Garden successes

Two months into the garden, things have really started to take off. The broccoli plants have given me the most this season so far, with a supply of around 10 or so small heads per week. Some sort of insect creature is attacking it, though, so I may have to replant.

It's harvest time for the romaine lettuce...

Zucchini squash has only been growing a few weeks and it's huge! It's competing with the potatoes for the fastest growing plant award.

The first tiny tomato - I believe this one is the Early Girl heirloom I got from a local nursery.

My daily Oregon Snow Pea harvest - which is becoming smaller and smaller every day. I've been freezing them for a continuous summer supply.

The spinach is starting to bolt because of the heat, so I'm going to harvest it all and put in some Ruby Swiss Chard instead.

Front to back - lettuce, spinach, 1/2 row of bush bean starts, and dying snow pea vines

My most recent problematic encounters have been the bugs feeding on the foliage (they sure are hungry) and the weeds which, mercilessly, seem to sprout back up a day after I pull them out. It's been really really hot (100 degrees last week!) and dry (your typical Colorado summer), so daily watering is a must. Can't wait to see what the water bill looks like this month! :)

Pea Time

I didn't think our snow pea vines were going to make it through the early season heat, but they proved me wrong. All of a sudden we got a bunch of little white flowers, which turned to pea pods practically overnight (pretty cool to watch how fast they grow).

 You pick snow pea pods before the peas actually develop inside the pod - while they are still nice and flat. They taste great right off the vine but I'm going to throw some in our thai pasta dish this week.

Overall I'm very impressed with this vegetable - it produced despite the unfavorable weather conditions. I'm going to plant a second round in mid-July for a second (and hopefully larger) Fall harvest. 

Fun Fact #2 - Potatoes

Here's something I bet you didn't know about potatoes: as potato plants grow, you're supposed to pile up soil on the plant, a process called "hilling." You do this right after the plant emerges and continually throughout the season.

Since potatoes grown beneath the soil, hilling gives them more room to produce larger tubers and keeps them from popping up out of the soil, which can turn them green and toxic (no poisonous spuds for me, thank you). 

Now that my potato plants are waist high, my only question is where can I get more dirt?

I've also noticed that the Yukon gold potato plants are producing white flowers, and the red potatoes have purple flowers. Although they seem to be doing great, I realized potatoes require a bit of faith - there's no way to know if there are any spuds actually growing down there. I'll have to dig around in a few weeks and see...

Yukon gold potato flower

 Red potato flower

You can also grow potatoes in garbage cans and old tires, check it out:

http://www.thegardenhelper.com/potato2.html

What I learned about spinach

It may just be the crazy weather here, but my first experience with growing spinach in the Spring didn't produce great results. Spinach needs cool temperatures to grow, but warm enough soil temperatures to germinate. The season started out okay (minus the snow) but this year it has gotten so hot so quickly, our Spring was basically nonexistent. The seedlings have been growing for quite some time and are still pretty tiny. Now, this may also be due to the fact that they were nibbled on by some kind of critter early on.

All in all, not a whole lot of spinach being eaten so far. I have gotten to pick some leaves here and there to throw in pastas and on sandwiches, but not quite as much as I was hoping for.

Fresh spinach, basil, and oregano from the garden - a perfect addition to my Vodka Pasta

(more on herbs later!) 

If at first you don't succeed, try try again, and I plan on doing just that in the Fall when the soil's nice and warm but temps are starting to cool down.

Fun Fact #1 - Broccoli

This week we got our first broccoli harvest. The heads are much smaller than you find in the store, but I went ahead and harvested some of our biggest ones before the weather turned hot (it got above 90). If it gets too hot, broccoli will bolt, which means it will look like this:

Doesn't even remotely look like broccoli anymore. The good thing about this veggie is that after you harvest the first head, smaller heads will develop around the perimeter of where you made the cut.

This means the plant will keep producing yummy broccoli all summer long, and even into the fall I'm told. We don't end up with huge heads here because our cool growing season isn't very long. Broccoli can actually freeze solid and be perfectly fine once it thaws out. The champion of all veggies!

Y

Yum!

By the way, we ate the broccoli raw and it was delicious.

Critter control and summer veggies

This weekend we put up netting over the spinach, lettuce, and peas to keep the critters out. I couldn't find any bird-squirrel-bunny-deer netting so I hope this will work. My next-door neighbor actually offered to “assist” with the critter control using his bee-bee gun, but I don't think I want to be responsible for ordering a mass squirrel execution.

Now that the weather is finally warming up, we planted squash (acorn and butternut, compliments of my coworker - thanks Sherri!), zucchini, two types of tomatoes, jalapeno and sweet peppers, and carrots. These veggies can't tolerate cold temperatures or frosts or they'll keel right over. On the other hand, the broccoli, spinach and peas can't tolerate hot temperatures. So now I can’t decide if I want it to be warm or cold outside. Luckily springtime in Colorado can give us both, sometimes in the same day.

Kyle enjoys the summer-like weather after a hard day's work in the garden

Uh-Oh

Something is snacking on my garden. It could be birds, squirrels, or bunnies. Notice the teeth marks below.

Bunnies are cute and all, but I would like to eat my spinach too. They are gnawing away at everything, it's like a bunny bistro back there. Time for desperate measures...

It's arrived

We have broccoli! The florets are beginning to show themselves.

Who knew this is what broccoli looks like before it's chopped off and shipped to the supermarket?

Peas are coming along nicely. And the potatoes - I've never seen anything grow this fast! Seems all that wet spring snow did them good.

Snow peas

 Potatoes

Whew

Everything seemed to survive the spring snowstorm. Next time I'll quit worrying, stay inside with a cup of hot cocoa and leave them to play in the snow.

The white stuff

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Just when the hot, sunny days start to lull you into a false sense of security, mother nature strikes.

Woke up this morning to a whole lot of white stuff on the ground. How (HOW???) can it be 80 degrees yesterday afternoon and be snowing by this morning? I thought it had to be below 32 degrees for the snow to stick to the ground. Apparently not.

6:45am, me outside in my woollies (and getting soaked) trying to locate my broccoli plants and dig them out of the snow. Got every large pot, pan and bowl I own and covered them up before the weight of the wet spring snow completely crushed them. Hopefully it will melt later today and I can see how much damage has been done. I’m pretty sure my neighbors think I’m insane digging around in the snow first thing in the morning.

I can see this is just the beginning of gardening in Colorado.

Tomato woes

Thought I could get a jump start on tomatoes by starting one in our topsy turvey hanger thing. My brilliant idea – we can hang it outside during the day, and bring it inside at night when it freezes.  Better in theory than in actuality.

Didn’t realize the thing would weigh 50 pounds. Took us a whole weekend to install hooks and find studs that could handle the weight. Then I realized there’s no way I’m strong enough to transport the thing back and forth every day for the next two months. Then I got carried away and over-watered it – it’s been dripping for two days…

Probably should have just waited until it’s warm enough. Lesson learned.

The good news is my tulips are up!

Faith like potatoes...?

Not much gardening being done on the weekends – it’s cold and wet. Frantically trying to get cool weather crops in the ground in the evenings after work, my only window of dry, sunny weather so far this spring. Apparently peas were supposed to be planted in March. Really? March?? Everything is still frozen in March. Oh well.

We now have scallions, red onions, and lettuce. The peas are growing like champs, as well as the broccoli. Spinach and onion seedlings are poking hopefully out of the ground. I’ve had to look up pictures on the internet so I know what the plants are supposed to look like. Believe me, the seedlings look nothing like the grown-up plant. Hard to imagine these spindly little green shoots will be a head of spinach in a month or two. That is, if I don’t kill them before then.

 Oregon Snow Peas

Spinach sprouting

Potato?

I can’t quite tell if the stuff growing in the potato bed are weeds or potato plants. I do know that they are quite fuzzy. As much as I desperately want to pull out every little thing that dares to invade my garden space, I must resist until I can make sure I’m not single-handedly demolishing all my hard work. I was inspired to plant potatoes after watching the amazing movie faith like potatoes.

Garden beginnings and doggie determination

As most everyone knows, Colorado is not the easiest place to grow a vegetable garden. We have a short growing season and heavy clay soils, damaging winds, temperatures in the spring can range from the 20s to the 80s, and we’ve been known to get hail the size of golf balls in the summer.

Despite all this (and my better judgment), I have decided to take the plunge and see if I can grow anything in our overgrown, somewhat neglected backyard. Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I roto-tilled. Yup. And it was fun! Besides not being able to move my upper body the next day, there’s somehow a huge amount of satisfaction in knowing that what was once a section of rocky, hard clay with some weeds is now a garden, complete with walkways, waiting expectantly for its vegetable residents.

After a full day was spent tilling, building raised beds and shoveling lots and lots of topsoil and compost, the fence went up. Initially intended to keep a certain someone from trampling my delicate seedlings, we soon realized that our best intentions at keeping Lucy out of the garden were…well, not good enough. With Lucy, where there’s a will there’s a way. Seems like she’s been in there more than I have. We’ve rebuilt and reinforced the fence a few times since its installation.

This weekend the potatoes (red and Yukon gold), snow peas, spinach, and broccoli have gone in. Apparently these plants are frost hardy, and I’m hoping that’s true because I know for a fact that we haven't seen the last of the snow this year.

 

                                                         
Broccoli seedlings from Fort Collins Nursery

I’m trying to be as organic as possible and stay away from chemical fertilizers and pesticides. We’re only going to plant what we know we’ll eat (i.e. no radishes or other ridiculous vegetables).  I’m also doing a little experiment on how much money has gone into the garden versus what we end up getting out of it this summer. So far, we’ve totaled about $100. Couldn’t believe how much stores charge for topsoil. Come on, people, it’s dirt!

Even if we don't break even I’d still be happy with home grown produce.  You just can’t beat fresh from the garden vegetables – the hard-earned fruit of long, sweaty hours weeding and watering.