I am not going strictly for organic.  That being said if something is organic,works well, and is reasonably priced, I will pick it over other options.  I figure even if I hit it with pesticides occasionally, it's probably still seen less chemicals then most grocery store produce.

It's finally starting to look like gardening season in the back yard.  The raddicchio, chinese cabbage and spinach are coming along nicely, along with the direct-seeded gai lun and bok choy.



Baby brocccoli:



Potatoes and bush beans:


Onions, daikons, and a pitiful display of carrots.


There's seedlings here, just hard to see at this point.  I tried a few short rows each of komatsuna, savoy, and a different kind of bok choy called vivid, along with amaranth for a summer green.  All but the amaranth is up so far.


Early girl and brandywine tomatoes.  Yes, I know the tomatoes are in early.  They were 3 bucks each though and the spring has been mild so I figured for 6 bucks I would try planting them and see what happens.  If it freezes I will try dropping a 5 gallon bucket over each one and hope.  If I fail, it's 6 bucks.  If I succeed, I got a 3 week jump on the season (they went in a week ago).  When I am starting them myself  I often try to start 3x what I need and plant early.  If it works, I have spare to share.  If it doesn't, I just plant again a few weeks later.


I am finally getting the trellis set up.  Here is bed 1 with trellis:


Bed 2:


Bed 3


Bed 4 will have tomatoes and tomatillas in it.  I am leaning towards using the cattle panels to make 2x2 cages and support them with more fence posts.  That is a project for another weekend though.

I had the same idea today about using cattle panels for my tomato cages.   I have seen a lot on concrete remesh cages but i can only find 150' rolls for over $110.   I think that i will cut two panels into 6' lengths and set them up 2 feet apart.   Then i will use bamboo poles to act as horizontal braces between the panels.   I have 13 tomatoes in the ground now and three more on order.   They are all indeterminates soni figure this will be cheaper than but two 4' cages x 13 (already have 6 cages).   I already use the cattle panels for my cucumber and bean trellises.  Hope it works well for you too.

We enjoy komatsuna - I have a red variety in my indoor kratky setup:



Finally found a way to grown the asian greens we enjoy without the flea beetles decimating them!

Thanks!  Good luck with yours as well!

Not currently but I probably should.  

Wow, that looks amazing!  Do you usually just eat it as a fresh green in salads?  It is a new plant for me this year so any insight is appreciated.  I learned last year I can get many things to grow in our summer, but they end up bitter.  Broccoli, lettuce, even cucumbers end up bitter as hell once it gets a bit warm.  This year I have branched out into alternatives that should be able to take it without getting bitter, such as suyo long for the cucumbers.  With greens I am trying a number of alternatives to see if I can find things that grow better here, and to expand my palette.

Did you have to put an IV drip in them come mid-June?  Only way I could see keeping them hydrated during the day!



 

Thanks!

And Yes - makes for a great addition to a salad, especially when harvested young.  Fill the same niche as spinach would.

As it gets older, its a bit more like a cabbage and we also use it in soups or broths... i even boil it in with Ramen like I would do with baby bok choy.

It's been a crazy month.  Between work travel, 60-hr weeks, and catching the flu the garden (and this thread) have suffered a bit.  I lost most of my seedling to the flu and a number of my bedded plants when I frost came through while I was traveling.  I did get a chance to get some pics at intervals, I just didn't get around to posting them so some of these have a time-interval series at about 1-2 weeks apart.

Bed 1 mid-month.  The barely-visible pepper is all I had left of my pepper seedlings after most of my seedling died.  The other is a gypsy pepper I got at Lowe's based on the days to harvest rating of 60 days.  Normally I don't start getting actual sweet peppers until almost the end of the season, so I am hoping this will help compensate for my seedling loss.  


1 week later from the other side.  I planted some spring brassics that are just coming up in the foreground.

2 weeks later the seedlings are a bit more visible.  The panels you see are to keep the neighborhood cats from deciding newly-planted beds are a perfect litterbox.  Once the plants are up to size they will come off.


A spring planting of beets.  They cam up nicely but we are already kissing 90 degrees here during the day so the early heat may yet be the death of them.

Here they are 1 week later.  The stuff in the background was labelled baby brocoli at the home store but I think they fibbed.  It looks like some kind of collard green.


Spinach, Chinese broccoli and bok choy.  I have been snipping leaves off of the spinach and it is producing well.

1 week later...

...and a week after that.  The bare spot on the right is where I harvested out the Chinese cabbage that was planted there.  You can see the Chinese broccoli on the left.  

You can see here the Chinese brocoli I had hopes of for a cut-and-come-again harvest has bolted in the heat.  :(


I have some elephant garlic, raddichio, and the (since removed) Chinese cabbage here.

1 week later is it a bit damaged but looking good....

...And 1 week after that, bolting.  Sad.  This pic has the Chinese cabbage out and shows the flower spike already forming on the radicchio.  I will harvest that today and hope it isn't too bitter.


Bed 2.  To the left here is some baby broccoli.  All of the tall stuff in this pic is supposed to be baby broccoli I though but 1 pac looks more like collards.  Oh well.  The foreground has slightly frost-bitten eggplants and some beets.

1 week later.

2 weeks later.  The eggplants are recovering and it is time to harvest the broccoli!


Further down on bed 2 initial pics.

Current pics from the other side.  The stuff in the middle is a suyo long cucumber I plan on running up the trellis.


The end of bed 2: purple potatoes and mellow yellow beans.  While I was gone they took some damage but mostly survived, but the beans died.  When I came back there was another frost warning.  I experimented with a 2-litre bottle with hot water and a foam cooler over 1 plant, then just a foam cooler over another.  The difference in damage is rather striking.  Once the frost passed I re-seeded the beans.

This is mid-month.  I cut the dead material down to ground level after taking the picture the week before.  The larger plant had the cooler + 2 litre.  The smaller one just had a cooler.  They are both significantly better off than the rest.

1 week later you would never know there was a problem, and the beans are just starting to come up.

Current:

This is bed 3.  I direct seeded here a week or two before this picture was taken.

2 weeks later...

And today, from the other side of the bed.  The foreground cheese pumpkin will eventually have a 16 foot run down the legnth of the bed.


This is a little further down bed 3.

Here it is just 2 weeks later, going like gangbusters.

and here is a current pic from the other side.  The blank area will be taken over by the pumpkin, as will the space on the rest of this side once the current denizens come out.


Mid-way down bed 3 - direct-seeded carrots, and some buttercrunch lettuce.

Here it is 2 weeks later from the other side.


This is the end of bed 3.  It has a few daikon radishes and some onions in ito.

1 week later...

2 weeks later.  The onions have thick foliage but have not yet started to bulb.


Bed 4 tomatoes  I lost the originals when we had a frost while I was travelling for business.  These are Marions and Early Girls I picked up at Lowe's.  

1 week later and caged.  Based on site feedback and availability of resources, I went with cattle-panel caged, staked with fence posts on 2 sides.  We will see how it goes.

2 weeks later.


The end of bed 4 is going to have tomatillas and cilantro.  I lost my seedlings for both.  The home store had cilantro, so it went directly in and I direct-seeded more tomatillas in the spaces between.  My logic is the tomatillas will hopefully get sizing up just when the cilantro dies from the heat.

1 week later.

2 weeks later.  Tiny tomatilla seedlings are starting to poke up through the soil, and the cilantro is getting ready to bolt.


Harvest to date is 4 grocery bags of spinach (and counting), 1 bag/4 heads of bok choy, and lots of chinese cabbage.  This year the heat came early an dlike everything else the cabbage was starting to bolt.
Bok Choy

Chinese cabbage; the heads were huge.

MOre Chinese cabbage.  I have some moderate leaf dammage on these but I mostly work with the ribs so not too bad.

It's been crazy at work so the garden didn't really get the care it needs, but between the raised beds and the new water system it seems to have done fairly well without me.

Produce!







There were some pests - little tiny black beetles all over the asian veggies in bed 3.  Lacking time and energy to fight them too hard I declared then not suited to my micro-climate and ripped them out.  Part of my goals with this garden is to find things that aren't too much work to grow, or if they are work that produce enough to make the work worth the effort.



Bed 1

The little black bugs are slowly migrating to this bed as well - I think they like bok choy more that I do, so I am debating pulling these as well.  Sadly, the corn seedlings that are going in here won't be ready for at least another 2 weeks.


Peppers, vining okra, and the only sweet potato to make it through combined neglect/bad weather/illness.  In the background you can see some swiss chard.


It's pretty hard to see but there is some salsify coming up here - another experiment on what grows well in this yard.


The peanuts are just breaking ground.  I did these once before with limited success so I decided to give them another shot.  I am trying to plant things that won't take much work this year, and peanuts seems to mostly be a plant-and-forget kind of crop.


Bed 2

The cabbages are about ready to come out.


Beets planted in with mild white and ichiban eggplants.  The beet roots should be far enough away I can pull them when I am read *crossing fingers*.


...More beets.


Purple potatoes, coming along.  I have had difficulty with these in the past as we get random frosts making it hard to plant early, and once it gets hot they stop producing.  Hopefully this is the year for success!


Mellow yellow beans.  The first bunch died in a late frost so I am running a bit behind, but they should still do well.


Bed 3

Heirloom tan cheese pumpkin.  Does anybody know what the damage on the leaves is from?


Carrots and trombocino squash.


My onions are coming along much better than last year.  I think I planted them early enough this time, as the bulbs are getting fairly large.


Bed 4

This is all pretty much tomatillas (purple and green), tomatoes, and some peas I sowed early that just never did anything until a few weeks ago.  Interestingly enough, I intended them to cascade over the bed but with the fencing holding them somewhat upright they are holding each the rest of the way vertical without a trellis.

Looking good!
How do the broccoli and carrots taste in the spring compared to a fall/winter crop?
And those onions look great!  I'll bring the grill if you got something to slice one with





 

Thanks!  The broccoli and carrots that just came out tasted just like fall-harvested.  Last summer I tried the broccoli variety sunking mid-summer and it tasted very bitter even though it grew perfectly fine.  
Grilled onions sound pretty good!  I am really pleased with how big they are getting.

I started by pulling things as they looked ready.  The onions I was pulling as the tops folded over.






I plant by the weather forecast more than the moon, almanac, or date.   Based on this when it got to the point I wasn't expecting any more not-hot days and the forecast showed a week of overcast and rainy it was time to flip the beds  and pull most of the remaining spring plants.  For sizing reference, the colander is about 2 ft across-  the larger potatoes in the pic are about tennis ball sized or possibly a bit larger.  The 2 grocery bags are full of beets.





Here are the beds post-refresh:

Bed 1
The corn plants I grew from seed using toilet paper roll middles.  I would have liked them to be a bit larger but I wanted to take advantage of the week of rain.

The direct-seeded peanuts are coming along nicely, as is the ridged luffa I grew from seed and transplanted.



Bed 2
The sweet potato seedlings scattered here and there are beauregard's that I pickup up at the local home store to fill in holes.  In the back are some  mellow yellow bush beans.

Corn, eggplant, and suyo long cucumber.  The cucumber was advertised as highly resistant to bitterness.  Since that is what happens to my cukes most years just as the harvest gets decent, I jumped on it.

Here I added some more corn and some pink eye purple hull cow peas.  They are supposed to be semi-bushy and I am hoping the purple color will make the beans easier to find and harvest.


Bed 3
The last of the carrots, some sweet potato slips and the trombocino squash.

Gypsey sweet mini bell peppers, and some burpless bush hybrids I found at the garden store.  I am hoping if the suyo long is a bust these will still provide some cucumbers.


Bed 4
These english peas came up way late but seem to be holding on through the heat.  The spiky tomato-looking things are tomatillas.  I planted both purple and green tomatillas this year to see which ones does better.

Tomatoes, is this year's tomato cage experimental option.

Thanks for the info!  I am hoping they will work well for me.  I mainly bought them because the time to harvest was a lot shorter.  Often with the larger bells by the time I start getting peppers the season is more than half over and I either get a month's worth of peppers for a whole season of growing, or I get a huge glut over a few weeks that I then need to process.  My aim is to get fresh produce over as long a window as I can, and hopefully these will do that for me.

The little black bugs on your asian greens are "flea beetles".

They love asian greens, egg plant, mustards, etc.

They are the reason I moved my asian green production in doors under LED.

I am trying pyrethrin on my eggplant seedlings (also keeping them under cover) to see if I can get them big enough to survive for a few more weeks - flea beetles usually decline mid summer.

Always great to see your updates!

Thanks for the info!  I hadn't seen those before I put out the asian greens - they really do like them.

Harvest








Suyo long cucumbers.  They are spiny, and curled, and odd looking, but wow I peeled one and it was crunchy and not at all bitter, even though it has been in the 90's.  If they stay decent I will plant these every year from now on.   This also has the first tomato of the season.  It's a bit small, and a bit orange, but it's been in the mid-high 90's for the last few weeks so I am happy to get anything.


The beans are coming in nicely.  This bag has 5 1/2 lbs of beans!


The first taster for the baby tromobocino. Baby is relative as you can see it next to the grocery bag for scale.  I will try it and report back to the hive on taste.

I have been putting in crazy hours at work so I haven't been doing much in the garden.  Thankfully I planted with this in mind so it's not doing too badly.  I managed to grab a few pics at 1-week intervals:

Bed 1




















Bed 2

Bed 3



















Bed 4

Looks like you could get a good hit on someone with the tromobocino.  Never seen one of those before.



How is the weather treating you?

They are very mild and crunchy, but they don't have a bunch of flavor.  I would happily use them in a salad with other more flavorful ingredients for cool crunch.  Even growing in temperatures of mid-90's I didn't notice any bitterness; I don't know how they compare to straight 8's though.  

Thanks!  It's been suffering under benign neglect recently but seems to be kicking along okay.

edited-  accidentally hit submit twice.

Hot, humid, and otherwise resembling a post-game locker room.    That being said so far the garden is holding up better than I am.    Trombocino's are an old Italian variety - I believe they were used to breed the butternut variety.  According to what I read when they are young they make a good zucchini substitute, and when properly aged taste like, well, butternuts.  I am crossing my fingers because I keep losing all of my zucchini to svbs and these are supposed to be resistant/unappealing to them.

Looks awesome! I'd say that's pretty good for being "neglected" haha

Thanks!  Between the raised beds and automatic watering it's almost like cheating!    I have been putting in about 30 minutes once a week for the last few weeks, mostly in harvesting and inspection.  I expect that will change once the tomatoes and eggplants really start kicking.

The taste test on the immature trombocino's is in!  They cook up somewhere between the taste of zucchini and summer squash, and the flesh is dense and consistent, with thin soft skin that does not need peeling.  Now if they just survive the FSVB's then I have a summer squash to eat when I want during the garden season, and whatever I don't eat gets automatically turned into a long-keeping winter squash.  Wow.  I wonder why I haven't heard of these before?  

Well, I have been so busy at work I have barely been out in the garden.  I finally spent some time this past weekend to survey the result of my neglect.  Here are the results:

Bad
The eggplants had been turned to lace by flea beetles - I will try some nematodes for next season, but for now I just pulled them.
The cucumbers that started the season so well attracted something that burrowed into each one to grow - NOT good eats.  :(  I will need to pull the plants at some point when I have time.
I am still not getting a decent bell pepper harvest.  Nothing seems to be wrong, I am just not getting a lot of peppers.  Jalapenos grow great, cayenne and banana grow like gangbusters, just no bells.  :(  No idea why.

Average
The string beans hadn't been picked in forever and were ready to come out.  I pulled the plants and grabbed the pods that looked old and dry enough to be next year's seeds so all was not lost.
The yard-long beans fared somewhat better as they are much faster to pick and process since each one is so long.  They are still cranking along with no problems.
I have a bunch of tomatillas coming along, but no harvest sized yet.  Next year I will need to start them sooner.
I only have 2 pumpkins on the tan cheese pumpkin - I think the 16ft bed is about where the fruiting would normally start so if I grow it again I would need to loop it back down the other side of the bed.

Good
The tomato cages worked fairly well.  They would have been better if I had had time to thread the stems through the cage instead of letting them fold down inside which hid a lot of the tomatoes.  Still, I am getting enough tomatoes for fresh eating and compared to beans they are quick to pick.
The peanuts plants are going like gangbusters, and sweet potatoes are growing over everything.
The trombocino squash stopped producing new squashes when I let the first one start to properly mature, but so far it looks like a bumper crop.  
The mild banana peppers are coming in nicely, and I am leaving the jalapenos to turn red.
The pink-eye purple hull peas seem to be a win - the pod stick out from the plants, with long, easy to pick, dak purple pods that can be allowed to dry and shelled for later cooking.  They probably would have been better on a trellis but they did okay as free-standing plants.  I will probably plant them again sometime.
The corn seems to be coming along normally so far and hopefully should be ready to harvest soon.

Overall I tried to plan for less garden time with things like winter squash, corn, and peanuts that need less attending and that seems to be working fairly well.  The fresh items needed a bit more time than I had - if I had noticed the eggplant issue before the plants were decimated I might have been able to save them for example.  

I tried some gypsy's this year - next year I will try the Antohi Romanians.  I think you are right and it is the high heat - they start to do pretty well by September but by then the season is almost over.

I can second this.  I have had success with the mini bells this season.  I also added a shade cloth that covers part of my garden area.  The bell peppers in that area are doing much better.  They are also closer to a rock wall so they get shade sooner.

Thanks guys!

The peppers are finally starting to kick - I have some mini baby bells from a previous recommendation that are ramping up, some sweet bananas and some popsickle sweet bells.  They are finally starting to look like something - as usual I am losing a lot to something that bores into the top to feed and grow.  Looking at the garden going to seed this year from inattention got me to thinking though - they are all hybrids.  If I could stick with a single heirloom that did well in my area, then select from the best peppers each year, I should end up with something that is suited to my micro-climate.  I may be a pipe-dream - I am not planning on isolating individual flowers and going around with paint brushes, just taking the best from each year's crop.  As long as I stick with 1 kind of pepper, or at least put them on opposite sides of the garden, it shouldn't do too badly (I hope).  With that though I am going to try the antohi's I think next year - they are suited to the heat, thick-walled, and heirloom.  As with any gardening experiment, we will see how it goes.  

Also on next year's potential heirloom and save seeds experiment:
Aunt Mary's Sweet Corn
potato onion

Experimenting with seed-saving this year:
Trombocino squash
tan cheese pumpkin
pink eye purple-hull cowpeas

Sadly, the mellow yellow beans to not appear to be heirloom.  I will need to hunt for another brightly colored, prolific, filette-type bush bush to take their place if I want to save seeds for that.

Some of the only eggplants I got out this season before the flea beetles turned the plants into lace doilies.  The white eggplants were listed as bitter-free but unlike the ichibans they have thick skin you need to peel, and the calyx is sharp enough to merit thick gloves when picking.  

I will try adding nematodes for the flea beetles into the soil and see how it goes next year.  Has anyone tried it before, and if so, did it work?  Do they over winter or do you need to re-add them each spring?





The yard-long beans did great but I missed a bunch of them until they were too old and became mealy.  You can see on the left what they should look like, with marginal in the middle and trash on the right side.



More yard-longs, with some purple-hull pink-eye cowpeas, sweet banans, and mellow yellow beans.




The sweet bananas were the first peppers in - I lost a bunch to what is probably slugs - 1/4 inch hole in the top of each pepper and denizen inside.  What was left I have been slicing up and using in a sweet/spicy pickling solution that came out pretty good.  If I have time later I may try it on some of the scads of onions I still have left from the spring planting.





This is where the baby bells and popsickle peppers finally started producing.





Even with only looking at them weekly, the tomatoes did pretty good.  After the frost death and replace early in the season I was left with 1 early girl and 1 marion.  The marion just started producing and most of the offerings were split on the top.  The early girls have produced each of the last 3 years even through our heat, with smooth-shaped, tennis ball sized fruit and good flavor.  It is not an heirloom but it has been around long enough I may experiment and see what comes from the seeds for 1 of my tomatoes next year, and grow from certified seed for the other.  It is listed as no longer protected and there are groups working on stabilizing it now so maybe someone will come up with re-usable seed in the future.







The trombocinos came in like gangbusers - that is a full-sized milk crate some of the are sitting in.  They have been orange for weeks but I was waiting for them to turn the buff tan I was used to from butternut, or for the stems to dry out and I think I waited too long.  If you look at the seed section of the one I cooked it looks like it is starting to go over.  The flesh didn't taste like butternut at all, more like spaghetti squash but if I left it too long it's possible the sugars all turned to starch.  All of this came off of 16 ft of trellis.