Cabbage Heads, Spinach Seeds, Garlic, and Potatoes

Five of the six cabbages, I got from my neighbor that started them from seed, are doing great.

Here are two of them.  I planted onions around them, but that isn't keeping the cabbage loopers away.  You can see all the holes in the leaves.  I have been going to put tule around them for 2 weeks and still haven't done it.  Tule is like netting, but has smaller holes, is softer, and used for bridal wear.

For now it just came into my brain that I could cover them with the window screens.  I don't care if the onion tops are bent over.  I hate onions!

Here is the spinach that has gone to seed.  I think it is ready to have a paper bag placed over the seeds to save them.  The lettuce behind it will be going to seed soon.  I am out of seeds from both of these plants, so I let a lot of them go to seed.

The garlic is dying without going to flower.  I noted before that it was going great in the winter and then when we got the hot winter spell it started dying.  The ones I have dug are double bulbs/cloves.  You can see them HERE.  I think I will pull these up and plant lettuce and spinach here.  I will have to go buy some seeds this time.

Here is a garlic from last year that must not have grown and came up this year instead.  Can you see the bulge near the top of the plant?  That is the flower developing.  After it comes out and starts to open I will break it off, so that it puts the energy into the garlic bulb and not the flower.  If it is broken off too soon it will come back.

             

This years garlic is weird.  The red spot in the center of the left picture is something popping out of the stock.  The picture on the right has a bulge at the base of the stock.

Garden Update

I can hardly believe it is June 6th.  I thought I had posted picture earlier in the year, but I guess I haven't.  I have been a terrible blogger.  Now it is time to do better, so here is the gardening news.

These are Isis Candy cherry tomatoes that I started indoors from seed on February 3.  I kept putting them into larger pots until they were outgrowing the gallon pots.  They sprouted faster than I was expecting and got leggy, so I planted them up to the fist set of true leaves on the first transplant into a larger pot.  I took them outdoors and back in for several weeks to get them acclimated to the outdoors.  Every time they were almost ready to plant it got down to freezing.  Finally on May 29 I planted them outside.  They were starting to die in the pots and needed transplanting again. 

Here is another view of the Isis Candy tomato plants.

Planted potatoes on March 2.  Some of them froze three times.  This group was the worst.  I watered one day and they froze that night, so they looked really bad the next morning.  Potatoes are tough.  They keep coming back.

 Found a little potato in the ground a month ago, so I planted it in a pot.

These are Walla Walla onions in the front half.  They were sick little onion starts that I planted March 2.  The back half is big German Red Garlic that I planted the same day.  Garlic should be planted in the fall.  It is only available in the nurseries in the spring and onions and garlic can no longer be sent to Nevada from the seed catalog companies.  I planted most of it and used a few pieces to cook with.  I like the flavor of this one.  Hope it does good.

This is what is left of the lettuce that was planted last fall.  The ones on the left edge (side and front) are transplant form seeds I started in the house on Jan 5.

I have spent the last 3 weeks moving my raspberries.  They were behind the fruit trees and get too much shade and don't produce very well any more.  Most of them seem to have taken the transplanting well.

My poor peach tree is almost dead.  It couldn't hold all the weight last year and broke in many places.  It is a semi-dwarf and about 17 years old, so it is about done producing anyway.

Here is what is left of the garlic I planted in August last year.  A lot of it got eaten by who-knows-what.  I did cover it all Winter when I found it eaten to the ground.  Now I see something is laying in there.  A lot of smashed plants.  Probably the cat.  I have smashed clumps of daffodils on the other side of the yard too.  The back half is carrots that I started about 1 month ago.  I didn't cover them until about 2 weeks ago.  I see a few starting to germinate.  I'm thinking that most of the seeds were probably eaten by the birds.

September Garden Pictures Finally Posted

This working for a living is really interfering with my blogging fun.  LOL.  Here are some pictures I have wanted to post for a while.

The beets I harvested the day this picture was taken.  Notice the heart shaped one and the one with two tops.

My poor Big Max Pumpkin will never be big enough to carve.

The garlic is growing very well.  I later covered it with netting because the quail were digging their holes to sit in around it and dug some up.  Last week I found most of the garlic tops eaten to about 1/2 inch above the soil.  What I thought were chipmunks, and have since found out are Antelope squirrels, are eating them.  Now the netting is raised off of the ground so they can't eat any more garlic.

The grapes are getting ready to pick.  Picked the grapes the third week of October.  We made 20 quarts of juice out of approximately 65 pounds of grapes (stems included in weight).

The cool weather gave me the best crop of onions I have ever had. I was so proud of my big onions until:

My mom's onion was placed next to my onions.  We both grew Walla Walla onions.

A close up of mom's onion.  Five inches across.

My bell peppers are on the plant.  Mom's bell peppers are sitting in the pot.  Gardening in the high desert region of Nevada is a lot of work.

 The refrigerator drawer full of potatoes from Mom's garden.

A close up of the biggest one.  All of  my potatoes were tiny and most of the plants died.

Two plants going to seed and how to make onions grow bigger

This is one of the broccoli plants I saved to go to seed.  The yellow flowers are starting to die off and soon there will be little pods that will have the seeds in them.

Here is a spinach plant that will soon start developing seeds.  I will put a paper bag over it and bend the plant over carefully so I don't break the plant and let the seeds fall into the bag.  I will post pictures when it is time to start collecting the seeds.  This is the same plant that was in the last post.  It is bigger now.

Here is one of the onion flowers just about ready to open.  If you look closely you can see how the skin is rippled and holding the petals inside.  Now is the time to cut if off.

 I took scissors and cut the flower off close to the bottom of the bloom stock.

Here you can see how I have started bending the tops of the onions over.  Just break/crack the tops enough to keep them from standing back up.  Now the plant will put its energy back into the onion and not the leaves or flower.

More Garden update 6-16

These are the Cal White and the red potatoes.  The Cal White were the ones my husband bought that had long sprouts when we planted them.  The red ones were little ones I saved from last years crop.  The red ones have almost caught up with the white ones in size.

The blue potatoes are almost as big as the red.  The Yukon Gold have died.  I have decide that Yukon Gold potatoes do better with less water.  I have dug into the ground around all of the potatoes and the moisture is the same around all of them.  But the Yukon Gold have turned to mush.

These are Yukon Gold in the tote.  They are not doing very well.  I have raised this tote off of the ground so that the water can drain out of the crack in the bottom better.  The littlest one is now dead.  I hope the rest make it.

Planted green (actually purple) beans and a few beets in this bed on June 9.  This is the bed that the dove I was following around and taking picture of likes to dig holes in and sit.  I covered it with window screens to keep the dove out.  I have to cover the warm weather crops like this every year, because the birds eat the newly germinated plants.  Well for the first time the dove went under the edge of the screen and dug a hole to sit in.

The window screens are now on the ground to keep the dove out.

The bell peppers I planted in pots in the front yard the middle of  May look the same as when I planted them.

The chamomile has died.  I planted new seeds about a week ago and they are starting to germinate.  They are too tiny to see here.  What is the problem this year?

I have harvested a dozen or so basil leaves twice.  The plants look terrible and a few are starting to flower.  I picked off the flowers and hope I can keep them alive.  I'm not going to give up.  I probably should, but I am addicted to gardening and will keep trying.  Maybe the warmer weather will help.

Even the cilantro died.  That is a first. This bell pepper is still the same size it was a month ago when I put it in this pot.  I did reseed the cilantro.

The onions are the biggest I have ever grown.  The squash plants in the center died.  I replanted them and the pumpkins (in another bed) today (June 16).

Some of the onions are forming flowers like this one.  I am waiting for them to start to open and then I will break them off.  If they are taken off too soon they will just grow back again.  I want the flower removed so the plant will put its energy back into the bulb.

Garden Progress Pictures

These are the Cal White potatoes that I planted on 3/22.  They had white sprouts on them when I planted them.  They have grown enough that they have also been covered with 2 inches of peat moss.  Maybe next year I will take the potatoes out of the refrigerator and get them growing before I plant them.

This is all that has grown on the red potatoes that I planted 3/17.  There were no sprouts on these when I planted them.

The Yukon Gold growing in the tote are a little larger than the red.

The kids have lettuce growing better in their barbecue that I do in my bed.

That patch of green is mesclun.  The lettuce is just two tiny starts in front of the mesclun.  Spinach is on the left, looking like a few weeds.  Behind the mesclun is beets.  The carrots on the back left have not germinated yet.  All of these things were planted on March 29th and 30th.

A few of the peas are coming up good.  There are a lot that are just breaking through the soil and don't show in this picture.  These were planted 3/30.

All-in-all I must say that of the things planted outdoors nothing is doing as well as expected, except the mesclun and the Cal White potatoes.  Everything is slow to germinate this year.

This is cilantro that grows mostly in the shade at my front door.  This is what started growing a few months ago.  It has been in this pot for about 4 years.  Everything you read about cilantro will tell you to grow it in full sun.  All those in this area who grow it with success grow it in the shade.

This is one of the cilantro plants I started indoors from seed on 2/28.  This pot's label says that it holds a 6 inch plant.

Genovese basil that I started from seed indoors 2/28.



Tomatillos started indoors from seed 3/5.  We are going to plant one of these in a Topsy Turvy as an experiment this year.  If you use a Topsy Turvy, you will need to water it often.  Probably more than a normal container.

The Walla Walla onion sets I planted on 3/31 have grown grown quite well.

The garlic planted in the fall of last year are doing good also.

Here is a picture of my rhubarb. These are all the same kind, but for some reason unknown to me, the back three always grow a lot sooner than the front three.  I have one water well dug out so far.  It was full of volunteer violas that I transplanted.

Here is an asparagus plant that is 12 years old.  Ten to twelve years is about the life time of  asparagus.

One year old asparagus.  I won't harvest any of theses one year plants until the third year.

This rosemary plant is in a place where I removed the bed and the other herbs.  I pinned 4 branches that were curving upward into the ground with some tie wire.  I made a "U" shape and turned it upside down.  There is about 5 inches of wire going into the ground and about a 1/2 inch of soil over the wire.  I will check for roots in a couple of months.

This is all of the small buckets of water that I have left.  There has been a lot of evaporation.  The rest has been used on the garden outside and the seedlings/plants indoors.  I am looking for very large water containers for next year to make a better storage system, but I am very thankful for any free water.