The Modern Victory Garden

Had a visit from my sister and brother in-law this afternoon and we are heading out this evening to go see the new Harry Potter movie, so my garden time was pretty limited this Sunday.   I did get out this morning though and took care of a few items.   Here's largely what I did today:

• Watered the remaining garden beds not covered on Friday or Saturday, excluding the potato beds, which I will catch later this week.
• Mixed some shredded paper into the current compost heap. I have been adding a lot of fresh garden and kitchen trimmings and it was getting too much nitrogen (greens) without enough high carbon additions (browns) to balance it out.
• Sprayed all of the cole crops (cabbages, brussel sprouts, broccoli, and kohlrabi) with Bt solution. It has been two weeks since I last got to this and I noticed lots of white moths fluttering around the brussel sprouts and cabbages last week.
• Hand pollinated some more pumpkins and winter squash.
• Hand pollinated the current ears of corn that are silked.

I should probably take some photos of the hand pollination process, particularly for the corn as it is simple to do and allows full pollination if you have a small patch where wind pollination may not give full coverage.   I will need to do this again with the later maturing plants and will try to remember to take some pictures when the time comes.                             

I noticed today that the bees were back working the squash patch more actively. They were conspicuously absent during the past week or so and I did some hand pollinating to ensure a reasonable fruit set on the pumpkins and winter squash.   I have been doing hand pollinating for several days now and will probably wrap up and let the bees take over (now that they have made a return).  The results of these efforts are that I now have several good-sized pumpkins and winter squash growing.   Here's one of the pumpkins - it's about 5 inches long and 4 inches across.              

Luckily, the pepper plants are self-pollinating (a little shake now and then like tomatoes) and are fruiting prolifically in the greenhouse with little or no intervention on my part.                                     

The brussel sprouts and early cabbages are really putting on a growth spurt right now.   The Primero cabbages have formed nice firm softball sized heads.              

These are one of two red/purple varieties I am growing this year.   The other is Ruby Ball, which is also forming heads but are not quite as well developed as the Primero plants.   The Steins Late Flat Dutch cabbages (green) also have a good beginning on their somewhat flat shaped heads.   All of the cabbages and brussel sprouts were sprayed with Bt solution today (1 Tablespoon in 1 gallon of water in a pressure pump sprayer).        

Before heading in to clean up for our coming guests, I pulled some Nantaise carrots from the second oldest carrot patch.   Most of the pictures I have been showing lately of carrots are of the variety Mokum, which is planted in the oldest patch.   The Nantaise are somewhat bigger, lighter orange in color, and are slightly more tapered in shape.   These Nantaise carrots came from the second planting of the year and are getting very niced sized now.                               

Off to see the new Harry Potter movie and enjoy an evening out.   Hope you had a good weekend in your garden too.