Garden 2012

[ptarmic wumpus]

I think my cherry tree has a canker...it is looking pretty sad and has symptoms of one of the cankers. I trimmed off the dead branches (most of the tree) but I think it will probably die. There are also raspberry cane borers attacking the raspberries, but I think I can control that at least.

Otherwise, the madder is doing very well and trying to invade the leek bed. The squash are finally starting to take off, but no flowers yet. We are a bit behind on rain, but managed to get a little bit on Friday. I need to get a good rain gauge to put in my plot.

[ptarmic wumpus]

Here is a sloppy montage of the plot. I need to get a push mower or one of those serrated hacking blade things to deal with the weedy areas...


The leeks are doing pretty well, I may need to start building up soil around them soon


Today was the first zucchini harvest

the other squash are slower, and the deer keep munching on them:


My poor cherry tree did die, I scrounged the bird netting from it to try to keep the deer from eating the squash. I'm not sure if I should plant another tree next year, I would have to put it in the same place, which is still not that great (poor drainage and not much sun), and I am afraid the canker might remain and infect a new tree. And I can get sour cherries at the farmers market in June (plus I keep having serious storage issues due to repeated summer power outages).

[ptarmic wumpus]

Has anyone done cut and come again with leeks? Ie where you cut the leek in the bed above the roots and the plant regrows from the base? I am thinking about trying this with some of my leeks, as they are starting to get to a harvestable size, and there might be enough time left in the season to regrow somewhat.

[Antidigger]

I've never heard of cut & come again leeks, but surely it's got to be worth a try with a couple. Do let us know how it goes.....

[ptarmic wumpus]

I started to harvest just a few leeks today....I dug them out to the base of the leek, used sharp garden shears to cut the leek about 1/2 inch above the base, and left it uncovered. I'll see how this goes - if they just rot, I'll try something different on the next harvest batch.

[ptarmic wumpus]

So, a lot of the cut leek "stumps" just rotted, but a few of them re-sprouted:


Some of them started to sprout, and then turned to slime, possibly because we have actually been getting rain and cooler temperatures. Leaving a bit more of the leek there seems to help.


Also, I decided to plant some garlic. Because the sunlight/tree trimming situation for next season is uncertain, I didn't want to put them in beds. I saw some pictures of "garlic grow bags" online, and then realized I had a bunch of those cheap ikea blue bags. So I poked some holes in the bottom of the bags, filled them with nice soil, and planted some garlic. One bag has hardneck garlic, the other two have the softneck garlic. The nice thing about the bags, aside from being USD$0.69, is that they have handles, so I can drag them around if I need too. I got about two heads of garlic into each bag, which is probably a bit too crowded, but I expect that all the bulbs will not survive the winter. My leek survival rate was about 40-50%.