chicken-soup-blog

My Tallest Tomato Plant - Organic Garden

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:32:19 +0100

This is the height of my tallest tomato plant, its just slightly over 6 1/2 feet tall.

This called "Early Girl Tomato" and it was the smallest of the 3 I planted and I wasn't sure it was going to be healthy and survive.

Made a batch of pickles

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 05:54:59 +0100

Well I can now consider this garden experience a complete success. I always wanted to make my own pickles and today I had the chance to taste a couple and I couldn't be more happy with how they turned out.

I wasn't too sure if they'd be as good as the ones my friends grandfather used to make but I have to admit these turned out incredible.

They were really easy to make, and I plan on making at least another 5 or 6 jars of them before the end of the season, hopefully. I started these cucumber plants from seed this year, and you can see in the lower left corner of this pick what they looked like on June 16th:

Here is a picture I took of them last night, it was starting to get dark but you can see how much they've grown in 45 days and they've already produced quite a few cucumbers:

Here is what I've gotten from them so far:

And finally the recipe:

It was inspired by Dan Koshansky's refrigerator pickles

I just took some notes for my own reference during the process, as to my exact measurements:

8 cups water (2 qts) - this was way more than needed but better than not enough I guess.

3/4 cup vinegar per qt of water - I used 1 1/2 cups total

I put fresh organic baby dill on the bottom of the jar (sanitized the jars in boiling water for 15 mins)

1 tbsp of pickling spice

1/2 tsp of mustard seed

1/2 tbsp of dried garlic

1/4 tbsp of dried garlic on top after packing in the pickles

Little more dill on top and then added the vinegar and pickling salt to the 2 qts of boiling water.

Poured brine into jars, wiped lids dry (they will rust if you don't) and put into the fridge.

I tried a small one after 24 hours or so and it was great, the others are starting to get a little darker green (looking more like pickles) so I'll wait a bit before I try a big one.

These are just unbelievably good, so fresh and nothing like store bought pickles. Can't wait to pick more cucumbers and make more of these.

How to setup a trellis

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:50:03 +0100

I spent the day setting up a new trellis in the garden. It wasn't too difficult and I'll probably do some more work on it to improve the support as the plants begin to climb.

I primarily did this because the cucumbers were beginning to sprawl and I didn't want to be overrun with them taking over the garden.

Looking at the previous post Slugs and Soil the garden seems to be growing nicely in the last month. We've been getting a lot of sun here and I've been watering them every other day or so with the drip irrigation hose. I've also spread some egg shells to help give them some calcium.

At this point we've only really gotten some beans out of the garden. I've picked a couple jalapenos but no strawberries, tomatoes, cucumbers or green peppers yet. I think in the next few days I'll be able to pick the first cucumber as its probably about 4" and I have two that size.

I am going to be looking into how to make pickles because that was my primary reason for doing the garden, as you can tell from the amount of cucumber plants I have.

Slugs and Soil Today

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 04:51:50 +0100

The Garden - Today I did a lot outside from organizing the garage, to cutting the lawn to working on the garden. A few things I did in the garden today should make a difference.

I went to Home Depot and grabbed 5 bags of garden soil, a container of slug / snail poison, and a couple tomato cages.

The soil was primarily because I dug out some existing dirt around the cucumbers, I would have really saved myself a ton of work if I would have made the mounds / berms prior to transplanting the starter plants. Instead I took the shovel and dug out around them because it seems that this would really inhibit growth and allow the water to easily able to get to the roots from the ground and not by just soaking down into the plant. It also allowed me to loosen up the soil which should help get the roots growing better. The other main reason I dug these out was because I wanted to add more dirt around the plants for nutrients but it would have caused many of them to get covered.

The cages should help with the tomatoes, although one bit of advice. I spent too long trying to get the legs down into the ground, kept hitting rocks. I ended up getting a pair of diagonal cutters from the garage and trimming off about half the length so they could get go into the ground and be secure.

I also used some more bamboo sticks to help guide the beans up their own poles. We'll see if they actually start to climb because I haven't seen them start doing any climbing just yet.

The next step will be to take a soil sample and test to determine the quality of the soil.

Finally as you can see in this picture there are some pellets that encircle the entire garden. These are hopefully going to resolve the slug problem, they are getting out of control. I also need to go to the guy in Seattle who sells the ladybugs and set them free to feast on the aphids.

Finally Some Rain In Seattle

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 02:57:53 +0100

Seattle, WA - It was 10 minutes away from setting a new record for the longest span without rain since 1982 where it lasted 29 days.

It was at the beginning of this long stretch of rainless weather in Seattle that I started planting my first garden. I planted a few vegetables that were starter plants from Home Depot and also a couple packets of Boston Pickling cucumber seeds. I was really surprised when almost all of them sprouted.

When I was younger my friend's grandfather used to grow cucumbers and make pickles that were so incredibly good I knew that I would try it someday.

So I'm thinking I should have quite a nice turnout eventually, but without any experience in this I'd be happy just to get a couple to grow and produce.

Here are some pictures of the plants.

The overall view:

Cucumbers where I started the seeds, and three starter plants:

The cucumber patch that I had to move from the original location to here simply due to the overwhelming number of seeds that sprouted:

The tomato plant, one of three:

I don't like tomatoes, these are for the girls.

The jalapeno plant just produced a flower, can't wait to see the pepper!

The blue lake beans, don't know why their called blue lake but I did put some bamboo sticks in for them to climb.

And some walla walla onions which I'm anxious to try because I love onions.

The anticipation of this garden to produce has been a lot of fun. Aside from battling the slugs, aphids, and other insects that are feasting on them, I have confidence that it should grow some good stuff. I haven't done a ton of reading about gardening so I'm open to hear tips and suggestions. One thing I think might be worth doing is that black paper or felt, that you lay down to prevent the weeds from growing, and I do need to do something about the bugs. I tried an organic spray but it left some black spots on many of the plants so I won't use anything other than natural from now on. I hear that there is a lady bug guy in Seattle that sells ladybugs to release in the garden to eat the other bugs. I don't think it will solve the slug problem, but maybe the aphids.

The New Garden

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:25:05 +0100

June 15 2009

The garden is coming along great.