Nutrition

Athlete’s Garden: Overgrown and heading to dormant period

A lot has happened in our little Athlete Garden experiment since I last gave an update. A quick rundown:

Bed 1: The onions and garlic had a nice growth spurt. Some of the onions are now flowering, but I have to figure out when to pull them out of the ground. I haven’t grown these before so I have to figure out the best harvesting time. We’ve pulled a few already and used them as slightly overgrown scallions for cooking. The garlic stems all turned brown within a week or two and the bulbs had rotted. Don’t know what happened there.

Bed 2: Once again, the diffuse light this bed gets from the shade tree is making it a non-producer during the summer. Three months after planting, pole beans are only 3″ tall and the transplanted peppers have withered and died. The brussel sprouts and broccoli plants are doing well, but are still very immature.

Bed 3: Arugula gone crazy! This is Max’s favorite spot to catch a breeze and
cool off.

Bed 3: The salad bed was a bust this year…except the arugula. I have more arugula than I know what to do with! The romaines and arugulas bolted in May due to the early heat wave. They normally wouldn’t do this until the end of June or early July. So, we got very little salad harvest out of here. The Swiss chard is hanging in and I have to figure out what to do with it and see how it tastes (cooked?). The artichokes were killed off by aphids of some sort, although my Armenian cucumber is now flowering and I hope to get some cukes by the end of the month.

Bed 4: When tomatoes outgrow their designated “square foot” and the gardener
neglects his pruning duties.

Bed 4: My three tomato plants have completely taken over this bed. I’ve been sharing sweet cherry tomatoes with friends and have a pretty good harvest of Roma tomatoes. The bigger varieties have not fared so well in the heat. Now that we’ve had a couple of weeks of triple digit heat, the tomatoes are starting to go dormant. This may be a good time to prune them back because they are out of control.

Bed 5: What a strange, strange season it has been for corn.

Bed 5: This has been a crazy bed of Franken-gardening. Turns out my Hopi corn (blue corn) cross-pollinated with the white sweet corn, leaving me with white/blue sweet corn that had a rather nutty taste to it. Actually, it tasted like shit. The strawberries are coming in one at a time. Hardly worth the effort, although I’ll probably keep them but may set up a dedicated strawberry bed or pots in the future.

On a frustrating note, I was bested by squash beetles. I had rubbed the caviar-like eggs off the leafs, sprayed Neem and used the adult beetles like Fourth of July poppers by throwing them against the flagstone (they do pop! when their guts come out…really, great fun), but the little bastards beat me in the end. I went out of town for a week and came back to find they had killed off my three squash plants. Completely mummified them. I have since learned that far wiser local gardeners don’t plant squash until July to beat the beetle plague.

Bed 6: Is it bad soil or dog wee-wee that is to blame for these weak crops?

Bed 6: This bed is having issues as well. My tomatillos died off. Peppers did the same. Now the tomatoes are dying off. I’m suspecting dog urine as the culprit here as I’ve caught Max marking the tomato plants here.

The mighty Chicken Casita. Lots of four-letter words, smashed digits and blood
involved in the building of this thing.

The Ladies: I admit to having neglected the garden a bit as I was spending most of my free time getting the chickens out of the garage and getting the new Chicken Casita built. So far,  our three Red Star hens seem to like their new digs…and it’s high-tech misting system. They’re 13 weeks old today and we just might start to see eggs in another 7-9 weeks. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the heat stress delays that a bit until the temps start cooling down in October.

Overall: This year’s warm season garden is turning out to be somewhat of a bust. The early heat wave appears to have foiled the salad garden so the salads this year are non-existent. I’m letting the lettuces go to seed and will let Mother Nature dictate what the cool season garden will produce. I’m certain She knows the planting schedule better than I do!

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