Garden Notes - Dates

Saturday is fertilizer day, as well as pull the weeds day, check for powdery mildew day, prune a little bit here and there day, and pick anything that didn't get picked during the week day. I wish I had jotted down when certain things have happened in the yard. It's frustrating not to be able to judge process, or to have a baseline for doing things better next year.

Tomatoes:

I do love tomatoes. This year we have crimson carmellos (Renee's Garden) and some sort of cherry, possibly sweet 100s. We started the first batch of seeds in mid March, and a second batch on April 20th. April 10th seems like it would have been the best time. I don't know when I transplanted the tomatoes, but it looks like it was between the middle of May and the middle of June, which seems like the right time to do it. Any time during the week leading up to Memorial Day is probably best. The poor cherry tomatoes are still languishing in the plastic box my organic baby greens from costco came in. It was a great planter for starting seeds, much better than the half gallon milk containers cut lengthwise. I'll use these again.

I just read a good article on pruning tomatoes for best production, Pruning Tomatoes. Clearly I should be snipping more off these plants. I barely pruned at all last year. This may explain why the plants didn't do so well.

Snap Peas:
I cut down half the snap pea vines, the dead ones and the dried out ones that were only producing pods with a single pea. The rest I left to hang out with the Dahlias and the volunteer Catnip plant that I thought was a weed until the distinctive scent from the bruised leaves and stalk clued me in. I'm thinking I may start some peas in pots against the back garage wall. They'll only get about 5 hours of direct sunlight even at the peak of summer. Later I'll move the pots to a different shady area. Because we're on the direct fog path, I want to see if I can grow peas in containers year round. Because they fix nitrogen to the soil part of my plan is to use their soil as replacement soil for the one strip that is sunny enough for tomatoes.

Beans:
I also love green beans. I have 6 plants producing, but it's not as much as I'd like. Next year I should have 9-12 plants, and should also get them into the ground by May 15. The beans are mostly green with purple marks on the pods.

Herbs:
The parsley, marjoram and oregano are still going gangbusters. I am now agressively pruning them and drying the stalks. The lemon thyme and the Danish thyme are both bolting, which is sort of a surprise. That the cilantro and dill are bolting is not a surprise at all. The summer savory is doing well, at the base of the tier far back along the fence. I hope to harvest a few bags worth of pesticide-free, Italian blend dried herbs.

Flowers:
I have BEE city over at my forget-me-nots. Every time I go over there the stalks are humming with bumble bees, honey bees and some sort of tiny bee that is probably either a carpenter bee or a sweat bee. The forget-me-nots are squeezing out a remaindered white carnation that I found on clearance lacking any sort of label. I happened to recognize the foilage, and thus got quite a bargain. The pure white blooms are small, (since I haven't pruned at all), but have the classic spicy sweet scent. I hate to displace the bees and cut the forget-me-nots back, but they're crowding the carnation out. We'll see what happens.

On either side of the forget-me-nots, I have pots with sweet william (another member of the same family carnations belong to), white lobelia, and blue salvia. The salvia has a terrible case of powdery mildew. I may just pull those plants so that the mildew won't transfer to the dahlias.

TheRoomate has planted a fair amount of corn and some sunflowers. He likes the tall seed producing kind. I like the smaller, dark orange kind. This year, we'll have both.