Invaders

While I was gone last weekend some backyard invaders decided to attack my garden.  My first invader was a local rabbit.  Somehow the rabbit got through my fence and decided to start a nest in between my rows of lettuce.  Not a bad situation - food and shelter - all within a few inches of each other.  When I got home the nest was empty and there was no sign of the rabbit in the yard so I removed the grass that the rabbit had accumulated and filled in the hole.  I checked out the fence and made sure there weren't any holes so we should be good to go again.  The only major loss was my row of peas.  They were completely eaten down to the ground.  I can only imagine what would have happened if I had been gone longer then a weekend.

Rabbit next in the lettuce rows

"Thanks for the peas. They were delicious"

My second invader was a cutworm that attacked my sunflower seedlings.  Cutworms are one of the most frustrating insects that I have ever seen.  All they do is literally chew through the stem of the seedling and leave the plant laying on the ground.  They don't even eat any of the plant.  I could handle it a little bit better if they would at least eat the plant.

Cutworms

Cutworm is the named used for the larvae of many adult moths.  They are very hard to catch since they come out at night to eat and hibernate during the day.  Cutworms can be stopped by putting barriers around your seedlings.  The barriers could be made from cardboard, aluminum foil or any stiff material that that can circle your plant.  I have also heard that crushed eggshells and coffee grounds around your plants will help.  Anyway about it they are nasty.

Damaged Sunflower seedlings

More damaged Sunflower seedlings

                                   

My solution.  Landscape tube cut into sections.

Seed Company Stationary

Check out this awesome stationary that I found at the Urban Farmgirl event in Rockford, Illinois this spring.  This stationary was being sold by a local vendor who loves to collect old stationary. Just look at some of the detail on this stationary. There is information and pictures almost all the way around the stationary.  The detail and colors are fantastic. This is a letter from 1934 in which the Condon Bros. Seedsmen are offering to sell 10,000 pounds of Timothy Seed to Yopp Seed Co. Imagine a business transaction done by letter and waiting for the US mail to deliver the answer. Don't you wonder how many letters it took for the two seed companies to come to an agreement on price and quantity?  Also, think about the level of trust each of these seed companies would have to have in each other with regards to payment, delivery and quality of seed.

Just spend some time looking at the detail on this stationary and the information that they provide. I would be happy to do business with a company like this.  I sometimes think we have really lost our way with emails and texts.  Have you ever written a business letter on stationary like this or even handled a business transaction through regular mail with beautiful stationary?

"Be Friendly"  "Write Occasionally"

Original Full Letter

Detail of Stationary Header

Detail of Stationary Border

Detail of Stationary Footer

                     

Body of the Letter

                         

Garden Accessories

The flower and vegetable gardens continue to grow well but we really need some warmer weather. The average high this time of year should be about 75 degrees.  Today, June 15th, the temperature by the lake barely got above 60 degrees.  I know my pepper plants are very confused.  I added some fertilizer to my plants to give them some additional energy and strength.  I used a 7-7-2 fertilizer from Territorial Seed Company called Bio-Fish All Purpose Natural Fertilizer.

Father's Day happens at such a great time of the year for a Dad like me that loves to garden. Today was awesome because I got to work in the garden with my children.  My daughter helped me plant some additional flowers in the perennial garden and my son found a Chestnut Tree growing in the perennial garden so he re-potted it for transplanting at a later time.  Good stuff.

For Father's Day I got two presents that I think you will really like.  The first one is a new clipper from Cutco.  Very heavy duty with a really sharp blade.  Along with the great functionality, the clipper comes with a lifetime warranty.

The second present were these really cool plant markers.  They are paint stir sticks with Scrabble letters on them to spell out the names of the vegetables in my garden.  The sticks were painted with really fun colors.  They really add a nice touch to the garden.  I'm so lucky to have a creative wife and daughter.  Can you tell which letters in Scrabble aren't used a lot?

Veggie and Plant Updates

I want to share a picture of one of my Peony plants.  This plant has special meaning to me since it is one of two peony plants I got several years ago from my mother-in-law for Father's Day.  As you can see this peony produces huge deep red flowers.  They really smell beautiful.  I wish I could remember the variety.  I will ask my mother-in-law who has the best memory I know for information like this.  Pretty sure she will remember.

My potatoes have been growing like crazy lately.  If you remember, I did not fill the planting bags all the way to the top.  Instead, I decided to fill the bags up as the plants grew.  I was hoping this way I will get more potatoes.  We will see. Here is a picture of the plants getting a nice drink of water after filling them up with several inches of soil. Thanks for my great assistant for the help.

Unique Veggies Growing in the Garden

I have several items in my garden that are from Seed Savers. I want to provide you more detail about each of the items because I am really excited to see how they grow and taste.

The first is a tomato called Mortgage Lifter. This is a Kentucky family heirloom that has been grown since the 1930's by three generations of the James Halladay family. This plant should produce 1-2 pound pink beefsteak tomatoes. They are suppose to be meaty and typically crack-free. This is an indeterminate variety.

The second is also a tomato called Black Cherry. The plant produces 1 inch round cherry tomatoes that are purple-black in color. The flavor is suppose to be very sweet. Just the way you want a cherry tomato to be for when you need a quick snack in the garden. This is an indeterminate variety as well.

So, what does it mean when a tomato is indeterminate?  To begin with, tomatoes are either indeterminate or determinate. It is important to understand which type you are getting so you can grow the tomato plant correctly. Determinate varieties are also called bush tomatoes. They are bred to grow to a compact height of around 4 feet. Determinate varieties stop growing when tomatoes are set and typically all the tomatoes ripen at the same time. After this the plant will die. Plants like this don't need that much caging or staking. Most importantly they should NOT be pruned or suckered. If you do this you will reduce the amount of tomatoes on the plant.  Determinate varieties are excellent for growing in containers and if you have limited space.

Indeterminate varieties of tomatoes are sometimes called "vinning" tomatoes. The great thing about this variety is that they will grow and produce fruit until the plant is killed by frost in the fall. This variety needs LOTS of room and staking or caging is required. While not mandatory, I think it is a good idea to prune and sucker this variety. Because this variety can grow so large they really don't work well in containers. I always grow indeterminate varieties because they last longer and you get a lot more tomatoes.

My other two plants from Seed Savers this year are sunflowers and cucumbers.  The sunflower variety is called Lemon Queen.  This is a sunflower that grows about 7-8 feet tall with large lemon-yellow petals and dark centers.  This variety is suppose to produce multiple blooms on one plant. Sure hope this happens because my wife is constantly cutting flowers.  It will be interesting to see how the plants handle her cutting tendencies.  Pretty sure the birds will be unhappy in the fall.  The cucumber is called Snow's Fancy Pickling.  This comes from the Chicago area and has been available for planting since 1905.  This plant produces slender cucumbers that are 5-6 inches long. They have thin skin so I'm hoping they will be good for eating right away instead of pickling.

Garden in and Seed Savers

So, its the end of May and I finally have my whole garden planted.  Better late then never. Hopefully, we get a nice warm up here along the lake to make everything grow.  Here is my listing of vegetables growing this year.

• Tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Yellow Summer Squash (Zucchini)
• Green Summer Squash (Zucchini)
• Peppers
• Peas
• Yellow Beans
• Green Beans
• Lettuce
• Brussels Sprout
• Kohlrabi
• Onions

When you only have a ten foot by twenty foot garden you have to stick with the basics.  Even with the basics things are a bit tight.  Really wish I had more space.

Carrots on the left, peppers and tomatoes down the middle, beans and peas on the right

Onions and lettuce growing nicely

Added some new Lavender plants

This year I have several plants growing from Seed Saver seeds. Seed Savers is a nonprofit, member supported organization whose purpose is to preserve and distribute heirloom plant varieties.  This way, unique plant and seed varieties will be preserved for future gardeners and farmers.  Not only should you think about buying your seeds (vegetables and flowers) from them but everyone should think about taking out a membership in this organization.  Here is a link to their membership page. Seed Saver membership.

Seed Savers accomplishes their preservation goal by maintaining a seed bank of thousands of varieties.  These seeds are grown in isolation gardens.  The cultural and historical information of the seeds is documented for current and future use.  Seeds Savers takes the banking process one step further by storing varieties in two back-up locations.  One at the USDA Seed Bank in Fort Collins, Colorado and the other at the Savalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.  Just waiting for a global disaster.

Seed Savers varieties contain heirloom and open pollinated seeds.  These are NOT hybrid seeds that have been modified genetically. Heirlooms are open pollinated with a long history of being cultivated and saved within a family or group.  The plants have evolve by nature or human selection over time.  Heirlooms are typically open-pollinated by insects or wind without any human intervention.

Their catalogs are really great.  Beautiful pictures with excellent descriptions of the variety. Here is the link to the catalog. Seed Savers catalog.