Squirrels At It Again

So I had a whole long winter to plan for squirrel attacks. So what did I do? Nothing. I guess it was partly wishful thinking, maybe they only went after the tomatoes last year because of the heat/rain/who knows what. Well, they've started sampling again. Took a few bites out of some nice ripe Tigerellas, but the straw that broke the camel's back was when they took a big chuck out of an almost ripe Cherokee Purple. Like a big one. And the first one, I might add. So I pondered what to do for a bit. My last year's plan was to build a moveable, modular super cage out of pvc pipe and chicken wire. That would have been pretty cool. But alas, I didn't do it. So I slapped up a crude, crude, very crude fence around them again using leftovers from last years tomato fence. But instead of making it big, solid and ugly, I made it flimsy and ugly. I half suspect it will collapse on the tomatoes before the season is over. And I don't have a good way of accessing the tomatoes. That's gonna be an annoying problem.

SO. Here's my to do list for next year.

• Build an awesome chicken wire tomato cage with a door over two of the long raised beds.
• Cover the beds with a load of composted cow manure early in the spring before planting.
• Bone meal, fertilizer, and egg shells in the tomato holes to combat blossom end rot.
• Plant seedlings early in the basement so the plants are ready to go once we're past the last frost date.
• Get pepper seeds from a catalog, not a pepper - we had really poor germination with peppers.
• Floating row covers for zucchini. Or something. Use the new zucchini rampicante, hopefully that will survive the borers.
• Build a solid trellis for the peas. They died not long after falling over this year.

Garlic Bonanza

Hauled in the garlic harvest. The bulbs are smaller than I recall, but this should last us through until next year if it keeps well.

Garlic harvest

Got some baby leeks from a neighbor. Planted them out, we'll see how they do.

Home Alone

Left the plantation on its own for a few days, was not looking forward to what I'd see when I got back. I figured everything would be shrivelled. The bucket tomatoes were somewhat less than happy, but I'm sure they'll be perked up tomorrow. A couple zucchini plants have collapsed, I think due to squash borers, I'll have to check it out more carefully tomorrow. And some creature has eaten most of my bucket eggplant. I suspect it's the groundhog.

Dead or alive

Did get a nice little harvest, though.

The harvest

The tigerella tomato was really nice.

Tigerella

Looks like the cukes will be nice and steady.

Cuke trio

And a photo of the poor eggplant.

Turkish Orange

Turkish Orange is now Green

Here's the dill - it flowered and now there's a preposterous amount of dill seed. One of the flowers -

Dill seed

The basil is looking pretty good. I planted a whole bed of it that's struggling, but most of the basil I planted in buckets with the tomatoes is doing very well. They are supposed to be companion plants, but they're doing so much better. I suspect that they like the semi-shade the tomatoes provide in this scorching weather. And I admittedly am a little better at watering the basil in the tomato buckets.

Bucket basil

The tomatoes are coming along nicely. We've harvested (and consumed) 9 or 10 Sungold already. They're a pleasant bright orange and taste great. Tigerella is also just starting to color up. Also got a photo of a nice sized Brandywine.

Sungold

Tigerella

Brandywine

The Turkish Orange Eggplant in the 5 gallon pail is flourishing.  I moved it to a shadier spot. Also, and I think this helped a lot, I mulched with grass clippings. Checked them out online, when they're ripe the look a lot like tomatoes. Right now they're tiny, but there a a bunch of them.

Turkish Orange Eggplant

Finally, a friend in the fight against bad bugs.

Baby Mantis

Eggplant Emergence

The Pingtung Long eggplant is starting to, well, elongate. Based on my last experience with eggplant (something like 4 measly eggplant from 5 plants) I wasn't optimistic. But these guys are already way ahead of the last attempt. Here's one of them:

Pingtung Long Eggplant

Yes, I need to weed a bit...

The purple basil the Mrs. planted is looking great.

Purple Basil

And a shot of the pattypan summer squash Bennings Green Tint.

Bennings Green Tint

Everything else is doing ok. Something (I assume deer) got at some of the zucchini and pumpkins I planted outside the fence on the back side. I didn't think they ate that stuff. Well, as a safety measure I draped some chicken wire over them. I'll use some of the old boards from last year's tomato prison to make a crude protective structure this weekend.

First zucchini, first borer

Harvested the first zucchini today. Weighed in at 1 lb. There are three more ready to go in the next day or two as well. And our Bennings Green Tint turns out to be a pattypan type. Hmmm, did we know that when we ordered the seed? Looks nice, anyway.

Also saw the first confirmed squash borer fly. Tried to kill it but missed. I suppose it's only a matter of time before these zucchini are done in. Damned borers. Although have taken a step towards beating them - we have a second generation of zucchini started up, they're a few inches tall right now. Also purchased some zucchino rampicante seeds. They have a tough solid stem that the borers can't get into. I guess we'll put that to the test. Apparently if you leave the squash on the vine too long, the skin gets too tough and they end up like a winter squash, so will have to give that a try.

The tomatoes are looking good. No squirrel intervention yet. I'll probably do nothing to protect the tomatoes until after the squirrels do their damage. Here are some of the tigerellas, they look pretty sweet.

Tigerella

Looking Good So Far

Been a while since the last update. The peas have come and gone. Seemed like we had fewer than last year. I'm pretty sure we planted fewer, so maybe that's not unexpected.

Dying peas, removed shortly after

This is from June 12, already dying. We did get a few meals of peas out of them at least. And the Mrs. whipped up a killer peas soup.

The black raspberries came and stayed for a few weeks and then the birds took care of the leftovers. Did manage to graze a ton of them and gather enough for a pie one day. That was a nice pie.

Homemade black raspberry pie

We've picked about half of the garlic that we sowed last fall. Used a bunch already, very tasty. Although the outer skin is a lot thicker than I remember it being, and the cloves smaller for the most part. I suppose it's the varieties or maybe the weather. I think I'll try a hardneck variety again next year if I can find one. This year was just two random varieties - storebought #1, and storebought #2 (a reddish variety). Here's half the harvest laid out to dry. There's a cleaned up bulb in there for comparison.

About half the garlic harvest

Eggplant is doing better than I last time we grew it. I think last time we got one eggplant per plant, later in the summer. This time I counted about 15 flowers on one plant already.

June 12

Only growing 1 eggplant in a container (it's doing remarkably well...). It's grow a LOT in a few weeks.

June 29

Cukes have put on some good growth as well. Right now we have tiny little proto-cucumbers on them, about the size of a paper clip.

June 12

June 29

I'm hoping in a couple weeks we'll be making a small batch of refrigerator pickles with our own cucumbers, dill, and garlic.

Peppers were a bit of a disappointment this year. Tried starting around 8 different types from seeds taken out of storebought peppers, only bell, jalapeno, and serrano managed to survive. Only in about the last week have they don't much, and only a few of them. Today I bought a couple Anaheims - we were really hoping to have some of them, we enjoyed them when we lived in southern New Mexico. But none of our seeds sprouted. So I cheated and bought some plants. *hang my head in shame*

I've been in a bit of a love affair with pesto of late. So I've gone big time with the basil. The Mrs. planted a purple variety which is coming along nicely. I've planted some normal sweet basil anywhere I can find space.

And finally, tomatoes. They're coming right along. The ones I started on time in March are looking great. Tigerella have some beautiful clusters of fruit about ping pong ball sized. Sungold is just covered with flowers and little green tomatoes. I think both of those will be perennial favorites unless the taste is sub par. Everything else is coming along, with some flowers.

June 12

June 29

Planted a number of leftovers in 5 gallon pails.

June 12

June 29

Sungold flowers. Lookit all of em, wowzers.

Now that's a cluster of flowers

Corn is a few feet tall and zucchini is starting to produce.

And finally, a weird mystery veg. I think this is where we dumped the pumpkin after Halloween last year. The bush is HUGE.

The mystery beast

Mystery fruit, about 4 inches long

Oh, and our hops plant is taking over a whole side of the garden fence.

And the crabapples in the parking lot at work are starting to turn red. Soon, apple butter time.