New England Gardener

Just Add Water Garden Early September

As you know, I started the season with seed suggestions and a 10′ by 10′ layout from the great gardeners at Johnny’s Selected Seeds here in Maine. For the most part, their varieties and succession planting ideas worked well, but I will make a few changes next year based mostly on personal preferences. (Click on layout to the right if you’re curious about what I grew.)

A Bouquet of Carrots, Red Lettuce and Chard.

I had bad luck with some transplants. Neither my cuke or basil seedlings fared as well as the plants that were sowed from seed into the garden. Next year, I won’t bother starting those indoors.

The peas, beans, lettuces and spinach have all been delicious. All will be invited back.

Thanks to the confines of the 10′ by 10′ space, I found I was much more disciplined about succession plantings. In the past I tucked veggies all over my garden beds and sometimes forgot about them. Not this year. Even in mid-September, every inch of the Just Add Water garden is still producing. Beans are coming up in the tomato graveyard. New rows of lettuce and spinach are launched next to the beans. I tucked in some discounted celery and cauliflower seedlings where the peas once grew. Those will be harvested in the coming weeks. The buds on my brussel sprouts are starting to swell. And the chard, carrots cucumbers and squashes are growing like gangbusters.

Cauliflower On The Way

What lessons does your garden have to share? If you’re like me, you won’t remember them in February and by then your garden won’t be in the mood for conversation.

Filed under: Just Add Water Project | Sustainable Gardening | Uncategorized | Vegetables

I just wanted to write 09-01-09.. Welcome to September in New England 2009 where we may actually have a week without a Hurricane Threat. Our NECN forecast shows sunshine into Labor Day. I am taking advantage of a quiet weather pattern to talk about, and hopefully, get some time in, the garden. There has been no improvement to my tomatoes, many of the vines have completely died. I left the tomatoes on the vine anyway, though I am sure they would ripen equally if I picked them on placed on the window sill.

During my last in depth discussion, my final though was ‘more on pumpkins next time’. I was going to talk about pruning the vines to possibly increase quality, perhaps at the expense of quantity. I was going to reduce the number of vines from the individual plants. But.. I never got to pruning those vines, now the pumpkins have taken over. I agree with Amy form her weekend post, pumpkins are easy to grow, but you never know how many you are going to get.

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Filed under: Vegetables

Move on Charlie Brown. No Great Pumpkins Here.

Crop failure is always a disappointment, but losing pumpkins is a real bummer. I think those bright orange balls ease the transition back to the school year. Their promise of treats and after dark antics helps lessen the burden of homework and diminishing daylight after supper.

Thirty Seedlings. One Small Pumpkin.

The pumpkins were plagued with cucumber beetles, powdery mildew and too much rain this summer, but this isn’t the first year our patch has produced a scant crop. I’m hoping some of you pumpkin pros will have a few suggestions. We usually transplant seedlings into the garden in mid June and I wonder if we’d be better off direct seeding into the garden? Our soil is good, but maybe sidedressing with compost would help? The fact that we have so few pumpkins tells me we’ve got a pollination problem, but I find this hard to believe. There’s a very active beehive about 15 yards from the pumpkin patch.

We promise a “pumpkin for every child” at our fall Harvest Supper. Hmmm. Maybe I should start spray painting the zucchini?

Filed under: Just Add Water Project | Kids Garden | Uncategorized

Back off. It's Mine

And this Late Blight outbreak pushed me to do something I’m not proud of–purchase a non-organic product. Let me explain. I do most of my growing at my community garden which is strictly organic, but I had a few straggly leftover seedlings that were on their way to the compost pile. You know how gardeners hate to throw away plants, so at the last minute I stuck them in an old apple barrel planter in my driveway. I pretty much ignored them all summer UNTIL, I lost all my other tomato plants. Suddenly, those two plants became my only hope for home grown tomatoes.
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Filed under: Just Add Water Project | Late Blight | Organic | Vegetables

Blight, Black Rot,and Mildew all threatened to crash 2009’s garden party, but as I look around the community garden here in Maine, I see there are many more successes than failures. The corn has overcome its late start. The cukes and squashes are producing right on schedule. Lettuces are delicious and abundant. In other words, there’s more than enough to fill out a salad bowl.

As gardeners, we must learn from the farmer’s optimism and work with what Mother Nature has delivered. Yes, I did have to pull my blight-ridden tomatoes, but now I’m looking forward to a bumper crop of bush beans. After I yanked the tomatoes last week, I threw in some bush bean seeds and the seedlings burst from the soil yesterday, determined to deliver a crop before the frost hits.
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Filed under: Flowers | Vegetables

Question:
We have a clean slate on the front and side of out house. What kind of foundation plantings do you recommend? We live right outside Boston MA.
Thanks! Julia
Answer:
Hi Julia

Driving around New England this August makes me think of how little I know about all the variety of flowering plants, shrubs , and trees available to us. The July rain may have hurt the tomatoes, but the August flowers are brilliant!
At my home, we have the traditional New England Favorites. Hydrangea and Roses are a must. Daylili, Black Eyed Susan’s, Azalea, and Oregano are all over the place. Iris and Gladiolus bloom in June. Rose of Sharon are in bloom right now. Ornamental Grasses are easy to grow, a bit tough to cut back though. You will learn that burning bushes are invasive species, and no longer sold in New England. But the Blueberry Bush has a similar color to Burning Bush, and you can have your own family berry picking days. Another one in bloom now is the Butterfly Plant (attracts butterfly’s). In the fall you can put some tulip and daffodil bulbs in for bloom in early spring. When you shop, there is no need to get real big plants. You can start with cheaper small plants, then with pruning and feeding, they will grow fast. Be sure to put them in the ground 3 or 4 feet from the foundation, that space will fill within a few years. Then prune the plants so they do not touch the house.
Enjoy creating your new garden, a never ending project

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Filed under: Ask The Garden Team