Overview

Bored

It feels like my garden has suffered from every disease and pest known to gardening. I spent the morning removing leaves that have powdery mildew. I couldn't figure out why some plants had it and others didn't. Then I discovered that my squash and pumpkins are infested with borers. The ones with the borers were the ones with powdery mildew. So even though I should have spent the afternoon working on my boat, I spent it operating. I sliced open the infected plants, pulled out the borers and sterilized the incisions. I also harvested the immature spaghetti squash and pumpkins and one summer squash. Time will tell if the plants recover and I get any more.

Megabloom

Megablooms are the conjoined twins of the tomato world. I have them on at least seven of my plants. No one seems to know why they happen. But I found another blogger who suddenly had a glut of them after rarely having any before. Maybe it was the early disease and malnutrition that my plants encountered. This image is of my biggest megabloom, on a Brandywine Pink Tomato. I think it was a fusion of at least five blooms.

Unfortunately, "too-big-to-fail" isn't a law in the realm of the tomato. A week later, the bloom is shutting down -- without having set fruit. I think that the bloom was just too crowded and gnarled for the pollination to happen.

I think my squash might be gay. All the flowers are male. I'm kind of proud of them. I hope it's not just a phase.

The peas, however, are breeding like rabbits.

The beans have gotten to the top of the tower. And they're blooming. They look gay. But that's probably just because I planted pink ones. They're bound to disappoint me.

The Uchuva is setting fruit, too.

As are my tomatoes. This variety is supposed to be ripe by the 4th of July. Lies!

My kale is getting a little long-in-the-tooth. They look more like Palm Trees.

Rabbits continue to confound my fencing. I will have to get yet another layer of chicken wire very soon. Every day one has gotten into the garden. It's really traumatic for them becuase I chase them around, and they can't find their hole to get out. The run the full length of the garden and leap, hurling themselves against the fence and bouncing back in. They seem determined to eat one particular cauliflower. I've got to rabbit proof better before they get eyes for my strawberry plants.

Something Fishy

Some of my tomatoes are failing to thrive. Purple stems, a purple cast to the leaves, and necrotic spots on leaves that progressively turn more yellow -- these symptoms seem consistent with phosphorous deficiency.

Back in April, I discovered that garden loam isn't good for gardening -- after having five cubic yards of it dumped next to my waiting raised-beds. It was mostly clay. Not so good for growing things. So I then found a place to deliver four cubic yards of compost. All the extra loam pushed me to add a few beds. I mixed the loam with the compost. But a couple of the beds are filled with about 95% of the sub-standard loam. The tomato pictured above is struggling to grow in one of those beds. I did mix a little fertilizer into the bed. But it probably wasn't enough.

I also found some grubs while I was digging up the sod for my beds. And there were some grubs in the loam. I squished any that I saw. However, last week, I pulled up an eggplant that just hadn't grown at all. There was hardly any root ball -- and a very lively grub was nestled in what was left of the roots -- very unhappy to be disturbed. I put an end to its unhappiness. So maybe more grubs are eating at the roots of some of my plants. If the roots are being eaten, then the plants will also have trouble absorbing water and nutrients.

One of the tomatoes that I planted in a pot with 100% sterile, pre-fertilized, store-bought garden soil is doing great. It's the control subject.

So I have saturated the soil with fish emulsion. I got a nice local brand, Neptune's Harvest. It's basically rotten fish syrup that gets mixed with water. It should start to get the nutrients in the soil up to where they should be. And a UPS truck should be bringing me a delivery of nematodes sometime today. I'll just have to wait for a wet day to get them into the soil. The nematodes are parasitic worms that will infect the grubs and eat them from the inside. Fish, worms: it's all circle of life here.

Septoria

from Wikipedia: Septoria: Ascomycete pycnidia-producing fungi that causes numerous leaf spot diseases on field crops, forages and many vegetables, and is responsible for yield losses.

from the Cornell department of plant pathology: Following spread, spores may germinate within 48 hr under moist conditions and favorable temperatures. Leaf spots can appear within 5 days.

Last evening, as I loaded up a tray with the remaining potted tomato seedlings, I noticed spots on them. I did a check of the planted tomatoes. The one hanging from the porch had more spots, and the ones in the ground had fewer. But all had some. It was classic Septoria.

The plants were stressed from transplant and had been root-bound in their peat pots. Then they were alternately watered and rained on, allowing dirt to splash their leaves and then several days of overcast skies prevented the leaves from drying well.

The only treatment is amputation. The seedlings still unplanted fared worst. They had been the smallest, weakest plants anyway. That's why they were still unplanted.

But even some of the plants in my beds look rather poodled.

A couple of the smaller seedlings were totally compromised and had to be taken out.

I spent the rest of the day in purchasing some straw and weaving it around the tomatoes (and other plants). This stops the rain from splashing dirt (and fungal spores) up onto the leaves. I had always planned on doing this. The rain coming right after transplanting was unfortunate.

Overview

 I still have a few things to build -- mainly some supports for the uchuva so that they don't get too rangy. But this photo gives a sense of the garden. The raised beds with the PVC hoops are four by eight feet. And the footprint of the whole garden is roughly twenty-six by twenty-eight feet. Rabbit fencing surrounds the garden to a height of thirty-eight to forty inches and goes below ground four to six inches. Deer netting tops off the fence up to six feet (not enough to stop a determined deer, but I hope that there's enough other vegetation to make the jump seem not worthwhile) and covers the rabbit fence as well, descending six to eight inches below the ground plus a few inches out. The gate is backed by hardware cloth, and a door-sill has stapled to it hardware cloth that extends ten inches below the ground.

Today, I planted cantaloupe and squash seeds -- and built some vertical supports out of bamboo on the narrowest raised bed, and then I planted it with a few tomatoes, jalepeños, and Thai eggplant. I already had a bunch of garlic growing there.

The supports that I built today are a little taller than those that I built inside the cold-frames a few days ago. But the cold frames are super strong and, well, cooler.

The pictured bed probably only needs the vertical support on one side for a few tomatoes, but the symmetry was irresistible. Most of the cabbages, broccoli and kale will probably come out in another month, giving the tomatoes (and a few peppers) room to breathe.
Here's an habenero, dwarfed by some kale:

The broccoli is starting to form heads:

In the next bed, the cabbage is really loving the cool spring:

There are small fruiting trees and shrubs in the garden, too. Eventually, there will be fewer beds when they get big. But now they're pretty small. There are two beach plums that are in bloom right now:

And there is a persimmon as well as a paw-paw:

And blueberries:

I'm a little worried that I planted to corn too early. Only four kernels have shown themselves:

But the peas and beans are doing great and the artichoke seems to be tolerating the cold okay:

Time will tell how the plants do that I squeezed in between the wood-chips and the fence. I had dug a trench so that the fence could extend below ground, and I figured that some roots could only help reinforce the border. The worst that happens is that I pull them out. I planted a couple of grapes, a bunch of raspberries, and five or so tiny tomato seedlings that probably would have been trashed (I planted a ton of tomato seeds expecting that some wouldn't grow -- but they all did).

There are parts of the border that were more intentional. A narrow bed by the gate has bell peppers, Mexican marigold, and nasturtium.

And the wide bed on the west side of the garden has the uchuva, squash, peppers, cauliflower. Here's a picture of one of the simple vertical supports that I'm making for the uchuva.

Seeing the overview photograph and knowing the dimensions doesn't really help one understand the garden. There's a lot going on.