Svalli gardening 63° N

[svalli]

We have started our four week summer vacation this week and first thing to do was going to country side and work in the vegetable plot. Even I use plastic and organic on mulch, there was a lot of weeding to do.

Garlic had scapes growing and I removed most of them leaving just two on each variety.

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Potato rows were looking good and Mozart was first to have flowers. Thanks to the black plastic on top of the potato beds and the stems being so large already, there was no weeding or mulching needed. Only one small row on the side is covered with hay from old hay bales and those needed a bit more hay on the top.

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Garlic has some yellow tips on the leaves, but otherwise I am quite happy how everything is growing this year. I have mostly potatoes, onions, leeks and garlic growing there with some short rows of carrots, beets and kale.

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While we were away from the city someone or something had picked ripening tomato, which I was anxiously waiting for. One of my Grinch Cherry Dwarf plants has regular leaves and bigger than cherry tomatoes ripening to brown. I had left the first one to ripen fully and it had disappeared. I found one small green one on the ground and the edge of the containers has some scratching or claw marks on it. I suspect magpies, because there is a family of them rummaging on our yard early mornings. I had already covered strawberry containers with tulle and curtains and now I have a net covering also all dwarf tomatoes.
My backyard potted plants are mixture of edible plants and some unusual and interesting flowers. With all the various size and shape containers, it may look a bit untidy and not so stylish, but it provides us something to eat and also something to look at.

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Sari

[svalli]

My corn has now tassels growing and one plant has silks showing, so maybe we get at least one ear, if pollination is success and first frost does not come too early. Even if we do not get any harvest, the plants look quite cool in the back side of my small city garden.

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[svalli]

Cucumbers are soon growing out from the greenhouse. Longest vines are about 15' long and have grown from back of the greenhouse to the front. I have removed all older yellowing leaves, so the stems on the back of the greenhouse are quite bare and now there is a canopy of cucumbers in the middle of greenhouse. Neighbors, relatives and anyone who visits us is getting cucumbers without asking. Nine plants was maybe a bit too many.

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Sari

[worth1]

You can only eat so many cucumbers and all of a sudden they're gone and you wish you had one.

[GoDawgs]

Being reminded of Gotch's "National Sneak Some Zucchini On Your Neighbor's Porch Day", it looks like you're ready to sneak some cukes instead of zukes!

[svalli]

Being reminded of Gotch's "National Sneak Some Zucchini On Your Neighbor's Porch Day", it looks like you're ready to sneak some cukes instead of zukes!

I have only one zucchini plant, so luckily we are not getting too many zukes. It is a parthenocarpic variety, which produces fruit even as single plant.

[NarnianGarden]

Looks awesome! I really need to get wire lika that (the blue that keeps your outside plants neatly and tightly together).. Mine are always in danger of falling over .. no support is strong enough..

[svalli]

I harvested all onions grown from sets on Saturday and brought those home. I remembered the mini greenhouse thing, which I got for seedlings in the spring and set it up to use as drying rack for onions. This year we did not get any huge ones, but the average size is OK to be used in kitchen.

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The onions grown from seeds in my city garden have still so good looking leaves that I will let them grow few more weeks.

Sari

[worth1]

Nice onions.

[MissS]

Yes. Those onions are gorgeous!

[bower]

Onion rainbow, wow, you will feel the cheer and be glad of those all winter long.

[GoDawgs]

Beee-uuuuuuuu-tiful! Well done, Svalli! Here I have to plant in the fall and harvest in the spring. I so wish our spring weather temperatures weren't so variable. Warm, cold, warm, cold. Most years the poor onions get confused and start bolting before sizing up. I will try, try, try again and hope they're as nice as yours.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@worth1; "You can only eat so many cucumbers and all of a sudden they're gone and you wish you had one."

Bravo Indigo November Golf Oscar!

@svalli; we're having a WELL_ABOVE_AVERAGE Cuke year here, too.

And those onions are really something, absolutely marvelous! I've never had any luck growing them, and then decided to move to more vertically productive planting.

The Gotch

[svalli]

Today when we came home from work during a bad thunderstorm with pouring rain and hail I was shocked to see the towering corn and lush tomato bushes, which I had just admired previous evening.
The corn may have survived without damage, but tomatoes were badly hit. Luckily the tomatoes on other side of the house had not been affected, but most of the ones grown for salsa and canning were ruined
I tried lifting up the tomato plants and picked 4 kg of ripe ones, which I had planned to pick up tonight. A lot of branches were broken with green tomatoes hanging in them. This year I could have picked the best harvest of tomatoes, which I have grow here in Finland, but now it does not look too good.

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[bower]

Oh, what a shame! Sari, we often get perfectly ripe tomatoes by spreading those green ripe ones in a cardboard box or laid on paper in a 1020 tray in one layer and just covered with another sheet of paper. IDK how much it depends on variety, some are even perfectly tasty when ripened that way, but for cooking or sauce probably those would do just as well. I usually freeze those for cooking anyway and eat what is best from the vine.
Another thing I've done with broken branches that are healthy like yours, just take a bucket of water and stand them up in the drink. They will happily stay alive and properly ripen those immature fruit.
Your plants are looking really healthy! Except for the hail.

[GoDawgs]

@Bower That's a neat trick with the bucket and stems with greenies on it. Filing that away for future reference!

@svalli What a mess! All that hard work torn up. It seems that things like this always happen when there's a "best year ever" thing going on. I sure would give some broken branches the Bower Treatment. Can't hurt to try. Well, there's always fried green tomatoes, pickled green tomatoes and green salsa to try and make the best of a bad situation.

I bet your corn stands back up all by itself.

[svalli]

That disaster last week revealed an other kind of problem hiding in the dense tomato bushes. Tomato Moth (Lacanobia oleracea) caterpillars were having a feast behind the leaves and eating leaves and green fruits. I have been picking and killing many of them every night and still I find some of them hiding and munching.

Despite the challenges I harvested many ripe tomatoes yesterday and made six and half quarts of canned salsa.

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Sari

[rossomendblot]

Beautiful tomatoes!

We have had problems with the same moth this year, here it is called Bright-line Brown-eye. They only attacked the leaves of the tomatoes in my greenhouse, I caught them early so maybe they didn't get big enough to start on the fruit. They have been eating the basil and pepper leaves too.

[svalli]

We have had problems with the same moth this year, here it is called Bright-line Brown-eye. They only attacked the leaves of the tomatoes in my greenhouse, I caught them early so maybe they didn't get big enough to start on the fruit. They have been eating the basil and pepper leaves too.

I did not know that those things eat also basil. I have to check my lettuce leaf basil, which had some holes on the leaves. I was suspecting snails and put Ferramol around the basil, but it does not help against these caterpillars.

[svalli]

I am not quite sure, if growing onions from seeds here is worth the effort. I started the seeds indoors in February and kept the seedlings under lights in garage for two months, before I could move them to greenhouse. When planted in a small pallet collar bed, I had to cover them with a row cover to prevent onion maggot flies from getting to them.Three Ailsa Craig grew to what I expected and are bigger than the Sturon grown from sets in the field. Rossa lunga di Firenze is the other kind I grew from seeds and those may be about the size, which they normally grow.

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If I do still grow onions from seeds, I may plant those to field instead of the small pallet collar.