In My Alaska Garden — Progress & Solutions
Peppermint -- the unkillable perennial
This week is a bit of a grumpy week for me. The temperature here keeps dipping below 45 degrees at night and we’ve seen it below 50 in the hoop house. Some of the plants are not happy, specifically the tomatoes and the basil.
Here’s hoping the warmer forcast for this week is accurate, although today is not a great start.
Since we talked a great deal about the hoop house last week, I figured we’d take a look at what is going on outside this week. (OK, I’ll admit it…it’s because we actually got some weeding done.)
In the bed closest to the greenhouse:
I planted some “Bright Lights” Swiss Chard seedlings and in my attempt to stagger the harvest, I planted some of the “Bright Lights” seed to the right. I hope they germinate. (BTW, “Bright Lights” has the multi-color stems — absolutely beautiful when mature)
Bright Lights Swiss Chard
I also planted some Romanesco and some larger broccoli seedlings, since the seeds in the other box took awhile to come up (I’ll show those later). Romanesco is a cool, twisted green variant of cauliflower.
Romanesco (top) and Broccoli
And finally, our faithful Peppermint is roaring forth once again. It looks like I may already need to start the harvest!
Peppermint
In the second bed:
This is where I planted the brassica (family of vegetables) seeds:
Little Jade Cabbage
Baby Broccoli
Kale
The seeds somehow ended up in a bunch. So, not only does that bed need to be weeded, I’ll need to transplant and spread out some of the seedlings.
This week, we also (intensely) weeded the “rhubarb patch” and I split and transplanted it. It was desperately needed and I made multiple plants. I’m hoping that, even though the attached leaves look like they are going to die on the transplanted plants, new growth should show up from the root.
Rhubarb
Regarding the hoop house, here are the latest developments…
Josh came up with an excellent solution to the problem of the plastic sheeting “creep” — when the wind blew, it would catch the plastic like a sail and pull it upward, causing the binder clips holding it at the bottom to either pop off or slide up with it.
Josh (with help from Morrigan and a friend’s son) used 2x4s, plywood and big bolts and screws to hold everything in place:
Bottom of Hoop House (outside)
Bottom of Hoop House (inside)
The house was just finished yesterday and already the inside temps are reflecting it. I hope to see the grumpy plants get much happier.
We’ve both come up with what (we hope) is a workable solution to the doors to make them relatively easy to open and close, yet will alxo keep them from flapping in the wind. When we get them done (and if they work), I’ll take pictures and show you for next time.
How goes your garden?
I had minor back surgery in April. My seeds got planted late, transplanted late and I bought some plants to get started. The tomato plants went in mother’s day, third year in a row we have been able to plant early. Rule of thumb here used to be Memorial Day.
We had a great start to summer, warm and sunny. This weekend turned cold and rainy and is going to rain and be chilly for the whole week.
The veggies look good, but hope we get some sun and warmer weather soon.
I am running the dehydrator daily, trying to keep up with the herbs. Boy, are they vigorous this year! Already well over a cup of dried ground sage, and if that stuff doesn’t slow down, everyone is going to get sage for the holidays in five gallon buckets.
Clearing space to start canning and freezing in earnest in about two weeks.
I am glad you got your hoop house to behave. I am sure you are going to love it.
Live nasturtiums. They make a simple summer salad just elegantly good. Our early lettuces and spinach are finished.
I am SOOO late with my garden this year that I didn’t even bother planting the snap peas or beets. I had a four day weekend over Memorial Day but it was way too hot to do anything outside. It was supposed to rain the last two days so I anticipated being stalled even more but, fortunately, the rain held off for most of the day on Saturday and the temperatures were delightfully cool.
I managed to get all of my leaf compost and composted manure dug into the veggie bed and my veggie plants planted on Saturday. This year I put in tomatoes (three kinds), peppers (two kinds), cucumbers (two kinds), basil and oregano plants. It did rain on and off yesterday, but I was able to put the seeds in for almost everything else (spinach, lettuce, carrots, dill, parsley and pole beans) between the showers. I was very pleased because we’re getting lots of showers and cool temperatures for the next few days that will help the plants adjust to their new home. I also decided to try zucchini one more time and see if I can grow it without powdery mildew destroying it like it’s done the last three times.
Now if I can just keep the baby bunnies out of my lettuce once it sprouts, I’ll be a happy camper!
I seem to always get to these great Sunday posts on Monday. Guess better late than not at all 🙂 This year’s growing seems to be the time for chewing things, even on things like the rhubarb.
It is driving me crazy as the critter picks and chooses even between cauliflowers, going after one variety but not another right next to it, and my peas. Absolutely driving me nuts, no evidence, no worms or bugs sited, just the chewing of the leaves. Bt is ordered and then off to making a cloud of it over all possible victims.
Josh is a cleaver guy and hopefully the door issue will work equally as well. My items are behind yours, with tomatoes going out this week. We are going to try hooping inside the tunnel to help keep things warm, at least until the plants get too tall.
Keep up great reporting, I love seeing and hearing how others are doing things!!
I’ve been puzzling about how to economically keep your raised beds warmer..one of the guys I work with uses solar heater panels to warm his aboveground swimming pool – it;s in the redwoods, so the pool doesn’t get much direct sunlight. A variation of this may be a 55 gal drum, painted black with inlet at the bottom and outlet at the top, and something as simple as garden hose going into and out of the raised beds, with maybe one or two coils in the dirt. Once the water warms up, it takes a lot for it to cool down.so it should (in theory) keep the bed s warm at nite. you could always put the drum up on cionder blocks and light a fire under it to warm the water up… turn the outlet off durng the day until the warm warms up enough from the preceding nite’s cool down. theorically, it should circulate on its own.. but we all know theories don’t always work the way we want them too.. so a small pump to get it flowing right may be needed.
Mu own garden is chugging away, but the deer are getting to be an issue- they’ve started stripping leaves from my plum tree and breaking branches, already had my first harvest of raspberries, and am having to go to a higher hoop house cuz the tomato plants are pushing up against the top ! 5 ft ain’t enough! next weekend will be adding more deer fencing to the yard, and oiling the shotgun ! there were 4 of them in the yard last nite !! can I borrow somebody’s smoker ???
Linda, lovely column. Romanesco is in the brassica family, too (cruciferous vegetables). I love it, truly. It’s as beautiful as it is delicious.
Linda, a word of warning on your Swiss chard seeds that you planted: Keep a very close eye out for cutworms. They really have a taste for Swiss chard (at least, that’s been my experience). It’s depressing to come out to check your garden and find all your little seedlings cut off at ground level. The starts have a much better chance once a few sets of true leaves show up.
What do cutworms look like?
http://community.adn.com/node/141652
here’s a cool way to deal with them… they are really caterpillars, not worms but they can mow things off at the ground level.
here in SE it’s the cabbage moth larva caterpillar which chows its way through stuff like mad.
bleah. BtK works on them though…
They’re fat little caterpillar looking things, gray or whitish, that hang out right under the surface. You can make collars for your plants out of plastic disposable cups. Just cut a strip a couple of inches wide all the way around the cup and then stick it in the ground surrounding your plant. Since the cutworms operate around the surface of the dirt they won’t dive below the collar.
bT works, too, I think.
This is my first year doing swiss Chard. I also chose the bright lights and they are so pretty, I have to harvest them. I could easily put them in the flower bed in front. I spent most of my weekend doing some serious weeding in the herb and vegetable gardens and top dressed with compost. We finally had some measurable rain the other night and the weeds all perked up. My corn is almost waist high! Now if I can keep the aphids off of it this time! Last year those buggars got all the corn. I’m thinking of constructing a hoop house over a couple of my beds this fall to extend my season. I need more room to plant more beans and peas as well. 😀
I always plant some of the bright -lights chard in a big pot with nasturiums and purple hues of violets and violas – beautiful!
Also plant a lot in the garden 🙂
That’s a great idea! I did nasturtiums in a hanging pot this year. Yours must be really colorful.
Both the leaves and the flowers are edible. Nasturtium adds a bright, peppery flavor to salad.