Weekly Gardening Outlook: Parched

This will be a continuing series where we look ahead at the coming week in gardening for the Northwest Arkansas area.

Small Nanking cherry bush showing signs of drought stress

Large Nanking cherry bush

I planted six Nanking cherry bushes as dormant, bare-root stock last spring.  After a month, four had leafed out and two had not.  I called the nursery and they immediately replaced the two, but by the time I put the two new ones in the ground they were six weeks behind and were going into the ground in the middle of summer.  The pictures above show the importance of planting during the correct time of year.  The smaller plants have a less developed root system and aren't coping with the heat and drought nearly as well as the larger bushes.  I doubt they will make it through the summer.

Roma tomatoes

Ripening Roma tomatoes

Almost there!

Super Sweet 100 cherry tomato plant

The Romas are just about there.  I've never seen this many fruit on the vines.  The Super Sweet 100 cherry tomato vine is producing 3-4 cherry tomatoes a day.  I may need to plant two of them next year.  No evidence of blossom end rot despite the extreme heat and dryness.

Flowering basil

Still plenty of pollinator activity around the basil.  Some seeds are starting to form.

Bell peppers

Jalapeno peppers

Plenty of bounty from the peppers.  A couple of instances of blossom end rot on the bell peppers.

Young eggplant

Five or six little eggplants forming and the plants are both still flowering like crazy.

Okra

The okra are bushing out and soaking up every available drop of sunlight.

Potted blueberry bush

The blueberry harvest is over.  The bushes have more than doubled in size already.

Evergreen bunching onions

I planted these evergreen bunching onions from seed in the spring of 2010.  Since then they've provided a constant availability of green onions, even in the middle of winter.

Butternut squash vines on a cattle panel trellis  

Young butternut squash

The butternut squash vines have crested the top of the cattle panel arbor.  They want to go in every direction and I have to train them up the arbor every few days.  In the middle of the arbor in the picture above, you can see a vine I just retrained.  Its leaves hadn't reoriented to the sun yet, but they did within a few hours.  No sign of squash vine borer yet *crossing fingers*.  I've seen two squash bugs this week and I hand picked them both off.

Same old chard.  Easy.

Turnips

Turnip, ready to harvest

The turnips are all ready to pull.  I've pulled and eaten some, but I don't have a ton of experience eating turnips.  Anyone have a good recipe?

Purple-podded pole bean vines growing up a cattle panel trellis

Purple-podded pole bean flowers

Flower buds are forming on the green bean vines.  Japanese beetles continue to try to eat the foliage, requiring a periodic treatment with NeemII.

Calendula 

I planted a few calendula (pot marigold) where I had open space.  The petals are a colorful addition to salads and are said to have numerous health benefits.

Sand plum

The heat and drought have resulted in smaller sand plums this year.  They aren't quite ripe yet, but in the next few weeks I will turn them into jelly.  Here's a previous post where I show how it's done.

Chicken and Egg Report:

Chickens at 6 weeks old

While I was out of town last weekend, we lost three more of the new laying chicks.  They just disappeared, leaving us with four remaining egg laying chicks.  I put those four in the enclosure with the meat birds and they are still there today.  It's got to be hawks.  I've searched the yard and can find no sign of them.  The dogs don't eat them after they kill them.  After these meat chicks go into the freezer this weekend, I'm going to get another batch of chicks to raise as hens.  With the heat, we are only getting 1-2 eggs per day.

Weather Outlook:

Dry fescue lawn

-Hot.  Mid to upper 90s all week with little chance of rain.

-Water early and often.

-Ten day forecast

What's Being Harvested:

A few peppers and turnips from the garden

-Herbs

-Serrano, jalapeno, and bell peppers

-Green, yellow, and purple onions

-Cherry and Roma tomatoes
-Turnips

Weekly Gardening Outlook: Flowers everywhere!

This will be a continuing series where we look ahead at the coming week in gardening for the Northwest Arkansas area.

Dandelions

 It's one of my favorite times of the year.  The days are warm, the nights are cool, the sky is a deeper blue than any other time of year, and the first flowers of the year are popping out everywhere.  Shown above is one of the many dandelions popping up around my garden.  The entire plant, including the flowers, leaves, and roots is edible.  The flowers are awesome eaten fresh, with a sweet, honey suckle flavor.  They can also be battered and fried or used to make wine.  I'm not a big fan of the greens as I find them bitter, but many like them in salads or lightly boiled.  The roots can be used to make tea, but I've never done it.

When harvesting any wild edible, make sure you know what you're picking and only harvest it from areas that you know have not been treated with chemicals.

Further reading HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Strawberry flowers

Green onions sending up scapes

Nanking cherry blossom

While I love the greening up outside and all of the flowers, it is worrisome.  We are having an unseasonably warm spring having not had a freeze since late February.  To put that in perspective, our average last frost date is April 21st.  We still have a month of frost danger.  If a freeze comes in, it will zap all of the flowers and really damage the subsequent fruit production.

That said, if it holds off and doesn't freeze we are looking at a monster crop of strawberries this year.  Each of my 77 transplants is loaded with flowers as depicted above.  This is perfect growing weather for them.

The green onions have sent up scapes (leafless flower stalks), which is to be expected.  Onions are biennial plants in that they produce seed in their second year.  I started these plants from seed early last spring and am pretty excited to complete the process of gathering my own seeds from plants that I started from seed.

The Nanking cherry bushes are blossoming in their second year.  While it is usually recommended to remove blossoms for the first few years on fruiting perennials, Nanking bush cherries are so hardy though, that we expect get a small crop from them in their second season.

Sand plum tree blossoming out

Transplanted volunteer cilantro

The cilantro have tripled in size in the last week.  I wasn't so sure that they would handle the transplanting well, but they are doing great.  They really like a moist soil, so I've kept them well watered using water from the rain barrel.

Chickens finishing up their work in the garden

Our chickens dug up and ate every weed from the beds, then leveled the soil back out.  This is one of those win/win situations.  They apparently don't find the strawberry plants appetizing and being planted in the blocks protected them from being scratched up.  I put the upside down aquarium over the cilantro to protect them from the chickens while they were in there.

"Crash" and flowering daffodils

A good dog or two is a must in the backyard garden/ranch.  Our two Brittany spaniels keep predators away from our chickens and catch rodents that try to invade the garden.  It took a little doing to teach these bird dogs to not chase the chickens, but they got it eventually.

Chicken and Egg Report:

We are remaining at four eggs per day. In the next month or so, we will get new chicks to eventually replace our current flock.

Weather Outlook:

-Cooler. Highs near 60 every day. We may see a light frost Sunday evening. A chance of rain today and Saturday and then again on Tuesday.
-Ten day forecast

What's Being Harvested:

-Not much right now other than wild edibles.

Weekly Gardening Outlook: Spring has sprung!

This will be a continuing series where we look ahead at the coming week in gardening for the Northwest Arkansas area.

Honey bee visiting some inaptly named dead nettle

The purple topped dead nettle seen above is a winter annual that seems to be everywhere right now.  Despite its name, it is not a nettle and does not have any stinging parts.  It's in the mint family and the whole plant is quite edible, making an interesting seasonal addition to salads.  As with harvesting any wild edible, make sure you know what you're picking and only harvest it from areas that you know have not been treated with chemicals.  Click HERE for further reading.

Newly planted strawberry plant in cinder block

Newly transplanted strawberry plants in blocks

Late last year, I quit picking off the runners on my strawberry plants and allowed them to infiltrate the main garden area and root new daughter plants.  This past weekend, I transplanted about 50 of these into the blocks that form my raised beds.  It's hard to beat the price (free!!!).

Transplanted volunteer cilantro seedlings

Mint emerging in a cinder block

 While transplanting the strawberry plants, I saw some seedlings with familiar leaf shapes.  I tasted one of the leaves and confirmed that I had some volunteer cilantro seedlings coming up!  I transplanted them into a suitable location.

The mint comes back every year, as seen to the right.  It is very hardy and invasive, so never plant it in your main garden.  Always make sure it is segregated as in my cinder blocks.  Also, don't buy mint.  Find someone that has some and get a cutting.  My mint was established by cutting a piece from my in-law's plant and sticking the cutting into soil.  A little water over a couple of days and it rooted and took off!

Freshly harvested green onion

The green onions persisted all winter and are now growing rapidly.  They add a great flavor to many dishes.

Garlic showing some freeze damage, but putting on new leaves

Asparagus emerging in mid-March

The asparagus is beginning to emerge from the bed we helped a customer plant last year. The owner could harvest a few spears right now, but they decided to give the bed a second year to become well established.

Sand plum tree budding out

My old sand plum tree and the six Nanking cherry bushes that I planted last year are budding out and will soon be covered in leaves.  The plums aren't very good for eating fresh as they have large pits and thin flesh, but I do make jelly from them every year though.  The cherry bushes should produce fruit this year and I'm very excited to see how they taste.  Look for a report on that later in the year.

Chicken and Egg Report:  

We are averaging four eggs a day now.  After transplanting the strawberry plants and covering the cilantro seedlings, I allowed the chickens into the garden.  They very efficiently scratch up the soil and dispose of any weeds or grubs and other insects they can find.

Weather Outlook:

-Highs in the 70's, with overnight lows in the 50's.  A slight chance of rain on Saturday.  Absolutely perfect weather to be out in the garden.

-Ten day forecast

What's being harvested:

-Green onions

-I should have already planted lettuces, but procrastinated.  Get it in the ground if you haven't already.