Fall transplants

Got pretty much everything in the ground now. Realistically, I'm a few weeks too late. It's possible that a frost or even a freeze can roll in by the middle of September, or it may be sunny and frost free till mid October. So I'm hoping for a mild fall and planting like crazy. The last lettuce will go in this weekend.

Cabbage in front and Broccoli in the back. This bed was in such bad shape I have not used it this year till now.

Kohlrabi. I sowed crimson clover in this bed as well to see how well kohlrabi can be interplanted.

Monumental Chinese cabbage goes in a bed with other winter tough veggies, leeks and carrots.

I've sown crimson clover as a cover crop and green manure in all bare areas at the garden plots. As soon as the tomatoes and peppers are done (as well as any other lingering crops), they'll be pulled and crimson clover will go in there as well. I'm hoping to have a dense cover over everything as soon as the winter rains start coming in.

Update

I'm back after a nice week long vacation. The garden went along nicely without me, even making it through a nasty thunderstorm with rain and wind. 3/4 " of rain kept everything happy.

Hot weather veggies are ripening up and starting to roll in. This sure was a bad summer for them - cooler than normal temps and many gray days in May and June really set things back. Nothing will be producing to its' full potential this year, but we'll certainly have plenty.

Tomatoes, Sungold here, are finally ripening.

Eggplant is a prayer in Bellingham, but even with this cold year I'll get a few.

Lots of hops maturing - I've got 5 varieties.

Here's the haul for today. Not too fantastic, but I'm happy with it.

Clockwise from the lower left: Sungold toms with Miniature Chocolate Bell peppers behind; Early Jalapenos; 2 heirloom Cherokee Purple toms; Italian pepperoncini peppers; Super Marzano Roma toms; a few Stupice toms and some FIrst Lady II toms.

Went down to the garden a few days ago and surprised some wildlife in one of the plots at the community garden.

They ate about 8 feet of a row of runner beans, stripping off all the leaves. I'm glad I've got a 6 foot fence!

My fall brassicas are coming along nicely. Instead of thinning 3 or 4 plants down to 1 per cell, as I did in spring with my early brassicas, I ended up pricking out these seedlings and potting them up to individual 2" pots or into a cell tray with 2" cells. I'm planting more of each vegetable than I did this spring.

That's cabbage in the front 2 rows and broccoli in the back 2 rows. These were sown about 25 days ago and should be transplanted some time next week.


Chinese cabbage in front and kohlrabi in back sown 2 weeks ago. Hopefully these will be out in the garden in 2 weeks. That's about 2 weeks later than they should have been out, but I'm hoping for a long, cool fall with no early frosts.

I sowed a few more fall veggies a couple days ago:
- one 4-pack Italian Silver Chard
- one 4-pack Red Russian Kale
Both frost hardy varieties that should stand through the winter.

More Fall veggies

Started some more cool weather crops this weekend, hopefully with enough time for them to get in the ground and be ready before really cold weather shows up.

one 4-pack Kohlrabi Superschmelz (KH348)
one 4-pack Lettuce The Redder the Better mix (LT443)
one 4-pack Monument Chinese Cabbage (OV572)
one 1 Qt. Sweet Dumpling Delicata (SQ822)

I've heard that squash and cucumber can be tricky to start, and they were for me. My first squash didn't come up. My two 1 qt. pots of cucumber all came up but all damped off within 2 weeks. It's almost too late now, but I'm trying one last time anyway.

Stopped by the garden plot last night and had some ripe Sungold cherry tomatoes - our favorite variety.

Physiological problems

I'm starting to see some more problems with the tomatoes. Physiological diseases are not spread from plant to plant and only affect the original plant. They are caused by environmental conditions. Half of my 8 plants have been stricken with leaf roll for weeks. This causes nearly all the leaves on the plant to cup upwards or roll up completely. This is a moisture related problem that happens most often during periods of "cool, rainy weather". Sounds like our early summer. Apparently it doesn't have any effect on production, and sometimes they will unroll after poor conditions subside, so I'm not worried about it.

Leaf roll on a Stupice plant.

A more serious problem I'm seeing on some plants is blossom end rot. Fruits develop black sunken lesions on the end opposite the stem. It's caused by a calcium deficiency. The most common cause is inadequate moisture or cooler temperatures during blossom setting which inhibits calcium uptake to the rapidly growing end of the fruit. In my case, planting early in cooler, slightly heavy soil that probably doesn't have the best drainage was most likely the cause. Usually only the first set if fruits are affected.

This Cherokee purple fruit has blossom end rot and cat-facing.

My last issue is leaves with purple undersides or purple veining. This is a phosphorus deficiency. I used a 5-5-5 fertilizer at transplanting time and have since side-dressed with a low nitrogen, high phosphorus fertilizer, so it is present in the soil. Soils with low pH (like clay soils) tend to hold on to phosphorus and not release it for plants, so when I prepared the bed in the spring I amended with lime to raise the pH, so that shouldn't be an issue either. The only other cause is cool soil and air temperatures. I'm starting to see a trend here!


Hopefully, warm weather for the end of July through August will help the plants overcome all these issues.