Garden Update - Area #2

Area #2 of the garden, where the drip irrigation was recently finished (hurray!), holds 4 beds - #9 through #12.

This year, bed #9 holds shelling peas, cucumbers and Tromboncino squash.

Shelling peas in back with cucumbers in front &

Tromboncino squash on the far left

The cucumbers have been sulking for a few weeks, but it looks like they are finally settling in.  I have yet to get their trellis up as I was missing a part (why is it that every year, I think I have all the supplies I need but I am inevitably missing some?); that job will be done by tomorrow.

As with most veg, I decided to grow more varieties of cucumber this year, but fewer of each variety – I have a total of 9 plants as follows:  Garden Sweet (2), Suyo Long (1), Lemon (1), Chelsea Prize (2), Diva (1), Green Finger (1) and Summer Dance (1), this last one being my daughters pick when we went to a seed house in the spring.

Of the varieties I’m growing, I ended up losing the Diva seedling before it was even transplanted, so that one was reseeded & is quite a bit further behind than the rest.

Diva Seedling
One of the leaves is a bit oddly shaped, but otherwise, it's looking good
 

This year, I’ve spaced the cucumbers out properly, using a 12” spacing.  The two times I tried a smaller 6” spacing (because I couldn’t bear to part with extra seedlings), I ended up with a reduced harvest.

On a side note, the pathways between the beds obviously need a bit of a cleanup.  Before installing the drip, the beds were being watered using a sprinkler. Of course, this means that the paths were watered as well and the grass/weeds along them are downright lush.  I'll be cleaning up the paths this week and am hoping maintenance will be much easier from here on in.

The shelling pea vines are literally dripping with pods:

I'm sticking with the same 2 varieties of shelling pea I grew last year:

Sabre & Aladdin

It won’t be too much longer before the peas are all harvested and this area is cleared, at which point I’m planning on sowing a new variety of dried bean - Arikara.  This one takes 85 days to mature, so I’m cutting it close.  In hindsight, I probably should have grown these in one of the other bean beds and reserved this spot for a quicker maturing variety such as Speckled Cranberry which has a 60-90 day maturity range.

Bed #10 has dried beans and snow peas.  On one side of the bed, I placed the climbers - Golden Sweet peas & Cherokee Trail of Tears beans:

Golden Sweet Snow Peas

Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans
 

I normally use jute for beans as they scamper up the trellis so quickly and get a tight hold of the conduit trellis and bamboo supports long before the jute stretches or breaks.  But since I was growing the peas on this trellis as well - and I've had dismal luck using jute with climbing peas - I decided to try cotton twine.  So far so good - the peas are supported and the twine is holding up well & not stretching.

Behind the climbers are a couple of dry bush bean varieties – Canadian Wonder (new this year) and Walcherse White.

Canadian Wonder & Walcherse White Beans

I'm very happy with the state of the beans this year.  They have all had MUCH better germination than they did last year, although there were still some scanty spots.

Bed #11 is all about peppers:


Pepper Bed
 

This year, I decided to try a full bed of peppers and I really packed them in - 4 rows spaced 12" apart with pepper plants also spaced 12" apart within the rows.  Several people have indicated they had good success with tightly spaced peppers, so we'll see how this goes.  The benefit of such close spacing, of course, is you can squeeze in many more plants/varieties - I just hope those in the middle don't get shaded out too much.

Like most other veg, I kept thinking that the peppers should be further along by now, but then I looked back at the pepper plants from June 20th last year:

Peppers on June 20, 2015 (left side of bed)
 

Um...am I seeing things or do they look much better this year?  I’m optimistic especially as I had what I would consider a pretty good harvest in 2015.  And just to emphasize my abysmal bean germination last year, the left side of the bed above held said beans on the right side.  I wasn't exaggerating now, was I?

There was a little mishap with labeling however.  I used Sharpies in the past and, although they faded, it was never a huge issue as they were still quite legible.  Well – this is what most of the pepper markers looked like last week:

Most of the markers were completely illegible

I could tell what a few were, but most were illegible.  And what’s the kicker?  I purchased a new marker this year, the Sharpie “Extreme”, which is supposed to be fade resistant.  Well, it almost seems as if they faded MORE than my regular Sharpies!  Or maybe it’s simply that we’ve had so much sun & hi UV readings.  This reviewer on Amazon, however, seemed to come to the same conclusion I did.

So I spent a good chunk of time, trying to re-label everything by guessing.  I did group each variety together and I have notes on how many of each I have, so that should help if I find that I didn’t end up labeling them correctly.  Also, many of the peppers I’m growing are quite different – a Pepperoncino, Padron or Jalapeno pepper will not likely be confused with an Orange Blaze bell pepper!

The last bed in this section holds tomatoes and eggplant.

Tomato side of bed #12
 

I’m going back to the rather successful tomato layout I had a couple of years ago with two rows of tomatoes sown down one half of the bed.  The rows are spaced 12” apart and the tomato plants are 24” apart within the rows.

I’m using a modified Florida weave for the tomatoes – the “modified” bit refers to my use of a vertical piece of twine that I wrap the main tomato stalk around – this keeps them from leaning over too much into their neighbour’s territory, especially during windy weather.

The eggplants are along the other side of this bed & I placed them all 12” apart.

Eggplant - Thai Long Green & Pingtung

I was originally going to stagger the 8 eggplant by placing them 24" apart in 2 rows on that side of the bed, but thought better of it as I could see those in the back row being overwhelmed by the tomatoes.  Now, whether this layout works well or not is yet to be seen as they may end up being too shaded by the beans in the next bed.  But the beds are spaced a good distance apart and they are oriented roughly from east to west, so I’m hoping that this will be enough to give them the sunlight they need.

And lastly, I’m glad to report that I’ve almost finished installing the hilltop drip irrigation - it will be complete by today.  After that, it will be on to Area #1 which I'm hoping to complete by the end of the weekend....can't wait!