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If you ask the earwigs these warm summer nights are just perfect for hanging around in the top of the apple trees, eating, sleeping, mating or whatever. Of course this happens in and between the apples where the birds can’t join the party. The apples grow so close to each other that the earwigs have perfect conditions. So I’m trying to rescue at least some of the apples by removing as many as half of them, leaving a space between each apple of about 5 cm (2 inches). This will also allow the birds to break up the party; I don’t know if they will actually eat them. The apples lost in the battle naturally goes into the composting box.

Now that most of the red beets and the first round of carrots are harvested from the raised beds I’m left with big patches of free soil. I ran out of spinach so today I ordered three more bags of seeds. As described on the back of the bag it’s possible to sow spinach until late August, so there’s still more to be squeezed out of the garden. Radish too can be sowed until late August, but I think spinach is a little more versatile and in higher demand around here. I believe the dates provided by the Weibulls company applies to the Scandinavian climate. The real way to do this is of course to collect your own seeds from vegetable flowers, but I still have much to learn so that will be an upcoming project for the years to come

Is this one carrot or two carrots? I’m confused.
(By the way, this is the Nantes 2 strain.)

Tomatoes put out small branches between the existing side branches and the main stem. The plants will grow into bushes if these small extra branches are not continuously pinched off. The picture shows two spots between the main stem and the branches where extra branches have been removed. If you don’t do any pinching and the plants turn into bushes it’s likely that they will not bear many tomatoes, if any.

I only have two plants this year so it’s easy to manage. I’m wondering how this is handled in a tomato field. It seems like it would be a lot of work.

This is what happens when you leave your raised bed alone for a week: A 1.8 kg (2 pound) squash leaning over the edge of the frame. I normally harvest them days before they get that big hoping they will have more taste when they are just half the size. These are growing next to red beet and parsnip.

I’ll be on vacation for a week, so no posts until then. Have a nice time and enjoy the summer

This is a log describing the food I bring in from the garden in 2008. I’m using the following beds:

Raised bed, 3 m x 1.2 m
Raised bed, 5 m x 1.2 m
Bed, 6 m x 1.2 m
Bed, 6 m x 1.2 m
Bed, 6 m x 1.2 m

———————-

Parsnip:

2008-12-24: 5 pcs. (1258 g)
2008-11-28: 1 pcs. (480 g)
2008-11-18: 1 pcs. (252 g peeled)
2008-11-13: 1 pcs. (364 g)
2008-11-03: 1 pcs. (446 g)
2008-10-20: 1 pcs. (564 g without top)

Total for 2008: 10 pcs. (3.4 kg)
———————-

Tomato:

2008-10-01: 30 pcs. (1200 g)
2008-09-24: 1 pcs. (36 g)
2008-09-23: 1 pcs. beef (125 g), 2 pcs. (112 g)
2008-09-18: 1 pcs. beef (52 g), 3 pcs. (138 g)
2008-09-15: 2 pcs. beef (300 g), 2 pcs. (120 g)
2008-09-01: 1 pcs. 20 g
2008-08-23: 1 pcs. 50 g
2008-08-13: 1 pcs. small green (22 g)

Total for 2008: 45 pcs. (2.2 kg)
———————-

Beans:

2008-10-12: 2460 g
2008-10-01: 266 g
2008-09-20: 1250 g
2008-09-10: 620 g
2008-09-04: 630 g
2008-08-31: 300 g
2008-08-28: 380 g runner
2008-08-25: 250 g short, 66 g runner
2008-08-23: 64 g short
2008-08-20: 87 g short
2008-08-18: 66 g short
2008-08-13: 29 g short
2008-08-11: 16 g short
2008-08-10: 43 g short
2008-08-08: 50 g short

Total for 2008: 6.6 kg
———————-

Peas:

2008-08-23: 34 g

Total for 2008: 34 g
———————-

Apples:

2008-09-16: 922 g green
2008-09-12: 539 g green
2008-09-11: 838 g green and red
2008-09-10: 700 g green
2008-09-06: 3200 g green
2008-09-04: 924 g (8 pcs.) red, 319 g (2 pcs.) yellow
2008-08-31: 284 g red, 172 green
2008-08-30: 871 g red
2008-08-27: 94 g (1 pcs.) red
2008-08-25: 785 g red
2008-08-23: 939 g red (with spots)
2008-08-20: 1758 g red (all with spots)
2008-08-18: 538 g red
2008-08-15: 561 g red
2008-08-13: 1053 g (11 pcs.) red
2008-08-12: 752 g (9 pcs.) red
2008-08-10: (10 pcs.) red
2008-08-09: 233 g red
2008-08-08: 298 g red
2008-08-07: 1000 g red
2008-08-03: 900 g red
2008-08-01: 685 g red

Total for 2008: 19 kg
———————-

Onion:

2008-10-12: 1 pcs. yellow, 1 pcs. red
2008-08-23: 18 pcs. yellow, 8 pcs. red
2008-08-12: 11 pcs. yellow, 16 pcs. red
2008-08-08: 10 pcs. yellow (1330 g with top), 9 pcs. red (1050 g with top)
2008-08-07: 1 pcs. yellow (97 g), 1 pcs. red (126 g)
2008-07-28: 1 pcs. yellow (28 g), 1 pcs. red (42 g)

Total for 2008: 42 pcs. yellow, 36 pcs. red
———————-

Red beet:

2008-10-12: 1 pcs. long
2008-08-08: Round (593 g), long (106 g)
2008-07-28: 12 pcs. (1200 g)
2008-07-18: 12 pcs. round (1500 g), 9 pcs. long (750 g)
2008-07-13: 2 pcs. round, 1 pcs. long

Total for 2008: 43 pcs.
———————-

Squash:

2008-10-12: 1 pcs. (1260 g)
2008-09-17: 2 pcs. (978 g)
2008-09-06: 2 pcs. (653 g)
2008-09-04: 1 pcs. (654 g)
2008-08-31: 1 pcs. (326 g)
2008-08-27: 1 pcs. (419 g)
2008-08-25: 1 pcs. (289 g)
2008-08-20: 1 pcs. (676 g)
2008-08-10: 1 pcs.
2008-08-03: 1 pcs. (1047 g), 1 pcs. (1037 g), 1 pcs. (166 g)
2008-07-27: 1 pcs. (1815 g)

Total for 2008: 15 pcs. (9.7 kg)
———————-

Radish:

2008-10-12: x pcs. red and white (360 g)
2008-09-04: 2 pcs. white (31 g)
2008-08-31: 8 pcs. white
2008-08-27: 9 pcs. white
2008-05-28: x, red, white tip
2008-05-31: x, red, white tip
2008-06-03: x, red, white tip
———————-

Carrot:

2008-10-12: 3 pcs.
2008-09-17: 23 pcs.
2008-09-16: 7 pcs.
2008-09-09: 8 pcs.
2008-09-04: 6 pcs. (327 g)
2008-07-28: 4 pcs. (145 g)
2008-07-18: 32 pcs. (2600 g)
2008-07-16: 2 pcs. (228 g) + 2 pcs. (183 g)
2008-07-13: 4 pcs.
———————-

Spinach:

2008-10-12: 186 g
2008-09-17: 120 g
2008-09-06: 100 g
2008-09-04: 60 g
2008-08-25: 17 g
2008-05-28: x
2008-05-31: x
2008-06-03: x

Total for 2008: 600 g
———————-

Lettuce:

2008-07-18: 3 sinks
2008-06-03: x
2008-07-14: 85 g
———————-

Potatoes:

2008-09-20: 4600 g Bintje, 3440 g Asparagus
2008-09-14: 1055 g Sava
2008-09-13: 871 g Bintje
2008-08-20: 800 g Sava (1 plant)
2008-08-16: 1670 g asparagus
2008-08-10: Asparagus (2 plants), Sava (1 plant)
2008-08-01: 3500 g asparagus (6 plants)
2008-07-30: 1100 g asparagus (2 plants)
2008-07-29: 750 g Sava (1 plant)
2008-07-27: 650 g Sava (1 plant)
2008-07-23: 900 g Sava, 600 g asparagus
2008-07-18: 500 g Bintje (1 plant)
2008-07-17: 800 g asparagus (1 plant)
2008-07-14: 1000 g (1 plant) <- One single potato at 210 g.
2008-07-13: 600 g Sava
2008-07-08: 1000 g Sava (2 plants)

Total for 2008: 22 kg

6 kg Bintje
7.4 kg Sava
12 kg Asparagus
———————-

Total amount of food for 2008: 82 kg.

One of my squash fruits seems to be rotting, and one of the leaves seems to be in bad shape too. This is the first time this has happened and I don’t know what is going on here, so please leave a comment if you have an explanation. This particular plant has delivered a couple of fine fruits earlier this summer and I hope it will keep on going despite this bad one.

I think I went a little to crazy with the iron phosphate fighting the killer slugs. As a result it’s hard to find just a single slug in the garden now. I scattered the pills along the sides of the raised beds and the other beds, along the hedge, and around the composting boxes. This method was effective. But then again it wasn’t, since the good guys also died and iron phosphate is quite expensive. So I suggest a better approach.

First of all – put out more ducks. This is not a “too-many-slugs”-problem, it’s a “too-few-ducks”-problem. Although it’s possible to do, it’s not practical in the suburbs. Instead I suggest targeting each individual killer slug with about 5 iron phosphate pills. Compared to collecting and boiling them this is more effective, because when slug starts having some “stomach problems” it will go back to the hive and die. Cannibals as they are the other killer slugs eats it and dies too. This won’t happen when you go and boil them.

Furthermore, the good guys is much less likely to come across the pills when you don’t spray the pills all over like a madman. 5 pills per slug is also much cheaper, so that a box of iron phosphate will probably last for years.

Isn’t that a fine row of tagetes? No? Why not? They’re not in the picture? Hmm, must be the wrong row… Nope, it’s this one alright. I saved the seeds from the tagetes last year and put them here in this row, but there’s no sign of them this year.

Now it’s unlikely that the following goes for tagetes too, but it does for some vegetables. It turns out that some of the companies producing and selling seeds for all kinds of plants is manipulating the genes of the plants, so that the seeds you will eventually get from those plants you grow will not be able to grow into new plants if you sow the new seeds. This way you are forced to go and buy another round of seeds if you want to grow this particular plant again.

For this to be a good business for the company it has to control the reproduction mechanism of the plant, the price of the seeds and the information available to the public. Well the last one just failed miserably (damn blogs ). Choose your company wisely.