Wordless Wednesday - A Garden in Bloom

A garden needs a fence

I had an idea for the perennial herb garden - closer to the Potager would be formal, and on the other side of the path, it would be more free form. However, it is looking more than just "more free form", it's looking lost and messy. Free form is hard to maintain.

It doesn't take long for Mother Nature to reclaim an area you carefully stole from her. A garden needs a fence, a boundary that says from this point I am a garden. From here on in I will be weeded and maintained.

Saturday hubby and I bought a fence. It has made it next to the garden. It will be a few weeks before it is installed. So much to do, so little time. I am thankful for the pile sitting there as a promise of a fence to come.

Of course, Smokey and Binx think it's perfect just the way it is.
"What do you mean this isn't a new cat toy?"

I'm linking this up to Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage 

Rutgers Gardens

Last Friday my friend and I went to Rutgers Gardens in New Brunswick, New Jersey.  The heat broke and it was only 90. Fortunately there were trees and shade so it wasn't as bad as the flea market in 100 degree heat!

There were shady little benches here and there. I thought it was clever how they made a trellis over the bench with logs.

One big disappointment was that there were no maps to grab to help you find your way around the grounds. We could have printed it off line, but assumed there would be maps available. There was a large map at the entrance, but none that you could carry.

This was a succulent display garden and it was very nicely arranged and labeled well.
I never thought of bringing the christmas cactus into the garden for the summer. They usually just hang out on my porch.

I mention that the succulent garden was labeled because one of the disappointing things at Rutgers Gardens was the lack of labeling. We would see an interesting plant and look for a label and there would be none.

I was most excited to see the vegetable gardens. After all, Rutgers is our state's agricultural school. I was hoping for some unique ideas, or new plants that I could take back to the Potager.

In front of the vegetable garden was a display garden which had a mix of flowers and vegetables.
This was my first disappointment of the day. Everything was tiny. Like the size of stuff you buy to put out on Mother's Day. I would have thought by the middle of June that the flowers and vegetables would be a nice size. Apparently they have an open house the last weekend in July and plant everything so it will look it's best that weekend. I thought that was a bit strange.

The only plant I saw that I had never seen were these purple podded peas.
We met a student who was tending the vegetable garden and he showed us around and let us taste the peas.

He was an environmental policy major interning in the garden, so my friend and I knew a bit more about gardening than he did.

I was hoping that they would have the latest and greatest techniques for growing things, and they just had a vegetable garden - with very small plants.

So I took pictures of structures, like this bamboo pea structure with bird netting for the peas to climb on (since my tee-pees didn't actually work for peas I need new ideas for next year).

And the support system for raspberries. I've seen bigger ones on-line, with two T supports.  This is my first year with raspberries and they are not putting out any long canes yet, so I am not sure what to do with them.
And there were no labels so I don't know what kind of raspberries these are.
I t would have been nice to have labels saying these are such and such and grow best in this part of New Jersey whereas these grow best in that part. Or something like that.

  I did take some pictures of plants I have in my yard that I haven't seen fully mature, such as these yellow flowers. They looked great planted as a mass. A friend at work gave them to me and I have them planted individually. I think I will move them all to one bed and let them fill in like these.

My camera battery died shortly after this garden.
There was a very cool (literally) bamboo trail that led to a running stream that we enjoyed.

There were no greenhouses to tour.

We finished the whole garden before noon. But as luck would have it, there was a farmer's market at the entrance on Friday afternoon's so we bought Rainier Cherries, Bacon Bread, cheese, pickles and fresh squeezed lemonade for lunch - and ate in the air-conditioned car!

The best of the New Vegetables in the Potager

What is it? It's big and pink. Do you know?

Here it is cut up.

Yes it's the Watermelon Radish, one of my favorites this year. These radishes can grow huge, and yet they don't get woody or split. They are tender and tasty and have just the right bite - not too hot.

Watermelon Radish was one of the new crops I tried this year that I really loved.

Another was Pak Choi. This baby variety bok choy grew really well and was quite tasty. I will plant this again. Only next time I will plant more.

Freckles lettuce has performed so well for me this year. I purchased this after Susan at Farmgirl Fare wrote of how much she loved this lettuce. I have to agree with her. It is tasty, easy to grow, it's a cut and come again type lettuce, and it has handled the hot days we have had without any wilting or bolting. And as Susan pointed out, it is cute!

These three veggies were my favorite new vegetables of the Spring Season in the Potager. They will all be back next year!

Hot, Hot, Hot!A vacation day for me!

Yes that was the temperature in the Potager today - at 6:30 PM! It was unbearably hot today. Very unusual for this early in the year. It's not even summer yet! I had scheduled a couple of days off work so a friend and I could celebrate our birthdays. Today was our day to go flea marketing. It was really not a good day for it - a lot of vendors were closing up shop by 10:00 AM because of the oppressive heat. But I found a few cute things, including this little garden tool:

To try to save my lettuce from the extreme heat, hubby rigged up this lattice shade cover.

The pak choi that was next to the lettuce was done on June 3rd and I cleaned out the 1' x 2' section of the garden it occupied, added some compost and lime and planted Royal Burgundy Bush Beans.
You can see them in their neat spacings before they were pushed down and covered with soil.

They sprouted up today. They are partially covered by the lattice also, so I hope they don't mind a little shade.

While at the flea market we met a gentleman selling organically raised herbs. I bought some and put them in the herb bed. I'm pretty sure I am over crowding the bed. Next year I'll move some to the larger bed right next to it, but for now the zucchini and spaghetti squash have started to grow there.

In the left corner of the herb bed I added garlic chives. These are close to the dill, but the dill is an annual, so I'm not concerned about that now. Behind the purple basil, between the sage and the greek oregano, I planted marjoram.

Between the chives and the thyme, behind the flat leaved parsley, I planted basil.

Between the thyme and the rosemary, I planted winter savory.
I also bought some lemon grass but haven't planted it yet. My friend looked at it and mentioned that it looked like a weed. And it did. The herb guy said to plant it in a pot so I could bring it inside for the winter.
I have never used lemon grass, but I am intrigued by it. It is widely used in Thai food and also Indian cuisine. It has the lemony flavor without the bite of a lemon.Some have said it has a hint of ginger. So I am going to give it a try. I need to get some potting soil and pot it up and see how it goes.

My friend gave me this lovely rain gauge for my birthday.
This evening we had a thunderstorm, so it will be put to use immediately!
The garden should look a little bit perked up tomorrow. It will be fun to see how much rain we got!
I hope the rain brings in cooler weather tomorrow. My friend and I are touring Rutger's Gardens!
Happy Birthday Sheila!

The unveiling of the cole crops

The broccoli has grown large. So large that it has pushed the floating row cover off the ground.

It is time for plan B - or rather BT.

Bacillus Thuringiensis (or better known as BT) is an organic widely used means to control cabbage worms. It doesn't hurt the butterfly or prevent her from laying her eggs, but when the caterpillars emerge and start to feed - they die! Before they have a chance to do any real damage. And it is completely harmless to humans.

So I mixed some up today in my fancy new sprayer and off went the too small row cover.

The four surviving cabbage plants are huge - I am wondering if the Square Foot Gardening guide has the right spacing. They seem way too crowded. Out of the six I planted, two red and two white have made it.

All of the broccoli survived, but some just isn't doing as well as others. They are healthy looking but smaller and behind in development - maybe they didn't get as much sun and water because of how the row cover was gathered over them?

But the ones that are doing well have the cutest heads on them.
I'm thinking they will not get as big as the ones in the grocery stores (especially with the heat wave predicted the next few days), but I'm hoping I can figure out when to harvest them before they bolt.
The plants that were grown under the row cover are big and strong and healthy looking.
I'm so excited! I will buy more for next year and make sure I cover my eggplants in addition to the cole crops.

I did find a small amount of insect damage on a few of the cabbage leaves toward the perimeter of the row cover. I didn't see any cabbage worms, but I'm guessing I sprayed the BT just in time!

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
H. L. Mencken


I'm linking this up to  at An Oregon Cottage.

I'm back! And so are the Flea Beetles :(

Sorry I've been MIA - just had a busy week and never had time to go on the computer.
The garden's been doing well, with some exceptions. We've been eating salads every night:

Yummy Mixed lettuces with Watermelon Radishes

But I am once again doing battle with the Flea Beetles. For years every time I put out my eggplants, flea beetles would eat them down to nothing. The exception was last year. The Potager wasn't completed until June last year and I purchased a larger eggplant plant to put in the garden. It never was attacked by flea beetles. It may have been genetically modified or it was just a more mature plant. Flea Beetles apparently can't eat thicker mature leaves. I just learned this. If I had learned this earlier, I would have waited to plant the eggplants and not ended up with this:

Flea beetle damage - tons of holes and dried leaves

Sad looking  Black Beauty - there are no new signs of growth on it.

Even worse looking Rosa Bianco.

I am spraying them, dusting them, doing everything I can think of, but I may be losing the battle.

I even waited until they had larger leaves before putting them out, but the flea beetles are voracious nonetheless.

However, I have a back up.

This healthy looking Black Beauty is still on my porch. If the others die, it will go into the garden.

Note to self - keep more spare plants next year. You just never know.