August 13th, 2012 
Rick 
You have been hearing this a lot from me this year, but it was another hot week!! At least 95 every day with one day over 100. The tomatoes sure don’t like this!!
We did get a chance to get out to the garden a few times this week and get the rest of the fall/winter garden planting done. These are some broccoli starts I bought from a local nursery. I’m not usually a big fan of buying starts (here lately I’ve been growing them all myself). But Glover Nursery did a really good job with these starts. They look healthy and aren’t leggy so I’m pretty happy.
Here’s why I decided to buy some nursery starts, these are my pathetic broccoli and cabbage starts. I got them started in late June just as I had planned, but I really neglected them. For some reason this time of year I just can’t seem to remember to take care of my starts. So I tucked the few survivors into this out of the way bed and mulched them with some grass clippings. We will see how they do!
We got the seeds planted for all of our fall and winter lettuce. Along with the lettuce we also planted some kohlrabi to go into one of the hoop houses. I’ve set an alarm on my phone to remind me to check my starts every day so that these will do better!!
We also planted this bed with spinach and Swiss Chard (mostly spinach). As soon as these plants germinate we will put the cold frame on the bed without the lids. I’m then going to cover the frame with some light row cover cloth to keep the flies that lay the leaf miner eggs out!!
We had another great harvest week. The slow trickle of early girl tomatoes continues. The cucumbers are really starting to produce well and we had the first large picking from the strawberries.
Later in the week we had a big harvest of green bell peppers along with another tomato, more cukes and a hand full of green beans.
Friday night gave us a lot more cucumbers, a nice zucchini a few small peppers that I pick because they were in the way of other peppers or were just growing in funny spots on the plants. Also we had almost a pound of strawberries.
Friday also brought us the first ripe “real” tomato. This one is a “celebrity” and is the first ripe fruit on one of our regular tomato plants. Many more to come in the next few weeks!!!
I also harvested two different seed varieties. The first are seeds I saved from our over wintered Swiss Chard plants.
The second are seeds from our favorite red lettuce that we call “Larry’s Red” named after the friend that gave us the seed. I only got a small amount of seeds from these. The plants were just starting to produce seed but they were in the way and we needed to pull them out and get our spinach in, so I harvested all that were ready and I’ll just have to try again next year.
Here’s this weeks totals:
Bell Peppers – 3.35 lbs
Cucumbers – 4.35 lbs
Zucchini – 1 lbs
Tomatoes – 1 lbs
Onions – .75 lbs
Strawberries – 1.25 lbs
Beans – .30 lbs
Eggs – 24
Total Produce - 11 lbs
That brings our annual total to 146.15 lbs. We will be joining Daphne’s Dandelions for the Monday Harvest Report as always this week. We will also join An Oregon Cottage for the Tuesday Garden Party this week.
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Good luck with the broccoli. It’s nice you can find starts this late. Around here the greenhouses have composted everything and are bringing in the mums and decorative kale for fall planting. My attempt at broccoli starts was also a bust but I planted four of teh best looking in some unused squares and cut my first head last week. So there’s hope if you have enough time left.
Very cool getting your own chard and lettuce seeds! I’ve only ever tried cucumber and tomato, but would like to try saving other kinds as well. You really are lucky to be able to purchase broccoli seedlings at this time. Where I live, vegetable seedlings are impossible to find so if you don’t get around to starting your own (like I did) you’re up a creek as far as fall gardening goes. All your harvest looks marvelous!
Will be fun to see how your two different broccoli patches do. Are they the same variety? Nice look haul for the week. Too hot for spinach and lettuce to sprout yet, another 3 weeks or a month depending on what the weather is doing. Having a run of 104+ every day the past five days, hoping my carrots germinate!
Nope they are different varieties. The one advantage my starts may have is they are pac man which is a pretty short season variety. Only about 55 days so maybe with a little protection in the late fall I’ll be okay!!
lovely harvest
Those are nice broccoli starts, lucky you to find them. I like you idea of having a daily reminder to look after your veggie babies, I’ve killed or stunted any number of them from forgetting to look after them for a day or two.
Hope you get some relief from the heat, we’ve managed to escape the heat around here, it’s actually been a bit on the cool side for the past month.
You had a good harvest despite the heat, hope it is getting a bit cooler. Cabbage worms are feasting on my starters and I am sure I will lose quite a few, need to look into ways to protect them.
We have used the light fabric row covers to keep out cabbage worms. The problem is this time of year it just gets to hot under them and the plants cook. So we will just have to live with a little damage for a few more weeks until it cools off.
Strawberries! How wonderful. I’m curious. How are you growing so many strawberries in that kind of heat? Mine have sunstroke right now.
Our strawberry patch is on the east side of our house where it gets lots of morning sun but avoids the baking sun of the late afternoon. This is really our best time of year for strawberries!!
You had a good harvest this week. I am terrible with my starts too, so I moved my mini green house right up into my dining/kitchen area. Hard to avoid. Mine are always leggy though cause we don’t get enough sun in the windows and I can’t seem to get enough light to fit into that little greenhouse!
Nice harvest, especially those bell peppers. They’re perfect! I poked around your blog a bit and saw your sunflowers. I usually grow them too but this year the squirrels yanked out all my seeds as well as the starts. Maybe next year.
The purchased starts do look like they are excellently grown, but you may be surprised at the resiliency of your own starts even with the early lack of attention, now that they have more root room etc.
Your new fall planted areas look so full of promise. I think that of every new bed I plant up… holds the hope of more to come.
I suspect that we’ll have to adapt our gardening to the realities of climate change… We’ve resorted to shading some of our less heat-loving plants with canopies made of row cover, and that has seemed to help. Still, you’ve challenging weather conditions there, especially for starts!
What a wonderful harvest you have–all those gorgeous peppers–yum!
Your garden seems to be handling the heat well, lots of lovely produce to pick especially envious of your peppers, one veggie i don’t seem to have a lot of luck with.
I am wow’d by your pepper harvest but what especially caught my attention is your headstart on fall/winter lettuce and your cold frame ideas. Just what I needed to get me moving on doing some winter gardening.