Fruit!
(From left to right--Super 100 cherry tomatoes, Fourth of July tomatoes, Miracle Sweet tomatoes):

Vegetable garden shots from this morning:

Two shots, from this morning, of the herb garden. Notice how out-of-control the mint gets (upper left corner). It grows like a weed, and we usually prune and trash it to control it more than we pick it to use it. (Mary's friend Michelle was telling us last week that she was told to plant mint in a box or something under the soil. This would make complete sense as it would contain its roots. Maybe we'll start over with the mint next season and try this tactic.)

The cilantro is coming along nicely. Maybe one more week til harvest. The key is to pick it before its leaves start thinning and it goes to seed.

Here are a couple of late-day photos of the garden and the Better Boy, Early Girl Bush, and Super Sweet 100 tomato plants (respectively) from last Friday, June 21. Sorry for the week delay, but I will try to get up-to-date this weekend.

Just got done converting the photos over from Boomspeed to MSN-hosted. The problem with Boomspeed's free service is slow load times. Plus they limit the amount of free space they'll give you. MSN is our DSL provider and they offer us 30MB of space. But I was having problems communicating how I wanted to utilize this space to host photos that would load on an "outside" webpage. Finally, I just asked them if there is a way to host a picture of an item I am trying to sell on Ebay and where would I find the "public" url for that photo. This concept they understood immediately and promptly emailed me instructions for doing so. Voila, all pics are now hosted here. Money talk, bullshit walk.

Sorry I haven't been updating the garden info, I'm testing out hosting pics at MSN while I figure out if Boomspeed took a total crap or not. (If the rest of the images on the page are broken, it's because this did happen.) Anyway, so I'm sitting on some fresh pics and if MSN will pull through, I'll have to go back and upload the old phots and redo each post to update urls. It may take a little while. In the meantime...

The Dr. Bronner's Soap spray seems to be doing the trick on the tomato leaves.

The new arugula is already coming up.

Here are my favorite flowers from Mary's flower garden (pics taken 6/9, the bloom is now off):

We just got back from a week-long vacation out of town. Our gardens and flowers are still kicking thanks to Marnie. Thanks Marnie! Expect to be in line early and often come harvest time. :)

On a sad note, the new Diva cucumber that I had just planted looks like it was dug up by a squirrel. I will be replacing it with a just-purchased Burpless cucumber plant. Also, the arugula never survived the bugs that were getting to it early on and I had to replant it (from seed).

Mary and I were out there this morning pulling weeds and trimming the booming tomato plants. Everything is coming along nicely. I will put up some new pics this weekend so that you can see the progress.

Planted a new Diva cucumber plant today to replace the dead one:

I cut down the oregano today and placed the trimmings between sheets of newspaper for effective drying:

See how tall the oregano is getting? Every year, around this time, the oregano goes off the richter scale and shoots up to about a foot tall. When it does this, the new growth gets thinner towards the top, and then it flowers. After the oregano flowers, its growth tends to slow down dramatically and it thins out. In the past, we've tried to combat this by trimming the plant to thin it out ourselves. Didn't help. We tried topping it off, just below the flowering point. Didn't help either. This article suggests harvesting all of the oregano before it flowers, just above the bottom leaves. Apparently, the oregano will regenerate within 2 weeks. We'll be able to use some of the fresh oregano, but I guess we will have to dry the rest if we do this. I'll let you know.

After consulting a few gardening message board for solutions holes in the tomato leaves problem, I think we'll try a soapy water spray and see how that works. This thread suggests a few drops of Dr. Bronner's (the killer camp soap with the wacked-out label) in a spray bottle, filling it 3/4 with water, and then thoroughly spraying the leaves of the plants.

Resources: BHG boards, answer already posted | Vegsource boards, no answer found | Soapy water solution confirmed here | HGTV boards, no answer found | Jerry Baker's formula, a little more involved

Update: Sprayed the tomatoes and arugula last night. Will do this every four days for a while and see if it works.

We made this recipe using some fresh sage from our garden. It's easy and highly recommended:

Hot Turkey Sandwiches with Sherry Gravy

Here's how the late additions to the herb garden are looking today:



The two new basil plants with the existing green make three. And the parsley is looking strong so far. But, I'm still a little skeptical.

Up to date! Here are some pics from today:



Note the size of the Super 100 tomato plant on the right. Very nice.



Fruit on the California Wonder (green bell) peppers and flowers on the Matt's Wild Cherry tomato. Sweet. However, there are a couple of problems...



The Matt cherry leaves still have holes (haven't done my pest control homework yet), and I fear our Diva cucumber is dead afterall.

Here are a couple of blurry shots, from May 31, of some leaf damage on the arugula and tomato plants. The holes appear as white spots on the tomato:



I will consult some garden forums for a solution and update you on my findings.

Here are two shots of the herb garden on May 30 (note 2 new basils in lower right--one purple):

I read on the internet somewhere (two summers ago, I think) about planting crops on raised soil, effectively creating troughs on either side of the plants' roots, and thereby facilitating the plants' access to nutrients. Seemed to make sense. Doing some digging, I found this piece on raised bed gardening, but it seems to imply planter-type gardening. Oh well, works for us. Here are a couple of photos of the raised crops:

Here's the aftermath from the next morning, Friday, May 24:



All of the plants survived, but the Diva cucumber is a little touch and go.

On Thursday night, May 23 there was a forecast for a rain/snow mix in the Denver area with temperatures expected in the low 30's. Maybe not freezing, but definitely frost. Typical Denver spring. Last year we were out there tarping the garden in June! We covered the garden with a large plastic sheet the covers the whole thing. We also covered the basil and rosemary.

Here is the planted garden on May 17:



And here are closeups of each sector--A, B, and C:



Note the wire cones around the tomato plants to help with containment and support of the plants. The largest cones are reserved for the two cherry-type plants which tend to grow the largest. They were planted on the ends for that reason.

We then organized the plants that we purchased in the decided planting pattern (clockwise from top left): Fanfare Cucumber, Diva Cucumber, Matt's Wild Cherry Tomato, Celebrity Tomato, Miracle Sweet Tomato, 4th of July Tomato, Better Boy Tomato, Early Girl Bush Tomato, Super Sweet 100 Tomato, Jalapeno Pepper, 2 Anaheim Peppers, 2 Sun Bell (Yellow) Peppers, 2 Red Beauty Peppers, 2 California Wonder (Green) Peppers, Cilantro (slow bolting) from seed, and Arugula from seed. The perimeter of the garden will be planted with Marigolds for pest control.




We decided to go with six tomato plants this year (we wound up with seven). This was down from probably 20 the first year because we didn't know any better and from maybe 10 last year--still too many for a garden this size. You have to really prune back tomato plants by cutting the limbs without flowers off (we'll cover more in-depth later), and if you don't keep up with this task, the vines get unruly and tend to take up more room than they should. We have addressed this issue by swearing (again) this year to do a better job of pruning, but just in case we planted less too. Most of the tomatoes were carefully decided upon. Two cherry-type tomatoes for snackability and deliciousness, two early fruiters (Early Girl and 4th of July) to help spread the wealth so to speak, and a variety of medium-sized sweet tomatoes. We have found that when we tried large varieties (think Beefsteak tomatoes), that the birds get to them first or they kind of fry in the sun before completely ripening.

The quantity of peppers was upped this year even though we have generally been disappointed by plant output from the bell-type peppers. Anaheims are necessary for creating smoked chili peppers and making green chili. The jalapenos tend to grow really well and can even be dried at seasons end.

From seed we will be growing arugula and cilantro again. These are favored crops for their many uses in the kitchen.

Status of herb garden (two views) on May 16:



Herbs (clockwise from top left): Mint (perennial, planted 2000), Chives (perennial, planted 2000), Sweet Basil (annual, planted approx. May 1), Oregano (perennial, planted 1999), Thyme (perennial, planted 2001), Rosemary (annual, planted approx. May 1), Sage (perennial, planted 1999).

Most of the herbs are perennials. We have planted different herbs over the years and have settled a few that we like as "annual" fill-ins to go with the existing perennials. This year, in addition to the Sweet Basil and Rosemary that we planted on about May 1, we will also add two additional basil plants and a parsley plant to the mix. This will probably be our third attempt at getting parsley to flourish--it hasn't yet. But Mary convinced me that the particular Italian Parsley variety that we picked out looked extra hearty. She's right, so let's hope it grows well.

Two views of the empty garden on May 16:




Note that the garden will divided into 3 sectors--A, B, and C:

Okay, a bit of an experiment. This weblog was created as an attempt to chronicle, electronically, the Keenan family garden of 2002. I will regularly update the status of our crops (including photographs of the progress), and hope to sporadically include bits of wisdom found on the web, gardening tips, and recipes. Since we actually planted the garden on May 16, I will have to condense the first three weeks for you in the course of the next few posts. Let me know what you think.