Fall Cleanup

I cleared out two of the five rows of tomato cages.

The tomato cages stored for the winter.

Our collards are going, and growing, strong!

In fact, our leeks, turnips and beets are doing quite well, too!

Tomato Cages

We have 63 tomato cages.

First Frost recorded on October 21, 2011

The first hint of frost at the Fermilab garden was October 17.  I noticed on the 18th that one of Jim W's plants had been nipped.  However, by okra was not particularly hurt by this.  So this frost was very well localized!

October 21 is then the first frost data (see http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KDPA/2011/10/21/DailyHistory.html).  The following day had a low temperature in Aurora of 0C exactly.

I just got back from my garden, and the tomatoes and peppers are done.

The growing season is officially over.

(But we still have collards, beets, turnips and leeks, of course.)

Compost pile & Jerusalem Artichokes

Yesterday, we completely emptied our compost pile at home--the first time ever, I think.  We got well over a half bushel of Jerusalem artichokes!

We put the new dirt into our home garden.

Thoughts/plans on spacing

Our rows are spaced this year (2011) as follows:

• Tomatoes: 50-58 inches (center-to-center)
• Peppers and beans: 38-42 inches
• Okra: 38 inches
• Others: 38-44 inches

Observations

For the tomatoes, we need at least 60 inches, possibly 70, between tomato row centers.  Similarly, we don't need to put so many plants on one row.  This year we have 12 plants per row--adjacent cages are touching in some cases.  Next year: 8-10 plants per row (only).

(I believe that the number of tomatoes you get is proportional to the planted area, not the number of plants.)

The okra rows definitely need to be farther apart.  I have been unable to get my tiller between the rows this year.  50 inches might be enough (an extra foot), at least it will be enough early in the season.

I could have planted the peppers more compactly.  15 plants per row is quite sparse.  This could almost be doubled and the plants still wouldn't touch.

Summary for next year (2012)

• Tomatoes: rows are 60-70 inches apart; plants are 45 inches apart (center-to-center), which is about 10 plants per row.
• Okra: rows are 50 inches apart
• Everything else: rows are 40 inches apart.
• Peppers: 25 pepper plants per row.

Lots of tomatoes

We had a great day picking our garden today, but it was very hot. We got a real MESS of tomatoes, beginning with this one plant that yielded 17 beautiful, red tomatoes, all by itself!

Here are all the baskets we picked

4 bushels (8 baskets) of tomatoes, one of beans, one of okra and peppers, one of leeks and onions and a round basket of beans.

We stuffed everything into Joanne's little Mini Cooper.

Yum!

The bounty begins

We had a great, not-hot day on Sunday to pick. The bounty has begun:

Bad news though: My tiller is on the fritz again and I need to order a new part. Wish me luck finding an obscure part from my 1983 tiller.

Summer garden starts to produce

The okra looks lovely in the late afternoon sun.

We got four baskets of vegetables today, including one almost-full basket of tomatoes!

Tomatoes

We got a nice basket of tomatoes today (Friday)! Also got okra (about 50 pieces), yellow squash (5) and beets. We picked a leek, too--it was beautiful!

The garden is dry, but it looks great!

We present to you today some photographs of our Fermilab garden. It looks very nice. Now we just have to wait (and continue weeding!) for the crop to come in.

Here is our stand of tomatoes. These are not the biggest plants in the Club area (J.W., not surprisingly has the biggest).

Our peppers are well weeded and clean. I hope this hot weather gets them to grow some more.

In the foreground is the collards, then the wispy fennel, followed by the okra, then four rows of beans.

Turning to the left, we see (from the right) collards, leeks, beets and turnips. In the background are pumpkins and other melons (where the sprinkler is going).

And here is a beautiful tomato blossom. (If you are going to click on one picture to see a higher resolution version, it should be this one.)

Successful morning of weeding

Joanne and I got to the garden at about 8:30 and worked for almost 5 hours! It was hot at the end, but we got a lot done.

We finished weeding everything; most by hand but some by hoe. We finished making the tomato cages.

Jo raked the weeds up and took them away (the Garden Club has a place for this sort of refuse).

Then I tilled. I was able to go between all the rows, and I cleaned up the area for the pumpkins. it already looked great. Then I put on the furrower and furrowed between all the rows! Some of the little plants got buried, but I think I caught all of them and un-buried them.

We had two remaining bags of shredded leaves, and we placed them under the pumpkin plant and around the peppers.

Joanne watered everything while I put in the last of the tomato stakes.

Photos

Here is the okra, after the weeding, tilling and furrowing (click to see a larger image):

The view from the south side of the garden:

A nice snapshot of some beans and blossoms:

Our work of weeding and tilling:

More maintenance

It has been 1.5 weeks since our last day of work at the garden (I tilled between the rows and put down a lot of shredded leaves then). Consequently, the weeds have grown quite a bit--faster than the plants, in most cases.

I was able to weed the two rows of okra and the one row of fennel. We have 15 sprouted fennel plants. The first row of pre-weeded okra is the row on the left of this image (the full row that comes from the bottom-left corner):

Weeding three rows (one seventh of the 21 rows I have) took me an hour, so weeding the rest of the garden will take six hours. Maybe we can do it together (E & J) and find some shortcuts (for example, use a hoe (novel idea)).

The tomato plants are looking very nice. The pepper plants are a mixed lot--some are OK and some are still small. The leeks look great, but need weeding. The pumpkins are OK--I think that we have one gigantic pumpkin plant left, but the other (small) pumpkins are coming up nicely.

Lots of work to do. Yay!

Update from the evening: I was able to weed ALL of the tomatoes and most of the peppers with a hoe. And I mowed.

Weeding and ...

It rained a lot over night at the Fermilab garden. Yesterday was fairly dry, but this morning was too wet to till effectively. I tilled anyway (and made a bit of a mess of the dirt, the tiller and my boots) in order to try again to knock out the grass in the new plot. By the time I left at Noon, it was almost dry enough to till, so I tilled between several of the rows. It looks good!

I planted the last tiny bit of the garden: eight Chinese cabbages in the row with the collards.

I hoed all the tomatoes, peppers and beans. There were teeny-tiny weeds starting to show. One good thing about soil that is too wet too till is that weeding is very easy.

Securing Tomato Cages?

How do we fully secure all the tomato cages so they don't fall over from the weight and the wind-resistance of the tomato plants? We have cages that are about 19 inches in diameter, made from 6x6 inch remesh, which is normally used for reinforcing poured concrete, like for a floor.

I made a bunch more tomato cages from the roll of remesh. I estimate there are about 5 more cages in the roll, so I have made about 30 (in addition to the 30 I made back in 1989). I also drove in a few stakes at the tomato cages and tied these cages to their stakes with twine. This afternoon, I made six more wooden stakes for securing the tomato cages.

Rototiller Problem

The problem with the rototiller, which makes it hard to un-engage the tines from the engine, got worse today: I could not get it out of gear. Not good. I was able to modify it quickly so I can get it in reverse (with the tines engaged--yikes!).

I'm going to have to fix this, eventually. I found what I think is the schematic for my tiller, here.

This is not a pleasant prospect: Take apart the transmission of my excellent tiller to try to figure out what went wrong. Knowing me, I'll plan this for about 6 weeks, then it will take all day to get it apart, then 6 weeks to get the right replacement part, then procrastinate for another 6 weeks (!!) and then all day to put it back together.

I should have it repaired by 2018, hopefully sooner.

Of course, if the world actually ends in December, I won't have to finish this job.

All planted!

I planted the rest of the garden: Two more rows of bean (4 total), two rows of okra, a full row of leeks and 2/3 row of collards. The last 1/3 row will contain cabbage.

The weeding begins

Oy!

Lots of rain and some hot weather, combined with a strain of grass that is particulary well rooted and hearty, means that weeding is going to be EXTRA fun this year. This is our pumpkin patch:

Oy!

Update (July 7, 2011): This new plot continues to be a problem! The grass just won't stop sprouting. I've tilled some areas three separate times, and the grass keeps on a-comin'.

Garden Layout

We planted the garden today (Sunday may 22, 2011). Here is the layout we have chosen:

We have two more rows of beans to plat (10 and 11), and we'll plant the okra in June.

Begin Planting, 2011

We began planting our garden today (Thursday May 18, 2011). We prepared the beds for the gigantic pumpkins and two rows of peppers and one row of tomatoes. We planed:

• 4 giant pumpkins
• 12 tomatoes:
  • San Marzano
  • Park Whopper
  • Mortgage Lifter

Furthermore, we laid down black plastic (special stuff from Johnny Seeds) to warm up enough row for 5 eggplants.

Rototilling before the rain

It is supposed to be hot and rainy for the rest of the week, so I tilled the new part of my garden today. My garden is now 40x80 square feet, plus another 40x20 square feet adjacent to the south end. The shape of our garden is the brown part of this sketch:

I tilled the upper, 40x20 part today.

Planting Cherry Trees

We planted four cherry trees on Sunday:

(That's me.)

We planted two dwarf Bing Cherry trees and two, uh, I can't remember.

Making seedlings

Here are the seeds we ordered:

Item Id	Item name	Retailer
67245A	PEA RSVPEA	Burpee
63107A	TOMATO YELLOW PEAR	Burpee
54841A	SQUASH SURE THING HYBRID	Burpee
51128A	ARUGULA (ROUQUETTE)	Burpee
56747A	BEAN FRENCH FILET STRINGLESS	Burpee
53835A	PUMPKIN PRIZEWINNER HYBRID	Burpee
57230A	TURNIP OASIS HYBRID	Burpee
51615A	PUMPKIN BIG MAX	Burpee
53520A	MESCLUN CLASSIC MIX	Burpee
99135C	135th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION SEEDS	Burpee
67245A	PEA RSVPEA	Totally Tomatoes
63107A	TOMATO YELLOW PEAR	Totally Tomatoes
54841A	SQUASH SURE THING HYBRID	Totally Tomatoes
51128A	ARUGULA (ROUQUETTE)	Totally Tomatoes
56747A	BEAN FRENCH FILET STRINGLESS	Totally Tomatoes
53835A	PUMPKIN PRIZEWINNER HYBRID	Totally Tomatoes
57230A	TURNIP OASIS HYBRID	Totally Tomatoes
51615A	PUMPKIN BIG MAX	Totally Tomatoes
53520A	MESCLUN CLASSIC MIX	Totally Tomatoes
99135C	135th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION SEEDS	Totally Tomatoes
2728.1	Diamant (F1)-Mini pickling Cucumbers	Johnny's
2258.1	Green Lance (F1)-Mini Broccoli	Johnny's
542.1	Lancer-Mini Parsnips	Johnny's
416.11	King Richard Seeds-Packet Leeks	Johnny's

We planted our tomato and pepper seeds on March 26.

Here are San Marzano tomatoes, leeks, Brocollini and chard:

Here are the tomatoes in the greenhouse:

Here are tall the flats with the lids on:

All of these are tomatoes: From upper left: Grandma's Pick, Park's Whopper, Mortgage Lifter, Burpee Big Boy, Djena Golden, Yellow Pear, Golden Pound, Ultimate Opener, Chocolate Cherry , Red Star, Sun Sugar and San Marzano.