Basil, Tomatoes, and Cukes: Oh, My!

Today's selling went a lot better than yesterdays. The surprise hit: cucumbers! A few people mentioned that they'd like to grow cucumbers but just didn't think they had the space. I explained the principles of vertical gardening and steered them toward the Little Leaf cukes. Both the plants and their fruit are small and fit well into the nooks and crannies of a garden (or a greenhouse, which is why I bought that seed in the first place).

Actually, I spent a surprising amount of time explaining and demonstrating gardening techniques, such as how to rabbit-proof your garden, how to seed lettuce, how to mound squash. I'm wondering whether I should start offering a Basics of Backyard Gardening course. How many of you would be interested in such a class? What would you like to see in the curriculum? And where shall I hold it? Ideally, I'd do it here so that I can demonstrate some of the techniques, but that might be a bit of a hike for some of you.

At any rate, I sold enough tomatoes, cukes, basil, the very last zucchini, and assorted other veggie seedlings this weekend to give myself some wiggle room in the greenhouse at last. Next week, more mad potting.

Meanwhile, today I finished prepping the last of the garden beds, and Alex finished setting up the header and added a few lengths of drip tape to the irrigation system. It's a lovely feeling, knowing that most of the garden is planted and cooking. Here's how things were looking last Wednesday:

Happy strawberries are growing like mad. Note the irrigation header on the right.

Cucumbers for Beverly Bootstraps

And some cukes for us.

The red trellises are tomato ladders that I'm trying out this year. I have a Brandywine planted on one end and a Hillbilly planted on the other. After planting the cukes, I realized I had a fair amount of space on either side of the bed, so I planted some extra carrots. On the right, I planted Nantes and Bolero, and on the left I planted Kaleidescope Mix. Now, if I'd thought of this before planting the cukes, I'd have put the fencing on the north (right) side of the bed so that the cukes wouldn't be shading half the carrots later on.

Zigzagging Melons

I did something a little different for the melons. Here I've planted Sweet Siberian watermelons, Yellow Doll watermelons, and Sweet Granite cantaloupes in a zigzag pattern to maximize growing space for the vines. Once the eggplants are large enough, I plan to plant two Orient Express and two Ravenna Green in the triangular spaces away from the fence.

Oops! Didn't quite cover all the Ovation Greens braising/salad mix.

Annelise's Giant Pumpkin

I really should have put an object next to this to help indicate its size. Giant is right! Each of those leaves is larger than my hand. Annelise saw the giant pumpkins at last year's Topsfield County Fair and insisted that she wanted to grow one. So we bought a small packet of 3 seeds, two of them came up, and we planted the more robust of the two. The other is promised to her best friend. Our plan is to let it grow in among the corn, which has just sprouted in the last day or two.

A mixed bed of zucchini (foreground), tomatoes, and husk cherries.

Husk cherries are essentially a sweet tomatillo, and this variety is reputed to taste like pineapple. We shall see.

I bet you're wondering: Why on earth isn't she putting down black plastic mulch cover on these things to prevent weeds? Well, here's your answer:

How Not to Mulch. Seriously.

These are Yellow Crookneck summer squash plants. I used a solid black plastic bought from a small farm supplier in NH. When I asked for black plastic mulch cover that was water-permeable, the salesman said, "We only have solid, but that's fine. You run your drip tape under the plastic." I really wish I'd stopped to think about that for a second. The problem with solid plastic, as you can see from the photo, is that rainwater pools and runs off, forcing you to use the drip tape a lot more than you otherwise would. I'm seriously annoyed by this. I could see using it someplace like New Mexico, where you'd irrigate a lot and want a plastic barrier to prevent evaporation, but this is New England, where it rains frequently, and with this stuff, I can't make use of the rain. Worse, other beds on the same drip tape probably don't need watering as frequently. So if anyone prefers this solid stuff, I have a whole roll of it for you. I will likely never use it again.

I have so many tomatoes in the greenhouse that, rather than scattering them randomly about the garden as I usually do to prevent the spread of wilt and parasites, I dedicated a bed previously earmarked for flowers to them. And here's a tip I'd include in my hypothetical class:

Bury Your Tomatoes

These two Valencia tomato plants were the same height before planting. Tomatoes are vines in the nightshade family, and they grow roots all along their stem, just as potatoes do. The more stem you put in the ground, the stronger and healthier they'll be.

I didn't bother taking pictures of the potato beds that day because there was nothing really to see. But the very next day...

Bintje Potato Sprouting

The Bintjes and Yukon Golds sprouted beautifully and are growing big and bushy now. Tomorrow or the next day, I'll start burying them, little by little, to encourage more root, and thus more tuber, development, just as with the tomatoes. Today, the Rose Finns just began to sprout, so I'm guessing the Norkotah aren't far behind. Our hope is that either the Bintjes or the Rose Finns will give us new potatoes by midsummer, i.e., the summer solstice.

First Strawberry

Also, that day, I spotted the first strawberry blossoms. Alas, we have to pick them all off and forego our strawberries this year to have healthier plants and a better harvest next year. Fortunately, I have a farmhand who loves picking flowers. Seriously, most of our roses never make it to a full bloom.

Eleanor, the Fashionista Farmhand

There's very little left to plant in the garden. I have a bunch of Mammoth sunflowers I want to get in the ground, as well as the Delicata and Spaghetti squashes. Still waiting for the eggplants to mature enough to plant. I have two more successions of corn planned, and we'll be direct seeding the beans sometime in the next week. That should be an interesting blog post. Finally, I have one last flowerbed waiting for my mother-in-law to come and seed wildflowers in it. And then, I can just sit back and water. And weed. And harvest.