Svalli gardening 63° N

[AKgardener]

Everything looks great..

[svalli]

Potatoes and onion sets are now in the ground. It got a bit too warm yesterday to do heavy work, but we can get to our garden in the countryside only during weekends, so we cannot choose the weather. Summer has been definitely switched on and whole coming week will be warmer than normal with highs in the forecast being above 25°C.

I planted six different varieties of onions and twelve varieties of potatoes. Quantities were smaller than previous years, because I decided to pay attention to quality and varieties and not the quantity.

I have two Finnish heirloom potato onion varieties and then I ordered online Birnenförmige, Corrado and Crusado sets and bought Red Baron and Sturon from a local garden center. Onions grown last year did not store well, so now I selected varieties which are better suited for storage. There is still room on the onion row, so I may buy leek seedlings, since I did not grow those myself this year.

Potato varieties grown this year are Alexandra, Amandine, Annabelle, Cherie, Heiderot, Juliet, La Ratte, Mayan Gold, Mozart, Pocahontas, Red Emmalie and Sarpo Mira. All others were from my crop grown last year except Alexandra and Juliet are new varieties to me.

Garlic is growing fine, but unfortunately I did not have time to check the rows of how many did not come up.

Potatoes and onions planted 20240526.jpg

This year I have wider paths between rows and those need still be covered with some type of mulch or the landscape fabric to prevent weeds from growing. DH was cutting seasoned birch logs for firewood, so I spread some of the sawdust on one of the paths.

[svalli]

We are getting quite early tomatoes from the plants, which were flowering already indoors.

Today we ate the first ripe Umamini. Had to cut it in half and share it with my hubby. It had really big flavor in such small tomato.

[svalli]

Every year I have had spider mites attacking the cucumbers in the greenhouse. I have had to keep on spraying them with a spray containing natural pyrethrin and canola oil. I do not like the oily film, which the spray makes on the greenhouse panels and after the season it is hard to clean.

This year I am trying predatory mites. I did not yet have signs of mites feeding on cucumber leaves, but usually the infestation is already getting out of control when that happens. I got two different kind predators last week. Phytoseiulus persimilis were packed in a bottle with sawdust and Neoseiulus californicus are in small paper bags. I hope these will work and I will not see any spider mites this summer.

Predatory mites.jpg

[pepperhead212]

@svalli Have you tried anything with Bt israelensis? I don't grow in a greenhouse, but for any indoor plants I use this, in the hydroponics, large plants, that I bring indoors, and seedlings, and never have any problems with them.

[svalli]

@svalli Have you tried anything with Bt israelensis? I don't grow in a greenhouse, but for any indoor plants I use this, in the hydroponics, large plants, that I bring indoors, and seedlings, and never have any problems with them.

When living in Wisconsin I used some Bt powder to get rid of Colorado potato beetles and tomato horn worms. Bt israelensis works against mosquitoes and fungus gnats. Unfortunately Bt is not available for hobby gardeners in Finland. There is some product sold to organic farmers, but it is too large packaging and expensive for home use.

[bower]

I'm really looking forward to hear about your experience with the predatory mites.
We do have some restrictions on Bt-i here, not to use outdoors where it could get into streams etc. But such a great product for potting mix in home or greenhouse. Bt-k is widely available though. Mainly used for the scourge of cabbage moth, and hard to do without it!

[Tim DH]

I noticed some two spot mites on one plant, shortly before we were due to go away for a fortnight.
I ordered some predators (Phytoseiulus) which arrived JUST before we left.
I asked my Greenhouse Guardian to water the path as well as the plants (to increase humidity)
When we returned, the mites appeared to have gone backwards and hadn't spread, but I couldn't find any predators.
SO I was thinking that next time I'd save my money and just splash a bit more water about!


However, I've just been out with a magnifying glass and there ARE predators! I guess I missed them before because they are so small, not the colour I was expecting and there will have been less of them two weeks ago. Its taken them a month to become visible!!

Not a quick fix!

Tim DH

[JayneR13]

Gardens teach nothing if not patience!

[svalli]

Greenhouse is filling up with plants and we have already eaten quite many ripe tomatoes and cucumbers. It is nice to make a salad from ingredients picked from own yard.

Greenhouse 20240701.jpg

I got a surprise postcard from @Cornelius_Gotchberg in the mail yesterday. It was stamped in Hurley WI on my birthday last week.

postcard.jpg

To answer Gotch's question, I have to say that event it looked like we would have still snow on the ground on Midsummer, the last remnants of the huge snowbanks on our yard melted 5th of May.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

I got a surprise postcard from @Cornelius_Gotchberg in the mail yesterday. It was stamped in Hurley WI on my birthday last week.
postcard.jpg

As a special flourish, I have the postmaster hand cancel the postcards' stamps; they enjoy mailing them all over creation.

Speaking of Hurley, WI, Little Finland celebrated its 60th anniversary last Sunday.

To answer Gotch's question, I have to say that event it looked like we would have still snow on the ground on Midsummer, the last remnants of the huge snowbanks on our yard melted 5th of May.

Speaking of Hurley, WI 2.0 (and snow): Iron County is the only county to have recorded snowfall in each month of the year https://www.hurleywi.com/wp-content/upl ... -final.pdf

The Gotch

[bower]

I'm terrible for remembering birthdays... hope it was a super spectacular day!! I know you have the longest day birthday, and in Finland that's really something!

[svalli]

Here is update on the tomato varieties sent to me by @Cornelius_Gotchberg.

We ate first ripe Super Sauce Hybrid week ago in a Caprese salad. It produces nice big meaty tomatoes, but productivity seems to be low. I wonder if that is because I let the first flowers to pollinate already before planting to final container.

Super Sauce Hybrid.jpg

Big Bubba and Pink Gift have made so huge tomatoes that I had to tie own support strings to the fruits.

Big Bubba and Pink Gift.jpg

Cucumber vines on the back have reach 2m height and I had to start guiding them to the front of the greenhouse. The predatory mites seem to be working, since there is not yet any signs of spider mites on the cucumber leaves.

Cucumbers 20240719.jpg

[svalli]

Last week was the last one of our 4 week summer vacation and work starts again on Monday. We did not do any traveling since we needed to be home during weekdays, because we are getting an attached garage built and last 6 weeks the crew has been working by digging, drilling and blasting the exposed bedrock from our front yard. Finally the ground work is done and they can start the construction of the new building. That is a long time planned project and finally it is happening.

Front yard transformation.jpg

Nobody came on the construction site on Thursday and it was sunny for change, so we went picking berries and harvesting first of the onions from our garden in the countryside. July has been so rainy that all berries are huge and also onions had grown well

Blueberries.jpg

That greenhouse rack thing is great for drying onions.

Onion harvest 20240808.jpg

Wautoma cucumber vines have grown on the trellis I made for them and are now producing quite many fruits. I wonder how large I can let them grow, or should I use them now. I am planning to make sweet cucumber relish from them.

Wautoma trellis.jpg

Wautoma cucumbers 20240810.jpg

[ddsack]

Good looking onion crop, and nice use of the rack! It must be a difficult challenge building on bedrock. Out of curiosity, I assume you have a drilled well for household water, but are you able to have a septic drainfield over the rocks or just a septic holding tank?

[svalli]

Good looking onion crop, and nice use of the rack! It must be a difficult challenge building on bedrock. Out of curiosity, I assume you have a drilled well for household water, but are you able to have a septic drainfield over the rocks or just a septic holding tank?

We live in a suburb quite close to city center, so we have municipal water and wastewater lines. Spots of our yard have the bedrock on the surface and in other areas there is just thin layer of soil on top of the rock, so planting trees and bigger shrubs is a bit challenging. That drilling and blasting was a bit nerve wracking when they were doing it so close to the house, but everything went well. Good thing with the rock is that we have solid foundation and not same problems as if the house was built on clay based soil, which can sink and shift.

One reason of getting the garage built on the front of the house is that we have detached garage on the back side which is much higher from the street level and the driveway there is really steep. During winter the driveway gets icy and dangerous. While getting all the work done, we had the old concrete slabs removed from the driveway and it will be asphalted so that we can use road salt to thaw it. The old concrete started to erode when we salted it and was breaking badly. I hope we can get everything finished before winter comes. The new building must be up, before the yard work can be finalized.

[bower]

I'm in the same boat here with bedrock near the surface. We actually changed the house plans because of it, since I didn't want to blast, and left me with a lot of stairs and split level on the north side where the cellar is under the front porch.
There was still a hump of bedrock in the basement and the cement floor is attached to and covering that. So the one thing I don't have to worry, is foundations sinking or anything like that.

I bet your new garage will be so worth it, and make life easier! Fingers crossed it is all done before any sign of winter.

[svalli]

I needed slicing tomato for chicken sandwiches, which I made for lunch. I picked then all ripe Pink Gifts and the ripened Big Bubba.

Pink Gift and Big Bubba.jpg

@Cornelius_Gotchberg asked picture of the sliced Big Bubba, but we ate now one of the pink ones and the Big Bubba will be enjoyed later this week.

Pink Gift is quite mild tasting and in my opinion it tastes like watermelon.

This is the first ripe Pink Gift, which we had last week with burgers. It weighed 360 grams.

Pink Gift sliced.jpg

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@svalli the Pink Gift looks really meaty; ours are all still greenies.

The Gotch

[JayneR13]

I also use a greenhouse rack for drying, everything from onions to seeds. It's really very handy! It was formerly used as a Martha tent to grow mushrooms. When I closed that project I repurposed the racks. My Aerogarden sits on the top shelf since the electrical outlet is close by.

Lovely maters! There's nothing like home grown. Having once tasted a home grown tomato, no store bought will ever bring the same satisfaction.