Robbins Farm Garden

A Cooperative Learning Project

Sunflowers’ progress

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SunflowersWe planted sunflower seeds on April 24, Russian Mammoth from Seeds of Change. After waiting a few weeks, the germination looked weak, so I planted more seeds on May 14. Now in both sunflower patches, we have two big 5-week old plants, and a bunch of 2-week old seedlings. I think I’ll thin them down to two of each and see what happens. Time to bloom is around 110 days, so we can look forward to seeing them in bloom around mid-August.

Sunflowers made the cut in our "all vegetable" garden because the seeds are, after all, edible and delicious. More than likely though, the birds will get them all. No problem – birds eat the bad bugs, too. We like birds.

Peppers are in

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Peppers

Mike P. planted the pepper seedlings on May 29, Memorial Day Weekend, three varieties:

Lady Bell, a sweet bell pepper from Busa Farm.

 

Lady Bell sweet pepper

 Carmen, a Mediterranean sweet pepper from Waltham Fields.

Carmen pepper

 Jalapeno, a hot pepper, donated by a neighbor, Robin.

Jalapeno hot pepper

Mike planted the seedlings using a standard successful method:

    1. Scoop the soil out of the planting hole, a little bit bigger than the hole you need;
  2. Throw in a handful of compost and a bit of fertilizer;
  3. With some loose soil in the bottom to correct the depth, position two seedlings* so the soil lines match the surrounding ground level;
  4. Fill the hole halfway with soil;
  5. Fill the hole with water to soak the soil around the seedlings’ roots;
  6. Fill the hole the rest of the way with soil;
  7. Build a little dike around the stem to help catch water.

* We doubled up on pepper seedlings – two to a hole, an inch or two apart. Pepper plants are kind of “loose” and let a lot of sun through the leaves. Growing two side-by-side helps shade the fruit from sun scald, and practically doubles the yield in the space available.

Cauliflower trouble

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Root maggotsTwo of the cauliflower seedlings have been looking pretty bad. I pulled them today and replaced them with two new red cabbage plants from Busa Farm. Upon examination, we found at least one root maggot and a lot of damage.

Cabbage root maggots are the larval stage of Baby caulflowerthe cabbage root fly. There’s not much you can do once you have root maggots, and our only hope is that the other brassicas are strong enough to grow in spite of possible infestation. We’ve already pulled a few cabbages with the same problem. So far, the brocolli doesn’t seem to have been effected.

The only effective prevention for cabbage root maggots is to grow the seedlings under an impenetrable tent or cloche until they’ve grown big enough to survive an infestation. It also helps sometimes to plant later than usual, after the first generation of the flies is past. I took the damaged seedlings home to compost, since we don’t grow brassicas at home.

Sadly, this little damaged plant had already produced a perfect miniature cauliflower bud.

Peas’ progress

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We planted all our peas on April 21, so this is where they are after about 38 days in the ground. We planted three varieties:

Pioneer, a bush shell pea from Seeds of Change. Est 55-70 days to harvest. Oregon Sugar Pod, a bush snow pea,  from Burpee. Sugar Snap,  a vining sugar snap pea, from Johhny’s. Est 62 days to harvest.
Pioneer shell pea Oregon Sugar Pod Sugar Snap

Bamboo pea and bean fence pea brushWe had good germination rates from all of them. Building the trellis

Sugar Snaps will grow 6 ft and taller, so we needed a substantial support for them. Erika, Steven and Alan engineered and constructed a framework using bamboo that has escaped from a neighbor’s yard into Oakes’ yard. Bamboo is extremely invasive, but very useful in the garden. 

For the bush peas, we used the trimmings from the bamboo as pea brush, just sticking them in the ground over the peas to give them a little support. They’ll also be leaning on the fence.