The 2011 gardening blog

Saturday 13 August 2011

Garden clean-up week

      Another Southeast-style week up here in Galena, Alaska. Right now there is a fine drizzling mist covering everything with drops of cold water. There are splotches of yellow in the leaves outside the window. The brocolli and cabbage looks lovely. The potatoes are robust. The pumpkins and squash are turning into a white-gray mush. A few of the other disasters are:

      Shogoin turnip from Kitazawa Seeds bolted immediately. No bulbs whatsoever.

      I found another row of green pak choi in the upper beds, crowded out by the neighboring plants.

      There was a row of giant nobel spinach that had immediately bolted. This was a variety which advertised itself as "very slow bolting," but these are not usual circumstances.

      A few more Asian radishes bit the dust - or more accurately bit the mud. The oharu variety had hardly any root at all. The il shim variety had a few small radishes about as big as the traditional supermarket radish. The minowase had the most beautiful purple-white flowers. No radishes attached to that, however.

      There's a row of tae baek radish which is still not bolted, though, with a bunch of 2-inch diameter roots. Maybe this is another one that will work well up here. We'll see what happens at the end of the season.

      The Chinese dark green and the toy choi bolted.

      The seed poppies came out with wonderful flowers, but all the rain has rotted the pods, so there are no seeds for bread and baking. Sad all around. However, in the realm of good tidings, there are some things that have worked out.

      The celery is robust. The peas, which were mowed down by the moose, are coming back with new growth and flowers. There are two types of peppers - peppino and jalafeugo - are doing well. The tomatoes are lush with growth.

Sunday 7 August 2011

Hybrid joi choi

      I was cleaning out the upper garden beds and found this huge patch of chickweed happily strangling those Siberian onions Sandy gave me last year. I was cleaning it out and underneath all the weeds there was this one huge and robust joi choi. A real beauty, like the ones you'll find in supermarkets. Apparently this was an errant seed which found its way over by the onion; the rest of the joi choi about one foot over were all bolted. Lesson: cover the plants in shade, and it'll prevent bolting. Of course, I was also told this two years ago and didn't do it because I'm too lazy to go back and forth every day. So... next year I'll get that shade cloth and put that over the mustard greens.

      Green pak choi exploded into a bolting shower of flowers immediately. RIP

      Isa is shown here with the joi choi. She also canned 25 half-pint jars of pesto from the six varieties in the greenhouse. Each variety has its own unique aroma and taste. A good day all around.

Sunday 7 August 2011

Another storm off the Bering Sea

      Another day of rain and clouds. When the clouds part, you can see that light blue Arctic sky which is cold, cold, cold. The weather prophets tell us that the sky should actually open up on Wednesday or so and bring back sunshine. Don't know if it'll be sufficient.

      The pumpkins have been a complete and utter failure - too much rain, too much moisture under the plastic. As a result, even the fertilized female flowers are rotting off. It's sad, especially considering the great guns by the Cheyenne Bush variety, which looked great at the start of the year. However, the cabbage, which looked like mostly-dead scraps on the black weed cloth, are now the most lush cabbage I've ever grown. There are some Early Copenhagens that are prize winners. Same with the kohlrabi and the daikon radish.

      The solution is to grow the pumpkins under the high tunnel, where they can stay dry even during the most fierce rain. The tunnel is doing good work protecting the plants against the rain and wind, which we've had plenty of during the past several weeks. Next year, as always, will be better.

      I haven't mentioned potatoes, but they are by far the lushest I've ever grown up here. The French Fingerlings in the high tunnel are four feet tall - and that growth came before the tunnel was put up. Cool.

Wednesday 3 August 2011

The gardening season starts winding down

      The garden has been going great, but the cultivation of this blog has been a little less vigorous. Of course, I have a choice - either sit down here and write or go outside and weed. I seem to always spend my time out there, which is fine. It's been an enjoyable summer so far.

      Some of the successes so far - the greenhouse is doing very well, and the plastic bags over the eggplants produced spectacular growth during the first part of the summer. The yellow sticky paper is busy sucking up unsuspecting aphids. The tomato trellis inside the greenhouse has doubled productivity. Outside, the cabbages and brocolli are doing well, considering the sheer volume of rain we've been having since early July. The high tunnel has been completed! Inside, the beans and carrots are literally bursting at the seams.

      On the other side - all that wet has caused the pumpkins to rot. The moose decided to walk through the garden before the high tunnel was completed, decimating the peas and creating huge bite marks in the kohlrabi and, very unfortunately, the giant cabbages. It is almost as if the moose selectively picked out the OS Cross cabbage. We can only hope he shows up again with twin spikes sometime in early September.

The new high tunnel has been built

      My career as a welfare queen was launched this summer when the Department of Agriculture decided that they would give me a high tunnel for free, sort of. It's a grant approved somewhere in the vast expanse of the federal bureaucracy for the peasants in the outback. So we got the high tunnel from the Oregon Valley Greenhouses. The directions were so poorly written it is hard to describe - misspellings, confused syntax, strange and contradictory instructions. Then the directions told me to purchase two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, which might have been fine along the road, but not out here. Then the instructions told me to drill into hardened steel. We fortunately went to town and bought some drill bits. My recommendation based on nothing more than experience is to avoid Oregon Valley Greenhouses. What a mess. After a few weeks we finally got the dang thing built. Now we have to wait for the reimbursement.

      My observation of the federal employees is that they're very nice people, but since they're working in Fairbanks and using a set of guidelines, sometimes they're more than a little obtuse. According to my contract, I have to use a certain amount of fertilizer in a certain way. This very nice guy apparently spent time trying to figure out how to make my liquid fertilizer fit the guidelines because the guideline is listed in pounds per acre. I can't have any hanging baskets. (Why? Who the hell knows. It's the guidelines.) I can't have raised beds, even though it is the best way to grow veggies in Alaska. I suddenly understand that Obamacare will be like this, with a nice bureaucrat attached to you at the hip actively involved in every personal decision, and always with the vague threat of something coming down on your back if you don't follow the guidelines, no matter how inappropriate or ineffective. It's for my own good. God help us.

      Here are the photos of the high tunnel from start to finish.

Wednesday 18 May 2011

Snow melts and gardening emerges!

      One week there's two feet of snow on the ground; the next week, the ground is bare and the grass is coming up. It is startling to see just how fast the native plants respond to the spring warmth. Take a look at that photo of the highbush cranberry, with the red buds literally bursting at the seams. The plants in the greenhouse were put out during the last weekend in April, which might have a bit early, as one of those days afterwards had an 18 degree morning. However, the temperatures have been above freezing since the start of the week, and it looks like spring is on its way.

      Sad news - one of the hives died. Don't know what happened, but I opened the box and there was a mess of dead bees clogging the frame. Fortunately, the other hive seems to be doing fine, and the girls are out foraging right now on the newly flowering willows.

      Planting out in the greenhouse is this weekend, and the outdoor beds are fast on their heels. The squashes, pumpkins, cucumbers, and watermelons are all coming up well, and the moonflowers look spectacular, if not a bit wierd. More to come.

The highbush cranberry; planting trays in the greenhouse; the brodeaia blooming in the greenhouse; the garden soil finally exposed to the sun.

Saturday 30 April 2011

More bee-mazing stuff

      I was in and out of the greenhouse all day, since I moved the planting trays out there to get real sunlight on a rainy and overcast day. Planted the elephant ears, dahlias, and caladiums, too. While I was out there, the bees in one hive were all buzzing and flying all around one hive, while the other hive was quiet as a church mouse. Why? Beats me.

      So I went outside to get the queen out of her box. I had been told to put some marshmallow in the little hole in her box, which I forgot to do. I simply opened the box and put it down. And I realize now in retrospect I also left the wire cage still inside one hive, which I'll have to get back today sometime. A lot of learning for me to work through.

Friday 29 April 2011

Bees arrive and find a home

      The bees arrived on Wednesday, leaving me both home from work on a sick day and working with several thousand bees. I soldiered through it. We got the bees and I covered them up with a blanket and a sleeping bag out in the garage. When I got back the next morning, I was startled to find out that the sleeping bag was warm to the touch.

      So there's a lot to learn. Reading about it is not the same as doing it. First, I've discovered that the beekeeping people haven't given me to little pry bar I need, so I've been using a screwdriver. Second, I had to learn about the location of the queen, which took a day. However, the queen is now safely placed between frames and waiting to be uncovered tomorrow.

Tuesday 26 April 2011

First geese fly over

      The first flock of geese flew over the greenhouse when I was out there enjoying that little spot of summertime. In the meantime, the raised beds in the bottom garden are nicely exposed to the sun, while there's still two feet of wet, sloppy snow surrounding them. It looks like the stuff I buried there in the fall have pulled through just fine.

      Inside the house, the clivia has bloomed. I have three clivia in a large pot, and hopefully the other two will decide to flower this year again. The philodendron I pinched from the neighbor on Denali Drive in Clermont when my folks lived there is really starting to do really well - and it still lives in a 6-inch pot. The cactus and epiphyllum are going gangbusters, too. The epiphyllum has sent out a shoot about 70 cm tall, which hopefully will come out in flowers of some sort.

Sunday 24 April 2011 - Happy Easter!

Greenhouse cleaned and ready to go

      The greenhouse is finally cleaned and ready to go. Not only that, but I decided to put out the hostas, rose, and the other bulbs outside already, since the sky was overcast and the temperatures didn't get too cold last night. I've set up the remote thermometer inside the greenhouse so I can tell the temperatures from the living room. On the days when the outside temperatures were in the single digits, the inside temperatures were in the 20s. Then I fixed the torn plastic along the west wall, and the temperatures immediately spiked. I'm thinking that I can move out a lot of the trays next weekend as long as I have the heater on inside the greenhouse when the temperatures go down far below freezing.

      The other cool thing - the area of the bottom garden beds sprinkled with soil dust has melted all the way down to the soil surface - while around the garden, there's still 30 inches of mushy white slop.

      Moving the potatoes inside has prompted sprouting, too. All of the potatoes are covered with small sprouts. We have another month before planting out, though - hope I didn't move the spuds inside too soon. We'll find out, I guess. I'm supposing that it's better to plant out a shriveled thing with lots of sprouts than a lump of potato still thinking that it's winter.

Sunday 10 April 2011

Planting day and preparing the garden

      What a beautiful day to be planting the garden. Up here, of course, that means sitting in the office and putting the seeds into trays. The sunshine alternated with snow showers. I planted 14 trays - a lot of flowers, and some kohlrabi. I'm really excited about cataloguing what I've got here. There are some varieties that are brand-new to Galena.

      The potatoes got brought inside to sprout them for eventual planting. We learned our lesson last year by trying to plant the potato in the soil directly from the root celler. Most of them didn't sprout. So this year we brought trays inside and we're letting them go to sprout for about six weeks. I hope this year works out much better. In any case, we have about 30 pounds of seed potatoes - French Fingerlings, Norkota Russetts, Red Gold, Yukon Gold, Magic Molly (our favorite), Adirondack Red, and Hippie (our name).

      A lot of sprouting coming up! The tomatoes are coming up, the geranium looks great, the leeks are strong. We had to move the hostas upstairs as they are getting too big. Those were fabulous successes - I'm getting more soon. I found some "giant" varieties. In that regard, I might try some gunnera, with the hope that I can take those out of the ground at the end of the season and put them in the root cellar for rest and recreation.

      Spring is here! I saw a flock of snow buntings down on base poking around in the ground near the steam vents. Someday the snow will be gone. And folks in the upper Midwest think they have it bad.

The backyard beds with a little less than four feet of snow. The tops of the fenceposts are four feet high.

The soil is sprinkled lightly with potting soil. Both photos were taken 8 April. The temperature was about 35 degrees. Within a few hours, the snow was pitted.

The entrance to the greenhouse. The drifts are about four feet deep.

Thursday 7 April 2011

Blizzard warnings

      A blizzard rages outside, but inside the plants are coming up.

      Keeping track of the seedlings has already taught me one thing (that everyone else knows, no doubt). The older the seeds, the worse the germination. Seeing it in the records is interesting. The second insight is that some companies sell good seeds that last a long time, and some sell dreck. It is fascinating.

      This is the time of year for the mass plantings, which started last night. I started with the flower seeds and have gotten all the way to the dahlias. Just gotta muscle through it.

      The indoor plants are coming up nicely, too. I just love it around Joe's birthday when the indoor plants start responding to the bright sunlight. This year's casualties: a dracenia which got scaly mealybug, most of the coleus, some old geraniums. Real treats: the philodendron from Denali Drive in Florida is sending leaves all over the place, the old monstera from Oregon is sending out new leaves, the cactus from Mom's neighbor is sending out shoots.

Sunday 3 April 2011

Got inside the greenhouse

      Stumbled through the snow to get to the door of the greenhouse. Shoveled that granular-sugary snow that we get this time of year, slowly chipping away, until I was finally able to open the door. I'm estimating about 40 inches of snow around the greenhouse. Anyhow, got inside, and the roof looks pretty good - which is astonishing, since I never got around to shoveling all that stuff off. Well, it held up.

      The temperature got up to 31.6 degrees today, but the water in the bottles in the greenhouse was already liquid. I have to fix the plastic and see how far I can push the envelope about when and how I can put out plants.

      Inside, the leeks and geraniums are coming up sweetly. Tomatoes are little spikes and the peppers are just poking out of the soil. Those hostas are going gangbusters - evidentially I've found the method for keeping those things alive. Some of last year's dahlias are less than stellar - I should have kept the bulbs dry and cool instead of the root cellar. C'est la vie.

      Hopefully I'll be planting a lot of the bulbs this weekend. A lot of pots laying around from last year to thaw out and use. Spring will arrive soon!

Saturday 26 March 2011

Hostas doing really well!

      Those hostas stored really well in the root cellar. All of them are coming up very confidently. The leaves are already 14-19 cm high, which is great. Lots of vigor. Next fall I'll just hang them bare-rooted in the root cellar.

      The dahlias remain a mixed bag. Some have come up, some haven't. Some of the hardy gloxinias survived root cellar hell, and the shame of it is that I can't find them in the cheepo catalogues this year. Maybe I can clone them in agar like I've seen and read about. That would be an interesting winter project, if nothing else.

      The epiphyllum starts are looking good. I'll give them away throughout the summer. It seems to be able take the winter low temperatures and lack of light pretty well.

Saturday 19 March 2011

Some little things starting to come up in the seed trays

      Not planting much today, since it is Joe's 13th birthday. However, there are some good things to look at.

      The hostas are coming up like gangbusters. They should be nice a luxurient by the time break-up rolls around. All the geraniums from Swallowtail came up strong and robust. The hibiscus is also starting to come up. One of the mimosa is also peeking out of the soil. Things are also looking up in the world of leeks! Lots and lots coming up! More planting out next weekend.

Sunday 13 March 2011

The first plantings of the summer!

      This was the first day of the spring, at least according to Alaskan standards. The first veggies were planted and the bulbs were gathered and looked at.

      Most of the hostas pulled through just fine. They were stored two ways - in paper bags filled with sawdust, and a single bunch just sitting out in the open. Interestingly, the one that was out in the open fared the best. The ones in the sawdust did fine, too. They should survive into the summer with nice foliage.

      However, the dahlias were a disaster. The sawdust got wet, which causes the dahlias to rot. It's unclear whether or not the dahlias were frozen, but they looked that way. In any case, it is clear that keeping the roots wet, or even moist, is really bad. The dahlias inside in the pots stored under the grow lights pulled through just fine. There were two small seedlings which were unplanted at the end of last year, and they've come through, too, apparently. We'll see how they sprout.

      Inside the root cellar, it looks like the strawberries are also doing well. There is something that looks like lamb's quarter, but without good recordkeeping, I don't know anymore. The flowering plum was in a frozen pot. It looks dead. The asparagus soil is also partially frozen near the floor of the root cellar. We'll get to see how they pulled through in a month or so.