Tag: July garden

Harvesting melons

Now is a rewarding time to harvest from the garden! This week we started harvesting our Crimson Sweet watermelons. At the beginning of July our Sun Jewel Asian melons started coming in, and somewhere in between then and now, our Kansas muskmelons (usually called cantaloupes).

Sun Jewel Asian melon

Sun Jewel Asian melons take only 68 days from transplanting to maturity. A good melon for people with short growing seasons, provided you can make a warm spot for them. They have crisp white flesh and are refreshingly sweet without over-doing it. The  long oval fruits average 7″ x 3 1/2″  and are pale yellow with shallow white sutures (“seams”). They ripen to a more buttery yellow and slip off the vine when ripe. Plants are resistant to downy and powdery mildews, and can be very productive. We buy seed from Johnny’s Selected Seeds

For new growers: “full slip” means a gentle nudge with your thumb on the melon where it joins the stem will dislodge the fruit. “Half slip” is an earlier stage where you need to cut or break about half of the thickness of the stem. harvest your melons at half-slip if you are going away for the weekend, or you worry the groundhogs will get it if you don’t. But if you are harvesting to eat right away, harvest at full slip for best flavor and aroma.

Kansas Muskmelon

We like Kansas muskmelons. They are an heirloom variety with really good flavor, fine texture and enough sturdiness to stand up to humid weather and variable rainfall. The oval fruits are sutured (ridged) and moderately netted, averaging 4 lbs. They ripen almost all the way out to the rind (not much waste!).  Kansas also has good resistance to sap beetles that can destroy fruit of other varieties. It needs 90 days from transplanting to maturity. Pick these at full slip, and be sure to inhale the aroma at the stem end, as you carry them to the table. We buy Kansas from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

Crimson Sweet watermelon in our garden

Crimson Sweet watermelon is the only one for us! It has the best flavor, though the pinky-red flesh might lead you to think it’s not ripe, compared to very red-fleshed varieties. We harvest ours from around 7/25 (75 days from transplanting) to the end of August.  There is a 10-14 day period of peak ripeness for each variety. We hope not to be still harvesting in September.

We save our own watermelon seed and select for earliness, flavor and disease resistance. We sell it via Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

A major factor affecting the taste is the skill of the harvester in discerning ripeness. The first sign we look for is the shriveling and browning of the tendril on the stem directly opposite the watermelon. If this tendril is not shriveled we walk on by. Next we slap or knock on them. According to Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, when a watermelon is ripe, it will have a hollow sound when you thump with your knuckles: it sounds like thumping your chest. If it sounds like knocking your head, it’s not ripe. If it sounds like hitting your belly, it’s over-ripe. Lastly, we do the “Scrunch Test”: put two hands (heels together) spread out across the melon, press down quite hard, listen and feel for a scrunch – the flesh in the melon is separating under the pressure. Rumor has it that it only works once, so pay attention!

Other growers with other varieties use different ripeness signs, such as the change in color of the “ground spot” (the area touching the ground), or the change in rind texture from glossy to dull.

I like to cut the melon stems with pruners, but some people break them off. Watermelons need gentle handling, as do the vines if you will be returning to harvest again.

After harvest, we set the melons out to the side of the row for pickup. This gives time for sap to start to ooze out of the cut stem. If the sap is red or orange, the melon is ripe. If it is straw-colored, the melon was cut too soon. This is useful feedback for new crew.

Watermelons can store for a few weeks, but then flavor deteriorates. We store ours outdoors in the shade of a building or a tree. Rotating the stored stock is a good idea. (They could be dated with a grease pencil/china marker). The ideal storage temperature is 50-60°F (10-15.5°C), with 90% humidity.

Keep the squirrels off!

 

Asparagus beans, okra and edamame

Cow Horn Okra

This week in the garden we have started harvesting some new, warm weather crops. Our okra is producing a few pods each day, even though the plants are still quite short. We like Cow Horn okra, which can get relatively large without getting fibrous. We cut at 5″, using pruners. Some years we have attached a card to the handles of the pruners we use for this job, with a life-size drawing of a 5″ pod. This helps new crew get it right.  We have a 90′ row, with plants about 18″ apart in the row. This will be enough for the hundred of us (some people never eat okra despite the cooks’ best efforts!)

Chinese Red Noodle Asparagus Bean

We grow asparagus beans (yard-long beans) to add variety to stir-fries, not as a major crop. To me, the flavor is not as good as bush green beans, but the shape and color, and the easy-care nature of this crop make them worthwhile. We grow Chinese Red Noodle or Purple Podded, which both keep their color when cooked. We harvest them at pencil-thickness, not at the yard-long puffy and stringy stage. Cut into one inch lengths, they brighten up any dish of mixed vegetables. Once the tall trellis is in place, this crop needs little work. They like the heat and are fairly drought-tolerant – they are more closely related to southern peas (cowpeas) than to green beans. They are not much troubled by Mexican bean beetles, and they’ll go on producing beans until the frost.

Normally we’d start picking sweet corn about now, but this year our first sowing suffered in the unusual early hot dry weather of our spring. We even plan for some degree of failure with our first sowing, because we do sow it early, which is always risky. We sow some seeds in Styrofoam Speedling flats on the same day we make our first outdoor sowing. The Styrofoam flats float in a water tank, needling little attention from us. Our plan is to use the seedlings at 2-3″ tall, to fill gaps in the rows. This year even this plan B didn’t work out. We were very busy and the seedlings got too big for successful transplanting. So we have very little early corn this year, sigh.

Next up, any day now, will be our first harvest of edamame. This is a kind of soy, which can be eaten fresh. We like Envy, a fast-maturing kind on short plants. We pull them up and strip the pods as soon as they are a bright green, moving towards gold, and the beans are a good size inside the pods. Some gardeners prefer a taller variety, and harvest several times from the same plants. We tried this, but found we prefer the once-over harvest. We make a succession of five or six sowings, to provide a new harvest every few weeks until frost.

Sowing greens for fall

Senposai – a delicious, cold-tolerant leaf green

One of my tasks this week has been sowing fall greens. I start sowing in the third or fourth week of June, and set aside time once a week for about six weeks, to sow more and weed and thin the older seedlings. The first two weeks are the most intense, and if I’m successful with those, I have a lot less work in the weeks following. If something goes wrong, I resow whatever didn’t come up, or died.

For fall greens, we don’t sow in flats but directly in a nursery bed, covered with rowcover on hoops to keep the harlequin bugs and flea beetles off. It’s less work, easier to keep them all watered, and they are not cramped in small cells: they make good roots and are more tolerant of hot conditions.

This year we are growing twelve different varieties of broccoli and eleven of cabbage! We hope to compare them and next year just grow the best few varieties of each  crop. We are growing to feed the hundred members of Twin Oaks Community, not to sell to a wholesaler, so we want a long broccoli season, and sideshoots are as important to us as main heads. We want cabbage that stores, as well as cabbage that is ready quickly. Our broccoli patch is part of the Novic trials, so we hope others will learn from our plants too.

To organize all these different sowings I have a spreadsheet and a map of the nursery beds. I prepare the bed, make the furrows, write a plastic label for each variety, measure the rows, set the labels in place, then water the furrows very thoroughly before sowing the seeds and covering them with (dry)soil from the sides of the furrows. This is a good way to help seeds germinate during hot dry weather: the seeds sit in the mud, where they have enough water to germinate and get up above ground. It’s much more successful than watering after sowing, when you sprinkle water on a dry surface and hope in goes down deep enough and doesn’t evaporate. And, contrary to some myths, brassica seeds can germinate very well at high temperatures. They just need the water right there where the seeds are.

We’ll transplant our seedlings when they are 3-4 weeks old, watering first, then

Kohlrabi is another of the less-common brassicas. We like to mix the purple plants with the green ones

digging them up and setting the bare-root transplants out in their rows. We’re planning 2000 ft of broccoli, 1300 ft of cabbage, 540 ft of senposai (a delicious tender leaf green with some frost tolerance), 360 ft of kohlrabi, and 90 ft each of Chinese cabbage and Yukina Savoy (a cold-tolerant giant tatsoi). That’s plenty of plants to rehouse in a short time and keep alive and happy.

This year we are trying two new things. One is Proteknet in place of rowcover. It’s a fine mesh nylon fabric that keeps bugs out, but lets more light in than most spun-bonded rowcovers, and has much better airflow. We think we’ll have healthier plants. Also, we can see them through the mesh, so we know they’ve germinated and can spot problems early. One year we checked under our rowcover and found fleabeetles had got in and had a busy week, chomping along the rows. We got the ProtekNet from Purple Mountain Organics in Maryland, suppliers of good tools with the personal recommendations from the company.

The second new thing we’re trying is drip irrigation in the field. We use drip for some of our crops, but previously we used overhead sprinklers for the fall greens. We’ve had trouble in recent years with the extremely hot weather in late July and early August when we transplant. We think setting out the drip irrigation and running the water while we plant will help the plants get over their transplant shock. And we’ll be able to give them an hour of water in the middle of each day for the first week, to help them face this brutal weather we’re having. And the best bit is: they can get their mid-day watering without me walking up and down dragging a hose. I can be indoors blogging!

Twin Oaks July Garden Calendar

(LOTS TO HARVEST)

Here’s this month’s task list, which you can adapt for your own vegetable plot. We’re in central Virginia. It’s 100F just so you know! October 14 is our average first frost date.

During the month:

Mow clovers, and sorghum sudan cover crop areas.

Lettuce Factory: Sow heat-resistant lettuces, every 5 days, (sowing #20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25), using shade-cloth & burlap to cool the soil after and before sowing. Soil temp must be below 80°F – use Jericho if very hot, with ice on seed rows, or sow in plastic flat in fridge. Transplant #16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 this month under shadecloth – 120 heads (1/3 bed) /planting. Store seed in fridge.

String weave tomatoes once a week with binder twine.

Seed selection: Romas: Select for high early yield and healthy foliage. Mark with ribbons on T-posts (bows on good side). Select 100 from 260 plants. Remove off-types, don’t select from plants within 150’ of other tomatoes.

Perennials: Water blueberries, take up & store roof netting.  Mow, weed & water all perennials.

Cover crops: can sow buckwheat, soy and sorghum sudan during July. Also white clover if damp enough.

Early July:

Mow spring potato tops if they have not died by 7/1. Spread compost for fall brassicas following potatoes.  Disk in compost ASAP, or if disking impossible, till.

Sow brassicas for fall, resow earlier brassicas if needed. Use rowcovers, water and your best powers of memory.

Sow carrots #8 (if needed), corn #5. Last date for limas is 7/6.

Asparagus: First week of July (or sooner) is a good time for weeding, composting and tucking mulch.

Transplant lettuce #16, 17.

Hill up peanuts at 12” tall, and mulch them.

Clear any remaining spring carrots, for best flavor.  Stop harvesting broccoli when it gets bitter.

Potato Onions – July 10-15 Second sorting: check through curing bulbs, starting with the largest. Eat any > 2”, or refrigerate and plan to plant them in September. Use Worksheet and Log Book.

Strawberries – July 6-8: If propagating from our plants, pot up 600-900 for each planting, pencil-sized crowns, 2 or 3 leaves, 4” petioles. Use current favorite method. Remember irrigation. 580 for 1 bed in East Garden, 900 for 2 beds in  Central Garden, 800 for 2 beds in West Garden. Finish renovating strawberries by mid-July, restore 20″ paths.

Plan, inventory and order winter cover crops.  Make cover crop maps.

Summer Disking: Get spring broccoli & cabbage area bush-hogged, disked, sown in summer covers – same time as second disking for corn #6.  Disk some of the Green Fallow area for new strawberries, sow buckwheat & soy.


Mid-July:

Harvest spring potatoes 2 weeks after tops have died; air the root cellar and warm to 70°F. Store potatoes in the early morning. Ventilate the cellar every night or two, especially if it’s wet in there.

Sow brassicas for fall; cukes #4 (slicers & picklers), zucchini and summer squash #4 7/15, corn #6 7/16, beans #5 7/19, edamame #5, storage melons. (Could sow snap peas 7/15, swiss chard, leaf beet, kale; rutabaga 7/15-8/15.)

Cut down all the celery to encourage a second harvest.

Transplant lettuce #18, 19; 2 week-old Blues cabbage,Tokyo bekana, maruba santoh;

Transplant senposai, yukina savoy, komatsuna, other fall brassicas – cover all with rowcover. Keep watered.

Water soil for transplants if dry: Set out drip tape for fall broccoli and cabbage. Transplant broccoli, cabbage, [cauliflower] at 4 leaves (3-4 weeks old?) in 34-36″ rows,

If eggplants are suffering from fleabeetle, start foliar feeding.

Seed Selection: watermelons: mark 30 early large watermelons from healthy plants for seed (use grease pencil).

Late July:

Sow fall brassicas, corn #7, scallions #4, fall carrots and bulb fennel in the last week of July, if not too hot and dry.

Flameweed carrots before emergence. (Get propane tank filled in good time.)

Transplant more brassicas, incl kohlrabi, collards, preferably not older than 5 weeks. Transplant lettuce #20 & 21.

 

July Harvests: Asian melons, asparagus beans, beans, beets, blueberries, broccoli (early July), cabbage, cantaloupes, carrots, celery, chard, corn, cow peas, crabapples, cukes, edamame, eggplant, lettuce, okra, onions, peppers, hot peppers, potatoes, raspberries, Roma paste tomatoes, scallions, squash, tomatoes, zucchini and summer squash.