Spring Vegetables

Despite the complete lack of blog posts, things are growing in the garden. I got the first group of seeds - carrots, spinach, black seed simpson lettuce and leeks - in the ground the first weekend in April. The first lot has been a disappointment with good growth out of the carrots and spinach, but the seeds have come up very sparsely, despite the chicken wire dome I built to protect the seeds from cats, birds and 2 year old D. The lettuce has been mostly eaten by the rabbits, and the leeks have been mostly trampled by D.
I followed up with a second sowing of spinach, carrots and lettuce 2 weeks later, around April 17th. A few carrots and spinach emerged. I haven't seen anything from the lettuce.
In mid-April I also planted cilanto, parsley and snap peas. A few dozen cilantro came up and no parsley. The snap peas, carefully protected from turkeys by a chicken wire dome, have come up robustly and are about 14" tall at 4 weeks. I also started red onions from starts. I'm determined to have all the makings of salsa in the garden this year.
On May 7th, I added greens beans and cucumbers (persian and pickling). The cucumbers are up in good numbers and the beans are just starting to poke through.
On May 15th, I transplanted tomatoes, 8 varieties (big boy, celebrity, golden girl, 2 sun golds, 2 plum and a purple krim). I also transplanted some very tiny basil that looks like it might not survive and peppers (4 japapeno, a cubanelle and 4 yellow bells). All from Russells. I also planted out my broccoli seedlings which are very spindley (no artificial light source) and small. After 2 nights in the garden, they are holding up pretty well. I dropped in some zucchini seeds along the outer, eastern bed that doesn't get as much sunlight. I resowed:

• lettuce - there are currently just 2 heads from the 50+ seeds I've planted
• spinach
• carrots
• leeks

And added some radishes, between the thinly growing cilantro and the red onions and some additional basil and parsley seeds. The parsley resowed naturally from last year, so I have a decent amount already growing, but it is already going to seed. I expect the rabbits will get the parsley seedlings as they start to emerge.

But, most significantly, my honey built me a rabbit fence to keep the critters out of the central garden. This will protect the most vulnerable and sought after plants - carrots, spinach and lettuce. I'm hopeful that the now-protect lettuce will actually make a go of it. Though, May is all about being hopeful about the garden.

Tomato disease - spots on leaves

Late blight has plagued tomatoes across the northeast this season due in large part to the very rainy June and blamed on poor quality tomato starts sold at home stores like Home Depot and Lowes. (These stores don't have the same quality concerns as local nurseries and will sell you any diseased plant they can offload on the unsuspecting!) So when my tomatoes took a turn for the worse back in July, I assumed I was having the same tomato blight problems as the rest of Boston.

Spots first appeared on some lower leaves of a Yellow Girl plant - black spots with white centers and yellow rings. The spotted leaves eventually withered and died and the disease moved up the plant, browning and dying as it went. Then quickly spread to neighboring tomato plants.

Patient Zero - the yellow girl - offered up 6 perfectly beautiful tomatoes before dying completely.

The other affected plants have similarly had no problem yielding delicious, healthy looking tomatoes, even while the plants themselves are slowly browing and dying.

I did what I could - I clipped off the affected portions, pruned heavily to try to lighten the plants and increase air circulation, but the infection continues.

I began to wonder if tomato blight was really my problem when I read that tomato blight produces black, greasy looking spots.

Now I think my problem is either bacterial leaf spot or septoria, but I continue to be puzzled by the fact that the fruit itself doesn't appear to be affected by whatever disease is killing the plants. Despite the problems, we have gotten many pounds of tomatoes out of our six plants. Ironically, the Black Krim Tomato, the single heirloom variety I'm growing, is the one plant that seem to be fending off the disease somewhat successfully.

Untended vegetable garden

Two weeks of vacation left the vegetable garden pretty ravaged. The bunnies have had a field day munching the basil and squash flowers. The tomatoes grew 2 feet and collapsed under their own weight, taking the stakes down with them and smothering the peppers and eggplant. G built a new contraption to hold them up. (Apparently it rained a lot while we were away, plus we had the sprinkler setup on the timer to go off everyday for 30 minutes.) The blight is taking over the tomatoes. I'm hoping that having them upright and better air circulation will help with the blight, but I've lost the yellow tomato altogether.

Still, we pulled about 2 lbs of beans, buckets of grape tomatoes and a dozen cucumbers out of the garden when we returned. I pickled up the green beans with rosemary and lemon

Growing tomatoes

The tomatoes were struck with blight (tomato blight: Yellowing leaves with black spots). I have pruned off all the parts that were affected - huge swaths of undergrowth. The yellow tomato was pruned almost to death. All this wet weather naturally caused the spread of mold and spot diseases. I believe the blight has spread to the nearby eggplant.

Growing tomatoes

The tomatoes are out of control. Despite my ongoing efforts to keep them pinched and pruned and growing in the right direction, they are running wild. I have lopped off 1/3 of the plants, but they just keep growing. The rain. The rain. The rain.

They are also lightly infested with a diverse ecosystem of insects. So far, they don't seem to be suffering too much from it. I've been feeding them about every 2 weeks with Neptune's garden. Each of the plants have loads of tomatoes growing.

These were planted May 10th from seedlings.

Spring planting

Seedlings from Russells in 4 inch pots: $3.99
Planted 6 tomato seedlings. From east to west: Yellow Pear, Better Boy, Purple Krim, Celebrity, Golden Girl, Smarty (grape).
Planted 3 egglants: 2 Black Beauties and an Ichiban
Planted 3 peppers: jalapeno, cubanelle, red bell
Planted 3 basil from home depot.
Planted red onions from Gus.
Also added Tarragon, Thyme, Parsley and Rosemary to the herb bed. I'll see if I can cage or bottle the rosemary to keep it alive through the winter...
Altogether spent another $57 on seedlings.
I also planted sweet corn in the southeast corner and started kentucky blue beans and french beans on a bean teepee. I've planted them in mounds and covered each mound with a milk jug. We'll see if that keeps the critters out. It was a little too windy today to transplant the bean seedlings from the sun porch, but they are 6 or 8 inches tall and ready to in the garden.