Garlic, Shallots and Potato Onions

A sure sign that winter is on its way--allium planting time in the garden. Garlic and and shallots are planted in the fall, just like tulips and daffodils. So, after digging some bagged manure, high nitrogen fertilizer and peat into one of the old tomato beds, I laid out my new allium bed.

I got some French grey shallots from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange-never seen them at my local vegetable market, but I understand they are the ultimate gourmet shallot. I'm also trying something new I read about and found intriguing called "potato onions", which is a type of multiplier onion. They look like regular onion sets that you plant in the spring, except that when these grow the bulbs are supposed to divide, alot like garlic and shallots. Come next August, I could get 5-8 fair sized onions from a single bulb planted now, so they say. They're supposed to be very winter hardy, and excellent for storage. Word is, if you get your bed growing properly, and set aside a few bulbs at harvest for replanting, you shouldn't have to buy onions ever again. Sustainable agriculture. cool.

I am also going to start some garlic "bulbils" I got on the cheap from tomatobob.com. Bulbils are the topsets from hardneck garlic varieties that have "bolted"; not a clove from the actual bulb, so these will take 2 years to make a full-size head of garlic. The names sounded interesting: Shvelski, Music, Ontario Purple Trillium and Persian Star. And while I was at it, I threw in a few dozen cloves from the white supermarket garlic I always have on hand in the fridge. We shall see if there really is a taste difference between garlic varieties.

(8" apart-hope I didn't plant them too close together!)

Call Any Vegetable

Tonight was last call for many of the frost-tender crops, as tonight marks Fall's first "frost advisory" for outlaying areas, with a forcast overnight low of 37 degrees. Remembering what happened the last time there was a forcast low of 37 degrees, I thought it best to err on the side of caution and haul in every tomato, green or otherwise, and eggplant, pepper, swiss chard, beans, okra, and I also gathered all the winter squash to spend a cozy night in the wheelbarrow in the garage. I probably could have left the squash outside without much damage, but they store much longer if they're not exposed to frost first. Noticing that the long term forcast has about 2 more good weeks after tonight's frost, I thought it wouldn't hurt to cover the pepper and eggplant beds with plastic, to try to force a few more weeks of production. The tomatoes are probably done for though, as there is no easy way to cover the seven-foot-tall trellises. Looks like I'll be spending good portion of tomorrow afternoon blanching and freezing. I need an appropriate soundtrack for such work.

Pink and Purple Potatoes

Tom Wagner's Paint Jar and Skagit Beets as french fries:

Skagit Beets were on the small side, and the skin had some sort of scab, but pared and cooked up they were creamy inside, crunchy outside, perfect for frying. Paint Jar, on the other hand, although the large smooth picturesque tubers lent themselves well to slicing, when fried they were disappointingly dry and mealy.

Which led me to believe that Paint Jar would be more suited for baking:

Technicolor dinner a few nights later: Salmon, baked potato and green beans. Talk about a feast for the eyes.

and yes, it tastes just like a baked potato!

Dog days

I just got done tearing out most of the cucumber vines from the trellis. They didn't even grow halfway up, and were mostly decimated by powdery mildew and probably 5 other unnamed and exotic maladies. Also threw out 6 "gigante" kolrabi that had begun to elongate and therefore were past their prime. Tomorrow probably will be the melon trellis' turn, they look almost as bad as the cucumbers, and the pole bean trellis, which are being mercilessly shredded by bean beatles. Probably 50% of the sweet peppers we pick have pepper maggots. Mainly the Tequila Sunrise, which are thin-walled and not very tasty at all anyway, and the chocolate pepper, which makes me kind of sad. Purple bells, Giant Aconcagua and sweet cream peppers seem less affected. Every turnip, beet and radish I pull has little brown tunnels in it. The tomatoes, overall, are doing fairly well, all things considered. We have way more than we can eat, but that's mostly because after it rains I have to pluck the most badly cracked ones before they rot on the vine, and there have been alot of those. Lots of crackd half-ripe toms this year. The first round of corn was exciting, and pretty good, but a small harvest considering the 50 plants. The "2nd tier" ears that were left on the stalks to continue maturing are small, misshapen and now bugs have discovered them. Okras are finally producing, about a dozen pods every other day...the only problem with them is minor aphid infestation.

Ah, August. Time for the gardener to shift gears for the first time in the season, away from planting and weeding and nurturing, to pause and take stock of the overall situation, and begin making judgements, adjustments and plans for next year. I have already decided not to even try to grow broccoli, cauliflower or brussels sprouts. On the other hand, an entire 3x8 box dedicated to nothing but carrots is looking mighty appealing. I never will grow Coyote tomatoes again even if somebody paid me to. Sucrine is the only lettuce variety I have grown so far that is not rendered inedible by my summer heat. And the list goes on...

No pictures this time, just picture in your mind's eye diseased plants being thrown into one of those brown paper yard-waste bags.

Remember Eighteen?

Yeah I know. Couldn't find an "8" candle, so we used his sister's "7" candle from earlier this year, and added one more. Couldn't get much lamer if we tried. But then again we didn't really try.

Happy Birthday to my son.

Squash pollination update: not good

See how it is yellowing? Not a good sign. It seemed to grow at first, it's about an inch and a half long, but it has not grown any in the past several days. I fear it will shrivel and fall off soon. The reason may be because the vine "upstream" from it is actually supporting several very large squashes already, and those have grown surprisingly quickly in the past few days. Perhaps the plant is getting maxed out, the squashes that have already set are approaching maturity and are sending out chemical signals that actually slow/inhibit the newly set fruits. Remember what they say about cucumbers, not to let any of them get ripe on the vine, because then the plant stops producing new ones? Seems to apply to squash too.

I also hand-pollinated another of my squashes, and it took right away and is growing nicely. It was actually the first fruit to set on it's vine. I started out thinking I was pollinating a "Type 1" of the Georgian Chestnuts ("Type 1" is growing on a trellis, apart from the "tangled mound"), but on closer inspection, we might actually be in for a "Type 4". There are actually 3 separate vines growing on the trellis, and the female blossom I pollenated was on a third vine, apparently the latest-maturing of the lot. I used pollen from the "Type 1" plant, though. Hmm. Maybe it's getting kind of late in the season to be doing this.

On a happier note, corn has silked!!! Luther Hill on the 24th, Ruby Queen on the 26th. I think now it's only 15-20 days to wait for fresh corn on the cob.

Well That Explains Alot

The house I live in 11 years old. And I know the way land is developed here is, they scrape away the topsoil (to sell it of course) and leave the hard barren stuff behind. Once the houses are built, it's up to the homeowner to put in sod, grass and whatnot, the builder rarely includes any landscaping in the price; and if he does, you know they're going to cut all the corners thay can get away with, and it's not going to be the highest quality installation. So my yard soil, beneath the 2" of sod, is most likely good ole' pure Michigan clay. High in minerals and pretty fertile, but extremely sticky and unmanagable in the spring, and hard as cement in the summer. Which is why I had some fancy high-priced "topsoil/compost blend" delivered from the local garden center to fill my new raised beds this spring. But I knew something was amiss lately when the squash and melons just weren't doing much.

Tested my soil yesterday with one of those do-it-yourself kits from L*we's. Checked pH, Nitrogen, Phosporous and Potassium. I knew that the nitrogen was probably on the low side, but I had no idea how low. Apparently too low to even register (the 2nd vial from the left). Not a even a hint of pink in the solution.

On the other hand, phosporus (3rd vial) was definitely high, I wonder if it's too high. Too much phosporus can manifest by inhibiting plant's uptake of other elements (such as zinc) and is exacerbated by higher pH, which I also have. My plants are kind of stunted from low N, but there are some weird symptoms that may be mineral-related, like strange leaf colorations on the beans, and some wirey and deformed growth in the nasturtiums. But high phosporus is generally good for things like corn.

And although I'm not sure if I'm reading the card correctly, potassium (4th vial) seems to be on the high side too. High potassium can interfere with calcium uptake, which may be manifesting in the minor blossom end rot I've seen in my tomatoes. Strange, because I have read that greensand, a high-potassium soil amendment, is often recommended for fruiting tomatoes.

pH is around 8, which was a little surprising (1st vial from the left). Healthy soil should have a pH around 6.5 for optimal microbial environment, from what I've read, which means mine is a little too alkaline. Sulfur or peat moss should fix that.

The general data provided by this quick do-it-yourself test is a good starting point, because now I know that if I just bought a balanced fertilizer (with a N-P-K ratio of 10-10-10) like I had originally planned, I would probably not be boosting the nitrogen enough, and at the same time overdosing on phosporous and potassium. Now I am more motivated to have my soil go through a more complete analysis by a laboratory, through the county extension office. Until then, I'm off to buy some slow-release high-nitrogen pelletized organic fertilizer, and maybe a quick-fix high-nitrogen liquid fertilizer too. Elemental sulfur will wait until fall.

Hand Pollinating Squash

After dinner the other night, I went out to the giant tangled mound at the back of the garden to search for a female blossom that looked like it would be ready to open the next morning. I found one: Its a female blossom because you can see at the base of the flower the little bulge that is the ovary, which will grow into a squash if it gets pollinated. So I got out my yarn, mostly because I could not find any tape, and did this to it:

The reason for that is to keep the flower from opening before I am ready. It keeps any bees from contaminating it with unknown pollen before I can get to it with the pollen I want to use. Squash flowers only open in the morning and fade by noon. A squash flower is receptive to pollen for a few hours in the morning; after 11am it's pretty much over. That is the reason for all the fuss.

The female flower was on a vine with "type 3" of my Georgian Chestnut squash, and I want to self-pollinate it, so I went to look for a few likely male blossoms on the same vine, and selected this one:The male blossoms have no bulge in the stem. I tied it up too:

The flower petals will be blocked from unfurling in the morning until I untie them, but the binding does not stop the ripening process. The pollen will be ripe in the morning, and the female flower will be receptive. Nothing to do now but wait until morning.

So after a nice cup of coffee, at about 9:30 the next morning, I went outside to do the deed.

I located the female flower. Yes I was correct, it was ready to open, see how it changed overnight, petals trying to unfurl, color much oranger:
I went and found the male flower. Its petal tips were also straining against the yarn. I picked it, leaving a long stem for a "handle":

The weather that morning was cool, overcast and drizzling but not raining. There were not very many insect pollinators out and about, conditions ideal for conducting this procedure.

I untied the male flower, and stripped off the petals, careful not to knock any pollen off of the anther. This flower was definitely ready, pollen grains were clearly visible and falling off. I untied the female flower, inadvertently damaging the petal tips slightly, it sprung open as soon as the yarn was released. It was definitely ready too. I rubbed the anther of the male flower on the stigma of the female flower, trying to sort of paint the pollen on all 6 of the stigma's lobes.

Then I immediately tied the female blossom petals back closed, to keep bees from contaminating it with other pollen, as the flower would probably remain receptive for a few more hours.

And that's pretty much it. Now I'll just wait a few days to see if it "took". The blossom and yarn will fall off in a few days, so I'll have to be sure and mark this squash somehow, and let everybody know not to pick it-it's being saved for its seeds.

Introduction to Georgian Chestnut Squash (USSR)

Georgian Chestnut (USSR) (c. moschata) is a squash that I have been unable to find out much information, at least through google. It is a variety I agreed to trial for Dave (a.k.a "American Gardener" on various gardening forums), who is in the process of starting a seed company.

There seem to be 3 distinct types of the Georgian Chestnut (USSR) (c. moschata) squash growing in my garden, on 3 separate vines. These were all from seeds from the same packet from Dave. Either this is a variety prone to much variation, or these seeds have been crossed. Here's what's growing:

Type 1. Pear-shaped, immature pale green-almost white, and no silver mottling on leaves:
Type 2. Bell-shaped, immature medium green netted pattern with distinct striping, and no silver mottling on leaves: Type 3. Blocky-oblong shaped, so far seems a little larger than the other types, immature medium green netted pattern, with moderate silver mottling pattern on leaves: Worth noting:

These squash are extremely vigorous growing and fruiting, even the one planted in poor soil. They are fruiting before an "Upper ground sweet potato squash", another c. moschata touted for being vigorous and heavy bearing (who only have male blossoms so far, I have already harvested several G.Chestnuts), and the plants seem a little bigger, and filled out faster too.

We were all very surprised how tasty the immature squash are when prepared like zucchini (c. pepo types). I read that some c. moschatas, like the "trombocino" italian squash, can be harvested immature and used like zucchini, so I tried it with these. I mean it was really good. and who raves about zucchini?

So far, I have only tasted the "type 2" of my Georgian Chestnuts. I'd like to develop the "type 3" shape, as the uniform and blocky shape will lend itself well to uniform chopability for the cook. Did I just use the word "develop"? I guess I did. I sound just like a plant breeder.


I am kind of nervous about being able to successfully isloate and self-pollinate each of the three distinct types I observed in my garden, because 2 of the plants exist in a tangled mound. I'm pretty certain that the different types I observed are from different plants. I would follow a vine from tip as far as I could to its root, and thanks to their extreme productivity there is a squash at almost every leaf axil, and as far as I can tell only one of the types shows up on any given length of vine. I have been watching the blossoms, trying to get a good feel for when they are about to open. I plan to tape closed or tie the selected female blossom bud the night before it's ready to open, and also locate and tape closed a few ripe male blossom buds on the same vine, to ready them for the next morning's activities.

As I have already have requests for seed trades, I shall attempt to isolate and self-pollinate each of the three types, to save seed. The next post will be about an actual pollination exercise. Why not just let nature take its course and not worry about separating types? Well, I may just save seed from some of those naturally pollinated fruits as well. But I am curious to know if I can stablize the different types, perhaps come up with my own strain that grows "true to type".

I never thought I'd be this passionate about squash.