Summer for real

July 9, 2016 Weekly Updates

And just like that, real summer sets in. We got to coast through most of June with relatively manageable temperatures, especially as nighttime lows continued to fall at least into the 60s. But with the start of July came reality! It’s been in the 90s for the last several days and, boy, is it hot. I’ve been doing my best to stay out of the garden in the hottest parts of the day. However, with plenty of crops that prefer cooler temperatures still in the ground, it’s important to provide some overhead watering during the heat of the day to help keep them cool and prevent them from going to seed and...

More and more

July 3, 2016 Weekly Updates

With a good day of rain this week, the soil finally got a decent soaking after several weeks of intensely dry weather. Almost immediately, everything looked greener and bigger. The tomatoes are shooting up, requiring a new trellis line every week, and I got a small first harvest off of the bush beans this morning. To date, we’ve harvested over 42 lbs of food out of the garden since May 26! About a month into harvesting, we’ve now had a good amount of time to see how things are growing and how much we are able to use. As a result, this week was a great time to reevaluate our year’s plan for the garden....

The crop pests cometh

June 24, 2016 Pests, Tips & Tools, Weekly Updates

There’s always that brief window in the year when I think, “Maybe this year is the year that I’ll have the perfect, pest-free garden.” And then they arrive! Despite a relatively light spring in terms of pest damage (we did have the broccoli annihilated by cut worms, but little else was affected), they’re here at last. The eggplant leaves are becoming speckled with the tiny, pin-prick holes that are the signature mark of flea beetles and, more severely, cucumber beetles have arrived to feast on the previously perfect squash and cucumber plants. If in your garden you’re noticing ragged holes on the leaves of these plants with the outside rim of...

All that empty dirt

June 18, 2016 Weekly Updates

The weather gets warmer, the plants grow bigger, but there’s still some bed space yet to be planted, something I’ve gotten asked about a lot recently. Even though it looks like an oversight, the empty beds are actually completely intentional and provide more than an occasional play space for my son! Coming from larger farms where there are always beds either waiting to be planted or having just been emptied of crops past their prime, this is something that seems natural to me. Still, it is much less common in smaller gardens where it can look like nothing more than a waste of space. In fact, it can be the opposite, providing an opportunity...

June Photo Shoot

June 9, 2016 Weekly Updates

To provide a fuller visual picture of the garden throughout the year, I’ve decided to make one photo-based post each month. Here’s the first one, for the month of June, posted a little late after yesterday’s high-wind thunderstorms knocked our power out until just a few hours ago! The garden’s pathways may look a little ragged right now, but that stuff sprouting along the paths that appears to be weeds is actually clover in its early stages. Eventually, this clover will provide a solid ground cover and weed deterrent throughout the pathways. ...

Summer at last

June 1, 2016 Weekly Updates

Wow, this week has gotten away from me. It’s Wednesday already, but with the weather finally warm and sunny, it’s hard not to spend all of my free time out in the garden. One week after being planted, the tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings have all begun to put on brilliantly green new growth, a sure sign that they’re getting accustomed to life in the ground. As a result, I stocked up on trellis stakes earlier this week and will begin the ongoing process of “basket-weave” trellising the tomatoes in the next day or two. The garden is getting fuller and fuller, with about two-thirds of the space now planted....

Here comes the sun- kind of…

May 23, 2016 Weekly Updates

I decided I wasn’t going to post this week until the sun came out again! Well, today it has, although in all honesty, it’s actually that weak, cloud-filtered sunlight that wouldn’t really count unless you haven’t seen much else for the rest of the month. Heck- at this point I even get excited about a little bit of blue peeping through the clouds! Last Friday, on a truly gorgeous, sunny day, I was finally able to get all of the summer crops into the ground. Usually, I plant the tomatoes, eggplant, squash, etc. around May 7, close to our average last frost date of the year. Although it hasn’t come close to frosting...

Working together

May 15, 2016 Weekly Updates

Well, the raininess continues, but yesterday we did get a beautiful, sunny morning for the City Harvest plant pick-up. City Harvest is a program within the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Working with a large partnership of urban gardeners and farmers, City Harvest provides seedlings and other supplies to these sites and, in exchange, the farms and gardens donate a share of what they grow to food cupboards and community kitchens throughout Philadelphia. For me, one of the most powerful benefits of growing in an urban setting is the ability to quickly and easily get nutritious food to many people. I had been part of City Harvest with the most recent farm I managed, donating...

May showers

May 8, 2016 Weekly Updates

There hasn’t been much opportunity for gardening this past week. By Mike’s calculation, we hadn’t seen sun from one Saturday to the next. Instead, it’s been a steady succession of rain, clouds, and more rain. After weeks of weather that had been mostly warmer and dryer than average, this real spring weather came as a bit of a shock to the system. But at least it saved me from time spent watering all the seeds planted last week! And, with the rain’s help, we have the first germination in the garden, with both the spring mix and arugula shooting their cotyledons (or first leaves) above the ground. In the midst of...

It’s go time!

May 3, 2016 Weekly Updates

The deer fence is finally up, our biggest project and necessity before the garden can really get going. It turned out to be both easier and more complicated than I expected. Because our garden is built on a moderate incline, we had to bunch the fencing at some of the posts to prevent the change in elevation from causing unwanted slackness. However, the whole process was faster than anticipated, with the entire fence up and ready to go in about two-and-a-half hours. And we were immediately reminded of what all the work was for as several deer watched us finishing up at dusk. Worrying that the deer would run right through the fencing in the dark, we...