Random Thoughts for a Monday

• We finally started summer this weekend! Highs in the 90s! YAY! I don't think we broke 90 degrees the whole month of July.
  
• I'm taking Master Gardener applications until Friday, August 14. The program will begin September 10, meets every Thursday from 9 til noon.
• Can you believe it's August already -- and the kids are already in school.
• Think about ordering garlic bulbs for planting in October.
• Our dog likes sweetcorn -- she steals an ear, shucks it, and eats it. I've got to get that on tape.
• If more people saw and smelled rotten tomatoes, fewer people would like them (I worked all weekend in tomatoes)
  

We Know Early Blight, but Late Blight??

Yes, late blight, the potato famine, a disease we rarely EVER see in Kentucky is here. And with a vengeance, especially in Eastern KY. This disease attacks both potatoes and tomatoes and has been diagnosed on tomatoes in Kentucky in the following counties: Laurel, Larue, Jackson, Breathitt, Johnson, Montgomery, and Wolfe.

Late blight is a fast-moving disease that has very much enjoyed the cool, damp, cloudy weather that we've had pretty much all this summer.

We are highly encouraging gardeners to scout their tomatoes (and potatoes) for this disease. Fungicides are recommended -- something like chlorothalonil (Daconil, Fungonil) or mancozeb/maneb.

For those of you doing things organically, use fixed copper or Oxidate. Under high disease pressure, even these will not work.

Let me know if you see anything suspicious in your gardens!

Summer Harvest

I've been patiently waiting on my 'Purple Haze' (All-America selection) carrots to make a root. Here's what I got:

One turned out orange. I'm unaware of the stability of the purple color. Or maybe a stray seed just got packaged up in error. Look at the interior of this carrot! Great stuff! I took a bite before realizing I wanted to take a picture....

And here is one of my 'Diva' cucumbers, also an All-America selection. Not a spine on it, smooth as a baby's butt.

Rain-soaked Garlic

As anyone who lives here is well aware, we have had a LOT of rain in 2009. Our unscientific rain count is up to almost 31 inches here at our office. We are ahead of the airport, who is officially about 7 inches above normal. WOW.

Every book/article/publication I read about garlic says 'Don't water up to 2 weeks before harvesting garlic'. Well, try doing that this year! Some of the garlic is 50-75% dead, so to me, it's harvesting time, regardless of whether or not we've had 2 weeks of dry. Here's what I pulled up today.

I took a picture of them uncleaned to show just how gobby and wet it was. This bed is still mostly clay, even though we add organic matter every year. The variety pictured is 'Belarus' I think. We had a lot of plant death due to onion maggots and bacterial soft rot which made my rows out of whack.


They've been hung up with the other 8 bulbs I harvested 3 days ago. Here's a weird thing, I planted some garlic at home about 2-3 weeks BEFORE this garlic and none of it is ready to harvest yet. Not sure what that tells me except different sites, same varieties, different harvest time -- it's all about your site, I reckon.

Carrots in Containers

Yep, I'm a weirdo. When it comes to plants, I try things that sometimes aren't normal. Most of the time I fail , but every once in a while, well, I hit the jackpot.


Look at these carrots I grew in a half-gallon milk jug. I can't remember when I sowed the seeds exactly but it was in the late winter. I thought 'What the heck', see if I can get a few fresh carrots from a windowsill. Truthfully, they've been sitting outside for about a month, but the germination and early growth was on a south-facing windowsill.

You'll notice some black holes in the container where there's still one carrot left -- that's where I pulled them from. My 2 kids were amazed, but we ate them last night along with new potatoes harvested from our compost pile! ha

Square foot gardening

I'm doing a couple of 4 x 4 foot square foot gardens at home. It's been interesting, to say the least. I've planted carrots, spinach (which has already been eaten/yanked), and fingerling potatoes.

The potatoes have been interesting to watch -- the Square Foot Gardening book (by Mel Bartholomew) says to plant 4 potatoes per square (12" x 12"). I barely covered them at first, then as they grew, I piled more and more soil mix/compost around them.There are 3 different varieties of fingerlings in this 4 x 4. It's weird how different potato plants can look.

Cover Crops -- Built-in Nitrogen

Just today, Greg B came by and helped me take down the crimson clover and the kale which had both overwintered in my small raised bed gardens by the Extension office. We took a weedeater and cut them down, then took a little tiller and whisked them into the soil.

Here are before and after photos:

First is the kale
Second is the crimson clover