The Old Guy's Garden Record

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Thursday, June 12, 2025

Rather than rush out to mud in the Eclipse pea seed I brought in yesterday, I started germination tests with the four bags of seed. The seed was saved in 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023. All of the bags had previous germination results written on them, but the seed has been in our big freezer for years. When I checked the seed today, it appeared that all the shrunken seeds had absorbed moisture and fattened up a bit. That's a good sign.

Not really thrilled with the production of our tall early peas, I fertilized them with some Quick Start liquid fertilizer to encourage more blooms. We'll see if that causes the vines to put on more blooms.

And seeing the browning of the leaves on some of our garlic plants, I did a test dig of nine or ten garlics today. The softneck garlics were rather small. Of course, softnecks usually produce smaller garlic bulbs. There was one regular garlic of good size and an elephant garlic at okay size. What I didn't find was any rot on the bulbs, a good thing in this wet spring. And despite their smaller size, all of the garlic are usable. And freshly dug garlic has incredible flavor.

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

We had a pretty much perfect morning today to spray our apple trees. There was little to no wind, and it’s not supposed to rain for several days. Our first spray of the season was with dormant oil. The next and today’s sprays were with Bonide Fruit Tree Spray. Since the Bonide spray has some really toxic stuff in it (Captan, Malathion, and Carbaryl), I wore a mask, gloves, and eye protection while spraying.

It appears that I left our melon and squash seedlings over our soil heating mat a day too long. All of the pots have germinated, but the plants are a bit tall. Getting the plants off the heat mat and from under the somewhat clear humidome would have prevented the legginess.

We got a rather light picking of peas this morning. That made me think to bring in our Eclipse pea seed. Eclipses are a supersweet variety that don't germinate well in cool soil. But the peas stay sweet when grown in warm weather.

Monday, June 9, 2025

We received another three quarters of an inch of rain overnight. So for now, our garden plots remain too wet to do any planting. I did see several people out mowing their lawns today. Their mowers must go through standing water better than ours does.

We didn’t get all that many peas in this morning’s picking. But with some previously picked and shelled peas, it was enough to freeze a pint of our early peas. It was time to empty out our Pyrex container of shelled peas, as some of them may have been there for several days. I haven’t found a good way to rotate the peas in it.

Blocked from gardening in our beds, I weeded one side of the patches on either side of our front steps. There were more hostas in the one side than I remember planting. Several of them will need to be moved to where they'll receive more light. When my knees and calves said to stop weeding on my hands and knees, I did.

It's cool to begin freezing produce from our garden. When I put the peas in our big freezer, I had to move several bags of frozen asparagus out of the way. Supper tonight will be grilled pork chops, baked potatoes, and the next to our last bag of frozen corn from last season.

Sunday, June 8, 2025

"Our" hummingbirds emptied their feeder in one day yesterday. So it was time today to hang another feeder. I'm guessing the hummingbirds have hatched out their first clutch of eggs of the season and the babies have left the nest. We'll probably have to hang one more feeder when the second clutch of eggs hatch and the birds leave the nest. At least, that's what usually happens in a normal season.

Something not normal is the dearth of white egrets on the Turtle Creek Reservoir. The water there is usually lousy with the birds, but I haven't seen even one so far this season. I did see a Blue Heron yesterday when driving across the causeway of the reservoir.

The oregano in our herb bed is doing its usual trick of trying to take over the bed, if not the world. I sort of let it go, and it's now in bloom. For best flavor, one wants to harvest oregano before it blooms. So, it was time today to cut it back.

Saturday, June 7, 2025

We had a nice morning today, so I picked and shelled more peas. When I took today's splashshot (top of the page photo) this afternoon, I also walked out to our peas and ended up picking a fistful more mature pea pods. Did I just miss all those peas this morning, or did they fatten up so quickly? It's probably a little of both.

Our how-to: Another Garden Delicacy: Homegrown Peas

I brought in last year's Japanese Long Pickling cucumber saved seed today and started two deep sixpack inserts of the variety. JLPs, as we call them, produce long thin cucumbers. They're ideal for making bread and butter or dill pickle slices. We also use them to make some incredible sweet pickle relish. The JLP plants will replace our tall early peas when the pea vines play out.

Feature story: A Cucumber of Distinction

This evening in a light sprinkle, I moved three Cora Cascade vincas into a large hanging basket pot. This is the second such pot I've started. With it, I will pretty well fill our main hooks under our back porch.

I'm going to need to hang a second hummingbird feeder from our back porch tomorrow. The tiny birds just about emptied a twelve ounce feeder in one day. This usually happens a little later in the season, but we seem to have some thirsty birds this year.

Friday, June 6, 2025

While I watched the Pacers/Thunder game last night, I started some melons and squash. For watermelon, I seeded Ali Baba, Blacktail Mountain, Crimson Sweet Virginia Select, and Kalahari triploid. For cantaloupe, it was Athena and Sugar Cube. The squash started was a Slick Pik. Other than the Kalahari, all of the varieties planted are old favorites that have done well in the past for us. Triploid watermelon varieties come and go. Our previous favorite is no longer available, so we're trying a new one.

Things are still really wet out from our recent rains, with more coming tonight and tomorrow. I did get out this morning and picked enough peas to justify shelling them. They shelled out for enough for supper and possibly enough more to freeze a pint.

Thursday, June 5, 2025

Every picture tells a story, don't it. While the Rod Stewart classic song doesn't have anything to do with gardening, the song title came to mind as I looked at our main raised garden bed with standing water in it.

When it finally quit raining, I put on my fishing boots and walked out to the garden. Our rain gauge was showing over four inches of precipitation in the last twenty-four hours! Even with what I've called a dry sump smack in the middle of our main raised bed, there was lots of standing water in the bed. The dry sump is just a hole dug as deep as possible with a post hole digger and backfilled with sand. It helps drain the bed of excess water.

After emptying the rain gauge, I was in for a couple of pleasant surprises. There were a lot of mature pea pods to pick. There's probably not enough there to yet make a meal, but it's a start.

Besides the peas, each of our Moira tomato plants had put on a small tomato. Based on a Google AI search, we should be picking tomatoes by early July.

And to cap off my wet, outside gardening today, a male, Ruby-throated hummingbird posed on a branch of our laurel bushes when I had my camera with me. Unfortunately, I didn't have my long lens in hand to get a better shot.

With any serious outside work out of the question, I sterilized some more potting soil to start some cucumbers, melons, and squash.

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Wednesday, June 4, 2025

I cut our seed potatoes with one or two eyes per piece last evening. While I really didn't feel like it, I got out and planted the potato sets this afternoon. I was sort of racing against a storm that was moving in.

Marking the rows, shoveling a furrow down each row, watering with a mix of Serenade biofungicide and Quick Start fertilizer, and spacing the potato sets about a foot apart and covering them with soil took an hour or so. I beat the rain by an hour.

The potato sets went in about three inches deep, about two inches shallower than is usually recommended. The long eyes on some of the sets got totally covered, so we'll see how that works out.

As I don't have a how-to on growing potatoes, as I'm not very good at it, I'll give you a link to a Seed Savers article on the subject.

I started some more gloxinias from seed yesterday. I also transplanted a Cora Cascade Vinca into a small hanging basket and three more in a large hanging basket.

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Tuesday, June 3, 2025

I put in a double row of onions from sets yesterday at the far end of our main raised garden bed. Now we have caged tomatoes at one end of the bed and onions at the other end. I'd planned to direct seed carrots and beets, but simply ran out of energy and tolerance for black flies. I hope to get them seeded today.

My big gardening treat for yesterday was finding our first ripe pod of peas. There was just one pod ready to be picked, and I didn't find any more this morning.

Realizing that I'm going to want to start using last year's compost pile, I started a new one yesterday. The new pile is at the east edge of the field, just outside our East Garden plot. When doing so, I pulled a bunch of volunteer tomato plants from the old pile. They could carry disease that might infect the tomato plants I want to put in the East Garden plot.

Getting back to our peas, there are lots of pods filling out. And while our early peas are a landrace mix of the white blooming Champion of England and Maxigolt varieties, something has crossed into our saved seed producing lovely purple blooms. I'm not really sure if I should remove those blooms or if they will produce good, edible peas.

Oh, and about those onions. I'd mail ordered some very expensive onion plants. Then I let them dry out in the basement! I put the dried plants in large pots with some wet soil to see if any of the plants survived my mistreatment.

And looking ahead, I have lots of healthy lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower transplants under our cold frame ready to go into our main raised bed. And there's a bag of seed potatoes in the basement that I need to rescue from a mesh bag. I'll have to sacrifice the bag to not harm the sprouts the potatoes have put out.

Later

I got out and direct seeded a double row of carrots and beets. The carrot varieties seeded were Mokum, Napoli, Naval, Scarlet Nantes, and Yaya. The beets were Red Ace and Burpee Golden. I haven't grown golden beets for years, so this planting should be interesting.

Sunday, June 1, 2025

I snapped off the garlic scapes I mentioned yesterday. Some of the scape stems will get chopped and browned a bit in oil before going into something like Campbell's Green Bean Casserole. Instead of using French style green beans, I used some old canned green beans. I also departed from Campbell's recipe by adding some bacon and Monterey Jack cheese.

Later

The green bean casserole with some "improvements" wasn't all that great. I'll stay with the tried and true Campbell's recipe next time around.

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