Elisabeth

This year’s weather gave us the usual New England spring temperature extremes, followed by a warm and unusually wet summer, resulting in very little watering. We had a long autumn, pleasantly punctuated by rain, and no hard frost until well into November.

It was a good year for alliums, legumes, squashes, root crops and celery, and it was a slightly less good (but not bad) year for brassicas and nightshades.

New crops this year were Scarlet Runner beans, Lemongrass, Shiso, Gai Lan (Chinese broccoli), Japanese Wasabi radish, Black Futsu winter squash, Lemon Verbena, Turkish Rocket (perennial arugula), and Black & Tan sesame.

Work at the garden began with completing the garden’s double-digging with the back perimeter beds, resulting in removal of another massive rock. Other infrastructure projects included a metal structure for the squashes and building our garden shed.

We assisted dedicated Friends of Robbins Farm Park volunteers with Spring Cleanup Day and Town Day. (Field Day and Fall Cleanup Day were cancelled due to the closing of the playground for reconstruction.)

None of this would have been possible without the ingenuity, persistence and genuine good humor of this year’s amazing gardeners: Alan, Carol, Celia, David, Elisabeth, Lisa, Mike, Nicole, Shakti, Steven, Suzie, Tim, and Wendy. Thank you all!

Egyptian Walking Onions transplanted bulblets from last year did well, transplanted more to fill in bed.
Garlic did well, Russian Red not as large as Georgian Crystal (maybe refresh stock?), wrappers were strong but there was a little rot around some stalks.
Onions did well, slightly damaged by mildew (be careful not to over-water in cool spring weather), good feeding schedule.
Onion sets did reasonably well, but would have benefitted from more diligent weeding.
Leeks did well but had a small amount of rot (too much wet weather?).
Scallions were absolute perfection, and lasted to the final day of the season!
Shallots did well, slightly damaged by mildew (be careful not to over-water in cool spring weather).

Broccoli spring crop had smaller than usual heads with good color; fall crop also had smaller heads, but with perfect color; no aphid damage on either crop; harvested stems on last gardening day.
Brussels sprouts variety was new, Divino produced small, but otherwise clean and uniform sprouts; there were lots of cabbage worms and a few plants required support, row near Jerusalem artichokes was stunted, try more regular feeding and topping plants earlier?
Cabbage spring crop was good, with lots of cabbage worms (use row cover next year?), red variety not as small as usual; fall crop also good, Alcosa savoy was smaller than Famosa and took longer to mature (go back to only Famosa?), Jersey type didn’t germinate well (possibly too few seeds planted), yielding fewer heads.
Cauliflower spring crop mostly did well, but a few were button heads (temperature extremes?); fall crop was great with a few somewhat smaller heads, some cabbage worm problems.
Collards failed to thrive, look for a more vigorous variety or go back to Georgia from High Mowing?
Gai Lan (new crop): spring crop was shaded by Brussels sprouts, fall crop was probably planted too late; try growing in another location and consider changing planting time.
Kales both had poor germination despite reseeding (weather?), barely had enough plants yet they rallied and produced normally later in the season.
Kohlrabi first crop started indoors planted denser than plan but did well, second crop seeded outdoors got off to slow start in shade of kale and volunteer marigold, many didn’t mature in time.