2008 Season Opens as First Shoots Signal Coming Spring (GDD 6)

New growth appeared on the garlic chives, reminding us that despite the snow and frigid temperatures, spring is on its way. With shoots about an inch long, it appears that the chives emerged from dormancy a week ago if not longer. This plant is always the first to break its hibernation. Planted in 2005 and divided several times, this plant re-awoke in mid-February in 2006 and in the first week of March of 2007. Although it'll be some time before any chives find their way into the kitchen, it looks like a good time to start making plans for a new season.

Winter Poor Time for Gardening; Plants Grow Unsatisfactorily

Snow, originally uploaded by tpl108.

Not much growing around here these days. Sleep tight, sweet raised garden bed. Your time will come soon enough.

2007: The Gardening Year that Was

The year that was on the Grange.

THE STATS

Last frost: May 7
First frost: October 29
Length of "frost free" growing season: 175 days (5 months, 22 days)
Effective growing season: late April through late September
First Mow: May 3
Last Mow: November 25

BEST & WORST

Best vegetable: Sugar snap peas. One of the first plants into the garden, its fast growth and abundant output made this the one crop that we never grew tired of.
Most disappointing vegetable: Beets. Despite numerous plantings and an NSA supercomputer, our beets were ping-pong ball sized at best and quite bitter.
Best surprise vegetable: Beet leaves. Excellent in salads (much like myself), beets will heretofore be grown solely for its leaves.
Hardiest vegetable: Swiss chard, var. Bright Lights. Kept growing through mid-November. Unfortunately, there were few takers for this leafy beauty. While wonderful when quickly sauteed, a decent serving required a whopping amount of leaves.
Best-tasting tomato: Brandywine, by a mile. Jumping on the heirloom vegetable bandwagon, Low-output and cracking were noticeable downsides.
Most-prolific tomato: Yellow-Pear and Better Boy. Yellow-Pears looked good from a far but were far from good. They may appear gourmet, but they taste is rather ho-hum. Better Boys, however, tasted great and produced a good number of fruit, solidifying their spot in next year's garden.
Most-disappointing tomato: Sungold. While supremely tasty, its low output was a big drawback.

Best flower: Peony. Even though the blooms lasted for a brief week, the huge blossoms were coveted by many a passerby. Hands off, fools. I'm watching you.
Best value flower: Walmart-specials, Cleome and Salvia. Purchased for maybe $2 each, these puppies kept blooming from mid-summer through the early-November. Three-cheers for the category-killer putting the little guy out of business!
Let's-hope-they-do-better-next-year flower: Echinacea. Transplanted in late-May, the Echinacea bloomed sporadically and despite their advertised drought-tolerance were the only casualty from the unusally dry August and September.
Worst planting arrangement: A soldierly rank-and-file approach gave my tulips all the charm of an invading German army.
Pack-your-things-and-get-frank-out-of-here flower: Astilbe. Prominently featured at the front of my south-facing border, its late and somewhat unimpressive blooms monopolized valuable garden space. They'll be transplanted to a shadier location (think: solitary stranger loitering near jungle gym).

Best-garden project: Lawn renovation. There's something extremely rewarding about taking a hardscrabble, weed-infested portion of the back yard and transforming it into turf. Turf-type tall fescues and perennial rye grasses are in my stable of friends.

Winter

Backyard, originally uploaded by tpl108.

Spring (and my garden) never seemed so far away. There's been a near constant snow cover here since the first week of December that has prevented me from amending the soil with fresh compost. However, with some balmy 40-degree weather in the forecast for this weekend, I'm looking forward to hauling a few hundred pounds of compost out back.

Early October Update

A week into October, the harvest keeps on trucking. Here's a tiny Better Boy surrounded by two dozen or so Yellow Pear tomatoes and one or two Sungolds.

The past several weeks have been an extension of summer with high temperatures and very little rain. Boston experienced its second sunniest September in recorded history, and yet we can still fault the weather as we struggle with a mini-drought.

The pepper plant recently set two good-sized peppers while the fall crop of snap peas struggles with the heat. The Kentucky Wonder green beans recent closed up shop, apparently having given up on waiting for me to water. The summer squash, with one last gasp, set fruit this past week.

After weeks of permissive neglect, the garden is moving back to center stage as the threat of frost looms heavy in forthcoming weeks of October. Last year, frost hit on October 15th.

Like a parent who's realized that he's spent a few too many hours in the office while little Rickey spent his time with an increasingly-impatient day care staff, I hope to atone for my weeks of inattention. (We were hoping to make you a strong and independent garden! Is that really such a crime? Who knew you needed water everyday or every third day for that matter? If I'm guilty of anything, it's loving you too much.)

But fear not, Champ. It's nothing but pony rides, moon pies, and blood meal from here on out -- at least for the next week or two until the frost silently swoops down from a clear cold night and squeezes the life out of you. But, in the meantime, have another Cherry Coke. You deserve it!

Brandywine Tomato

Brandywine Tomato, originally uploaded by tpl108.

Late-Summer/Early-Fall Salvia

Salvia, originally uploaded by tpl108.

Summer's Last Hurrah

Duck Inn, originally uploaded by tpl108.

It hasn't rained more than an inch or so over the past seven weeks and temperatures are supposed to soar into the 90s this week. My fall pea harvest is surely going to be a disappointment, but my pepper harvest, if not spectacular, should be decent. This recent bout of warm weather has goaded the plant into setting several new peppers. It'll be a mad dash to the first frost, which should be coming any week now. We'll see if we just might be able to sneak a few peppers in under the wire before the season closes.

Pictured: Aquinnah, Martha's Vineyard. No, this isn't my garden. I only wish it were.

Late-Summer Sunrise

Late-Summer Sunrise, originally uploaded by tpl108.

Hunnewell Forest, Natick, Mass. Autumn is on its way.

One Day's Harvest

Harvest, originally uploaded by tpl108.

Fall now leans heavily upon summer, with noticeably chilly night and cooler days. It hasn't stopped the harvest however. Here's a mixture of Brandywines, Yellow Pears, Sun Golds and Better Boys, along with some Swiss Chard.

The garden is now down right haggard. The plants have made their stand against several months of wind, rain, and now drought. Having brought forth a wealth of food, they look a little worse for wear.

It's Been a While . . . About that . . .

St. Peter's Church, originally uploaded by tpl108.

Nothing kills a blog faster than a vacation. Spend a week without an internet connection, and suddenly you start wondering why you're running a low-rent blog about fruits and vegetables in the first place.

Then, toss in a new job and suddenly your little hobby starts feeling like work and you feel like calling in sick.

Since we've last spoke, my tomatoes have come in, but one squash plant died. You're riveted. Dying for more. You asked for it. I also replanted a huge chunk of my back yard. Okay, now you're hooked again.

Bee in Squash Flower

Bee in Squash Flower, originally uploaded by tpl108.

To my subscribers, (all three of you)

Updates coming soon. Lack of internet connection and stint in French Foreign Legion negatively affected the Backyard Granger.

In the meantime, enjoy this picture of a bee pollinating a squash flower.

Photo Proves Brandywine Tomatoes Look Green When Not Ripe

After an agonizingly slow start, the Brandywine tomatoes are coming into their own, setting fruit, kicking butt, and taking names. They aren't the fastest growing, nor do they yield a lot of fruit, but they sure is purty like a Thursday morning.

Weekly Update: Storms Batter Grange (GDD 1455)

More than two inches of rain fell in less than two hours, upsetting the delicate balance of the grange. High winds knocked over three tomato plants and twisted up the peas something fierce.

Weather channel fodder aside, it was a good week actually. The first ripe tomato of the season appeared while the squash plant finally set fruit. The peas set an incredible number of pods enabling the largest harvest of the season.

Like it is . . . The Week that Was
7/26 - Phlox blooms
7/27 - First tomato harvested. Sungold 60 Days
7/28 - First squash appears

Pholx Paniculata, "Orange Perfection" Blooms

First Tomato of the Season, Day 60

Sucker MCs, back up. The first tomato of the season, a Sungold, has arrived.

Jealous? Hate the game, not the gardener.

Weekly Update: Water, Weed, Pick, Eat, Repeat (GDD 1298)

It's been seasonably warm, but not too hot. Rudbeckia, echinacea, and astilbe are nearly in full bloom. The beans and peas keep producing while the squash plant continues growing by leaps and bounds.

Like it Is . . . The Week that Was
7/16 - Pholx buds appear
7/19 - Rudbeckia blooms, pepper blooms in 52 days
7/20 - All spring-planted beets harvested. If the beets themselves were small, the leaves were quite tasty. More lettuce planted by seed.
7/21 - Sungold tomatoes begin to turn a shade of yellow 54 days after being transplanted.

Black-Eyed Susan Blooms

Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii "Goldstrum"

Despite battling an early-season bought of septoria leaf spot, these black-eyed susans began blooming this week. Transplanted a little less than two months ago, it was a slow-grower initially, but began quickly filling out over the past two weeks.

Better Belle Pepper Flowers in 52 Days

Getting what is perhaps too much shade as four tomato plants tower around it, the pepper plant bloomed today.

Having never grown peppers before and nearly resigned to writing off this year's pepper crop, a post last week on The Compost Bin heralding the arrival of his peppers' first bloom gave hope that my pepper was right on track.

Can big peppers really come from such a relatively small plant? Shouldn't this plant belch fire and spread like kudzu?

Yellow Pear Tomato, Day 48

After a few weeks of trailing the other tomato plants, the yellow pear tomato surged this week, putting out lots of flowers and setting lots of fruit.

An heirloom variety, yellow pear tomatoes have been grown since the late 1800s. They take about 70-80 days to mature, which seems about right as these guys have been taking what seems like forever to ripen.

Sources: Cornell, Iowa State