thats a ripening strawberry without a bit out of it!! That's because of the lovely bird netting that I put over the plants to protect the. You can see the netting in the picture above. This netting is designed to be draped over fruit trees to keep birds from getting to apples, oranges, etc. It is working very well for the strawberries so far. I plan to try and pick this strawberry today or tomorrow.


My sister found this tomato the other day. It was hiding under the mass of tomato plant where this Czech heirloom has intertwined with the Juliet that is right next to it. The original spacing requirements on this were 18" apart; I think I could have put them 36" apart and they would still be growing together. There are three or four tomatoes on the bottom of this plant that are ripening quickly, and I anticipate we will be eating this one by the weekend.


This is just a pretty picture. This is the same Czech Heirloom as pictured above, but I was trying to get some of the "viney-ness" of this plant compared to the very tall Juliet and Burpee plants. This plant seems to be spidering out all over the edge of the garden. I am very glad this was in the corner, or I would be in a lot of trouble with it growing into every other plant I have.

One Week Ago...

This is what the garden looked like when I was out of town last Friday (thanks Mom for taking the photos). As I mentioned before, we received over 4 inches of rain on Friday morning/afternoon. This was the result.....The good news is that we had a decent amount of rain in March before I started to plan the garden, and I had seen the standing water towards the back of the yard. That is why I decided to put the garden where I did, hoping that if we had rain like this, it would survive. The good news is, it did. There are very few lingering issues from all of the water that the was standing around the garden. With the exception of some lower leaves not making it past a coating of dirt (they prolly shoulda come off anyway) everything seems to be fine.


Since we received that rain, we have had very warm weather. We have also had two other instances of short periods of heavy rain, and the water has been absorbing into the ground a little slower. The ground is still VERY wet below the top layer.

One thing is for sure, if I decide to expand the garden towards the back of the property next year, I am going to have to make sure I build the soil up from where its at.

We have some large tomatoes growing in the garden, and a TON of strawberries. I am going to be trying the use of deer netting to keep the squirrels off of them this time. Also, there is finally a bloom on the topsy turvey as well.....

Jalapeño's and More!

Here is the first Jalapeño! The flower that I took a picture of the other week has really started to produce a fairly large fruit. Amazingly, these plants seem to be flourishing with the incredibly wet weather we have been having. As of last night, there are at least two other jalapeño's coming out, and about 10 more flowers right behind that. We are going to be up to our ears in these.



The white grapes are coming along nicely as well. This is a close up, but at a further distance then the previous shots. I would say these are now about half the size of a dime, and seem to be getting bigger everyday. The grape plant has also really taken off now that it has hit the fence. I am going to have to actively trim it to keep it from fully invading my neighbors flowerbed.


Here is a pic of the full garden. Its been a while since I posted one. As you can see, the tomatoes are out of control. I am not going to post this time, but on the left side of this picture is the one bush heirloom tomato plant, and it has at least 15 tomatoes on it, with what has to be 50 or 60 more flowers. This plant is out of control!

You can kind of see the brocolli in the background. It has also gotten crazy and is shooting up like a weed. I think this is a combination of two things. First, with the plants falling over, then being staked and bending and re-bending phototropically to get back to the light, they have ended up growing in a different way then normal. Combine that with the cold/wet weather which brocolli clearly thrives on, and voila, you have out of control brocolli. I took some other pictures that I will post later in the week. This area was also almost under water last week with the storms we had, those pics willl be coming too.


Speaking of standing water and massive amounts of rain. The pic above is of the bottom of the burpee tomato plants. The Chicago area received roughly 4" of rain on Friday (more in some places) and this of course was quite a bit more then the ground could swallow at one time. As a result, much of the bottom leaves of the tomato plants were covered with dirt that was kicked up from the rain, or coated on as the standing water receded. This caused the lower branches leaves to start to die. You can see the yellowing lower leaves above.


Instead of letting the plants continue to put energy into branches that have dead or dying leaves on them, I trimmed them off (thx, Eli). This is very common practice among gardening, and almost overnite those specific plants seemed to perk up a bit (their leaves were drooping). I ended up doing this more on the tomato plants ont he outside, then on the inside plants as they seemed to be affected the most, but I am going to contine to monitor them, and trim where necessary.

Next up are pics of the garden underwater, and the first harvest of the garden!

Updates

I haven't spent a lot of time taking pics in the garden over the last few days as I have been a little obsessed with taking pictures of the flowers in the neighborhood. However, that didnt stop Nora from picking up the hoe and getting to work on some weeding.

Right now the only thing that is really going on is weeding, and attempts at closing up the holes in the fence to try to cut off the rabbit's way into the garden.

As you can see from above, the tomato plants are getting really big. Interestingly, the Juliet tomatoes are the biggest plants right now. While I think in the long term the Burpee's will be the biggest due to the weight of the fruit, right now the Juliet's have really shot up. On that same note, the Juliet's also seem to be flowering as well. I am starting to see some flowers up near the top of most of the 8 plants there. I am curious to see how close to the published growing cycle each of these comes in at.

More details coming later in the week on Jalapeño's and rabbit proofing.

Starting to Come Around Pepper

The pepper plants are finally starting to show some signs of development other then getting big! The above picture is of a Jalapeño plant. As you can see, there is a really nice flower, and above the very beginning of an actual Jalapeño. To give you an idea on size, that small pepper up top is about the size of the top of a ballpoint pen cap. Most of the pepper plants are starting to show these signs.


What I found more interesting, was the distinct differences between the Jalapeño plant and its structure from the other bell pepper plants. I have read in several places that the Jalapeño plant was a much heartier, and strong plant that thrives in warm dry climates. I know this isnt a shock being that much of the Jalapeño's consumed in N. America come from Mexico and the bordering states in the US. However, look at the difference in the woodiness of the stem above compared to the soft green stem of the bell pepper plant below. These two plants are growing 5 feet apart, there is not much difference in soil, and they are getting the same amount of water.


Its very intriguing to me that neither plant seems to be doing better then the other with the cool climates we have had so far this year. Both pepper plants are far more stunted then the Tomato and Broccoli plants are, part of this is their bushiness, and part of this can be attributed to the cool weather. It will be interesting to watch these plants develop if/when summer weather actually arrives.


Here is a strawberry hiding out beneath the cover of some leaves. Do date I have had four strawberries close to ripe (not including this one) and all of them have been "sampled" by the rabbits. This picture was taken two days ago, so there is a good chance that this one is gone as well. I am convinced that there is no chance I will be getting any strawberries from these plants this year.

Rain Barrels and Updates

I know that I have mentioned these in passing a couple of times through the first few weeks, and I wanted to go into a little bit of detail about what we are doing with them. Our contractor came over and put two of these in (one on each gutter in the back) so we could collect a portion of the rainwater we are getting. I was hoping to replace the watering I was doing on the garden with the neighbors hose (they know we are using it, we are bartering with produce :) Pretty simple concept: barrels have connection points on the gutter that divert about 1/3 of the water flow through the gutter into the barrel. The barrel then has a spigot 3/4 of the way that you can use to take the water out. So after the first rain, which wasnt very hard, I went out to see what had collected, and there wasnt much. Over the next week, we did get a decent amount of rain, and the barrels were chock full 'o free water. On Friday I went ahead and tried to see how much water was in the barrels. So, I decided to give each plant one full watering can (I estimate at 2 gallons or so) and see how far it lasts. After i did all of the first row of tomotoes and part of the second I noticed the water pressure in the first barrel starting to wane a bit. Realizing I didnt have nearly as much water as I needed, I moved to two plants per can. By the time I was done I ended up using almost all of the water, and got the garden enough water to last a few days.

In the end, I am sure that I wont be able to water my whole garden soley on rainwater, but I am guessing I will be able to supplement at least 35% of it with rainwater, not too bad for $200. That brings my total up to just short of $60o if you include the tomato cages. Not horrible.


You might be wandering why I posted this picture. Well....there used to be 1 promising strawberry at the end of each of these stems. However, it seems as though the squirrels are treating the fence adjacent to this plant as the sidwalk to the buffet.


Whats interesting is these tomatores are in the pot right next to the aforementioned strawberries, and nothing. They are just chilling getting bit. The plant actually is so heavy on the east side, that it tipped over on Friday. This specific heirloom tomato plant is supposed to be bushy, and not need support. I now have it supported....


Some close ups of the white grapes. We have having great weather for growing grapes so far.


The grape vines are finally starting to spread out and move into the fence. I think its possible that it wont work out this year, but next year we could have quite a few grapes coming on on the fence. I am just going to have to work hard to keep them from getting into my neighbors flower beds right on the other side of the fence. Nevertheless, its really cool to watch this plant reaching for the fence to find a way to spread out the way it likes.

The Culprit

I walked into the garden last night and what do I see?!?!? This furry guy staring at me wondering why I was in his garden. After we stared at each other down for a few seconds we both started to realized that he shouldn't be in there. So I slowly shooed him out of the garden to see if he would go out the way he came. After a few minutes of coaching, I got him to get the heck out, and sure enough, he went out under the front gate. You can be sure that I will be spending some time this weekend working on getting that gate rabbit proofed a little better.

Meanwhile, when the little bugger was in the garden, he managed to eat the second best strawberry that was just a few days from harvest as well. Little opportunists is what they are : ).

If I continue to have problems, I am going to borrow some cat hair from my sister to settle into the garden edges in the hopes that it will be a further deterrant to their entering the garden.

I havent mentioned much about the rain water tanks yet, but I did water the garden with them last night. I will detail them a little more over the weekend.

Squirrels and some great close ups

I am not 100% sure who did it, but something too a HUGE bite out of the aforementioned strawberry. And now, its no long viable. I walked out to the garden yesterday to find this scene with the strawberry still hanging from the vine. Needless to say, I was disappointed. However, I think this is a very good lesson for the future. This is going to happen, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. The good news is that when it comes to tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli, I dont think all the animals in the neighborhood will be able to consume everything :)

I rented a 60mm macro lens from here . I have used this place before, and its a great way to get a test drive out of a lens you might be interested in. SO, I took it out for a spin this evening after I got home from work, and I have to say, I am very impressed. Its a different style of shooting, having a fixed distance, but when you get it right, its really fantastic. I got several more great shots of some of the flowers in the area left over from 2 owners ago, and I think I will find many uses for this. Its should be a great way to document the maturation of the garden.



Young Strawberry. Adjunct garden in our yard.


Blueberries getting going. These were flowers 3 weeks ago. Hoping to get 8 0r 9 :)


Grapes. These are white grapes, if our weather stays this cool, they could get quite big.


The size of this tomato in this picture is deceiving. This is a very small tomato, maybe the size of a dime in diameter.