Growing hops

This hops vine found its own way into our vegetable garden this year. It is growing like crazy with all the rain we've had in Massachusetts in the month of June.

It popped up in the middle of the strawberry patch, and since the strawberries are done for the season, we gave it a trellis to climb.

Squash at 4 weeks

Squash plants at 4 weeks

Growing haricot verts

The beans are in!

I planted haricot verts and kentucky blue beans 11 weeks ago. The haricot verts came in first. We had the first of them for dinner tonight.

They were slow to get started, but so far they've been pest free and very little trouble

Carrots ready to eat

The nantes carrots planted 12 weeks ago are ready to eat. About 8" long and delicious. We had some the other night in a carrot ginger puree.

We have about 30 carrots growing in a 14"x20" space. They have been low maintenance and pretty easy to grow.

Value of the vegetable garden

Our vegetable garden is a 17'x14' area in our front yard - small but easy enough to tend in 1 or 2 hours a week.

I've been wondering if it's really worth it. I mean, other than the pleasure I get from toiling in the dirt and the smallish chance my children will be inspired by the sight of vegetables growing and actually want to eat one of them.

So, part of this project is keeping track of the cold hard cash value of what we're pulling out of our garden. So, far, we've gotten about 5 pints of strawberries, 1/2 lb of snap peas and several bags of lettuce and spinach. I'll forget that what we have is local and organic and that that combination commands jaw-dropping prices at the local Whole Foods, and focus on the price of these items as if they were plain old vegetables from the regular grocery store. Current price are $2.50/pint of commercially grown California strawberries, $4.99/pound of snap peas and $4.99/box of mixed greens - bringing the total value of our garden to $24.99, (and it's only June 19th!) and that's ignoring all the snips of chives, basil, garlic scapes, oregano, parsley and cilantro for which I can't begin to calculate the value.

Black bugs on Nasturtiums

These little buggers are kind of aphid and they descend with ferocity on my nasturtiums. Nasturtiums serve 2 purposes in the vegetable garden. Firstly, they're delicious. But I'll discuss edible flowers more when I actually have some flowers to eat. Also, they act as a "trap crop" which draws little haters like these aphids away from my more valuable vegetable crops.

My first course of action has been to pick them off by hand. If the assault continues, I have heard of some pepper-based organic insecticides that might keep them away.

Growing cucumbers in Boston

We've successfully grown marketmore cucumbers from commercially grown starts in our garden for years, but buying the starts doesn't seem nearly as efficient as starting my own cucumbers from seed.

Last year, I direct sowed cucumbers in the garden and got nowhere. We got 1 or 2 cucumbers from the 20 or so seeds I planted. The few seeds that sprouted never really grew. This year, I started the seeds indoors in newspaper pots (persian cucumbers and an asian variety) in late April. My first problem was that a sunny south-facing window sill does not provide enough sunlight to start seedlings. I need to get a grow light. The seedlings emerged quickly enough, but they grew tall and spindly and not thick and strong. Nonetheless, I planted them out where I knew they would get a lot more sun and hoped for the best.

Late May and early June have served us a hearty helping of cold, rainy weather - which is not a curcurbit's best friend. My seedlings languished. Several died (hey, that's why you plant so many!). Facing the terror of another summer without cucumbers, I went to the greenhouse and bought 2 well-established marketmore seedlings ($3.99 for both), and started feeding everything regularly.

There is some sign of hope amoungst the seedlings I started myself, but can you see the difference between the vigorous 4-leafed marketmore in the bottom left and the other plants in the picture? These cukes get sun from about 12:30 until 7:30 or so in the evening and 2-3 inches of water per week. I'm hoping the weather warms some more, and we get some cucumbers this summer!