Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Perkins Update

lettuce080722While some things have been a real challenge this year, other things are going amazingly well. The new electric fence means that we have un-nibbled lettuce this year. Add to this the discovery of a good variety of buttercrunch and a good variety of romaine and we have some serious lettuce available.

carrots080722Carrots are also doing amazingly well in the hard, clay soil at Perkins. I tried five different varieties to see what works, and the four that have been in long enough are all producing reasonable carrots.

Even the sorry-looking eggplants I reported on earlier are now bouncing back.

But we're still waiting for the first of the broccoli and we discovered clubroot in one corner of the garden. Next year I'll just have to get out there a spread 50-pounds of lime between the first and second tilling.

But the best surprise of all has been the value of floating row cover. Below are two photos of cucumbers. The scraggly ones planted by the trellis were planted two weeks before the big, healthy-looking ones in the other photo. But without serving as the singles bar for disease-spreading cucumber beetles, the later cucumbers have surpassed the earlier ones and promise to produce much healthier fruit. The same results appear to be happening with the pac choi and mustard greens planted under row cover and protected from flea beetles.

cucmbers1_080722
cucumber2_080722
Things we've eaten from Perkins so far this year:
Mixed salad greens
Radishes
Garlic scapes
Arugula
Chard
Spinach
Mustard Greens
Broccoli raab
Carrots
Snow peas
Shell peas
Purple bush beans
Golden zucchini
Green onions
Cipolini onions
Basil
Dill

As for our venture into selling our surplus produce, we've almost paid for our seed costs. This week, some surplus basil and green onions will be sold to the chef at the Amway Grand for use at Cygnus 27 and the 1913 Room.

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