SeedO's 2014-2015 Garden Journal

[TheSeedObsesser]

I thought that it was about time to jump on the garden journal bandwagon, and I wanted to make several other threads but instead thought that I should just lump them into one, so...

To smash or not to smash? Bugs that I found among my peas.



Some other pics -

First pea flowers (not open yet, should be open by tomorrow morning, I'll take pictures when they are)!

@marshallsmyth's purple-seeded Golden Sweet selection was the first to get flower buds and has the most of them.

I also have one or two flower buds on some breeding material that I obtained from an HG member. All other varieties don't have any flower buds yet.

In case anybody was wondering what a Garbanzo/chickpea plant looks like. (Ignore the weeds )

More coming later - have to eat lunch then go pick up my sister's 4H ducklings!

[EDIT] How do you turn pictures into a slideshow?

 

[journey11]

Black-spotted Red Lady Beetle, good, eats aphids, so keep her...but check and see what the aphids are up to.
The second is a Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, the kind that comes in your house to stay for the winter. Bad, handpick and drown in soapy water. Wear gloves because they will stink you. Yuck. The 3rd is also some kind of stink bug. They suck the juices from your plants, tomatoes, squash fruits.

I think any photo you insert as a thumbnail will automatically cause a slideshow to pop up when others click to enlarge it, then you can flip through all the pics at once.

I had always wondered if I could possibly grow chickpeas! We love them. I make homemade hummus all the time. Can't wait to see how they turn out.

 

[897tgigvib]

I grew a few garbanzos a few years ago. They were at the end of a row of Tomatoes, and not far were some pole beans, so they got shaded some. Grew alright, but the garbanzo beans they made were smallish and few. The seeds I used were out of a store bought bag of beige garbanzo beans.

 

[Smart Red]

Ditto to what @journey11 said. Only the first (red and black) insect is a keeper.

 

[897tgigvib]

SeedO, those Peas really are a good selection. I've been selecting them for over 10 years. At first for best plant. I selected them at first while living in barely zone 4 montana. They grow fast and uniform. To about 6 feet.

Wait until you see their real pretty flowers fully opened!

How many of them did you plant? I can hardly wait to see if the purple seeds happen for you too, or if it is just my growing conditions or something.

 

[Wishin']

The second two should be killed, The first is the convergent lady beetle, it is one of the most popular types of lady bugs bred and released in crop fields for pest control.

LOL didn't realize others had already answered.

 

[journey11]

Well, I guess the second two suspects have been condemned by a unanimous jury.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

They'll get the death penalty, that is... as soon as I can find them again! Thanks, I had thought that the red one was a good one but wasn't sure. I also have trouble telling the difference between assassin bugs and stink bugs.

Marshall, I planted all that you sent me along with a similar one that I found in a packet of regular Golden Sweet. They really are a good selection, I've counted over 50 flower buds on (what I think to be) those plants, I've only found a few on the rest. They also seem to do well with strong winds (A plus in my garden - the more the mega-farmers log the windier it gets, the hills sure don't seem to help.). 10+ years is a lot of work in the making. Your selection will definitely be a long time resident in my garden.

It will be interesting to see what I get out of the peas next year, as there are swarms of bumblebees here. I do think that they'll be preoccupied with the wildflowers and whatever else there is to keep them busy. Most of my peas are the edible-podded types, so crossing wouldn't be that bad.

Here's the first fully-opened flower. This is from the breeding material, I've got a suspicion that it will turn out to be yellow-podded.

Journey, we eat a lot of chickpeas too. If I get a good harvest I will send you some, I think that I still have your address somewhere around here. You won't have to water them very often, if at all. The small plants are very drought tolerant and don't seem to like being overly wet. They do take their take their time coming up. (That could be because I have old seed. I got them from Baker Creek - "Black Kabouli", reportedly not even a Kabouli type (these have smaller seed). I am considering trying Carol Deppe's "Hannan Popbean" Garbanzo next year.) My plants are sort of being shaded by the peas as of right now.


A picture of our new barncats! I am considering naming the tortoise-shell (calico-looking one, could actually be calico) something along the line of Frankenstein or Frankenmeow (the different patches of color). Hopefully he/she will keep the birds out of the garden for me late on. There's two of them, I'll see if I can get a better picture of them later on. @marshallsmyth your a big cat person, do you know of an easy way to sex kittens, preferably without messing with them too much? I have read that male puppies will always let the females win in play-fights, so I kind of used this to guess their genders.

More garden news - some good some bad, good news first. You already know that my peas are flowering - my radishes are too, I'll be able to get seed this year! Some more (sort of) good news - the strawberry popcorn was up this morning, went out later today and it appears as if half of it was eaten. I don't have enough bird netting to cover the area (I sowed 150+/- seeds and spaced them about one foot apart from each other). I'm either going to buy some more popcorn seeds, or just fill the bare areas in with dwarf okra. The cucumbers are up, we'll see if they get eaten. The moth beans are up, hopefully they'll grow fast and shade the soil so I won't have to weed so much. I've got camomile flowering.

The dry beans are getting eaten alive by cucumber beetles, I saw what might have been adult Mexican bean beetles, and there are these little black fruit fly things that really seem to like the beans. The whole thing got dusted down with diatomatious earth, hopefully that would help. They would probably be flowering by now if it wasn't for the darned bugs. The snap beans are doing much better (newer seed than the dry beans?).

I transplanted four volunteer pumpkins today (maximas). Other than that I can't think of anything else strictly related to the garden.

More coming later...

 

[journey11]

The pea bloom is beautiful and the kitty is too. I think all calicos are females, right? Something about the pattern not presenting in male genetics.

Assassin bugs remind me a little of General Grievous from Star Wars, the Clone Wars. Just look for that big proboscis. The stink bugs also look more like a little shield, stubbier and not as long in the body.

Thanks for offering me some of your chickpeas if they do well. I'll be rooting for them!

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Yup, I think that the calico pattern would be a sex-linked trait, only showing in females.

Well, nothing much new here. Oddly the coll weather crops are doing great this year while the warm weather crops wither away, it's usually the opposite. I need at least one tomato this year. Keeping my fingers crossed, my lone Black Sea Man plant seems to be dealing with the temperature swings and dry soil the best. We've had a few 40* nights this week with temps near the 100's forecasted for this week. Odd, odd weather.

The peas are doing great, I'm surprised that they haven't flowered themselves out. They're covered in peas, I even got a red one! Here are some pictures.

The red ones start out gold and turn to purple, red being in the in-between stage. This one's a kind of burgundy with a yellow border.

A younger one. The red ones are snow (?) peas.

A purple-blushed snow pea. These start out green and only partly change to purple.

Pictures of the all of the peas. They're all flowering now and I'm getting everything from purple snap to red snow to yellow snap (I am missing a few color combos). Marshall's Golden Sweet and the breeding material peas (where I got the red ones) were first to flower, with Dwarf Grey and Sugar Magnolia (purple snap) coming in last. Next year I'll be adding a few more to my little collection including recommendations.



The Cincinnati Market radishes are flowering, they're already producing seed pods. Pictures.


Other than that I have camomile, some beans, and a lone volunteer tomatillo flowering. I'm really regretting not planting more tomatillos this year. The bean varieties that are flowering are maxibel, black valentine, and I think trout (jacob's cattle). I'm already getting some small pods, although not enough for green beans. Pictures.


And a cucumber seedling (couldn't attach any more pictures).



The squash is doing OK (as in still green - mostly), the butternuts do have some cold damage. The popcorn is doing great so gar, I've got some seedlings that are already past the 8 inch mark. The beans are doing good, although some are a little bit leggy and bug-eaten. The cowpeas are still a little bit on the small side, still growing but diseased (they're probably not taking the cool nights well). All of the herbs are doing great, especially the mint (when does that not do great?). I wouldn't recommend the lavender mint for food use (I haven't tried it in very many ways although it may be OK baked into something), I would have to say that it would be great for soap or candle making. The tomatoes and peppers are pathetic, really hope that next year turns out better (I know that I probably shouldn't doubt them yet, but they aren't looking good).

Went for a long walk this morning and they're are a lot of wildflowers around - wild tobacco, crown vetch, bird'sfoot trefoil, shasta daisies, goat'sbeard, clovers, and a few that remain unidentified or that I just didn't see. One of those identifiables was growing on the side of the road, in a gravelly area, among the grass. It was a legume, small bushy plant, with large oval-shaped leaves that may or may not have been in groupes of threes, large red pea-like flowers. I'm thinking that I better collect seeds from it before it gets mowed down (any idea of what it might be?). No pictures - yet! When I go back in a week or so to check on it I will make sure to bring my camera along with full batteries though.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and one of the garbanzos appears to have flower buds on it. Pictures coming when they open. My lentils are also flowering, but the flowers are so small that I can't get a non-blurry picture with my camera.