Countertop Gardening

Lettuces. Could be eaten at this size, but
I'm greedy and keep them going.

 I'm still using my indoor hydroponic gardens, though all but the basement tomatoes were shut down for the summer. I started lettuces and bok choi the second week of October. I was able to start eating in about five weeks. I started my second batch of lettuce then - the third week of November. 

Baby bok choi

I finished the bok choi (baby sized) the first week of December - so about 9 weeks total. The first batch of lettuces, which I'd been using for salads and sandwiches straight through from when I started the harvest, was pretty much done by then. I left them, and got a few more leaves before finally trashing them this week - so 10 weeks total.

Isn't this gorgeous?

I started swiss chard about a week after the first batch of lettuce, mid-October. Tonight I based a meal around harvested chard - the third time I've done that. It'll keep going, I think, for quite some time. I base my harvests on when it grows too tall for the container, and the stems are still relatively small and easy to cook and eat. I could move the chard to jars to get bigger, but I'm going for at least one more batch in the machine. I think they are really attractive! They brighten the place up considerably.

Post harvest, I swear they grew an inch in a couple of hours!
I think these will keep going for quite some time.

I've started a batch of herbs, just last week. Not all have even sprouted yet.

2024 Vegetable Wrap-Up

My peppers, bought onions

I thought I would recap what happened this year, what worked and what didn't work. It was my most successful vegetable gardening in years. While we haven't had a frost yet, and the plants are mostly still alive, there won't be any more harvests.

First, peppers. I only put them in the Greenstalk, my rotating vertical grower. They did very very well. When I first set them in place, they took a small beating from small pests (holes in the leaves) but I sprayed with an organic bug spray and also trapped many slugs in beer traps, and from then on they took off. I watered daily during the drought and I fertilized them every couple of weeks through the end of July. 

I probably won't grow the same varieties of peppers again. I mostly planted "mini-bells", sweet peppers that only get to be a few inches big. They were very tasty, but WAY TOO MUCH WORK TO EAT!!!  The teeny little things required de-seeding just like a big bell, but it took a lot of them to make a meal. The orange variety seemed much more prolific than the red ones, and I had a purely green, round, one as well (Cupid) with an especially good taste. I also planted one variety of normal-sized banana peppers, long and skinny, and they were good, but more prone to insect damage than the others. I'm going to look for classic bells and fatter Italian frying peppers next year. (I do not do hot peppers.)

And basil! I had SO MUCH basil! I started 24 basil plants from seed, and plopped in a plant to each of the unused slots in the Greenstalk. I had four varieties - Napolitano, Genovese, Tuscany, and Thai. I also put a half-dozen plants into the ground. I had basil extravaganza for the whole summer! It loved the heat, and I watered daily during the drought. The Thai basil plants in the ground got as tall as me! It's not my favorite variety of Thai, I'll look for a new one next year. I bought parsley plants, flat leaf and curly, at farmer's market and put in the Greenstalk, where they did well. I also bought cilantro plants, twice, and placed in the Greenstalk, but they both died quickly.

And tomatoes! I did regular tomatoes in the ground and in individual pots, and cherry tomatoes in the Greenstalks. (Same variety cherry tomato as I grow inside hydroponically.)  I basically got no cherry tomatoes outside, maybe one or two. I think the bunnies may have gotten to them - they were accessible, though slightly protected. And my big tomatoe plants were partially protected. I had four plants in the ground, inside netting that was easily broken by the animals - and it was shredded by them on Bastille Day, in the middle of July, when the plants were bursting with plenty of green tomatoes and no ripe ones. (see this post). I had picked a few green-but-clearly-ripening tomatoes before the massacre. I repaired the damage as best I could a few days later, and the plants survived their haircuts and proceeded to set a new crop of fruit. I got maybe a dozen tomatoes in all (maybe a bit more). The tomato plants in pots were basically unprotected from the critters and took many haircuts besides having fruit stolen. I did get a couple of handfuls of tomatoes from the five plants in pots. I fertilized all the tomato plants every 2-3 weeks (pots slightly more often) through the end of July. I don't think I fertilized after that.

I did two of the three sisters, corn and beans. I got some little corn before the massacre. The beans, inter-planted at the foot of the corn stalks, continued to grow post-massacre, and I harvested a few handfuls of very attractive pods. I shelled the beans, they yielded about 3/4 of a cup, and boiled them, ate them in a vinegar and oil dressing, and was pleased. But I don't know that either the corn or beans were worth the garden space. Corn from the farmer's market is easier, and I like beans from a can. 

I had my best zucchini harvest in years! It wasn't anything to boast about, by zucchini growing standards, but I actually got maybe a dozen or more zucchini to eat! I planted in my raised bed with new soil, and draped the whole thing with insect netting, fastened down all around the edge of the bed. After the plants started blooming with female blossoms, I replaced the fine-meshed insect netting with wider-meshed critter netting, to allow for natural pollination while still keeping the deer, rabbits and squirrels out. I watered, but far from daily, maybe more like weekly. I sprayed the plants with the organic insect spray, put out slug traps (but slugs didn't seem a problem) and sprayed a couple of times with BT, which is specific for caterpillars. I think I thwarted the squash vine borer, which is a moth that lays its eggs inside the vines, for the emergent caterpillars to eat their way out. 

This was my first year for potatoes! I bought seed potatoes on impulse at the hardware store, and I planted them into three 5-gallon growbags. I harvested one bag at the end of July, and the other two about 10 days ago. It was so fun to peel back the bag, and plunge my hands into the dirt feeling for the little potatoes! The thing to worry about potatoes is their turning green. The green is actually just chlorophyll, which is fine, but bad chemicals (solanine) often develop as the potatoes are turning green. I scrubbed, cooked and ate the potatoes the day they were harvested, and I think a few of the potatoes had some solanine. Some of them were bitter to the taste, and I felt queasy after eating them. How odd, but I won't be doing potatoes again. 

But it's all an experiment, and the fun is in the doing and finding out. I don't know what I'll do next year, but whatever I do, I know I need better pest and critter barriers.

Promises Fulfilled!

On the cloth, clockwise from top right:
Sweet Sunset banana peppers,
Cupid pepper mini-bell,
Fresh Orange not-yet-ripe,
Flambo Shell beans,
Fresh Orange mini-bell,
Fresh Red mini-bell,
with various tomatoes along the top.

 Tomatoes and peppers, and a few beans.

I'm picking tomatoes before they are fully ripe, because critters (probably squirrels) are also going for them, though they like them soft and red. 

I'm pretty sure I'll be making a version of spaghetti sometime soon. Right now, I've got the banana peppers cooking slowly in a pan with onions - going for a couple of hours.

I'll have to do some research on what to do with the beans. The idea is to eat the beans not the pods. I don't know if they can be boiled and eaten right away, or if they need to be dried, and then soaked, before cooking.

More Promises

I've been getting lots of little peppers! They are cute, but a lot of work to eat, because each has to be cleaned. I've also had 4-5 more zucchini! Officially the best zucchini year ever! The outdoor cherry tomatoes are smaller than the plants inside, and less prolific. I did fertilize all the greenstalk veggies about a week ago, to keep them going.

Inside the crop cage,
with dead corn propping them up

But the big news is the big tomato plants have come back from their animal depredations and are full of green tomatoes! The ones in pots have a few tomatoes and more blooms. The ones in the crop cage a really big and have several tomatoes. I did patch the crop cage, but it's still vulnerable. We'll see if the critters feel a need to assault it. I'll definitely pick before ripeness, but they are solidly green now and its too early to pick them. I like to see them starting to change color before I pick.

Potatoes!

 

The kids argued whether this was 5 and half potatoes, 
Or 9 potatoes. 
All from one of three bags. 

This is officially the most productive gardening year in several years. Just a quick look at my first-ever potato harvest (from one of the three bags I planted). And a large and a distorted smaller zucchini, which I had for dinner tonight. 

A large zucchini, and some of the little peppers

Today's Haul

Today's haul

 I harvested the most and nicest zucchini I've grown in years! OK, it's TWO smallish ones, but it's still record-setting. And, I've got more coming along, and so far the protection is working.

In other news, there might not be any more outdoor tomatoes. My big plants have all been mauled by large critters. I do have healthy indoor cherry tomato plants producing away.

On the plus side, there are several small pepper plants coming along with small fruit on them, all in my greenstalk planter. And, of course, more than enough basil (and parsley) to feed the entire Italian army. 

The zucchini behind its barrier
(too many plants, should have thinned)

Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May

Munched corn, with a big new hole
in the netting visible.

My garden, on the cusp of delivering on its bountiful promise of just a few days ago, has been decimated! My crop cage, string netting surrounding and covering my big wood bed where my corn and tomatoes are, has been shredded. I think deer may have breached it initially, but yesterday the squirrels made it their own and ravaged it completely. Pretty much every ear of corn has been munched to nothing. The tomatoes are all gone, and the plants are buckled and broken. 

Five years I’ve had the net, and finally it was breached. I think the heat and drought are driving the beasts to get more creative and forceful to eat lush moist vegetables.

Only the basil remains almost untouched. 

I’m so glad I harvested corn and tomatoes when I did. I’ll see what happens to the ravaged tomato plants- they may survive. 

I still have 4 tomato plants in pots, but they have been pruned back by munching deer and aren’t showing a lot of fruit. They are not well protected at all. But squirrels rarely go there. We’ll see how it goes.

I also have the greenstalk towers, with cherry tomatoes and tiny peppers, and basil. Something to take care of and pick from. I also have the zucchini, sequestered in its own bed. It’s protected from a casual browse, but not from a determined assault. 

Now I have to think through more sturdy pest control solutions. Sigh. 

Tomato Massacre

This morning, when I went out to water my plants in pots, I discovered one of them had been completely massacred! The huge pot had been overturned and emptied with the dirt spread all over the driveway. The large Early Girl tomato plant, previously covered with green tomatoes, was snapped off at the ground level, shredded and denuded of all fruit. Sigh. All gone, nothing to do about it. I assume a deer. I moved around my remaining pots to use my large lime tree (which has thorns) to protect the remaining pots. But they are not behind a big fence, so they remain vulnerable.

But it's far from only bad news in the garden. I decided to make a harvest today, partly because I figured I'd better grab some before the animals do!

I've got a small harvest of tomatoes, mostly salad-sized, mostly Early Girl variety. I picked some that are not yet fully ripe - there is a school of thought that says it relieves the plant of a burden so it can continue to make more tomatoes. Once tomatoes start to ripen, they will continue even if picked. And flavor is based on the variety of tomato, not on maturity when picked. (Modern tasteless supermarket tomatoes result from breeding varieties for good transport qualities while ignoring taste - it doesn't have to do with when they are picked.)

I planted a few pepper varieties, based on seeds I already had in the house. None of the peppers are full-sized bell peppers. I've got banana peppers, and small bells that will turn bright colors. I picked some yellow bananas and tiny green bells. I'll probably let the next tranche ripen to more vivid colors.

I went ahead and picked some of my corn! What I read was it's ready to be picked when the corn silk turns brown. But I saw ears with a lot of the silk just gone - and the ears had a lot of ants crawling on them. All of my gardening is only entertainment and experiments, so I figured let's just go see whats going on inside the husks. 

The ears are small and misshapen, and the kernels are irregular. But there are some regular-sized kernals, and I think I'll use a knife to cut off the good ones and cook them in a skillet as part of a veggie saute. (Apparently each thread of cornsilk is tied to a specific kernel - if it gets fertilized, it grows into a plump kernel.)

I've also made my zucchini more vulnerable to pests, but also open to being pollinated by insects. I had it completely under insect mesh, and I attempted some manual fertilization. But I haven't had great success with that. I was defending against a pest called the Squash Vine Borer, but supposedly it's an early season pest, so the odds are much less it will show up now. So now it's under a larger plastic mesh, which hopefully keeps deer and rabbits away, but allows the beneficial insects in.

Full of Promise

Early Girl tomatoes

Right now, the vegetable garden is still looking good. My tomato plants in the ground and in pots are all thriving - no sign of disease, leaves not munched by anything, many blooms and a few fruit forming. One of my tomato plants in the ground, an Early Girl variety, is taller than me. Peppers in my greenstalk towers have recovered from their original slug leaf holes, and just now starting to flower. The corn is about waist high, and I planted beans between the stalks and they are up about six inches; they are not yet climbing up the corn as they are supposed to. The zucchini in its veiled bed has sprung up into giant plants. They are not yet blooming at all, but the plants are big and healthy. My potatoes in bags are full to the top with dirt and just now starting to bloom. The book says that's the time they start making little potatoes down below. I'm very excited about the potatoes!

My zucchini under its anti-bug veil

I've been tending the plants much more this year than in past years. I've used bug spray and slug pellets. I water nearly every day if it doesn't rain. I amended the soil heavily before planting, and I've fertilized all of the fruiting vegetables a couple of times now. I have a rough schedule - the next round of fertilization will be around the end of the month. 

My greenstalk with peppers, herbs
and cherry tomatoes

But it's still mostly promise at this point, nothing to actually eat! Except, in the greenstalks, I planted herbs and one swiss chard (chard was my only successful outdoor vegetable last year). I had to cut back some of the basils and parsleys and dills and the big leaves of the chard. I washed and cleaned them up, and will sautee the chard with some of the herbs - I think I might make an omelet with a bunch of the rest of the herbs and have that for dinner with the chard.

Farming

I'm making yet another run at trying vegetables this year. I have been spectacularly unsuccessful for the past few years, but I'm doubling down on my efforts. Last year, I ran out of energy and just went for the hydroponic small eggplants and cherry tomatoes. I found the plants very attractive to look at, and also very attractive to insects. So I got vegetables to eat, but not oodles. I never put any vegetable plants directly in the ground, but let my raised beds and large pots stay fallow.

My flimsy structure in 2022,
covered in netting

The year before last (2022), I tried physical barriers to keep the bugs and larger pests out. I put a pop-up net tent in my side yard, and then I built a (too-flimsy) frame out of PVC pipe and covered it with bird netting. It kept the deer and birds out, but not bugs. Inside the shelter I had pots - with tomatoes, eggplants, and zucchini. I also wrapped the stems of the zucchini in tin foil in an effort to foil the squash vine borer. All of my protection attempts were to no avail. I had aphids, I had spider mites, I had viruses (virusi?) and fungi, and I had squash vine borers. So I got two tomatoes and one feeble zucchini out of it - I think also a couple of smallish eggplants. In my 4x8 garden cage in back of my house, I tried tomatoes and peas and beans. I got some beans, and came to the realization I don't really like just plain green beans, even very beany ones fresh from the garden. And there was a lot of slug damage. My only success that year was with swiss chard - I planted it out early, and it kept going until the hardest frost in December. It was covered in slugs for much of the year, but in the fall it was actually lovely as I guess the slugs were taking their winter naps.

4 tomatoes and a block of corn
totally caged from deer

But hope springs eternal among us gardeners. I've maintained some momentum this spring in order to get things moving on the vegetable front, and I'm trying several new things.  For starters, I've done a lot with soil amendments and fertilizer before planting. I have fertilizer on hand and a basic schedule of when to apply, to be adjusted as I see how things are going.

I started tomatoes and peppers and basil from seeds indoors. In my 4x8 cage, I've got four tomato plants, and a 4x4 block of sweet corn. I grew sweet corn in this spot once before several years ago, but I lost enthusiasm and didn't water it and it turned into light brown husks. My technique, developed from the internet, was to plant 4 seeds in each square foot. Just yesterday, I thinned what had sprouted to two plants per square foot. I read that this dense planting may lead to smaller ears, but corn requires density to pollinate - each plant relies on its neighbors to get the job done. My plan is to plant vining shell beans around the bottom when the plants get to be about a foot high. (Currently they are about 6" only.) I also put basil plants around the tomatoes.

My netted zucchini bed

I bought metal raised garden beds two years ago. Last year, I put together one of them. This year, I finally filled it up and built a crop cover for it. (Why hurry? There's always next year.) Just today, I planted zucchini there. I didn't fill it to capacity with zucchini plants - advice is to do so some succession planting to try to defeat the pests. The cover on the bed is insect netting which is pretty much tulle fabric. Hard to work with, but I think I have it anchored well. We'll see if it defeats the bad bugs!

I bought a vertical planter, a Greenstalk. It has five tiers of six planting spots each, and it spins on a base. After seeing how high it was, I decided I didn't want to garden above shoulder height, so I bought one more tier and split it into two towers of three tiers each. In the greenstalks I have cherry tomatoes (the same variety I grow indoors) and peppers and basils and herbs. I had started all the little plants from seeds and they looked great when I planted them out. But the peppers have been severely munched, so it's time to get out the spray. I'm going to apply Captain Jack's Deadbug Spray first thing tomorrow to everything in the greenstalks, and also to the tomatoes in the ground and in pots.Any innovative thing will have enthusiasts, and the enthusiasts will have internet discussion groups. There is a lot of overlap between the hydroponic enthusiasts and the greenstalk enthusiasts, which is how I learned about them, and also how I learned about Captain Jack's. I haven't yet put up a barrier to keep deer out of the greenstalks. Where they are is kind of a cul de sac for the deer, so far they just haven't come through.

A planted greenstalk

My final experiment year (so far) is potatoes. I bought seed potatoes at the hardware store, and I've got them in grow bags. Per internet advice, I planted them shallowly at the bottom of the bag, and I'm supposed to add dirt as the visible green plants grow. To harvest, I simply empty the bag. My first bag has sprouted and grown up enough to need more dirt. I tried potatoes once years ago, and got nothing despite luxuriant foliage. We'll see this time!

Greenstalks, with my citrus grove in the background

My munched pepper.
It's not dead, but its weakened.

Roses and Iris and Peonies, Oh My!

Roses, and iris, and peonies, are blooming away. It's a particularly good year for them - somehow the combination of rain and temperature has hit a sweet spot. Most of my efforts for the past month have been focused on vegetables and annual flowers, but this year I also get to reap the bounty from past years' investment in perennials.

I keep meaning to write a post about all my vegetable efforts, but I'm too busy actually doing the gardening. There is "the law of the farm" which is that certain things have to happen at certain times, or else they will never happen at all. For example, seed starting at the right time, or watering something about to die from thirst. I miss some windows, but I'm trying to keep up.

So instead of a detailed account, here are pretty pictures. 

About 3 years ago, an acquaintance offered several irises from his thinning.
I made a little bed along the walk from the side of my house.

I have a penchant for red roses.
This is actually a rose bush and a peony,
almost the exact same color.
Just outside my kitchen door.

Another red rose, this one along the front wall of my house.

Another passalong iris, in the bed by the side walk.

This spot is too shady, and so it always falls over.
Along my street.

Yet another red rose, climbing this time.
At the front street corner

Siberian iris, from my mother's garden in Bellport.

I'm not sure this dark purple iris has bloomed before.
It's along the back of the house, about two years old.

 

This is the dreaded invasive multiflora rose.
It needs to come out, but it is on the steep slope
along the street and so will require bullet-proof clothing
and a balancing act to remove.

 

Still Growing

 It’s been more than half a year, but I am here. In mid-December, I got a couple of my countertop units going. Now I have light and color in the middle of the bleakest month!