Vegetable gardens in Portland

Garden Update, June 2024

Dear Liza,

Wouldn’t you know it, just as I am coming to visit you for a few weeks, my garden is getting into high gear! Fortunately, Auntie Bridgett will be staying in town, so she can water and harvest.

The 24 lettuce starts I out in have all done well, giving us enough lettuce to have big salads every day. I only pick a few leaves from each plant every few days, so they just keep making more!

The Black Beauty zucchini plants are coming up, and may be bearing baby Zukes by the time I get back.

Our three cherry tomato plants, (Chocolate Cherry, Sweet Millions and Isis Candy) have doubled in size, and the Chocolate Cherry has three blossoms!

Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, are two feet high and very fat and bunchy. They are going to give us some big blooms later in the summer.

And, of course, the lavender is big and blooming, smelling fabulous, and trying to take over the joint.

I hope Auntie Bridgett will enjoy watching the garden grow as much as I do, and share our harvest with our lovely neighbors!

Love,

Grandma Judy

August Garden Update

Dear Liza,

It is still very warm most days, but Fall is coming. Some leaves are turning annd falling, and the mornings are cool.

The garden is showing signs of summer ending, as well. The lettuces, which have been giving us free salads every day since May 26th are finally done, pulled, and composted. We will miss them!

All four varieties of tomatoes are bearing fruit, enough to eat, share with the neighbors, and make tasty relish. Isis Candy is the biggest cherry tomato, and bright yellow and orange. Purple bumblebee is purple with orange flecks. Chocolate cherry is almost brown, and Sweet Millions are bright red and tiny.

Our dahlias, Laverne and Shirley, continue blooming giants.

And Ribsy and Picky-Picky (named after the pets in Beverly Cleary’s stories) are still with us. Ribsy is turning orange and seems to have stopped growing, but Picky-Picky just keeps getting bigger. I love this time of year!

Love,

Grandma Judy

July Garden Update

Dear Liza,

It has been such a busy summer, I feel like I am squeezing gardening in between everything else! But veggie plots are relentless, both in the care they require and the joys they give.

This week, I have good news and bad news. Some of my yellow squash are being hit with a blossom end rot. I have looked it up and the solution seems to be ‘maintaining a consistent moisture level’ in the soil. Easier said than done, but we’ll try. We have harvested several of the tasty squash and want more!

The good news is that we are having free salads every day from the curly lettuces and raddichio, which we combined with that lovely squash and some basil from M.J. down the way. The currents and anise are from the community plots of the Blair Community Garden.

Our first tomato, “Isis Candy” by name, came ripe and was delicious.

We are finally seeing success in pumpkins, with “Ribsy”, our fourth named pumpkin. His predecessors (Beezus, Ramona and Henry) shriveled, but this fellow is resting on a step of the ladder and seems happy. The newest pumpkin, “PickyPicky”, had started forming four feet off the ground and needed shifting to the top of the ladder. We’ll see how he adjusts.

And finally, the two gigantic dahlias, Laverne and Shirley, are ready to pop! They are both nearly four feet high and were threatening to topple over last week, until we improvised a support from an old tomato cage.

Now, it looks like they will stay vertical long enough to bloom, feed some bees, and recharge their roots for next year.

And that’s the news from the garden!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Update

Dear Liza,

I have been distracted by all sorts of activities since the beginning of the month, but my garden has been growing like crazy anyway. I went over Tuesday and had a good time getting my hands in the dirt and pulling a box full of weeds.

It sure cleans up pretty, doesn’t it?

The yellow summer squash are getting tall, and I put a loop of yarn on the pumpkin to encourage it to climb on the ladder rather than the tomato cages.

All the tomatoes are above their cages and in need of extra support.

We are eating lettuce and radicchio everyday from the plot, laughing at the cost of organic greens in the market.

Auntie Bridgett has named our two dahlias Laverne and Shirley, and they are both doing well! No buds yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

So Huckleberry Finn and I are spending some quality time in the garden. All in all, summer is here and the gardening is lovely!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Warming Up!

Dear Liza,

We are predicted to have a heat wave in all the western states this coming week, so I headed down to Portland Nursery to gear up! The whole place was very full of happy people. I hunted for a tiny Japanese maple for my bonsai Hundred Acre Wood, but the ones they had were way too big. They did have this extra-large bonsai, called a Penjing. But still no tiny maple for me.

I did find five cherry tomato plants and six lettuce starts, and walked them home. I put them on our balcony to be safe from the predicted thunderstorms.

By then it was noon, so Auntie Bridgett and I had the first-of-many lunches on the balcony, sharing our space with Mouse, the veggies, and whatever neighbors strolled by. When the storms were taken out of the forecast, I hauled the new plants to the Blair Community Garden and put them in.

It was a happy, sweaty, exhausting hour, for sure. But it was what I have been waiting for since March! Getting my hands in dirt is always so satisfying.

Now I need to rig some sort of sun shade to protect my baby lettuces from the upcoming 90 degree heat.

It’ll work out. It always does.
Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Catch-Up

Dear Liza,

Our trip to Los Angeles was sad, wonderful, and busy. It also kept me away from my veggie garden for a whole week! Auntie Bridgett did a wonderful job keeping everything watered through some of our hottest weather, and boy, did the plants appreciate it!

Here was my pumpkin growing ladder set up just before I left. Healthy, right?

And here it is now, as tall as the ladder I have for it to climb on, and using its little tendrils out to anything available for support, including the nearby tomato plants. You can see the tiny yellow tomato blossoms trapped by the pumpkin tendrils. These plants mean business.

The zucchinis are growing too, and the cucumber even has a blossom on it. Since cucumbers aren’t squash, their blossoms are very different from zukes and pumpkins.

The tomatoes are now officially taller than me and ripening up nicely. We had a half dozen on our salad last night. Fresh veg!! Hooray!!

Going to be eating well this summer!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Chasing Summer

Dear Liza,

My veggie garden got a late start this year because of a cold, wet spring, including a snowfall on April 11. But now that it has gotten started, I am having trouble keeping up! This week’s heat wave has been upping the ante.

I planted my pumpkins by a ladder so they can climb up instead of spreading out and taking up a lot of space. They are now almost up to the second rung, and I have tied them to encourage their progress.

The oak leaf lettuce starts I planted in March have given us dozens of salads over the months, but are starting to bolt and go to seed in the hot weather. I pulled them up and managed to harvest several days worth of lettuce before tossing the stalks out. I even used some of it in a batch of pesto, since I was short on basil.

My five cherry tomato plants have gotten almost as tall as me, and have formed a lacy vertical screen that gives my garden some dappled afternoon shade during these hot days.

I have stopped watering the tomatoes, since there is a lot of fruit set, and today I was rewarded two tiny, perfect, ripening tomatoes! Stay tuned for lots more!

Auntie Bridgett’s sunflowers are short, as we planned, but are still making neat blooms! These are called Pompoms.

I have sewn a few more rows of peppery arugula lettuce and some Danvers carrots, making sure to go over every morning and give them water.

I will be chasing summer until fall. Should be a fun ride.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Vegetable Garden Progress

Dear Liza,

This past week has been a combination of showers and sun, and the garden is definitely loving it.

I planted a bunch of seeds; carrots and radishes in parallel rows, pumpkins by the ladder, and zucchini by the trellis. The radishes are up already! I will need to thin them a bit. The carrots should be poking up soon.

I strung up some shiny old cds on string as a ’bird be gone’ and they seem to be working. I love this picture of Momma’s ant figure up on the ladder, guarding the garden! Momma always said that farmers and gardeners were the most superstitious people because they never knew what worked, or why, so they just tried everything!

Of course, all of life isn’t honey, as your Baba Alla says. The Delicata squash seedling got eaten down, like the cucumbers I put in before it. I will cross my fingers for the zucchini.

Auntie Bridgett’s dahlias seem to be happy, however. Their buds are opening as they get taller, and I look forward to lots of dahlias for the table this summer.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Finally, a Real Gardening Day! Part 2

Dear Liza,

After lunch, I gathered up all my supplies. Gardening tools, several pounds of ground up egg shells, seeds, and lettuce seedlings I started in an egg carton all got piled in a box, and off I went.

The egg shells got worked into the soil for the tomatoes and sprinkled all around.

The delicate lettuce starts got planted while still in their cardboard cribs.

The five different organic cherry tomatoes got planted in their cages, in the sunniest part of the garden.

As I was working, a neighborhood cat (complete with collar and bell) came by to visit my catnip plant! She was very relaxed, like she was in her favorite pub. She barely even noticed me.

The ’shadier’ side of the garden, closest to the tall camellia bush, got sown with carrot, zucchini and radish seeds, so doesn’t look like much at the moment. I will keep you posted.

The dahlias got put between the sunflowers and the catnip, and boy, is that a full garden! Look at all that green! I am very pleased and will go back early tomorrow to make sure everything is okay. (I have learned not to be too optimistic!)

Love,

Grandma Judy

Finally, a Real Gardening Day! Part 1

Dear Liza,

Months ago, I decided to start my garden early this year. I thought I could outsmart the weather. I had squash and cucumber starts in my window in February!

Then came the wettest Spring on record, complete with an April 15th snowfall. My super-early transplants survived the snow but got eaten by wet-loving slugs and I ended up with nothing. Zip. Nada. Bupkis.

So much for rushing things.

But now it is mid-May, and weeks of mostly sunny weather are predicted. So, back to the nursery and we’ll try this again!

Fortunately, Portland Nursery is there for me. Auntie Bridgett drove me down and after getting side-tracked by cool sculptures and Fairy Moss, we picked out five different organic cherry tomato plants, a Delicata squash, some dahlias and a begonia.

We delivered them to the garden, went home for lunch, and back to the garden for the digging fun! More about that tomorrow.

Love,

Grandma Judy