BMR Current Season

The Garden 2010

This year’s garden started, as usual in late winter with the ordering of seeds from various sources, primarily Fedco http://www.fedcoseeds.com/ and Tomato Growers http://www.tomatogrowers.com/

My 2010 season seed ordering included…

Vegetables	Greens	Peppers/Chiles	Tomatoes	Herbs/Flowers
De Bourbonne pickling cukes	Tyee Spinach OG	Early Jalapeno Chile	Big Beef VFFNTA mid season	Sweet Basil OG
Sunburst Patty Pan Squash	Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce OG	Habanero Chile	Rutgers Tomato OG	Forest Green Parsley
Raven Zucchini	Green Ice Lettuce OG	Revolution Sweet Pepper	Celebrity VFFNTA	Mammoth Basil
Nantes Fancy Carrots	Red Sails Lettuce OG	Valencia (Orange) Sweet Pepper	Goliath VFFNT	Purple Ruffles Basil
Tendergreen Broccoli	Buttercrunch Lettuce	Bell Boy Pepper	Burpee's Supersteak VFN	Chives OG
Fiesta Broccoli OG	Rouge d'Hiver COS Lettuce	Early Sunsation (yellow) Sweet Pepper		Cilantro OG
Arcadia Broccoli	Michelle OG Batavian lettuce	Red Knight Sweet Pepper		Bouquet Dill OG
Black King Eggplant		Ixtapa hybrid Jalapeno		Sweet Marjoram
Vittoria PS Hybrid Eggplant		Bell Boy Pepper		Summer Savory
Sugar Snap Pea OG		Early Sunsation (yellow) Sweet Pepper		Mammoth Grey Stripe Sunflower
Detroit Dark Red Short Top Beets		Red Knight Sweet Pepper
		Ixtapa hybrid Jalapeno

Beginning in Late February I began starting some seeds in the greenhouse. Seed starting in the greenhouse continued periodically all the way through May.

Here’s the chart I used to calculate how many seeds to order and start based on the number of planbts I wanted in the garden

Need	Start	Order
24 broccoli	30	2, .5g pkt tendergreen= 100 2, .2g fiesta = 50 2, .5 g pkts arcadia = 100
24 eggplant	30	1, .2g pkt black king = 48 1, pkt vittoria PS hybrid = 30
24 cornichon	30	1/16 oz deBourbon = 65 seeds
18 zuchini	30	2, 1/16 oz pkt raven =40
18 patty pan	30	2, 1/16 oz pkt sunburst =40
48 tomatoes	60	1, .2g pkt rutgers=60 1, pkt big beef = 30 1, celebrity = 30 1, goliath = 30 1, supersteak = 30
192 snap peas	400	2, 2oz pkt suger snap = 500 ea
96 scallions	100	from grocery as needed
96 lettuces & greens	200	1/4 oz spinach = 350 ea 2g pkt simpson = 1700 ea 1g pkt green ice = 800 2g pkt red sails = 1700 2g pkt buttercrunch = 1700 2g pkt rouge d'hiver = 1700 2, 1g pkt michelle = 1700
100 beets	300	1/8 oz pkt detroit dark red = 250
48 carrots	200	1/8 oz pkt nantes fancy = 1000 seeds
72 sweet peppers (36 green/red, 18 orange, 18 yellow)	80	1, 2g pkt revolution = 30 1, 2g pkt valencia = 30 1 pkt bell boy = 30 1 pkt early sunsation = 30 1 pkt red knight = 30
32 hot peppers (24 jal, 8 hab)	40	1, .5g pkt early jalap = 50 1, .5g habanero = 50 1 pkt ixtapa jal = 30
24 basil	30	1, 4g pkt sweet =2000 1, 1 g mammoth = 500 1, 1 g pkt purple ruffle=500
8 parsley	10	1/16 oz pkt = 850
6 savory	5	1, 1g pkt summer = 1500
4 marjoram	5	1, 1 g sweet=4000
6 chives	10	1, .5g pkt = 400
6 dill	10	1, 4g pkt=2000
30 cilantro	100	1, 4g pkt =240
24 sunflowers	50	1, 14g pkt=100

Beginning in April I started getting the garden beds ready with another healthy layering of nicely decomposed compost (Thanks goaties!). Using the tractor I distributed an average of about 6” over the whole garden (minus the perennial herb and asparagus beds that got some hand-shoveled compost, but less).

By the end of May I had most of the irrigation set-up and ready to go and a lots of plants in the greenhouse waiting for their chance in the great outdoors but this was a tough spring. Right about the time I would have begun “risk cropping” (setting out some of the more hardy plants in the garden even though it was technically within our frost danger time in the hope of getting them off to a better/earlier start), we got a series of wicked wind storms. The seedlings and small plants I did put out were no match for the elements. The few I was able to keep dug out from the blow-sand drifts got shredded by the winds. Our asparagus bed was hit hard by the sand and we got very little harvested this season.

Summer hit hard and fast in early June. Theoretically, our “last frost date” here is May 30^th. We had our first 100F degree day this year on June 3^rd. Very little had been moved out yet because of the winds we’d been having and the over-flowing greenhouse got so hot, so fast, that a number of the plant starts just keeled over and died. Fortunately the super-hot weather was short lived and by a couple of weeks into June almost all the remaining plants (quite a lot of them made it) were in the garden.

Amazingly, some of the plants that survived the super-heated greenhouse were the full-sized tomato plants we’d planted in there last winter and from which we’d been harvesting wonderful red ripe fruits from the late winter and continuing all spring. They absolutely exploded in new growth and set tons of new fruit and kept it up all summer. I never have had greenhouse tomatoes live through a full year but it looks like this year’s are going to do just that and in style and productivity!

July and August brought lots of thunderstorms to the ranch and much to our thrill and the garden’s benefit, they actually drooped a decent amount of monsoon rain on us for the first time in about 9 years. I probably only watered the garden half a dozen times in 2 months and the plants all really appreciated “God’s Watering” way more than they ever did mine. Of course the weeds also appreciated it too but Kathryn was a HUGE force in keeping them under control and in most cases completely beat back. In addition to the weeds we fought several waves of various pest infestations including beetles on the tomatoes and eggplants, horn worms on the tomatoes and peppers, and the ubiquitous squash bugs (vine borers). Daily and sometimes twice-daily sessions for weeks with lots of hand-picking off and smooshing the pesky critters eventually got them significantly knocked down to manageable proportions (i.e. we could share the garden produce, getting plenty for ourselves with them without feeling we were gardening for THEM.

Garden pests

We did have a few fights this year. The beetles tried attacking the eggplants, tomatoes, and basil. The squash bugs tried taking over the zucchini, and the hard to spot horn worms noshed on a few tomato plants. Can you see the horn worm hiding in the tomato plant (lower left hand picture)?

In early July we found that all of the plants growing over a large section through the center of the garden were really struggling while identical plants at the end of rows were thriving. Investigation turned up a serious problem with the subsoil in that area which was very high in clay and had gotten very heavily compacted, anaerobic and dead. The problem began about 8” down and went for over 36” deep. Water was being trapped and the ground there was actually getting “sewery smelling”. I still had some very nice compost left from this spring and was able to dig out one section (about 1/4^th of the offending area) down almost 4 feet deep and replace the nasty soil with lovely fresh and highly organic fill. I re-planted that section with the remaining potted peppers, chiles and eggplants I hadn’t had room to put anywhere and they TOOK OFF! Can’t wait until I have another batch of compost ready this fall so I can renovate the rest of the problem area.

The produce came in, in a steady stream all summer and we ate lots and lots of fresh squash and tomatoes. Got a good number of jars of pickles of various types put up and froze a lot of broccoli etc. The herb garden was spectacular this year right from the beginning but none of the beans/peas survived the spring to produce a single pod. The salad greens got off to a very late start but by August we had as much as we could eat and then some.

We had a big open house here at the Ranch in August with over 160 people in attendance. The garden looked pretty good and was included on the tours. The sunflowers had just opened fully and were spectacular. The peppers and chiles were really getting heavy with great-looking fruits and those amazing tomatoes were just about taking over the greenhouse. The day before the open house K and I did a last-minute tidy-up of the garden and ended up picking a really nice basket of a wide variety of produce including a monster heirloom tomato and a couple HUGE 6” yellow, red and orange bell peppers. I washed it all off and left them in the basket on display of a table for the open house. People were very impressed although I had to slap more than a couple of fingers poking at the vegetables. “Sorry, we thought they were plastic”, one lady told me. I suppose I should have taken it as a compliment.

More Garden Pictures

Broccoli, and Basil (right)

Tarragon (left), and Jalapenos (right)

Patty Pan Squash