Summerization July 1, 2011 Garden Photos

We went on vacation the first week of July so prior to leaving we had to summerize our garden. (This is a good idea to do even if we did not go on vacation as it is always a good idea to reduce water and weeding needs). We purchased 6 bales of hay to mulch all of our garden rows to prevent the ground from drying out too fast and to reduce weed growth. Here are some photos of where we are with the garden as of July 1, 2011. A lot of our plants are really small as we had an exceptionally cool and wet spring.

View of the west half of our garden.

View of the east half of our garden.

View of the middle row and hoop house.

Our asparagus producing well for several months.

Asparagus and Okra.

Okra about to start blooming.

Bush beans don't produce as well as pole beans but don't require support.

Pole beans starting to bloom. The turnips below are flowering.

Pole beans starting to climb the hoop house.

Our cool season stuff inside the hoop house is starting to die out although the carrots, Amish Deer Tongue Lettuce, carrots and Oakleaf Lettuce are doing well.

Cabbage and Deer Tongue Lettuce.

Kale and Chard produce all summer long.

Cucumbers starting to flower.

Our grapes are looking good for early July. We are having big problems with Japanese Beetles.

We have grape vines above our berry bushes and strawberries all around our garden.

Good looking grapes! We have Concord, Norton and other varieties.

A volunteer Gourd growing amongst newly planted Blueberry bushes. The strawberries below are hard to see withthe new straw mulch.

Peppers, Asparagus and Cucumbers.

Asparagus, Cucumbers and Okra.

Garden view.

Tomatoes and Okra.

Peppers. They are small because they were all grown from seed and I got a late start with our cold wet spring.

Tomatoes and Peppers.

Tomatoes and Peppers. Our strawberries (behind) produced about 25 pounds of berries this spring.

Tomatoes starting to flower.

Tomatoes freshly mulched to lessen watering.

Early Spring Planting (and mulching).

We have started our bed preparation and planted just about all of our cool season plants (mid to late March). We have planted onions (both seed and bulbs), garlic, cauliflower, broccoli, many types of lettuce, kale, chard, Brussel Sprouts, arugula, spinach, potatoes, beets, carrots, snap peas, turnips, etc. The soil was still cold below the surface so I did not place any mulch/straw over the surface so the sun could continue to heat the dark soil.

Half of our hoop house is planted!

Both sides of the hoop house are planted!

My daughter helping spread straw!

Some may think that we have this backward, but we are putting down straw in all of our aisles, not on the beds. We still need the sun to heat up our planting beds so we are putting down straw in all the places we walk to give us a better/dryer surface to work from, keep the rain from washing our soil away and keep the weeds away. When things start to dry out and all our cool season plants have sprouted, I will spread straw or grass clippings around them as well to keep the soil moisture in and prevent weed growth.

What a good helper!

Look at all that area I do not have to weed this spring!

Now we just sit back and wait for rain and seed germination.

A little bit of straw over the top of my strawberries in the Spring (late March).

I did spread a little bit of straw over the top of my strawberry beds so that the new shoots can grow over the straw. This will hopefully mean more of the fruit develop sitting on top of straw instead of having direct contact with soil that rots the outside of the berries.

How to build a simple hoop house.

We have a wide row garden layout and it worked out perfectly that our 3' wide rows and 2' wide aisles were the right distance for a hoop house to be built over them. Cattle panels are typically 16' long and as such when they are arched over they are about 7' high in the middle when they are bent over 9' apart.

The cattle panels (that you can purchase at any farm supply and a lot of hardware stores) are 50" wide and 16' long. They are arched over to create sidewalls and a roof support so if you want a 17' x 9' hoop house, you will need 4 panels and if you want an approx. 21' x 9' hoop house, you will need 5 panels.

Incidentally, these panels are useful for so many things. If you have the money, buy more than you need as they can be used as arch arbors for growing vining crops or temporary fences in a pinch. The base supports are simply 2" x 6" treated boards on end 8'-9' apart that are secured by 36" concrete form pins pounded into the ground. I pounded the concrete pins in place 9' apart then screwed the boards on the inside. You will need one other person to carry the cattle panel and place it carefully inside the wood 2x6 that will hold it in place.

Click on any photos to enlarge them.

After the panels are in place, I used zip-ties to hold them together along the ridge line where they abutted each other. We then draped the shade cloth over the top. I purchased a 24' x 20' piece of 50% shade cloth that kept our hoop house about 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the garden in summer and enabled us to grow cool season vegetables through June and July. 20' wide allows for 2' of overlap on both ends to hold it down at the base.

Heavy-duty shade cloth.

Some people prefer 50% white plastic that has the shade benefits in the summer as well as the ability to hold heat in during cold weather, so that you can grow your greens all winter long. I have not taken this step yet, but may in the future. I have not had luck with plastic and I hate throwing away huge sheets of it every other year after it breaks down. I do think that the heavy duty shade cloth helps with extending fall greens into November because it holds in some heat at night and minimizes wind damage.

The finished product!

Spring greens in our new hoop house. You can clamp the ends of the metal panels to the boards, and I purchased the clamps when I built this, but never got around to installing them. The hoop house has lasted through a winter of winds without the panels being attached at the base. More importantly is that the tops be fastened to each other, where they abut along the ridge line, so that they hold together as a unit. I use rocks to hold down the shade cloth on the outside at the bottom.