Le Potager in Mid-May

Our early spring has benefited the vegetable garden.  Le potager is almost a whole month ahead of where we usually are plantwise.

I planted our seed potatoes on St. Paddy's Day, a tradition that makes it easy to remember when I planted.  This year we'll be trying Cal White and Kennebec taters. I wanted to plant last year's winner--the Peter Wilcox--and although I couldn't find them as seed potatoes I had a few marble-sized Wilcoxians left from last year's harvest that I planted.

Pretty much all our veggies go in raised beds in our climate because of our year-round cold nights, but the potatoes go the raised route for ease of harvest.  I'm trying a straw mulch system this year...once the seed potatoes sprouted and reached the top of the bottom boards, I piled on compost and raised the bed with a second set of boards.  Within a week they were well above the six inch boards so I added yet another set of boards and more compost/cherry blossom drop/straw.  As you can see, they've flourished and I think I'll add one more layer and then leave them alone.  Theoretically we should be able to (easily) harvest a (bumper) crop of potatoes from the organic layers I added on top of the soil.  I wasn't diligent last year about adding layers but I did notice that I did get a decent crop from what I did layer and I didn't have to dig much to harvest them.

We usually have good luck with our Sugar Snap peas but this year they were dug up within a few days by the Golden Retriever who seems to enjoy digging more than I'd like. At least I could tell they were germinating. I just tucked them back in, watered them and crossed my fingers. Because I do love those pods in our salads well into summer! Most of them made it and I had enough extra seed to replant the little corner that didn't.  With three (completely accidental) planting dates, we'll have an extended season for peas this year.

It's not like the peas need the added protection from the row cover since they like our cool springtimes, but I had the time to sew a custom cover to fit the PVC frame so I did.  Protection from the marauding Golden was a bonus.

I wanted to get some sweet onions again since our crop last year was my most successful try at onions yet. I settled for Stuttgartner which sound delicious. At least they look happy in their new home. Although it looks a bit like a jail with the hardware cloth protecting it from chickens and Golden retrievers.

I planted a package of Black Seeded Simpson lettuce back in late March. It's not fancy, but I didn't get the germination from my Farmers Market blend that I wanted due to a dry winter, so I went with what I could easily get and knew would do well. Sometimes it's better to just go for the sure thing. However the fates seemed to be against any lettuce harvest since Miss Golden Retriever (who else) dug a very deep hole in the lettuce plot as well. Lettuce needs light to germinate and who know how many seeds were left anywhere near the surface. Watering and hoping didn't do any good.

As it turns out, the dog paws left just enough plants that we've actually already harvest three good salads with no end in sight.  There's nothing quite as tenderly delicious as home-grown lettuce!

Without a full bed of lettuce I had room for an experiment.  I'm gambling (I live in Nevada, after all) and planted a first crop of Blue Lake Bush beans in the blank spaces.  It's waaay too early but I have the row cover and if the weather stays as warm as it has, we'll be harvesting quicker than usual.  I'll be planting French filet green beans and some pole beans too as the season rolls along.

This year I wanted to grow Sunsugar or Sungold tomatoes, or Santas, all of which get good reviews for flavor.  But do you think I could find the seeds anywhere in this town? I'm not into mail order...but maybe next year. Anyway, the Romas (beloved of my son) are in as well as a giant Red Cherry tomato and we're seeing true leaves so they're ready to transplant.

I did find a packet of Black Cherry tomatoes (at the feed store--go figure) which are described as having intense flavor so I'm hoping they germinate as nicely and live up to their advance advertising!

I can hardly wait to start some zucchini and more beans. And see if the pumpkin seeds I saved from the minis last fall will germinate and give me a fall decorating bonus.

Be (INSPIRE)d,
 
Tuesday Garden Party time!
Show and Tell Friday at My Romantic Home too.

Just Let Us Dream

The lone butternut squash has been harvested.  Zucchini are long gone.  The French filet beans are history. Our remaining tomato plants are black mush after the first, second and third killing frosts.

So what IS growing in the High Desert?

Lettuce seedlings.

Crazy, huh?  Lettuce seems like the very first plant that would turn limp and lifeless after a frost.  Mais non!
These little Mesclun-mix sprouts will grow all winter, flourishing underneath a blanket of snow (that they apparently consider their own personal greenhouse) and will yield fresh baby lettuce for early Spring salads. 

A few years ago I optimistically made a late-September sowing of leaf lettuce and wrote it off when the frosts arrived.  The following March after a hard winter they were still green and growing to my utter astonishment.  I purposely tried the same stunt the next fall and served the family Spring lettuce.  It's a successful part of our yearly routine.

Now if I could just get the lettuce and tomatoes to ripen at the same time...

The seedlings are in a raised bed getting full sun all winter.  And it's sunny most any day that it's not actually storming.  Still...gardening is full of surprises, isn't it!

At least my seedlings give me something to share at An Oregon Cottage's Party.

Our Cottage Potager--Beginning/Ending/Beginning

I'm ecstatic to report that we will begin harvesting French filet beans this week.

Our very first beans of the season. Uh, this is one crop I can't blame on our late frosts; this mixup is all my fault. I planted beans seeds three times before they germinated; twice with seeds that were ten years old (yikes!) before I realized my mistake and planted fresh beans that promptly sprouted and grew.  Lesson learned:  either share my seeds with family and friends, check the "packed for" season date before decanting, or throw out old seed packets pronto instead of hoarding them like they'll appreciate in value.

I woke up early on Sunday and decided to dig potatoes so that I could plant a winter crop in their place.  Let's see, here are the seed potatoes being chitted (sprouted) last spring.

I planted half whole and half I cut up and callused before planting.

My harvest.

Sad. I think I had more last year when I planted in containers. I amended my soil with sand and peat and planted in ground this spring.  I'm not giving up, I'm just learning.  I plan to profit from some local success stories before I plant next spring.  For the record, the whole potatoes produced more than the cut-ups did.

Let's move on and check out the butternut squash.

 

My lone baby is growing daily and I'm hoping for late frosts. The Queen Mother's isn't doing a whole lot better--maybe this just wasn't a good year for them. I plan to start seeds inside next spring for an earlier start. Yep, time to plan ahead for Harvest 2011!

In the former potato hills, I have snap peas started (from nice fresh seed, thank you very much).  In between the bean rows, I've sown leaf lettuce and I'm trying to figure out if there's enough light coming through the golden zucchini to start some beets and carrots.

Come join other gardeners as they blog their successes and failures here at the

Now Harvesting

The hot weather finally paid some dividends!

See, my garden does have something other than flowers in it--like Gold Rush zucchini.

 

There's no way I can miss these babies growing so I end up with fewer gigantic zucchini. Although this year I could use them--the Bombshells apparently love the blimp-sized squash from our neighbor.

These little cherry tomatoes have successfully hidden from our tomato-seeking missile (aka Sophia).

 

We have some yellow mini-pear tomatoes coming on too. They always remind me of being a kid in the summer so I usually call them "Bug Light" tomatoes. Sounds yummy, right? (Do they even make yellow bulbs for porch lights anymore?) Sadly the Black Krim heirloom tomato doesn't have one flower on it much less a tomato.

And ya gotta love volunteers. Obviously there was one at least one tomato that didn't get picked last year. I'll have to look back in my garden journal, but I think these are Early Girls.

 

My pickling cukes are starting to climb and blossom. The butternut squash vine has possibilities--I'm dreaming of delicious winter soup everytime I see it.

Come join the Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage (where Jami's already planning her fall garden) to see what's happening in gardens around the country.

That's my veggie tale and I'm stickin' to it,

Three Fifths

Yesterday's Spring Break adventure yielded three raised-bed planters for the Queen Mother's veggies.

I kinda like the striped look myself but I'm sure some paint is in their future (then they'll match the fence). We cut enough wood for five beds total but put off assembling the last two until this weekend.

The fence company was going to charge her to haul away this lumber from her fence that blew down. Hello? Free lumber? I don't mind pulling out nails and stacking lumber for future use--especially since I was already plotting these raised beds to make her gardening easier in our Nevada climate.

Total cost: $6 for a box of screws. With enough lumber left over to build a chicken coop and run.

A slightly sunburned but satisfied,

Miss Itchy Fingernails Makes A List.. or Two... or Three

I received a gift certificate (woo-hoo!) to a local nursery for my birthday waaay back in January.

Since then, we've had just enough sunshine peeking through the clouds to defrost the frost-heaved soil and just enough warm weather and rain to green up the lawns.  It's enough to make any gardener here start to think seriously about springtime even though we've also had a snowstorm or two.  Or three.

The annual longing for gardening weather is a delicate business in northern Nevada--maybe even more crucial than knowing I can't plant tomatoes until the snow's off Peavine Peak.  If I start to think about it too early,  I'm apt to get seriously depressed when I look at all the bare, frozen ground outside and realize I have weeks upon weeks upon weeks before I can get my hands dirty.  If  I start to plan to late--well, springtime's a busy season for teachers and past experience has shown that summer is too late to plant since we have a miniscule growing season.

I despise cold, wet, damp, rainy days.  (We northern Nevadans are a spoiled lot who expect sun for approximately 360 days per year.  Give us a week of clouds and we all come down with SAD, bouts of depression and a raging case of the "poor me's".)  But I have to admit that the gray days were perfect for planning this year's vegetable garden since I was stuck inside anyway.  Developing a list while I had the time hopefully prevented frittering my gift certificate away on plants that I don't have room for and seed packets that I don't need because I still have (tomatoes, beets, basil, you name it) seeds from the last millenium.


Truthfully,  I love making lists. Crossing off an item gives me a feeling of accomplishment and I gain momentum as I go.

I have a Spring Garden Chores list that I'm working my way through right now--pruning the fruit trees (check), raking leaves that escaped me last autumn (check),

 

continuing my search-and-destroy mission to eliminate the white violets while preserving the blue-flowered plants.

Each autumn, I make my Musical Chairs Plants list so I know what plants need to be moved where.  It's essential to make notes while the plants are full size because all the herbaceous perennials are almost invisible by springtime. This year the hardy geranium, the purple mum, the Red Volunteer daylily will all settle into new sites (although it's a tad early to start digging now).  Thanks to my list there will be NO tall plants blocking my view of the pond this year.

 The elimination of our pin oak brought some much-needed sunshine into our backyard--good for flowers and vegetables alike--so my list included seed potatoes (currently "chitting"), bare-root rhubarb (now at five leaves with more unfolding) and strawberries (lying low till the weather warms), chives, and onion sets (sitting on the workbench until St. Paddy's which is, by gosh, tomorrow).  It was satisfying to spend wisely (thanks to my list-making) and fabulous to spend lavishly (thanks to my thoughtful friends).

I still have money left on the gift certificate so I'm making yet another list.  As the snowfalls decline from two feet to six inches to a mere dusting, I tell myself that Spring is winning the battle so primroses and johnny-jump-ups should be making an appearance soon at the nursery.  Or perhaps a peony is hoping for a new home.  The flower list could be my favorite list of all!

Insulated

Shhhh! I know it's winter and you know it's winter but my baby lettuce plants don't know. And that's the way I like it.

I ran into a friend at a Christmas party when we had three feet of snow on the ground. He's passionate about his vegetables; his Victory garden outgrew his side yard several years ago, then consumed the sports court that the kids used and now occupies the front yard too. And he regularly dines at the best restaurant in town--because he supplies them with his gourmet greens. (His pampered lettuce plants reside in hot frames with soil heating pads and produce in abundance. Did I mention that he has his own tractor?) We fell into conversation about the kids and moved on to gardening. He laughed politely when I told him that I was growing lettuce (remember those three feet of snow). I'm not sure if he thought I had a poor sense of humor or was suffering from a mental breakdown. It's tempting to email him my photo right about now.

Truth is, I accidentally discovered that if I sow my lettuce seeds in the fall, they'll sprout, somehow magically survive the killing frosts and then grow happily under their cozy blanket of snow before providing an early harvest of delectable leaves in the springtime. These little guys easily doubled in size under the snow despite the sub-zero temperatures in December and January!

Easy-peasy gardening, gotta love it.

Voila!

It was a cool spring this year so we experienced Nevada gardeners took longer than usual to plant a vegetable garden. We have learned to wait until the snow is off Peavine Peak (our local signal that it's safe to plant tomatoes, petunias, and other frost-sensitive plants). I can get really antsy though, so I crossed my fingers and put in the tomatoes anyway. The Garden Gods let me get away with it and the tomatoes have flourished.

I usually get nice little tomatoes in four inch pots, but the nursery industry decided that we all needed larger tomato plants that cost twice as much. Ouch! I'm sure it helps their bottom line but it takes a lot of tomatoes to make it cost effective when they're that expensive. I grabbed them off the labelled carts anyway, choosing the healthiest plants I could find and trusted that I had my usual Sweet 100's for Mr. Pogonip who loves cherry tomatoes, Romas for me because I hate tomato snot on my sandwiches, the yellow bug-light cherry tomatoes for variety, and an old reliable Early Girl. When I started to plant them I discovered that the red cherry tomato was actually a Beefsteak, and the yellow cherries were some weird variety I've never heard of. Our Lowe's is across town and gas was already getting expensive, so instead of returning them I put them in and crossed my fingers.


It was only two weeks ago that I realized I had actual large green tomatoes not just the flowers. So today I was astonished to discover we had several orange tomatoes. I guess they must have really liked the hundred degree temperatures over the past two days to begin turning red so quickly.

And I would have never guessed that Beefsteaks would size up so nicely with our cool nights. I can hardly wait to sample the new varieties in a nice cool salad drenched with raspberry vinagrette. I'm drooling just thinking about it. I guess there is a silver lining to the hundred degree temps if the tomatoes ripen more quickly than usual!