OmahaJB's 2010 Garden Journal

[Sherry_AK]

Hi, Jeff. I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy reading these posts.

Sherry

[OmahaJB]

Thank you Sherry. Hopefully I've given everyone a laugh or two reading about an amateur in the garden!

Knowing how much work having even a small garden can be, makes me appreciate those who plant hundreds or thousands of seedlings. It's always been my dream to have land to have a farm/ranch, so I envy those who do. But they work hard, I know.

I haven't been using sevin dust or any other insect killer, but eventually I'll need to if I continue gardening in future years. Also will need to do a much better job of soil preparation and then later weeding during the summer. Although the garden fabric is helping quite a bit with the weeds. Really haven't been fertilizing much out of fear of overdoing it and killing the plants, but this year will push the envelope a little more.

Glad you are enjoying the thread. It's something that helps me as I can refer back to older postings to see when certain things were done.

Jeff

[OmahaJB]

Realizing there probably wont be enough time to get anything from these, I went ahead anyway and planted some seeds today. Since I don't have any cucumbers I sowed Delikatesse (one more try), Poona Kheera, Bush Cucumber (old Burpee seed from '06), and one squash - Early Prolific Straightneck. Starting them indoors and will transplant outside about a week after germination. Will use growbags since they are working so well for the 4 plants I'm using some for already.
Cucumbers may have a chance of producing but not sure about the squash. Maybe we'll have a late first frost.

[Tormato]

Jeff,

Early Prolific Straightneck matures in about 45 days.

Gary

[OmahaJB]

Cool....It's possible I could get mature squash from it before cucumbers I'm starting at the same time. Regretting not starting the other squash seeds you sent Gary, especially Winter Luxury Pie. Read Jeanne's post in the squash forum and then googled info on it. Sounds great. In the spring I guess I was so enamored with the idea of growing Amish Pie and Musquee de Provence that I overlooked the others. But hey, sounds like I still have time to get some Early Prolific Straightneck if they germinate fairly quickly.

Saw my first daylily flower today. Yellow neck, a dark lavender ring about 1/2 inch wide, then pale lavender, with dark lavender ruffled edges. Attractive but the coloring is pale. Still like it. And they are about 5" across.

Pulled two roma tomatoes today that had BER. Hopefully this is not a trend for the rest of those roma tomatoes in the grow bag.

First fruitset of my project plant Big Green Dwarf. Very nice looking plant. Small but solid dense vegetation. Haven't measured it but I'm guessing it's about 12-14" tall.

So far two Diamond eggplant and one Rossa Bianca eggplant growing.

Jeff

[Mischka]

Originally Posted by OmahaJB

Realizing there probably wont be enough time to get anything from these, I went ahead anyway and planted some seeds today. Since I don't have any cucumbers I sowed Delikatesse (one more try), Poona Kheera, Bush Cucumber (old Burpee seed from '06), and one squash - Early Prolific Straightneck.

Poona Kheera matures fairly quick in comparison to other varieties I've grown so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it does for you too.

As for summer squash, I have faith you'll harvest a few before Jack Frost pays your garden a visit. I will be direct-seeding some here this weekend, specifically for a fall harvest.

[OmahaJB]

Thanks for the info, Mischka. I did grow Poona Kheera last year and it was my most prolific cucumber. Soil was poor so the cukes were still small when they needed picked. Taste was just ok for me compared to all the posts I read about it, but I'm not one who should judge taste - even though I like pickles with the added flavoring, not really a big fan of eating fresh cucumbers. Growing these more for my mother who likes them - although she wasn't a fan of Poona Kheera either last year. She likes what she refers to as English cucumbers. They are about a foot or more longer, fairly skinny and wrapped in saran wrap in the stores. One of the stores just calls them 'greenouse cucumbers'.

My Delikatesse seeds have had great germination rates and all 5 came up within 2 days. Poona Kheera has 2 poking through the soil but they are taking their sweet old time doing much else. No sign of the squash seeds germinating but I realize they should take longer.

Good luck with your squash seeds, Mischka. I've had no luck direct seeding melons and squash the past three years, but you obviously know what you are doing.

Weather's been pretty good this year for the most part, and it's helped the garden. Seems the plants like warmer weather than I thought they would. I knew eggplant would, but thought high-80's & 90 degree temps might be detrimental to tomatoes at least. It wasn't partly because humidity wasn't terribly bad on those days.

Ahhhhh...time to tend to the laundry in the dryer... a single man's work is never done.

[OmahaJB]

Silly me....yesterday I did some research on the internet because it seemed I was mostly getting female flowers on the Amish Pie squash vines, and no squash were growing. Since there are few bees around here I decided I'd need to pollinate by hand. BTW, I learned from the info I read that you need to get in the garden early to hand pollinate because the flowers will close up in the heat of the day.

So this morning I drive over to the garden, about 10 minutes away, with Q-tips and scissors in hand. Q-tips for transferring pollen and scissors in case I decided to cut the petals back on the males rather than pull them back. Turns out scissors really aren't needed. Having learned yesterday that the female squash flower has about 4 stigma and the male 1, I knew they'd be easily identified. I had assumed the larger flowers were female and smaller were male.

Looking around I realized all the 'males' were dying off, so I decided to pull one off and see if I could get pollen off of it. To my surprise I saw at least 4 stigma. Then I glanced at the 'female' flower and noticed it only had one. Obviously I had them backwards. The larger flowers were actually the males! At that point I remembered something else I had read. The males will start flowering a couple weeks before the females in July. So that should explain why I'm not seeing many females yet. Kind of panicked for no good reason.

In the process of that I noticed a couple flying 'things' by the flowers but didn't see well enough to know what they were. Definitely not bees but they were interested in the flowers. Hopefully they'll help with pollination without destroying the plants.

That Rossa Bianca eggplant is going to have good size.
Which leads me to something that was happening last year. All eggplant but two very small ones were stolen by what I thought were squirrels, as well as some of the cucumbers and tomatoes were either completely gone or a bite or two taken. I mentioned to my mother today that it was odd the squirrels haven't taken anything since they are still around. She said maybe it was the possum who took them last year. I asked if she saw any out there and she indicated she had last year but not this year. In the spring of 2009 she said she hadn't seen possum but obviously she did later and failed to mention it. So I'm guessing that was the culprit or culprits. Nothing missing yet. I can only hope we don't have that problem this time around.

Lost a 'Not' Emma Pink, and another tomato seedling that had never recovered from the storms a few weeks ago. I had to prop them up with soil and stake along with a couple others, but these two didn't make it. Seems I forgot to write down the name of the second plant on my diagram. It was a fairly latecomer, planted just before the roma and Pink Girl seedlings.

The peppers are doing well this year. Troyka now has 8 peppers. I have a plant where the peppers point bottoms up towards the sky, which I think might be Soroksari. Can't be certain because I messed up my diagram a little in that area of the garden. Another one is kind of a golden or yellowish color right from the start. Regardless, they are doing well as are the other pepper plants.

Tomatoes need to get busy. I do have a couple growing on my project plant, and La Roma is productive already but BER will be tough to combat in that grow bag. Just drys out too quickly.

Looking forward to tasting those Troyka peppers. The description I read said they get about 2" across at the top and about 6" long. Would make a nice pizza topping. Oh yeah....

[danwigz]

Just wanted to mention that I've been enjoying reading your garden's progress. Hope things keep going well for you.

Danwigz

[OmahaJB]

Thank you for the kind comments, Danwigz. So far I'm happy with the progress of most of what I'm growing. Although I'm starting to wonder if I'll get squash. So far no pollination. Also lost at least 4 plants to animal and storm damage - all tomatoes.

Like much of the country it's been hot the past 4 or 5 days, at least. Up into the mid-90's. We'll see a break from that by Friday it looks like. I'm worried how that will affect pollination since it's also been fairly humid. The plants love the heat as far as vegetative growth, and they are flowering well, but if the pollen gets moist from the humidity I may not see tomatoes on some of the good varieties that really just started flowering. Toedebusche Pink, Brandywine Cowlick's & Sudduth's, and 'Not' Emma Pink are the ones with no fruit yet, but plenty of flowers. I really haven't seen much from Emma Pink in the way of plant growth or flowering.

However, I do have at least a couple tomatoes on my dwarf project plant along with more flowers open on it, and the peppers and eggplant are enjoying the heat. Troyka has 9 decent sized peppers on it at the moment, and may have some others just starting out. I visited the garden today and was impressed by all the pepper plants growing at least a pepper or two, and both eggplant producing. Diamond now has 3 eggplant growing, and Rossa Bianca is growing a really nice sized one and another one or two starting out. Growbags/Containers really are great to grow in since I can control the quality of the soil a little better.

Plan on using a growbag to transplant the cucumber seedlings and hopefully the squash seedling that popped up will be ready as well.

Softneck garlic might be ready to dig up already. The tops are pretty much all brown and laying down. Hardnecks might need another two weeks.

Nice to see the possum (or whatever) has not gotten to the eggplant. Hope my fortunes comtinue in that regard.

Until next time....Jeff

[OmahaJB]

Pulled one Diamond eggplant off the plant on 7/9, 55 days after transplant. It would have grown a little bigger if I had left it on but not a whole lot larger. There's another on the same plant that's about the same size that I left on, plus a couple smaller ones.

Rossa Bianca has one that's probably ready to be picked but I'm waiting for a reply on my thread in the Eggplant forum. Not sure how long it should be. It's around 4" or slightly longer. All descriptions I've read mention how big around it gets (4-6") and this one has to be right about that size. Really a beautiful eggplant.

Today I planted the Delikatesse cucumber and the squash I recently started late. Also had a very small Poona Kheera seedling but I doubt it survives.

Dug up the soft-neck garlic today. The tops were all brown and laying down. Size was very good but a few were ok. Will wait another week or two to dig up the hardnecks. Their tops only have a couple of lower leaves brown at this point.

Saw a couple bees inside a Amish Pie squash flower. Hope they were early enough to catch both sexes of flowers open. Interesting, the bees looked different than the old honey bees we used to have so much of. When I pulled a leaf back so I could look a little closer at them, one of them got pretty aggressive. Hoping they aren't Africanized bees. Reportedly they never reached this far north, at least not in large numbers. Still no evidence of squash on either plant.

Looks like one or two Cream of Saskatchewan melons starting out. This is what I can really get excited about. Love melons and never had one of these.

Used a green Troyka pepper as a pizza topping last night. Tasted better that way than just fresh as I was slicing it up. These are said to be good at the yellow stage, even better than at the ripe red stage. Still have several growing on it despite pulling a 2nd green one off today.

Tomatoes not growing in abundance, but plenty of flowers. The project dwarf plant has a couple tomatoes on it. Only other with tomatoes that I saw was the roma type. And that is getting alot of BER being in the grow bag. Don't think I'll grow romas in a container again. I had read they can have alot of BER problems, especially in containers.

Nice big daylily flower about to open on the same plant as before.

That's about it for today....

[OmahaJB]

Visited the garden yesterday and saw I had a couple Cream of Saskatchewan cucumbers growing. Say what??? That's right...my melon vines turned out to be cucumber vines. Having never grown melons I didn't know what they'd look like compared to the cucumber leaves. Really wasn't paying that much attention to it, just went by my diagram. Somehow I wrote a couple things down wrong in that part of the garden. So I have a couple Delikatesse cucumbers about the right size for pickles if I were using them for that. But will let them grow to full size and use for fresh eating.

Have to admit it was a big disappointment as I enjoy melons much more, and was looking forward to trying that variety. But I am happy I'll get to taste Delikatesse, since last year I don't think I had but one or two very tiny ones from it.

At this point doesn't look like I'll have squash to harvest, unless the early one I recently transplanted works out for me.

Not much else to report, except I have a Diamond eggplant sitting on a shelf in my kitchen. And a Rossa Bianca will be harvested next time I visit the garden.
Peppers growing well, but tomatoes are slow to set this year. Maybe due to the heat which sometimes has come with high humidity. The dwarf project plant has a couple on it still green..duh!.. It's a green variety so I guess it always will be. Glad I caught myself on that one! But they are far from maturing. Look to be maybe an ounce to an ounce and a half. And they may still grow larger.

Good day!

[Tormato]

Jeff,

Did you know that Cream of Saskatchewan has seeds that look like...



watermelon seeds?

You must have had your mind on the Browns when you were planting the imposter cukes.

Trmat

[OmahaJB]

Everyone's a comedian....hah...actually I transplanted the cucumbers and melon seedlings. Just wrote my diagram of that area of the garden wrong, including which pepper plants were in each spot. Don't know what I was thinking about. Just trying to get the work done. The only thing I tried direct seeding was Charentais. Also transplanted a seedling of that one but the seeds didn't germinate and the seedling either died or was eaten by a wolverine or something.

[OmahaJB]

Short update today compared to normal. Was over at the garden mid-week. Dug up the garlic. Smaller than last year due to poor soil I wasn't able to amend last fall. But I do have more heads this year so that helps make up for it.

Project dwarf plant is productive and has decent sized tomatoes considering how small the plant is. Guessing the tomatoes are around 3-4 ounces. Plant height in less than ideal soil is around 14" tall. The plant itself filled out nicely. A couple of the tomatoes are close to being ready to pick but they've been hard to judge since they are green when ripe. Just have to go by feel.

Delikatesse has several cucumbers growing on it. The biggest one may have been picked already by my mother. It was ready when I was there, but I told her she could decide when to pick it. She thinks I
pick some things too soon, last year the cucumbers and this year the eggplant.

Besides that not too much going on. Other tomato plants have started producing recently. The hot weather this year, with at times stifling humidity, kept pollination in check for awhile, but I think I'll see more tomatoes growing soon.

Will have to give up on the Amish Pie and Musquee de Provence this year. Not producing.

Hope to find a couple ripe dwarf project tomatoes next time I'm there.

More updates to come....if I can pull myself away from my new AT&T UVerse tv. Just couldn't deal with free tv anymore. Now if I can just get the Gateway computer working! I signed up for the bundle package in hopes of working from home and saving $100/month in gas, but the computer my sister gave me is not re-installing the software. May have to start a thread asking advice. Good idea!

Enjoy your Sunday everyone!

Jeff