Category: Garden

In the past I’ve noticed occasional sunscald on my tomatoes.  I don’t have a good picture of this right now, but you can see the parts of the fruit exposed to the sun get a little discolored, but usually not so badly it can’t be cut off before eating.

This year was really something else!  The fruit of most tomatoes grown in a very sunny spot got sun scald, and I also noticed it on the leaves of my plants.  I guess in past years I’ve seen it on my plants too, but I didn’t really realize what it was, and it was never too serious.  This year sunscald has been killing some of my tomatoes.

The picture above you can see a particularly bad case, with the leaves turning a purplish color with exposed veins, and the leaves dying on the edges.

Plants in partial shade are less affected, but of course are maturing more slowly with less light.

Is this just a result of our deteriorating ozone layer?  Was this particularly bad over northern Europe this year?  Did anyone else notice this?

What about solutions?  I remember seeing Mike on PlanBe blog in SA mention he has this problem as uses 10% shade cloth.  I don’t particularly know where to buy this, or have any experiences with it.  Does anyone have an opinion on this?

I asked Lieven, in Belgium, if he had noticed anything this year.  He said his greenhouse glass is partly opaqued, and therfore the light is dispersed so he never has this problem.  Does anyone have any experiences with this in a greenhouse?

In the meantime, with blight outbreaks in the eastern US, as well as neighboring countries here, there’s no sign of blight on my plants…  I hope some of them survive to get blight!

I should add the sun seemed brighter than usual this year, and I had to limit time in the garden because of it’s strength.

This was one of my most anticipated harvests of the season, my Painted Hills Sweet corn.  There is a well known variety of starch corn called Painted Mountain, a genepool mix of a number of different colored heirloom varieties.  This was a cross between that variety and Luther Hills Sweet Corn.  The seed for this came from Peace Seedlings, the seed company belonging to the daughter of Alan Kapuler, who was the breeder of this variety.

Watching the plants grow was a blast!  All different colors; stalks, silk, ears and of course the kernels.  It was like a fantasy land crop, almost too colorful to believe it was real.  You can see a lot of the colors in the picture above.

With all the excitement came some disappointments too.  First I had damping off problems when starting the seeds indoors and lost more than half my seedlings.  Okay, damping off problems were probably my fault for not keeping things clean enough, but I did try to keep things clean and didn’t have any damping off problems with any other seeds.

Then when I put them out in the garden, a number of them were too weak to survive.  Again, this could be partly my fault, and perhaps I could have let them get bigger before setting them out or maybe I could have waited for the soil to warm up a little more.

Then there was a lot of variability in the remaining plants, and it’s clear the genetics were not completely there for my climate.  Really, they didn’t grow well at all.  I struggled to get a decent harvest, and it’s mostly what you see in the picture above (starting with 125 seeds).  I might get a few more ears in a few weeks time.  I had a hard time telling when it was mature enough to harvest, because the ears were small and underdeveloped so I kept thinking I should give it more time.

The taste?

I had high expectations.  I had very, very high expectations, and they simply weren’t met.  I ate it about an hour after harvest, so it was very fresh, but it was not at all sweet.  I understand heirloom sweet corn is not as sweet as commercial varieties, but still this didn’t even have any hint of sweetness.  Mostly it was starchy and bland.  It was however very edible in it’s own way.

Was I disappointed?

Well, a little.  Like I said, I expected so much more.  At the same time, wow!  Multi-colored sweet corn!  Can you believe it?  A variation of the famous Painted Mountain corn!  Perfectly edible.  Truly a visual delight, if not a tasty one.  It’s clear it needs some breeding and selection work to make it suitable for my climate and to stabilize it, something I don’t have the space, isolation, expertise or time for right now.  If this is an early peek at the future of sweet corn, it’s exciting!  It needs some work, but this really has the potential to turn into a very interesting variety!

Will I Grow it Again?

Not anytime soon.  I’ve seen it and done it, and will look for something else next year.  Trying it was a great experience.

My current favorite bean, Dog Bean, is growing here filling the bed and doing a pretty good job smothering the weeds.  It’s just started to bloom, so the dry bean harvest should be in 4-6 weeks.  I’m growing lots of different beans this year, given to me by a lot of different people.

I’m quite excited about the sweet corn.  It’s Painted Hills created by plant breeder Alan Kapuler.  I purchased the seeds from his daughter’s seed company Peace Seedlings.  The website is a little out of date, and it’s worth asking them for their printed seed list which may have more varieties available.

The variety is a combination of a multi-colored starch corn called Painted Mountain and Luther Hills sweet corn, yielding a cold soil tolerant multi-colored sweet corn.

It’s clear this variety needs some more breeding/selection before it will truly be suitable for my climate.  I first had problems getting the seeds to germinate, because of damping off problems.  This might be unrelated to the seeds.  Then I had problems with the plants dying after transplant, again maybe this might be my fault for transplanting too early.  Now however, many of the plants are small and stunted and unlikely to produce ears.

The remaining healthy plants are however a true delight to watch growing.  Like the ears of corn, the plants are all different colors:

Among the plants that seem to be going slowly this year are the pole beans.  Many of the varieties I’ve planted this year have yet to start climbing their poles.  This one, Nekar Queen given to me by Crazytomato is not only climbing the pole but the name tag as well:

The edible Chrysanthemums Kate gave me at last years meeting in Oxford are blooming their hearts out.  I never did get a chance to taste the greens before they started blooming.  Oh well, there’ll be plenty of seeds to try again next year!

Mike gave me seed for Cape Spitz, an oxheart shaped cabbage.  Oxheart cabbage is a real food staple here, sold in all the supermarkets and markets and often used in both Dutch foods and foods of former Dutch colonies.  The only other oxheart variety I’ve grown is Henderson Wakefield a few years ago, and I’m very curious to see how what Mike grows in South Africa compares with what’s available here locally.

I had originally intended to do a big planting of artichokes this year, and expected seeds from a couple of different seed savers as well as some purchased varieties.  In every case, something went wrong and I didn’t get the seeds I expected or they didn’t germinate, except this variety of Cardoon from Baker Creek.  I wasn’t really interested in trying cardoon particularly, except to grow it along side some artichokes, but here it is…  I keep hearing very negative things from fellow gardeners about it’s taste.  The gardener next to me says she has a friend who grows it, but only as an ornamental plant.  Anyway, here it is.  If I don’t get a chance to eat it this year, I’ll select the best 1 or 2 of the 12 or so plants I have to keep and grow next year and try then.

Finally, here is one of my oca plants.  They’ve been blooming and look good so far.  Last year I was unprepared to protect it from early frosts, and I din’t get much of a harvest.  The plants are daylight sensitive, and produce most of their tubers in the run-up to the winter solstice, but at the same time are killed by frosts, making this a challenging plant in almost any climate.  It also apparently doesn’t like to be grown in a greenhouse.

This year many plants seems smaller than last year, but in the last few days it’s been hot and wet, a combination that’s making things grow fast.

As well as other plants, the weeds have really been taking over, and you’ll notice lots of them in the pictures here.  The new plot I got at the community gardens this year was neglected and very weedy.

The asparagus is almost as tall as me.  Here’s what the male plants look like, sort of bushy and green:

The female plants have seed pods forming on them:

The garlic is beginning to brown and the scapes are straightening out.  Harvest is a few weeks away.

The pear tree has a few small pears on it:

I’m growing mustard for the first time this year, and here are the last few blooms on the plants.  I’ll certainly be growing it again.  The young leaves have a nice spicy flavor, and are great in salads.  The plants do a great job smothering weeds, and the flowers attract pollinating insects.  The plants sure have a lot of seeds on them, and it’ll be interesting to see if I have enough to cook with.  This variety is called Florida Broadleaf and comes from a local gardener, Crazytomato.

The yacón is still small, but starting to grow fast.  This is the normal brown skinned variety I grew last year:

The is yacón morado, a red skinned variety.  Both these varieties come from Frank.  You can see the leaves look very different:

I grow celeriac or celery root most years.  I don’t save my own seed, and this is Giant Prague from Baker Creek seeds.  I think this is one of the more underrated vegetables, in particular it makes great soup: