Green thumbed folks, gardeners and grow your own

The commie tomatoes (Cosmonaut Volkov) have been slow to take off, but are now making up for lost time.  I like to delude myself into thinking that they've been busy setting deep roots.

The garlic is in and it looks to have been a good garlic season.  I have run out of room on my balcony, and have strands of drying garlic hanging off all my chairs out there, and on brown paper on the chairs. As long as the landlord doesn't catch me..... 

This particular head of garlic was in the ground three days ago, so it doesn't have all the papers/wrappers one normally sees. But it's Bogatyr, and I just had some chopped and grilled on top of some mozzarella cheese on a big slice of cibatta bread.  It was quite nice,  but does have a somewhat fiery afterburn! I need a dish of ice cream, have none, and it's way too hot to go get any. Still, the garlic is nice.

Cold, wet, yucky summer. Slugs have feasting and nothing is growing very well. Ugh.

Cold, wet, yucky summer. Slugs have feasting and nothing is growing very well. Ugh.

Sorry to hear that. That is truly a bummer, when you can do nothing but watch your garden drown. Or get slimed to death. 

We've had hot and dry. Dry meaning no rain, not no humidity. It's been like a sauna out there, with absolutely blazing sun. I'd get to the garden at 6:00am and be literally drenched in sweat by 6:30. I will no longer make jokes about "dry" heat vs "wet" heat.  Wet heat is definitely worse. And the damned ticks are loving it all, of course.  I had to put shade cloth up over my tomatoes/potatoes/and tender seedlings to try to bring the temperature and the feels-like temperature down a bit. (The first was in the middle 90Fs and the latter was higher - over 100F a few days this week.)  Went to check on a supply bucket I had under the shade and a small army of ticks that had been hanging out on the cooler side of it made a mass charge at my hand. Yoiks! I have since invested in some heavy-duty tick repellent, of course.

Fortunately, and thank goodness finally, we are having a "cold" front move through today. It's been pouring rain on and off all day. Which is great, as the ground in the garden has been so dry it's opened up into fissures, even with me sitting out there every other day with the garden hose running full tilt for an hour trying to get it re-hydrated a bit.  Hopefully this rain will help get the soil back into condition. (And that's with wood-chip mulch all over it!) The front is supposed to have broken the heatwave, too. I can only keep my fingers crossed on that part.

I'm off to the West Coast next week to bring my daughter back up here to NY, so the plants are having to either make it on their own or survive on the rudimentary drip irrigation system I've rigged up for them for three weeks. Fingers are crossed they are not all dead by the time we get home!

Seriously, sometimes I really do miss the weather in Scotland.

Oh hell. Squash bugs. I HATE squash bugs, and all the hoopla that goes with dealing with them. Removed several invested leaves this morning, will have to go back tomorrow morning and do a more thorough check. There's no insecticide that really kills the adults, but Capt. Jack's will take care of the eggs and larvae.  And, of course, I'm leaving for the coast in 72 hours. Assuming the planes are all flying again by then.... Expecting to find squash armageddon when I get back in three weeks. 

I hope the squash survived Nan.

We've been in moving mode the last month, and the new house gets more sun than I expected (it is south facing but has another house above it on the back, but the back garden is still private). The back garden is full of creosote timber so no food can be grown there, but I'm hoping the front garden can become a haven for it - along with all the giant pots I brought from the previous house. My fuschias and bleeding heart and lillies can happily go in the back garden. Lots of roses, multiple clematis varieties, and a neat abutilon plant are already here.

How do you go about getting soil tested for safety? (Heavy metals etc) - the area of Wales is a former mining heavy one, and although no mines directly underneath us definitely want to make sure it's safe. It's been glorious sitting in the back garden just enjoying our morning coffee in peace!

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Huge list of companies that can help you with that listed here - imagine some cost a lot more than others!

https://ahdb.org.uk/knowledge-library/soil-and-forage-testing-companies

Congrats on the new house! I agree, no veg in with the creosote, but it sounds like a great place for flowers. In a pinch, for the back, have you considered raised beds? Lined, to keep the raised bed soil away from the contaminated soil?

The trip ended up being 3,960 miles and I'm really beat from all that driving. We got in on Sunday, but I finally stopped in just to check the status of my garden yesterday. OMG, it's turned into a jungle of weeds.     The lady who was watering my tomatoes for me didn't harvest them (although invited to do so) and so now there's rotting tomatoes on the vine and ground, some half-eaten on the vines. It's going to take a few hours to get that patch into shape again. But it's doable, and we might still get a few tomatoes out of it. Worst case, our local farm stand is selling "canning" tomatoes at 30 pounds for $30. (The misshapen ones they can't sell in the shop because they're ugly.)

The squash plants are half-again as big as when I left and running amok everywhere. There's a bit of mildew on some leaves, but I can deal with that. Overall, things seem to still be alive, more or less. She told me there was a tremendous heat wave right after I'd left, and then just before we got home they got hit with massive rain from the remains of a hurricane (Debbie?). I'd believe that - the place was kind of swampy.  But it's all in absolutely dismal shape. Peppers rotting on the plants, weeds up to my waist, plants fallen over onto the ground... At least it's mostly all alive and with some more sweat equity it'll be back to a garden for at least the month or two we have left for things to grow in it.

On the soil testing, here we use a private company and just get the basic nutrient testing. They also offer an in-depth service that discusses micronutrients and any pollutants, but I haven't needed to use that, thankfully. In both cases they also say how much of what nutrient (PKN, etc.) to add to the soil and in what quantity for the plants I listed as going to be planted in it. Hopefully you can find a good company there. It's worth it to do it every few years, and definitely before your first year so you know what you're dealing with.

Again, congrats on your new place and condolences on the insanity involved in the moving process!

Oh, I meant to add - If you get a chance to plant Huckleberry Gold potatoes, I can heartily recommend them. They have bluish purple skins, but the insides look like a normal boiling potato. They are really delicious and have a low glycemic index (for a potato) and are high in anti-oxidants. They are an early-harvest variety and prefer cooler climates, and are quite disease resistant.