Fall is Fun!

Actually, I like the fall, after the frost. It is now that I get to use my mighty BCS rototiller to pulverize the soil prior to "frozen tundra" conditions. FGC management (that is, Mr. Wendt) has the place well-stocked with good, clean (seed-free, that is), decaying horse compost (from a high-end stable in Wheaton, I think), so Fall is also the time to haul manure into the garden.

We still have collards to harvest, and that will be a few more weeks.

Pix from our garden as it fades into fall

Check out my pictures of the garden I took today.

End of our 2010 Garden

Google Maps and our Garden

Right now, the image of our garden at Fermilab from Google Maps shows me working there!

My blue car is in the middle of this image, and I am in the garden to the left (west) of my car, in the second row.

In this image, the first row is beets and turnips, the second and third rows are tomatoes and the last two rows are beans. The west half of the garden is ready for (and maybe I have already planted) the second crop of beans.

The URL to see it for yourself is here. Note that this URL is centered on Jim Wendt's garden, just to the right (east) of my car.

Cool!

September 4 Diary Entry

We had a nice morning at the garden. We picked

• a half-bushel of cherry-roma tomatoes
• a half-bushel of other tomatoes (full-size roma, big-boy and orange cherry)
• a half-bushel of beans (flat and round)
• 20 pumpkins (each about the size of a volleyball)
• 10 butternut squashes
• a handful of tiny okra
• two yellow peppers

I tilled in the manure I placed around the perimeter of the garden.

Okra

The Okra has finally come in.

Diary entry: August 24, 2010

We picked heavily on Sunday (Aug 21):

• 2 baskets (1 bushel) of small roma-style tomatoes
• 1/2 basket of yellow and orange cherry tomatoes
• 6 slicing tomatoes -- we should have planted more.
• 2 baskets of beans.
• 6 cantaloupes
• 6 butternut squash
• 1 pumpkin

Today, I went out after work with my tiller. I tilled between all the rows and around the outside. I brought my mower from home and mowed, capturing the clippings. I placed the grass clippings on the peppers (3 plants have survived) and the okra plants.

The okra plants looks wonderful--they are almost 3-feet tall. I picked two okras that were too big. There are no other okras ready to be picked (surprisingly!).

Note for future: Do not plant okra seeds closer than 12 inches apart, even 18 inches is OK. I had expensive seeds this year, about 30 seeds total. This did not cover an entire row.

The mosquitoes are terrible this year!!

Quick visit: August 7, 2010

We have gotten a lot of rain again at our garden. (The Fermilab weather site is sorta down, see http://www-esh.fnal.gov/pls/default/weather.html, so I cannot tell you how much rain we have had.) Again, the plants at the end are dieing because the roots are suffocating from the heavy water content of the soil.

We got about 1/2 basket (1/4 bushel) of tomatoes--mostly yellow cherries.

Everything else looks pretty good.

Diary entry: August 1, 2010

We went to our Fermilab garden last Sunday to clean up, weed, pick.

It seems that we had 7 inches of rain last Friday! Many of the plants in the corner of the garden almost died--but it looks like everything recovered except for one pepper plant.

The tomatoes have grown profusely! J says that we need to space the tomato rows twice as far apart as they are this year. This is a good idea. We spaced the two tomato rows by about 4 feet, and now the plants from the two rows meet in the middle--you cannot get through the row in a white shirt! So, maybe next year, the spacing between rows of tomatoes should be 6 feet.

Also, the plants are too close together. We recalled that Bill Robertson from graduate school at Duke had only 4 plants per year and always had more tomatoes than he could handle, because he had them spaced by 4 feet in each direction (and planted them in 2 feet of leaf mulch). So, we should increase the spacing between plant to about 3 feet or so.

We tilled under the beans that had grown old and J planted turnips on top. We also planted a row of collards.

The okra looks good, but there is evidence of deer damage (some leaves have been eaten).

Vine crops (pumpkins, cantaloupe, cucumbers) look healthy.

Gardening Logbook

I do not really intend for anyone to read this blog--I just need to keep track of the gardening details from one season to the next. I feel like I am repeating my mistakes, so maybe this journal will help. I've tried paper journals, but this never worked.

Here we go!