Project Garden Noob - Year 6

Only my husband and I would be crazy enough, in the dead of winter, to start composting (yes, this post is maybe two months late). It came about a bit half-hazard (obviously), our yard has four massive trees, which in turn generate massive amounts of leaves that we bag up and send to the landfill. We decided to keep some of the leaves, mulch them, and leave them in a pile.  Said pile hung out for a while until we read up a bit on composting.  Realized we needed to add those kitchen scraps to get the whole process going, my husband took one of my jamming pots that was gathering dust and boom, created a countertop composter (side note: we are not experiencing a lot of smell by not having a fancy, aerated composter.  Maybe it would breakdown more with more aeration, but so far, the cheap solution is working for us.). So then we started dumping kitchen scraps outside and burying them in the middle of the random leaf/grass clippings pile.  Then I had a moment of pan...

Hmm, no post since September.  I wonder why? Oh yeah, because our garden looks like this: We got an early cold front.  Well, maybe not early, I have no idea.  It was cold enough that I ripped out our tomatoes, and between that and the mildew, the garden was toast. Lessons Learned?  Where to start. Good Things: -We ate out of our garden.  I told myself I'd be happy if I got onions and zucchini.  We did.  We even got small amounts of lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, watermelon, pumpkin, and spaghetti squash (the pumpkin and spaghetti squash didn't get eaten by us...whole other story). -I have a newer found respect for farmers.  I always knew farmers work hard to fill our grocery store and fridges, but I really feel, and I'm sorry if this is snobby, until you do it yourself you really don't know just how hard it is.  Especially organic.  The fact we ever even survived as a species boggles my mind at this point.  Mildew decimate...

Our latest garden development has been animal destruction.  Everyone said we'd have an issue with the rabbits.  Because of hubby's awesome fence, that hasn't been an issue. But recently, our near ripe tomatoes were suddenly being eaten (sadly, I have somehow not taken pictures of the devastation).  We were worried about two culprits - rats and squirrels. Squirrels seemed like an obvious culprit.  We were finding tomato chunks in the yard and  this one in the tree.  I apologize for the truly terrible picture.  But you get the idea.  Limb, red blob = tomato. Rats we were a little skeptical about.  I've never seen a rat in Colorado, but we noticed that something was digging holes underneath the fence that faces a busy street and we didn't think it could be rabbits because the tomatoes are in cages, and the damaged tomatoes were high off the ground.  Something had to be climbing.  Hubby decided to get traps and make some fanc...

So remember pumpkin looking like it had a cocaine problem? Here are some close ups Asked the Grandpa.  He had no clue.  I was floored, this has to be bad if a man who's been gardening for over 30 years had no clue what I was talking about.  I took to Facebook, because I have a fair amount of gardening friends (3), and thought I'd venture there.  Yes, I'm too lazy to Google.  The verdict was mildew, thank JC.  She suggested a combo of milk and water and if that didn't work the ever mentioned neem oil. I tried the milk and water.  Nada.  This was right around Labor Day weekend.  Now, as mentioned before, I have a great nursery around 15 minutes away, but I find them a little spendy.  So I was lazy and waited until after Labor Day to hit up the nursery by my office.  Mistake. Mildew spreads.  And worsens.  Fast.  The mildew is now on the pumpkin, zucchini, spaghetti squash, and cucumber.  Tomatoes, than...

August went pretty well, mostly good growth, really got some harvesting done.  Here was a batch of veggies I sent home to my mother-in-law. So nice to have little vegetables coming out of the garden. The tomatoes and zucchini have been doing their thing.  Still a little leaf roll on the tomatoes, but 5 out of 9 plant seem to be doing alright. Zucchini has been zucchini (Where did that one come from?!). Oh the pumpkin.  I will never put a pumpkin within the confines of a garden again.  I feel I can safely say that was our biggest noob mistake this year.  Pumpkins crawl, EVERYWHERE.  No plant or fence is safe. I've had to chop it back several times and remove it's creepy tendrils from the tomato plants. See how well it got outside the fence. Yeah. Sadly, if you look closely in this picture, you will notice some white spots on the pumpkin and zucchini plants, like someone dusted them with flour, or perhaps cocaine.  Hello mildew...

Dear Time, Please stop moving.  Thanks, Me Hello August, or what I like to call the gateway month into Christmas.  The garden has been moving along.  I did a major cleaning this weekend of overgrowing leaves and vines, tomato suckers, and ripped out all our broccoli and cauliflower.  They had issues, let's just leave it at that. Sadly I didn't take a lot of pictures of the work I did because quite frankly, I was frantically trying to get it done before a very busy weekend.  I'm glad I did as this week has been nothing but rain, so all my freshly groomed plants can soak it all in. Our first tomatoes are starting to turn red, mostly the Romas and heirloom cherry tomatoes.  I find that I like these heirloom versions much better than the standard grocery store ones.  Go figure.  :-) Hubby also has a baby watermelon.  Watermelon are notoriously hard to grow out here, so we'll see how he does, but so far, so good. Zucchini is ...

On Saturday, July 6th my husband and I attended a "Common Tomato Problems" class at Tagawa Gardens . It covered a lot of the usual that I've heard about, blossom end rot, cracking, etc.  Also covered some pretty gross looking bugs, which luckily we have not seen. But we also learned about Physiological Leaf Roll, which is pretty much how it sounds.  The leaves roll inwards.  It's brought on by a variety of environmental stresses (i.e., temperature, moisture levels, nitrogen levels, etc...).  So we come home and look at our plants, sure enough, looks like we got a bit of this going on. Good news is, this shouldn't affect our yields at all.  I gave them a little TLC today - pruned, side-dressed, and put mulch around the base of the plants to retain moisture. Up until this point, I'd been hesitant to apply mulch.  One, I just don't like it and two, since our soil is soooo clay ridden, I feel it should be retaining moisture a little too well.  ...