The harvest is all in, with the exception of all the delicious herbage and greenery that I am using as cover crops this year due to unknown toxic loads. (Still unable to find a lab willing to do small scale test for under $500.)

Time to evaluate this superweird gardening year in order that next year be more successful. To note, we had a million rainy days this summer, (yes, one million) which mucked up the whole works including washing away the seeds, rotting the seedlings, incubating our largest mosquito population ever, and delaying the warm stuff. I also felt like nothing put down deep enough roots to hold water well, so when the rains slowed, everything wilted in a day. (This is Catscience, so please ignore if it sounds nuts.)

Total harvest was around 100 lbs, so all in all, a good year, with some surprise underdogs. (*=successful plants from last year, repeating this year; **=plants started last year, but squished by cat-love or melted in great seedling death of ‘08)

• Multicolored Pole Beans: WINNER! Multiple poundage, lots of variety. Early plantings rotted, so direct seeded in early May with first harvest 7/4.
• Scarlet Runner Beans: WINNER! Planted 5 year old seed packet, maybe even from my garden in SF (10 years ago). Same as pole beans. NEED MORE SUPPORT, maybe horizontal next year.
• de Bourbonne Pickling Cucumbers: RIP: rain. Direct seeded. They came up (or other variety did), but no fruit. Lots of flowers.
• Little Leaf Cucumbers: RIP: rain Direct seeded. Three stunted, ugly fruit that tasted like soap. Lots of flowers.
• Northern Pickling Cucumber** See notes on other cukes above.
• Red Russian Kale: DANGER/POISON Easy to sow, easy to grow, still going strong and beautiful. The first few harvests were tasty until I learned about danger of cruciferous family taking up toxins.
• Be my Baby Cherry Tomato: RIP: Every last one washed away.
• Genovese Basil* WINNER DANGER POISON. still going strong
• Thai Basil* WINNER DANGER POISON. still going strong
• Borage* WINNER! As noted in prior posts, seedlings easily rot from top watering and torrential rains, but easily recover, self seed and pop up in every crack. Direct seeds were in bloom by mid-June. A happy volunteer that I will gladly host forever. Probably best to tie up because it looks terrible when it falls, and can knock down bean vines because it’s so heavy. First two plants carpeted with aphids, but after a couple weeks, I didn’t see another aphid. There were ants, though, but couldn’t see that they were farming them.
• Flying Saucers Morning Glory RIP: rain. All but one seed rotted, but it was beautiful sprouting out of burned out guitar planter in late August. Blooms were about 4″ across, streaky and stunning.
• Daddy Mix Petunia: RIP: rain
• Pink Wave Petunia: RIP: rain
• Mission Bells California Poppies: RIP: Rain. We do not have this kind of rain in California, and they never popped up at all. So, not poppies but poopies.
• Beneficials Mix (to draw nice bugs): Middling results. These were damned impossible to tell from weeds. Yes I know they’re weeds by another name on purpose, but still… Some pretty pink and white flowers. I noted a couple tiny waspy things on them that weren’t drawn by other flowers, but the bees preferred the borage and lemon balm by far. Bachelor’s buttons included, which I loved. Also, the easternmost bean container’s leaf cutting mystery coincided with emergence of the white tufty flowered plant. Useless info without photos, I know. Next year.
• Black Beauty Zucchini: RIP: rain
• Bouquet Dill* RIP: rain
• Lemon Cucumber* RIP: rain
• Chadwick Cherry** RIP: rain
• Pronto Beet RIP: rain
• Butter & Eggs Marigold** WINNER! One of few plants that survived transplanting. Very leggy, needs to be planted with lower growing ornamentals or basil? Not anything super dense, though, because choked out last year by pink petunias.
• Caserta Zucchini** RIP: rain
• Cascadia Bush Snap Pea** WINNER! Several pounds harvested, DEFINITELY plant on St. Patty’s day. (added note to calendar to remind me every year.) Organic peas never dropped much below $5/lb, so a significant money saver. Plus, they’re delicious.
• Scarlett O’Hara Morning Glory** RIP: rain

Perennials

• Concord Grape: WINNER! Over 40 pounds harvested. 27 pints of grape juice canned! Harvested about a week late due to rain.
• Rosemary Alta: RIP: rain
• Mints: (some survived, not sure which) Only icky mint survived. Bought new one at farmer’s market. WINNER!
• Lavender: (seems to have survived) RIP: rain
• Paul’s Glory Hosta: Still going strong. Not too much blooming because of the rain.
• Chives WINNER! This the first year I cooked with the flowers. Very nice for fancy pasta salad.

New friends:

• Cherry tomatoes: as noted in prior post. Farmer’s market. Lots and lots of pounds. I failed at weighing them, but I would say upwards of 10 lbs, and with organic tomatoes in the $4/lb range because of late blight, definitely a money saver.
• Butternut squash (Volunteer) WINNER! I think this is my favorite argument in favor of composting. I didn’t plant this at all. I will say it’s a descendant of Hubert’s squash because the squashes were nice, but I’ve had other squashes since he forayed to the Golden State, so it’s parentage is in question. That said, 20 lbs of food from a plant that sprung wildly from a garbage heap is pretty f’ing awesome.
• Liriope From the Bronx, a plant with no home. Happy, if a little dry. A little boring, but surprising August/September purple flowers.
• Bleeding Hearts: Also from the Bronx. Transplanted just after bloom, unsure of color/variety. Should come back next year.
• Lemon Balm: another Bronx transplant. Seems invasive, but smells so nice, I don’t mind it yet. Easy to weed. Loved the wet weather, but roots seemed ill suited for dry spells.
• Thyme: DANGER POISON from farmer’s market
• New Rosemary: DANGER POISON

By next year, I hope to have the toxics issue sorted out, but it certainly didn’t make me want to dig around in the Gowanus-tainted dirt. It’s probably mostly fine, but small amounts of PCBs and PAH’s can be very bad for the living, and I’m not a fan of that kind of risk. All in all, very successful in hindsight, though the mosquitoes and potential PCBs made it tricky to work down there. The nice thing about gardening is that next year is only a few months away. I saved a bunch of seeds, which will make next year cheaper.

Several folks have asked why there haven’t been more updates: the skeeters have driven me out of the garden. Even running down with DEET on for two minutes to dump compost and grab as many tomatoes as I can, I get bitten all to hell through my clothes. I seem to be allergic to these f**ers and get quarter-sized lumps from them. Maybe one of those beekeeper outfits would do the trick? Are they mosquito proof?
Totally depressing.

In good news, the rogue squash growing from the compost pile has been identified: it is a butternut squash.

Since I took these photos on Monday, the visible squash is almost full size, though still green. I think we’re gonna be making and freezing butternut ravioli again! Yay! Lowfat, filling and delicious. And cheap. Did I say cheap?

The tomatoes don’t seem to have late blight, but I’m watching them as much as I can. Another pound of tomatoes today, some fugly cucumbers and more beans. The beans have been surprisingly bountiful, and very very pleasing.

And today, the grapes are ready.
Harvested for 20 minutes, lazily in the heavy rain (no mosquitoes) and got 3.5 lbs of grapes. They’re sweet and grapety grapey. In Cat News: Gary is a fan of grape detritus.

I’m gonna see which grapejuice extraction method is going to be best, as the Interweb is divided evenly between juicer and boiling. Then, in the next few days, any and all are welcome to come to my house for harvesting, stemming and canning of grapejuice. Then, popsicles with the new popsicle mold Paul found on the street.

Again with the rain. I haven’t needed to even hook up the irrigation system or the rain barrel. This is silly.

Lots of tomatoes ripened in the couple sunny days this week, almost a pound yesterday. Which makes about a pound and a half thus far. The beans have slowed dramatically, and irritating neighbor cut the stray ones back. Grr. I even left him a nice note inviting him to eat the ones that strayed to his side of the fence. What I thought was a volunteer tomato in the kale/bean/borage box is actually a sungold, which must’ve sprouted from a wayward seed from the cold frame when I transplanted the kale. So sad that all the rest of the sungolds washed away, because they’re so delicious.

The kale is taunting me, it is so beautiful, but no soil lab has said they can test for the contaminants at issue, so the kale is just for pretty right now. The herbs don’t scare me as much, which is irrational. Kale is meatier and therefore more likely to be poison?

The basil box is fluffy and prolific, but growth has slowed again with the renewed rainfall.

The borage dropped a lot of seeds when it fell over, and I crawled around on the ground yesterday picking them up. I think I collected almost a full seed packet’s worth. They are pretty and black and ridged. I think by now enough of them have been washed around the yard that next year will have more than three volunteer borage plants. I collected about half a packet’s worth of snap pea seeds, though I’m pretty sure they were a hybrid and won’t come true from seed. It can’t hurt to grow them, now that I know the St. Patty’s planting day secret.

I think this week, I’ll try for a second planting of beans and marigolds.

I was just passing messages back and forth with Christa about hating to harvest. As seen below, my veggies look so happy that I am loathe to bother them.
The Cascadian peas are sweet and dripping with rain:

I don’t know when to harvest the Red Russian Kale, but it looks so pleased next to beany buddies.:

Happily, I need not worry about the tomatoes

or the grapes (which are trying to get into the guitar store) until much later in the season.

Note the bright blue planters that I built. They are made of old shelving units, my former neighbor’s nightstand, and some cedar wainscoting that was on sale for having a ripped package. They are painted with AFM Safecoat Very Low VOC Exterior paint in Cerulean Blue. I love this paint and the people behind it are lovely, upstanding folk who make their product in the US and have gone about it the right way, by not putting any toxic garbage into it. I thought the blue would be very nice against the green, especially once the marigolds and petunias pop up everywhere. So far, not too many flowers, but that will change (I hope).

The grapes flowered last week, (maybe 5/29?) and I believe I am allergic to the pollen, but only sneezy. Hopefully the bees and wasps and whatever pollinates them went nuts, because it has rained most days this week. If we get as many grapes as there were flowers, we will have a bumper crop and possibly, a collapsed grape arbor.

I planted the tomatoes from greenmarket sixpacks on Memorial day. I spent 20 bucks replacing the seeds that didn’t germinate well or don’t grow well from seeds. All told, I believe only $5 of fedco seeds weren’t successful, which is a million-fold increase over last year’s results. (75% have been successful, and wildly so.) Yay Fedco! (To be fair, some of last year’s failures were 100% successful this year with better planting habits and timelines, such as Cascadia Snap Pea from Seeds of Change.) I probably should’ve thinned the peas, but can do next year.

In other big news, the white Bleeding Heart plant that I rescued from a garden project in the Bronx has come back from the dead. Good to know, as it was totally flattened by the wind in the back of the truck. It resprouted all over the place, and should be healthy enough to put in a prettier container soon.
The Liriope and Lemon balm looked good the next day, but I knew they would be forgiving.

Next week I will post pictures of the Herb Stairs I made, as well as the rain barrel which I am acquiring from NYC DEP’s Rain Barrel program. If you are at all intimidated by rain barrels, I assure you they are easy peasy pie, and only make your life better and cheaper. I hooked up (and will again) connect a drip system to it, which makes your life even more betterer and cheaperer.

I am off to harvest, tenderly and lovingly, some mint and peas for dinner. Maybe we’ll have Kale too!

The peas are all up, looking lovely with lots of leaves ready to unfold. Snow yesterday, so the lids stay on the boxes.

Today I can build more in the backyard, since the garbage is all gone. Yay! I don’t have to scramble over a busted toilet to get to the garden anymore.

First, I will make a taller frame so that I can start transplanting seedlings into larger containers next week. The Kale is very tall already, and the beets, I think will want to be moved as well.

I hear tell that the dogwoods over on Union street are in bloom, I will post pictures if it is true.

More rain today so photos tomorrow.

Here’s a progress report:

• Mosquito dunks in the rain barrel are controlling the volume of biters pretty well. The only exception is the small cloud of mosquitos right next to the composter. Today’s rainy day project is figure out what they’re going after there, and how to make them go away.

• The compost is hot, smells clean, and is decomposing stuff very quickly. The corn cobs from our barbeque three weeks ago are almost entirely gone.

• I have been meaning to tie up or cage the tomatoes for weeks. I never got around to it, and the tomatoes started sprawling all over the place, thereby squishing the nasturtiums and the purple petunias. So I found some bright pink fabric strips at the sweatshop around the corner, and tied them up today. I lost a couple branches to my laziness, but I won’t knock into them anymore and the flowers will look better.

• After the Massive Seedling Death in May, I direct seeded the cukes, the zucchini, basil, dill, peas, borage and marigolds. One rogue tomato came back to life, and I hope it’s a Sungold, but I think it’s the Chadwick Cherry. The dill is coming in nicely, and the borage seems to be coming up everywhere. The cucumber plants are looking stocky. Zucchini seems to be nowhere, unless I’ve mis-identified one of the zucchinis as cucumber. The peas went looking for something to grab onto, and they are latching onto the big iron gate piece I have leaning against the wall. Everywhere I had a spare inch of soil, I planted basil. As a result, basil is sprouting between cucumbers, petunias, chives, and tomatoes. I truly don’t think it’s possible to have too much basil, and am excited that both Thai and Genovese seem to be flourishing.

• Paul’s Glory Hosta put up its first flower spike! (Thanks, Wilma!) Last year, it was a little timid, but the leaves are very big, and I believe I can get rid of the squirrel/cat cage to let the pot run over. I think moving it into the grape arbor and giving it a lot of compost was the key.

• Weeding goes on apace, and it’s tough to keep up with. Brooklyn is lush with weeds, and I am learning which ones to hate, and which ones I kind of like. Galinsoga is very pretty in form, but always seems to have buggies on it, so I make it a priority. It’s also very easy to identify when it first germinates. Lambsquarters were a problem last year, but now that I know that they are edible and better tasting than spinach, they aren’t growing at all. I have an official zero tolerance policy on Ailanthus since it gets so big and stinks. This, the tree of Brooklyn, makes up a huge percentage of my browns for the compost. I can chop down the whole tree, and within a week, it’ll be three feet tall. I know I will lose the battle. I haven’t been able to identify one of the taller weeds that grows around the patio drain. The leaves smell a lot like chrysanthemum leaves but I’ve never seen it flower. I also have quite a bit of plantain, which I just learned is good on fresh bug bites to control itching. We will see.

• The rain barrel is irrigating everything nicely, as long as it is full. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem to have the pressure to do the whole yard. I think the dripper in the thyme is clogged, but otherwise, the whole system is working beautifully.

• The mint is swimming happily in it’s boggy home with the rain barrel overflow hose. I made a delicious salad from the Times of green grapes, MINT FROM MY GARDEN, feta cheese, salt and pepper. It was supposed to have olive oil too, but Steve is a bachelor and had none. It was remarkably delicious and was the first produce to come out of the garden.

I am happy with my garden this year, and the rainbarrel is easing my mind about watering. If it doesn’t rain for a couple days, I turn on the drip system and the plants are fine on the hottest days.

Today I’m thinking about seeds.

They’ve arrived in the mail but are still in their little packets. Allegedly the rule is to figure out your safe planting time (after new plants won’t get damaged by the last frost). So I’m supposed to figger out what magic date was the last frost, count backwards through the germination and baby seedling time, and plant seeds that day.

Every time I’ve ever done this, I’ve messed up my seedlings most righteously.

• Plant too early, the babies are too leggy and spindly and weak.
• Plant too late, and they’re too small to be set out on time and tomatoes never ripen before September.
• Plant too close to the radiator and get great, early plants that fry to a crisp when the last cold weekend causes Saharan desert condition in the house in late April.
• Cat starts chasing soil gnats. Cat knocks petunia seedlings onto ground. Cat eats petunia seedlings. Cat pukes petunias and soil gnats all over rest of seedlings. Cat eats remaining seedlings when I try to clean up puke. Cry and lock cat in bathroom. Start again.
• Early summer rains allow only flood-resistant seedlings to survive. Drought kills rest of garden in July.

Hopefully I’ll learn better how to do this in first garden class in February. Have been collecting cardboard egg cartons for seedling starts.

Will try doing plants in homemade newspaper pots for easy transplant. Ma talked me through it the other night on the phone. In trial runs, it seems that brown paper bags and brown paper wadding is easier to make pots out of than newspaper.

I have a grow light bulb, and have scouted a place in house that is far from radiators.

Protecting the seedlings from Kitten and Big Cat, and later, Neighborhood Feral Cat is clutch. I’m working on a very cheap system of barriers using old busted out window screens with ag netting instead of screens. Testing commences on Superbowl Sunday, which is my favorite day to go to the giant hardware store: it’s all mine.

So here’s where I’m starting. A few containers from last year, an ancient Concord grape vine, and a big cement slab. Everything is grey and it feels like snow today. The bright colored plastic junk stands out a lot more in winter. Maybe I’ll paint the fugly containers as this project progresses.

Here’s the composter, which currently lives inside a funny planter box that I made last year from old doors and a futon frame. It’s far too deep to be practical, and would require a giant amount of dirt to fill. I’ll rejigger it this year.

A shot inside the composter, frozen until Brooklyn is warmer. The unnatural blue bits are teabag tags from the office. Lady Grey tea was very popular last week.

Here’s the grape vine, and a shot of wires and vines all tangled together. Note the open telephone box. I wonder why verizon service stinks so badly.

And last, but not least, my 2nd compost pile, which is just leaves and sticks for now. I throw leaves and sticks to cover food I put into the binned pile: good habit for when it warms up to prevent flies and smells.

It’s a little forlorn, but winter isn’t permanent.