Sounds great, Jack! Can't wait to see your harvest pics! I can't believe you're at 95..our high is 75 today.

Bush beans already?! Wow

I wish we were at 75 but the peppers prefer the heat up to a certain point. I'd hate to have to break out the shade cloth before it is actually summer! I hope the heat does not shut down fruit set on the tomatoes already! It's supposed to cool back down to the 80s next week but I doubt that will last long.

The beans were planted April 23 so it's been 48 days and the DTM is 50. They have been blooming for over a week now.

Yeah that seems a bit hot for this time of year.

Snuck that one by me, I didn't know you started your beans that early. My Fortex pole beans are just beginning to climb.

Beans to pick already? I haven't even planted mine yet. That would be Greencrop for snaps and Black Coco for dry (this year or maybe the little reds) for soup and chili. Hopefully those will get put in and then later Alaska for dried soup peas. Hollanders love pea soup. Still gotta find space for my daikons, too. And the sweet potatoes that have not gotten here yet.

Sorta kinda running out of room. And then there are the experiments like the peach bushes and the Bud 9 dwarf apple rootstock that I did not have scion wood for; so I just planted them and they are all growing too. The apple seeds are sprouting in the fridge, too and have to go into the dirt some time. I wish I were 30 years younger, but then the extra energy would probably be pointed toward some girl friend so that wouldn't be a net gain anyway... :-)

Yep, gotta get the bush beans in early to try to beat the heat. Provider is a dark seeded bean and germinates well in cool soil. I got at least 90% germination.

I'm hoping the Maxibell (May 21) and Contender (June 12) plantings can withstand our summer heat and produce.

Sounds like you need to get a bigger yard Dutch!

Heat is almost never too much here, often there simply isn't enough for some crops. LOL what I really need is more restraint. OTOH today it is right at 90 degrees here in Minneapolis. Forecast similar tomorrow, even a little warmer. 80's for the next couple of weeks.

I have been growing Greencrop off and on since the 70s. A nice long semi-flat pod that is just as dependable as you would expect from what was an All-American selection in its day, and early, too. I just hope there is enough season left to get seed dry enough to save this fall. In the past we often replanted every couple of weeks for the market garden. Back in the day we sold them fresh by the lug.

FWIW I now have a tomato set on all my plants, the Bush Champions, the Big Beef and the 4th of July. Also at least one pepper on my sweet bananas plus a ton of bloom. The Big Beef is already in need of a bigger cage! Both seedling types of peaches are also well set and growing.

This season is really amazing. I also think I can see the new eggplant seedlings grow daily. Just beans, daikons and the sweet potatoes left. And a few thousand uninvited plant guests to send home.

Wow that looks delicious Jack.

I planted Fortex again this year. They are taking off up the poles now. Long way still to harvesting beans. Skipped the bush beans this year but am trying some Tohya edamame, which is about a foot high. Also skipped the sweet potatoes... don't have the fenced space or season for them.

My solanaceous crops are about 1-2 weeks behind last year.

Got lettuce coming out the ears, and snap peas producing their usual small but tasty crop.

Garlic harvest probably this weekend, and carrots are almost ready too.

Cool stuff LoneJack! I gotta do potatoes next season!

Thanks...they are delicious! I roasted some on Sunday with fresh Spanish Roja garlic, Candy onion, and Rosemary all from the garden. They were a bigger hit than the Peppercorn Salmon I smoked.

My Provider bush beans will be ready for the first picking this weekend and I have one solitary Sungold starting to blush. Vertina cukes are flowering already and I can't believe how many females flowers it produces. It is amazing.

All of my cool season crops are long gone except the carrots which are slowly rooting up. I'm missing the fresh salads already! Long range forecast has highs averaging about 95. I hope the heat doesn't shut down fruit set on the Peppers and tomatoes already.

Wow, that's awesome! Those look great. I have 2 Yukon Gold plants, where I threw leftover seed in the ground, next to a raised bed. They were planted 52 days ago and one has started to bud. How much longer do you think they have to go?

Thanks Chris. I would guess maybe 3-4 weeks.

Ok great! Thanks. Did you hill them as they grew? I've heard mixed comments about whether or not continuous hilling during growth will cause them to produce more.

I planted in a 8" deep trench and then covered with 2" soil and then filled the rest of the trench in as they grew. I think hilling and/or mulching just protects the tubers from getting exposed to sun and keeps the soil cooler but does not cause them to produce more on most types.

I love the cute little potatoes! Someone in another group suggested for erosion control here, we should plant sweet potatoes. Gonna do that for sure! Hope the gophers don't get em!

Most potatoes start to set "new potatoes" about the time they start to flower. There is a bit of guesswork and experience involved in when you can start digging those. They are a bit different vegetable than the fully matured and cured spuds one gets after the vines die down. Especially good with new shelled peas. Creamed fresh peas used for "gravy" on new potatoes is fabulous.

BTW potato flowers are attractive enough that one year my mother took a blue ribbon at the local county fair with an arrangement of them. The judges had a heck of a time identifying the type of plant they were. But I have seen ornamental flowering potatoes just as there are now a lot of ornamental sweet potato vines.

Fully matured potatoes from under dead vines will actually heal from fork punctures if cured properly. Same goes for splits. Back on the farm dug mature potatoes went into the north side of the corn crib for curing. (That sure dates me, since corn farmers have not used corn cribs for decades now...) Shaded from the sun, dry against the rain and fully ventilated. Worked fine for onions, too. Dug new potatoes went right into the kitchen.

You hill potatoes in the open garden not so much for additional production as to make sure that no developing potatoes are exposed to the sunlight and thereby made worthless. Just like Jack says above.

Growing potatoes in sacks or structures where you keep adding soil on top and harvest new potatoes off the bottom is an entirely different cultural method, one that friends have used very successfully, but I have not yet tried.

Jack, your comment on spacing is right on. The closer you plant the smaller the spuds. Back on the farm it was sorta eyeball for maybe 12-15" between sets. Every once in a while there would be a bit too much resulting in Dad digging a spud that went a couple of pounds by itself out of his Kennebecs.

I spaced my Russian bananas about a foot apart or a little less this spring. Nice set of vines I got but no flowers yet up here in Minneapolis. Time for a little hilling up I think once we get past our current rainy spell.

I plant my potatoes deep in a trench and fill it up as they grow. Works for me. I think people go a little overboard with the hilling.

Suzi, if you are frost free your sweet potatoes may become perennials, almost certainly good for erosion control since most of them root where ever the vine nodes touch even slightly damp soil. But if you got gophers, they will love the potatoes. For sure. That won't necessarily bother the vigor of the vines. For that matter there are now a whole lot of ornamental sweet potatoes grown just for the appearance of the vines. They do well even in planter boxes here in Minneapolis as annuals in landscaping schemes with no thought toward digging whatever tuber develop. Where you are you should also get a bonus of flowers as the season progresses. You can even take stem cuttings to root and protect over cold spells and plant them right back when the weather warms up again. They root out as easily as do impatiens or African violets.

I posted my garlic harvest pictures over on the allium forum if anyone cares to take a look. Here is a picture of the next things to be harvested.

Provider beans with several 3-4" beans developing. Onions in the back bed are bulbing up nicely and should start to die down and flop over soon.

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Jack it boggles my mind that no animals are eating any of that stuff.. might as well put a buffet sign over that here.

So far so good...knock on wood! Seems that if I don't plant any sweet corn they don't bother anything. I did notice that some deer have eaten some of my wife's Hosta flowers at some point recently.

I do have some deer repellant here and there. You can see a couple little green bottles hanging from the PVC hoops over the beans that I fill with the repellant. There is a little wick that sticks down into the bottle that draws the scent up into the air flow. They may be empty now though because I haven't added any scent for a couple weeks.

The beans look like they are going to need to be picked before the weekend...I really don't want to do that in the 98d heat of the day they are calling for the next several days. I also plan to blanch and freeze some of them so I would rather wait until the weekend.

Some of the Red Candy onions in the picture have now flopped over so they will be harvested this weekend as well in the morning while it's cool.

Link to the deer scent I use.

Scent-inal

I will be harvesting a lot tomorrow (Saturday) morning hopefully before the heat sets in.

14 hills of French Fingerling Potatoes, 16' of Provider Bush Beans, 36 Shallots, 24 Red Candy and a dozen or so Red Marble Cipollini onions, a few Leeks, my first 2 Sungold tomatoes, and maybe a few carrots for dinner.

I also started my fall Brussels Sprouts last night to be planted out in 4 or 5 weeks. I will start some Broccoli and Cauliflower around the 4th holiday and then more a few weeks later. Fall Carrots sowing will be in late July.

I got most of the harvest done Saturday and took a few pics.

First harvest of Provider bush beans....4.75 lbs. off of 16 ft. row (about 50 plants). So about 0.1 lb. per plant and 0.3 lb. per row/ft. I am going to keep track of how much I get at each picking for each type of green bean that I am growing. The picture was taken after I gave a pound or so to the neighbor. We ate some fresh and I froze the rest.

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Red Candy onions did pretty well. About 1/3 of them including the biggest ones are still standing so were left for a few more days.

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I thought these were Red Marble Cipollini but now I'm not sure what they are. They are not flat like a Cipollini and the skins are pinkish. They are Dixondale onions that I bought at my local gardening store and IIRC they were tagged as "Red Salad Onions". I don't see any listed by that name on the Dixondale web site. Haven't eaten any yet so can't comment on taste. This is about 1/3 of what was planted. The rest are still standing so were left.

I also picked a couple of the white Superstar onions, and 3 Leeks. I harvested the Shallots as well and the fall planted ones had all bolted and the size was clearly affected. The spring planted ones did not bolt and did much better. I did not take a picture of the Shallots.

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Garlic curing in my shed. Not sure if I have enough room left to hang all of the onions!

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French Fingerling potatoes are awesome!!!!

The funny thing is that I planted 3 types of potatoes and all three types gave me a 19 lb. harvest. All types were planted in raised beds with 8" spacing. 60 sq./ft. total space allocated.

French Fingerling. I planted 1.75 of seed tubers in 14 hills. 10.85 lbs. harvested per 1 lb. of seed. Largest tuber was 5 oz.

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The Red Pontiac were dying back quickly so I went ahead a dug one hill and they looked ready with good size nice and well cured skins so I went ahead and dug them all.

Red Pontiac. 2.25 lbs. of seed tubers planted in 14 hills. 8.44 lbs. harvested per 1 lb. of seed. Largest tuber was 9.5 oz.

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These are the Yukon Gold harvested a week earlier. 3 lbs. of seed tubers planted in 18 hills and 19 lbs. harvested so 6.33 lbs. harvested per 1 lb. of seed. Largest tuber was 8.5 oz.

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Wow I'm jealous... I hope my potatoes and onions come out that nice. My Red Gold are dying back and I will start digging this week. My onions are probably another month to harvest. I wish I had enough time and sunny space to grow that much :)

Once again, Jack...amazing! Great harvest all around!

What's the word on watering potatoes? I read that they can handle dry spells. I watered them 2 days ago. We're at the point where we haven't had rain in at least a week and it's been getting into the mid 80's.

Thanks guys! I did a lot of sweating even though I did most of the harvesting early in the morning.

We got adequate rain here until late May and then the faucet shut off but I think I only watered the potatoes a couple times. Like most things about 1" per week is plenty. To avoid splitting and irregular shaped tubers during development it is best that they are not allowed to dry out completely followed by a heavy rain or watering. While the tubers are forming you want them to size up at an even pace, not in fits and starts.

Ok - good to know. I'll be taking them out of the ground soon. One just started flowering.

I made a garden dinner last night for my wife.

I put two beets in a pot. In another pot I had our first new Kennebec potatoes along with some nice tender young carrots. These were boiled until tender and served with butter, salt and pepper.

In a fry pan I sautéed our first zucchini, a red and a yellow spring onion, kale and chard with olive oil.

We also enjoyed a salad with our fresh romaine, spinach, arugula, basil, pea pods, radish seed pods, nystertum flowers, and borage flowers.

Needless to say, it was very satisfying, and a delicious explosion of flavors.

My bush beans are setting small pods. My scarlet runners and Kentucky wonders are flowering and running up sunflowers and arbor. Tomatoes and peppers are setting fruit now. Herbs have been great for awhile now.

From now until final harvest I will be out every afternoon after work deciding what to make for dinner and busy every weekend water bath canning pickled beets, dilly beans, sweet/hot beans, then tomato sauces.

Yummy!

It sounds like your garden is pretty far along for Minnesota! Zucchini already and bush beans setting pods. I think my brothers garden in Wisconsin is a couple weeks behind yours.

LoneJack, I started planting 3/13 this year….Earliest ever. The plants survived upper teens (kale, chard, raddish, spinach, etc) I planted successions of summer squash and everything else starting first week in April. Everything made it, with fits and starts. Now it is game on for everything!

Wow 3/13? That is only one week after I put out my potatoes and onions here in MIssouri. Radish is the only direct seeding I did before 4/1, Nice job!

I picked another dozen onions last evening. 2 Candy, 2 Superstar, 4 Red Candy, and 4 of the Red Salad onion. I think most of the rest should flop over in the next week or so.

I'm having to water a lot this year lately. We had some rain in the area Monday night and yesterday. I could hear thunder most of the overnight Monday but not a drop at my house. Missed me by less than 10 miles :(

Been pretty dry here too, but nowhere near as hot.

Ever try growing Vidalia?

How are your tomatoes doing?

No, I've never grown them. I think Vidalia are short day onions called Granex. The Vidalia name just indicates they are grown in a certain area of Georgia that has very low soil sulphur which makes them grow very sweet.

Tomatoes are doing pretty well. Several dozen fruit have set on the 5 slicers but probably won't see any ripe fruit for a couple weeks yet. I think the heat has just about if not completely shut down any new fruit set already. We are supposed to cool off next week with highs in the 80s for a few days so maybe they can manage to set a few more then.

The Sungold is ripening a couple every day now and setting several new trusses every week. It should really start cranking out ripe fruit in early to mid July.

Hmm, that's interesting. I'll have to look into that. I'm not a big fan of onion, unless it's caramelized, sautéed or fried lol. Too pungent for me otherwise. I like the sweeter onions though.

Great! Yeah that's some pretty intense heat there. Isn't it a bit early for mid-90's by you? Just saw you're expecting it to be 100 today! That's without the heat index! Jeez. Stay cool.

Tomatoes here are doing pretty well, but our nighttime temps could be warmer. We are consistently in the 50's at night, with daytime in the 80's. Guess I shouldn't be complaining lol.

Yep, too hot too early. This is more like mid July weather. We hit 100 last week as well and have been close a couple other times. At least I live out in the sticks and don't get the "concrete jungle" effect and it is usually a few degrees cooler. Wind is blowing hard as well so it is like a blast furnace today!

On the bright side, it is making my garlic cure faster.

102d yesterday and only got down to 82 this morning. I went out to the garden yesterday after work with intentions of picking bush beans but after moving the hose to another bed and pulling a dozen more red onions that had flopped I was already dripping sweat. I figured sweaty green beans were not very appealing so I went back down into the cool basement and cracked open a cold one.

Only supposed to get to 93 today so maybe I can get the beans picked tonight.

Only 93 haha.

Yikes! One thing that's great about the heat is that it makes those cold ones taste even better.

Jack, I'll stay up north. You can always put on another layer in the cold, but there is only so much you can take off in the heat... High temps here forecast for the high seventies and the 80's for the next few weeks. Just about perfect IMO.

My tomatoes are setting well. Big beef has several, the biggest already the size of a baseball and already outgrowing its cage; 4th of July is setting in trusses, and may well live up to its name again this year. The Bush Champions I put in real early are a disappointment. Flowers already showing on the Japanese eggplant, and the Sweet banana peppers are all setting.

Yesterday I put in the first of my sweet potatoes (Beauregards) and found out if Sand Hill Preservation was going to make good the miss-shipped order I received from them last week. They said the replacements should arrive here today; so I guess I plant a few more today. They say it is not too late, but then they are a full climate zone south of here too. Oh well... Some years in this country are sweet potato years and some aren't. So far this one looks like a good one for sure.

Broke my favorite old trowel digging tulips yesterday. Sad - had that one for years! Finally got smart and switched to the potato fork. Garlic pictures later over on the Allium forum.

Yep...can't beat an ice cold beer on a hot day!

You can't fool me Dutch...I lived thru a few Minneapolis winters in my youngster years! I'll take my 8 month growing season. Your weather does sound about perfect and we are looking forward to cooler weather for our visit up north the week of the 4th. Our temps here are moderating a bit with highs in the low to mid 80s next week. Hoping to get a few more Tomatoes set before the temps take off again in July.

Sorry to here about your trowel! I am nursing along several garden tools that belonged to my father including a potato fork that I keep thinking will break every time I use it for digging garlic or potatoes.

I got the second harvest of Provider bush beans last night as it was only 96d. Another 3 lb. 15 oz. which is not much less than the 4 lb. 12 oz. I got 5 days earlier. I do think the next harvest will drop quite a bit though but that is OK as the bed of Maxibel filet beans planted May 28 look like they will flower pretty soon and the June 12 planting of Contender came up with a nice stand.

I went to the fabric store and bought 10 yards to Tulle to cover my yellow summer squash and melons. So many different colors to choose from! I chose green. I need to pick up some binder clips to 'sew' it together to get a wider piece.