Saturday, August 29, 2009

Goings-on in the garden...

It's really a big PAUSE out there right now... I've got tomato and pepper seedlings in the ground and in large containers; the tomatoes are about twenty inches. Brassica and chard seedlings are doing OK... I might have started them a bit too early, but if I can nurse them through the next few weeks, I'll have an early harvest. Things slow down so much in December--if you aren't at harvest stage for chard, broccoli and cauliflower in November, you end up waiting until February for things to get going again. But still waiting to put them in the ground. Transferred a couple of melon seedlings into an empty bed. Trying out some Turkish summer squash, too. Japanese cukes, metkis--both in pots and twining up strings. Vigorous buggers... we'll see what the pickleworm thinks.

Every day I'm tempted to dig up my sweet potatoes, which have run rampant all over one side of the garden. I know, though, that another couple of weeks will really increase my harvest, so I wait.

And wait for the bananas.

I've tried a couple of times to get some salad seeds started, but it's just too hot for them to germinate. So I made a sterile mix of coir and Truface and I'll give it a try inside--if I can just get them started, I should be able to grow them in pails, in the shade, until it cools down a bit.

Decided not to put polebeans in this fall and save the space for peas instead. My limas, cowpeas, and yardlongs are all still producing heavily, and will continue to do so until I rip them out to make room for fall crops.

Peppers are suffering a bit from fungus (maybe anthracnose, maybe mildew... can't tell), but they're so well established and big that I think they'll push through and provide some nice harvests in November.

Oh, and aphids... Lots of aphids out there, giving new growth a hell of a time. I guess I'll try some neem and soap.

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