Our Springtime Gardening Progress.

In years past, when clearing out the old plants in preparation for the spring planting, I would pull the plants and put them on a pile and then use my lawn mower to roll over the top of them until it was all shredded material for my compost pile. After it was all cut up, I would put the bagging attachment on the mower and go over it again and bag it, then dump it on the compost pile. It was a lot of work and it always left kind of a nasty juicy area on the lawn where I mulched it.

This year, I tried something different...

It was a lot easier mowing over the individual broccoli plants than it was to pull them all and make a large pile and then try to run the mower over it all. I will use this method again next year.

This is what my broccoli rows look like after I mowed them over just one time. It was slow going, but it was a lot easier on the ol' back. The broccoli plants were larger than the collard plants you can see in the picture.

After tilling the broccoli portion of my garden for the first time this year, this is what it looks like. Pretty good, I think. After I tilled it this first time, my son Jonathan tilled it again. One more tilling after the collards are pulled, and I'll be planting my Fortex Green Bean seeds from Johnny's Selected Seeds and the rest of the crops.

This is my west plot where I had two rows of broccoli. That area is all tilled up as well. You can see the row of giant marconi green pepper stalks to the left of center of the picture. You can also see my compost area in the top left corner.

The warm weather is the enemy of the collards. Here are a couple of pictures showing how wilted they get in the heat of the day.

As you can see, some of the leaves are almost lying on the ground from the heat of the day. Consequently, the collards will be pulled up in the morning when they have snapped back and the leaves are full and crisp. I'm not waiting any longer to do that.

My Brown Turkey Fig tree is growing very nicely! I pruned eleven shoots from it and stuck each of them in a hole in the ground after I rammed a 1/2 inch rod into the soil. It made the perfect "socket" if you will, for the shoots to be stuck into so they can try to grow into new trees. When I planted the eleven shoots, they had tight green buds on each of them.

Just one week later, the same shoots have progressed to the point shown in this picture and the following one. The leaves are unfurling and they look just as healthy as can be. If all these figs survive, I will go from one fig tree to twelve fig trees! I know this way isn't the perfect way to start a new tree, but the opportunity was there with the pruned shoots, so I took it. What do I have to lose? Mother Nature doesn't provide perfect growing circumstances, and she does fine. Why not give it a try?

Looks good, don't you think?

Here is my row of Giant Marconi Green Peppers that I tried to winter over in their same growing places. From the looks of the plants, it isn't very hopeful.




In the next three pictures, take a close look at the bark on the "trunks" and see that it is loose and falling off.

It certainly looks like they are dead as doornails. I didn't know which way to go... give them a chance or just go ahead and replant new plants. I needed to find out exactly what condition they were in.

Like being in grade school and having your last name begin with an "A", this plant was the first in the row, so it was selected for reporting the status of it's growth.

I went to pull it out of the ground so I could examine the root system and see if it was possibly alive. You can see the bare trunk as the light tan area. The bark was gone. When I went to pull this stalk out of the ground, after the first two-handed tug it didn't move. I had to give it a good grunt to pull it out of the ground!

I took it to my work table and looked closely at the roots. They were ALL very moist and healthy. No brittleness, dried roots or any negative condition was found on them. However, given the condition of the stalk, I really wasn't sure of the condition of this and the rest of the marconi pepper plants.

I had to do something to find out the condition of the plant. I didn't want to do a destructive test on it in case it was still a viable pepper producing plant. I thought... what could I do to find if there was still life in this plant? The only thing I could come up with was to do a below grade scraping of the bark. As you can see in the picture, the stalk is a healthy green color! That's why it was so hard to pull out! I immediately went and replanted it in the same location so that hopefully it will recover from my investigation efforts.

Even though they look like they are going to rejuvinate very well, I still have no guarantee that they will produce well, if at all. However, I am committed to this "experiment" to see if pepper plants can indeed winter over in a Zone 8a area, even if this was a very mild winter. So they will stay and we all will see how they will produce this year. The next step is to apply dried blood to the soil above the roots, along with general organic fertilizer, and then cover that with cured compost. At that point it will be up to Mother Nature to see them through.




Oh yes, and then there's the buttercrunch lettuce. I am happy to say that it is already going to seed and I will absolutely be saving those seeds for my family's garden next year.

You can see the flowers beginning to form all over the plants. It won't be long and they'll be seeding up and be ready for harvesting.

That's my garden progress at this time. I hope you enjoyed reading about my gardening efforts, especially about the experiment of the peppers wintering over. The actual success of that remains to be seen, but it's looking good.

Have a great vegetable gardening day!
Veggie PAK

Winter Composting Efforts.

Each fall I sow my lawn with annual rye grass seed in order to have a good supply of "greens" for my compost pile through the winter. This year was no exception. I bought a ten pound bag of grass seed for this on two separate occasions, for a total of twenty pounds of grass seed from two different batches. I sowed the seed on October 18th and watered it in. As you can see from the picture below, the seed didn't germinate very well. In previous years this area would be a solid lush green color. Not this year.

I suspect that this warm winter that we've been enjoying has affected the germination of the winter grass seed and the growth of the grass as well. My lawn got patchy enough to mow one time and that was in December. My usual locations for obtaining grass clippings are all the same way. It just didn't grow. Consequently, my compost pile didn't get the greens that it needed to cook properly through the winter. I went to turning it about every ten days instead of every three days, but there was no significant change in the appearance of it. It didn't even produce steam when I turned it on cool mornings.


Finally some lawns grew enough so that they were mowed and I was able to gather some bags of clippings and blend their contents into my compost pile.

Yesterday I mixed in six lawn bags of grass clippings, each about 3/4 full, with my compost. Finally the compost should resume cooking like it is supposed to, and I'll go back to turning the pile every three days. The nitrogen materials really make a difference. I have read many times that in a case such as this, you can just mix in some nitrogen fertilizer as a susbtitute for the greens. I tried that a couple of years ago and it didn't work for me. The only thing it did was use up a four pound bag of dried blood organic fertilizer that could have been better used elsewhere in the spring.

I just thought I would share this information with my composting friends out there in case it might help someone else.

Thanks for visiting and seeing what's going on with my compost area.

Have a great vegetable gardening day!
Veggie PAK

Harvest Monday & Spring Growth for March 5th, 2012.

This week was the final harvest of the broccoli from the fall crop that extended into this year. The final total weight of the spring broccoli harvest was 23.19 pounds.

This week's harvest was two pounds thirteen ounces of fresh organic broccoli. The remainder of the crop is bolting. With the current growth combined with this coming week's temperatures which are forecasted to be in the high 60's for several days, the end of this crop is a sure thing.






Here are a couple of pictures of my blueberry plants showing their new growth. I can't wait to see the harvest this year since I added two more bushes last fall.

The root that I cut off a bunch of store bought celery and planted last year has survived the winter without any protection at all. I wonder if it will continue to grow?

It certainly looks healthy to me.

The brown turkey fig tree is showing healthy growth all over. It should be a good year for it.

The garlic is still growing pretty good. It also had no protection from the "winter" weather we've had this year.

The green onions that I planted after using the scallions are growing very well. I'll be ready to begin harvesting more scallions from the same bulbs in just a few weeks.






Then there's my favorite... Red Raspberries! They are sprouting like crazy, even with frosty nights.

I plan to put in three or four more plants this spring. I simply can't get enough of them. My grandkids  love to pick them and eat them right there!

Be sure to visit DaphnesDandelions for more exciting vegetable gardening experiences in a northern growing zone, as well as beautiful pictures of her prepared food that will absolutely make you salivate!

Thanks for stopping by to see what gardening information I have to share with you.

My readers are still having some difficulty when trying to leave comments. I also have been frustrated when trying to leave comments at other blogger's sites. I wish Blogger would fix it and leave it alone.

I appreciate your perseverance when leaving your comments for me.

Have a great and warm vegetable gardening day.
Veggie PAK

Harvest Monday for February 27th, 2012.

With the mild winter almost being over, there's still more broccoli for the freezer from this week's harvest!

This week we picked four pounds nine ounces of crisp, fresh organic broccoli! It may be the last harvest for these plants though, given the warm 82 degree weather we had for a day or two.

That warm weather is all the plants needed to start thinking about bolting and going to seed. The weather has cooled back off into the mid-50's, but it may be too late for another picking. Right now, these are the only flowers I see on any of my plants, so the others might still produce. We'll just have to wait and see.

It won't be long and I'll be pulling them anyway in order to plant the spring garden. The broccoli was very good while it lasted as the total harvested was 20.38 pounds!

Be sure to visit DaphnesDandelions for more exciting vegetable gardening experiences in a northern growing zone.

Thanks for stopping by and visiting my blog!

Have a great vegetable gardening day!
Veggie PAK

Harvest Monday for February 20th, 2012.

Last week the weather was pretty cold here so I didn't have a report put together for sharing with you on Monday. The temperatures of the last two nights of the week was 28 degrees and then 26 degrees. Pretty chilly for the plants, but it seems like they were not damaged.

The garden is looking pretty good for February! This is today's view of my east plot.

This is a view of my west plot. As you can see, I didn't do additional work on the giant marconi pepper stalks to prepare them for the winter temperatures. It's been so mild for the vast majority of this winter that I felt it was unnecessary to do anything else for them. Maybe the weeds that grew up alongside will help protect them from the cold. The stalks are very dry so I leave them alone. If they sprout new growth, it would be great. Perhaps new growth may come from the base of the stalks and not the stalks themselves. The stalks may actually be dead, but I'm hoping that the roots are still alive.

I checked the soil temperature to see if it was warming up for seed planting. After four full minutes in the ground, the probe thermometer only rose to 48 degrees. The cooperative extension publications basically say that anything planted before the ground reaches and maintains a steady 60 degrees is just wasting seed because it will rot. At least for the non-cool-weather crops anyway. Using that line of thinking worked well for me last year, so I'm sticking with it for this year too. The air temp today was only 42 degrees, so that could be a contributing factor to the low soil temperature. Daytime temps this week are supposed to be in the mid-50's all week. I hope so.

I picked 15 ounces of rainbow Swiss chard this week. It's really starting to sprout!

I harvested three pounds of broccoli this week! After fertilizing the garden and watering it in, then we had rain.  Now there are several dozen dime-sized florets throughout the garden. Hopefully I'll be picking them for the next Harvest Monday!

During the last two weeks I picked two pounds of buttercrunch lettuce for salads and sandwiches. This picture is of the full pound that was picked just this week.

Be sure to visit DaphnesDandelions for more exciting vegetable gardening experiences in a northern growing zone.

That concludes another Harvest Monday report from our garden. I hope no one is having too much trouble in their gardens with cold temperatures. Spring is right around the corner!

Have a great vegetable gardening day, and thanks for visiting!
Veggie PAK

Harvest Monday for February 6th, 2012.

This week's harvest brings only one veggie to the table, but it's a favorite!  Fresh, crisp broccoli!

I harvested three and one-quarter pounds of broccoli from our back yard organic garden this week.

Tomorrow I'll be fertilizing all the growing vegetables using organic dried blood with a makeup of 12-0-0 at almost twice the rates prescribed by the cooperative extension recommendations for when using fast release chemicals rated as 33-0-0. Since the dried blood is slow release, there should be no problems.

I have been unable to reply to last week's comments thus far due to blogger problems. I'll reply as soon as it doesn't delete what I have written when I click on Publish.

That's all for this week's harvest report.

Have a great vegetable gardening day!
Veggie PAK

My Garden Status as of February 1st, 2012.

I thought I'd share a few pics of my garden with you since we've been blessed so far with a mild winter. Please excuse the dots on the first picture. I don't know what they are, especially since I didn't clean the lense and they're not in the other pictures.

This is a shot of my entire east plot a day after using the Mantis tiller on it. It looks pretty good, especially after the night of gentle rain we had. I figure that if I nicked any of the plant roots when I was tilling, the moist soil would certainly help them recover quickly.

These are five of my total of eight rows of broccoli. They are doing very well in my opinion. I'm going to apply organic fertilizer this weekend in anticipation of two days of rain forecasted for next week. That will be perfect for watering it in. You can see the weeds around the base of the plants. I don't believe in going 100% weed free due to the level of work involved and also the possible damage to the plants I want to grow. When the weeds are large enough for me to grab without kneeling, I do so and remove them as is convenient for me, since my knees give me a fit sometimes.

You may have noticed the lush green annual rye that shows in some of the pictures. That's what I sowed in order to have it grow through the winter so I will have the mowed clippings for nitrogen for my compost pile. It works great!

These are my youngest collard plants. In the spring, they will grow like the wind! It has been my experience that when I let the plants winter over and then the weather begins to stay warm, they really produce a great deal because the roots have really become established. That's why I do it this way. I'm really looking forward to the spring harvest!

Here is a shot of my one row of Swiss chard and two rows of buttercrunch lettuce. The Swiss chard is like the collards. When the soil warms in spring, look out! It's collard and Swiss chard harvesting time! Just a few more weeks...

Here is the garlic that my two year old and four year old grandaughters planted. I'm so happy that it's popping right up! Now they can see what their little hands planted. Rest assured, they will also do the harvesting when the time is right. Then they'll always remember Poppa's garden. Hopefully, that will serve as an inspiration for them to have their own vegetable gardens one day.

Well, that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed seeing my garden as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you for your enjoyment and interest. I'm really thankful for the garden as I know it's really not me that's making it happen. I'm just prodding it along.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week and we'll see you on the next Harvest Monday!

Be sure to visit DaphnesDandelions for more exciting vegetable gardening experiences in a northern growing zone.

Have a great vegetable gardening day!
Veggie PAK