2006  Garden  Journal

revised  Saturday, October 28, 2006

Overall 2006 was one of the most productive gardens I've had in a long time.  Lack of sufficient time to harvest and weed continue to be a problem.  I canned over 10 gallons of tomato juice, canned & froze corn, and froze allot of  green peppers.

This year, I did not cover the black plastic with straw.  The tomatoes & peppers actually liked it better; probably because it cause the soil to get hotter.  Other area gardeners have complained that their tomatoes didn't do nearly as well.  Tomatoes and peppers like the hotter soil.

October 28......Today the garden was put to bed for the winter.  The darker  rows in this picture are where the tomato rows are located.

October 12   The temperature begins to drop and the first frost is to hit tonight.  This is the last harvest  of peppers (note Chocolate variety) .   Say goodbye to the Brandywine,  Super Sweet 100, Golden Jubilee, Celebrity tomatoes & Candy corn.

September 2... ...Canning is what I do with most of those zillions of tomatoes.

August 26

Some of the Candy corn was turned into Iowa corn relish.   Peppers did very well too.

Tomatoes are the determinant type Celebrity, the big producing  Roma type, Golden Jubilee & Super Sweet 100 which seemed to have the best resilience to leaf disease. 

August 17...

Tomatoes - Brandywine variety produced some large toms but was susceptible to leaf disease, fruit rot & catfacing.   It was a better producer than prior year's Mortgage Lifter variety but not worth growing again. 

The unknown Roma variety was the best producer but had some leaf disease.

All three varieties of pepper plants seen three days earlier.  

 

August 3......

Corn - The corn had barely meet the old rule-of-thumb  "knee high by the the forth of July".   Today I harvested the first ears of corn which show incomplete pollination (missing kernels).   Here you can see the immature and the mature tassels on the corn.

Peppers - Ready for harvest.  Here are the 3 varieties:  Garden Leader, Ace, Chocolate Beauty.

Tomatoes - Golden Jubilee plant & fruit, Celebrity plant & fruit,  Brandywine plant & fruit, Super Sweet 100.   The Supersonic plants clearly were mislabled at Brenan's Nursery.  They are actually a pear shaped variety.  :-(     Both the Brandywine & pear varieties already have wilt.

Commodore bush beans

 

June 30 - The garden plants doubled it height during the last 10 days, mainly due to rain early on.

June 24......

        I'm not retired so here's how I weed my garden paths (why fight it)

        Golden Jubilee , Celebrity , Sweet Sweet 100 , Supersonic , Brandywine  tomatoes

        photos of the corn , peppers and beans

June 10 - caged the rest of the tomatoes ; early morning rain

June 8 - reinforced bare spots in the beans and corn rows with additional seed.

         95%  Corn is up, standing 2" tall

June 5 .. following a couple of rainy days everything is coming up

          The corn has about 5% up thru the soil.   The bush beans are around 50% up too. 

          Tomato plants are growing quicker than normal.  

          Pepper plants are doing well too, except for one that bugs worked over.

May 30.. ...planted  peppers & more tomatoes 

     Sweet Peppers - 4 Garden Leader (red), 4 Chocolate Beauty (brown), 4 Ace (green)

     Tomatoes - 2 Golden Jubilee,  9 Celebrity (still need caged)

May 29 - planted  beans, corn

     33' long row of  Livingston Commodore bush bean  (Kentucky Wonder type)

     two 30' rows of  Candy Corn

May 27 -  began garden

      planted  tomatoes on 29" centers - 2 Super Sweet 100,  11 Supersonic,  3 Brandywine