Unusual Weather, Unusual Harvest

In most years, we are blessed with a bountiful harvest. Usually by now we have an overabundance of cucumbers and tomatoes, along with beans and potatoes. In past years we haven't done well with Bell Peppers and have had trouble getting our onions to grow very large.

This year is very unusual. The main season tomatoes are very late and we have only had a few good cucumbers. On the other hand, our Bell peppers and onions have been amazing!

We have well over 100 large onion bulbs drying right now.

To grow large onion bulbs you need many growing days of warm but not "hot" temperatures. Usually here in Northern Kentucky,our weather is not condusive to growing large onions because we typically go quickly from a cold Spring to a hot summer. This year has not been typical. Our Summer has been unusually cool. July 2009 is now officially the coldest July ever recorded! Our "normal" average high temperature for July is 85 degrees. This year's average was 69 degrees. That kind of weather is not great for growing tomatoes, but oh how the onions love it!

And of course we love the onions! I guess in a way the vegetable garden is like the stock market - it pays to diversify.

The other vegetable that has been unusually great this year are the Capsicums. The weather explanation doesn't fit here at all. I do have a theory about why we have harvested about 75 large peppers from one 4'x12' bed. I will share that theory and some pepper pictures in my next post.

Happy Gardening,

- Marc

Onions - a - Plenty

Recently Renee and I got to transplant our onion plants outside in two of our raised beds.

We are growing two different onion plants this year. Walla Walla is a yellow skinned large sweet onion and Superstar is our large mild white onion. Both are supposed to do well even in the north.

We will be planting various onion sets as well when we plant out the tomatoes and beans. We also have two types of leeks still growing inside under the lights (Carentan and Giant Musselburgh). To round out the Allium family, we have potato onions and several types of garlic that we planted in the fall. The large onion bed is right next to one of the garlic beds.

The garlic is growing very well.

If it weren't for all of these Alliums, the vegetable garden would still be pretty empty. Soon they will be joined by peas lettuce and cabbage. Then later comes the many warm season veggies. I can hardly wait!

My daughters are gardeners too!

I still have much to write about our visit to Baker Creek, but for the last two evenings my time was occupied with spring planting. The best part about it was that my daughters helped.

Tonight my 14 year old helped plant the third and final wave of the early tomatoes. We planted "Siletz" and "World's Earliest". It was a big help having someone help me remove the plants from the recycled CD spindle containers that they were planted in.

We put crushed egg shells in the planting holes to give the tomatoes added calcium.

My 11 year old daughter is great with a rake. Last night she worked up the soil in several of the existing raised beds.

I have different sized beds but I think my daughters like the 4'x4' beds the best. Just like Mel Bartholomew of Square Foot Gardening says, it is easy to reach any part of the bed from all sides. Here my daughters are planting green beans in one 4 foot by 4 foot bed:

Another great thing about raised beds is that you can sit or kneel in the grass and reach in to work the bed. Below my daughter is planting red onions next to the first early tomato batch. Onions are great companion plants for tomatoes.

Gardening with my daughters is great fun. I love when they want to help, but I never make them. When I was a kid, hoeing the garden was part of my chores and I hated it. It took me many years after that to actually like gardening. That is probably also why I don't like hoes (sorry Carol).

I want my daughters to enjoy gardening, and I think they do. They have grown up playing in the garden and helping as much or as little as they want. Now that they are getting older, when they do help, it helps a lot! Why this is great is not because more work gets done. This is great because it gives us some wonderful quality time to talk and be together in nature. I'll gladly take as much of that as possible, even if nothing we planted together grows at all.

Gardening with your children is a priceless gift indeed.