August 2022 garden update

 Hello, friends.  Welcome to the 2nd of the year, maybe final, but most likely penultimate, garden update!  Let's get right to it, shall we?

The green beans keep coming.  We've eaten them fresh several times, and I blanched and froze four family sized portions, and they just keep coming, despite being completely eaten up by Japanese beetles.  The plants look so straggly, and I'm kinda done with green beans, so I'm tempted to tear them out, but that feels like throwing away perfectly good food, which doesn't feel good.  So I'm going to leave them for now.

I have one softball sized watermelon, and the plant seems to have stopped setting flowers, so it's looking like this is our one hope for watermelon this year.

One of my cabbages is actually forming a head, which is exciting.

The zucchini flower issue* is continuing.  All but one of the zucchinis we've harvested this year have been the result of hand pollination.  Here is an open male flower, along with an almost ready zucchini in the background.

I'm so happy the marigolds from last year self-seeded.  It's a bright spot of color in an otherwise not very lush looking garden.

I've harvested about 3.5 pounds of tomatoes, and there are plenty more on the plants.  As you can see, blight has set in, so it's a race to see if the blight, or I, get the tomatoes first.  Something has happened with the tomatoes that I don't remember happening in past years--a lot of the new bloom clusters have died--they look like they've been burned.  It's kind of an ok thing, since the plant doesn't really have time, at this point, to grow a whole tomato from a bloom, but it's weird.  It's happening with the cherry tomatoes, too.

The jalapenos are going strong, with multiple peppers on each of our four plants.  I'm not sure how to tell if they're ripe, so my plan is to wait until I have enough tomatoes for a batch of salsa (about 6 pounds), and then pick as many jalapenos as I need for a batch of salsa (about a pound), picking the biggest ones first.  I may can some jalapeno jelly if there are enough leftover jalapenos.

I harvested a red pepper maybe a week ago, and there are bell peppers of various sizes on each of the four plants.  This is the largest, at about 4 inches long.

This volunteer sunflower is my favorite thing in the garden (at least until that watermelon ripens...if it ripens).  It's way taller than me--maybe 10 feet?--with multiple buds.

I planted three supposedly cold hardy to -40°F lavender plants near the chicken coop.  I'm doing all the research to give these plants the best chance of surviving the winter, because I really enjoy having them there.  Two of them are blooming, and it's so lovely to look at, and smell, them.

The only other plants that survived by the chicken coop were two zinnias from saved seed.  I'm trying to decide if I want to plant daffodils and/or black eyed Susans (perennials) here or if I want to just plant zinnias or other flowers each year.

I've harvested probably 2 dozen small onions whose leaves were dead or damaged to the point that it was obvious they wouldn't be getting any bigger.  I still have about 8 onions in the ground, and I'm looking forward to seeing how big they get.  The ones in the containers did way better than the ones planted in the garden beds.

I planted some radishes at the beginning of the month.  According to the seed package, they should be ready in about a week, but it's not looking good.

And that's it.  I'll probably post a season wrap-up, but I might not, so maybe prepare yourselves emotionally for this to be the last update for this year.

What's happening in your garden?

* We've had lots of male and female zucchini flowers, but hardly ever at the same time, which makes fertilization difficult.

First garden tour 2022

 It's time for a garden update!

This year, I planted a salsa garden, which is fun.  It's kind of a bummer that the salsa ingredients won't necessarily all be ready at the same time, but I'm ok with that.  I'm growing most of the components, but I'm willing to supplement from the grocery store as needed.

I have roma tomatoes,

jalapeno peppers,

bell peppers--this little guy is almost bigger than its plant,

and onions.  I'm so glad I decided to grow these in containers--they're doing great.  

I also planted cilantro, but unfortunately, it bolted, so now I'm growing coriander.  This is why the garden people say to succession sow cilantro.  Maybe I'll have seeds in time to plant another crop--we'll see.  I did not plant garlic in my salsa garden because it takes too long/doesn't grow well in my area.  

Also in the garden this year, I have cherry tomatoes--one that I purchased as a start, two volunteers from last year's plant, and one sucker that I pruned and stuck in the dirt.  It seems kind of miraculous that it's that easy to propagate tomatoes.  There is purple basil planted in the pot around one of the cherry tomatoes.

Of course, I'm growing my favorite, sugar snap peas.  I just started harvesting a couple of days ago.  I also threw some pole beans in, and they're trying to overtake the peas.

I planted a total of four watermelons from seed I saved from last year.  This one is the furthest along.  I've seen male flowers, but no females yet.

I planted some zucchini, and it looks like this one is fertilized and growing.  We'll use these for fresh eating, plus I'm hoping to freeze some zoodles and can some pineapple zucchini and sweet relish.

I also started a couple of cabbages from seed, hoping that growing them in the garden, versus in a container, will enable them to become more cabbagey than last year's cabbages were.

I'll leave you with this beauty--a volunteer sunflower growing outside one of the raised beds.  I regretted not planting any sunflowers this year, so I'm grateful that this one planted itself.

Last(?) Garden Update for the season

 Hi friends.  It's time for the monthly-ish garden update.

The other day, I cleared out both the pea bed and the melon bed.  When I harvested melons, I left one watermelon hanging on the fence to see what would happen.  See, the thing is, when you're relying on the ground spot to help you decide when your watermelons are ripe, and the watermelons are not actually on the ground, there is no ground spot.  So it's not possible to judge whether the ground spot is creamy yellow.

So I left the biggest one hanging, and it had a hammock to support it, but I guess the hammock was not supportive enough, because a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the final watermelon had disconnected from the vine.

With the final melon harvested, I was able to remove the vines from the garden bed, and while I was at it, I cleaned out the weeds that had grown in the pea bed after the peas capitulated to the weather.

I harvested some compost, which, frankly, surprised me--that there was enough finished compost to harvest--and added it to the top of the empty beds.  I covered one of the beds with cardboard to keep the weeds down while the bed isn't being used.  I neglected to cover the other bed because I didn't have enough cardboard, but I suspect that, given enough time, I will accumulate enough cardboard to cover that one, too.

That leaves the flower/tomato jungle bed, and it is still full and alive and blooming.  It is such a joy to look out at that colorful bounty.

The sunflowers are about 10 feet tall, with multiple heads.  I am hoping to be able to harvest these as a treat for the chickens, but I've seen both squirrels and birds snacking on these, so I'm not sure there will be anything left for the girls.

Oh, these marigolds are glorious.  The plants are just full of blooms, which I continue to deadhead to encourage more blooms.

The zinnias are also glorious.  I've been cutting them throughout the summer, so that I've had a bouquet on the table for the last three months or so.  I marked this particular bloom to save its seeds.  I am so glad that I made the decision to grow flowers, rather than food, in 1/3 of my garden space this season.

And the tomato jungle, aka the one cherry tomato plant, continues to produce.  The harvest has slowed from its peak, but there are still plenty of ripening fruits as well as new blooms.  I would top this plant (cut off the growing top to encourage the plant to put its energy into ripening the fruits it already has, versus putting its energy into setting new fruit), if I could figure out where the top is.  When I say it's a jungle, I'm not kidding.

As usual at this time of year, I'm already dreaming of next year's garden.  This garden thing--it's a joy.

August garden update

Seems like I've been bringing y'all a garden update about once a month, so here we go for August.  

I planted a single tomato plant this year, and yet somehow I still have grown a tomato jungle.  I'm not a huge fan of entropy in most circumstances, but I love the way the garden devolves into beautiful chaos at this time of year.  It feels so wild.

We've been harvesting cherry tomatoes by the pocketful.  There is nothing like a tomato picked from the vine, warm from the sun.  Delicious and sublime.  A sweet burst of heaven on earth.

The sunflowers are glorious.  And much taller than me.

One of the wonderful things about saving seeds is you never know exactly what you're going to get when you grow them.  I am loving this yellow marigold with just a few darker red stripes.

The zinnias are shades of pink this summer.  I am so glad I made the decision to devote 1/3 of my garden space to flowers this year.  I've been able to cut these pretty much continuously for the past month or so, bring a little bit of the outside beauty inside.

We have several Sakata's sweet melons growing.  I have no idea how to tell when these are ready, and last year, I feel like I waited too long, so I harvested one the other day.  It was good!  As promised, it tasted like honeydew melon in a cute, apple-sized package.  I think it could have benefited from a few more days on the vine, so I've left the others out for now and will try another soon.  

Eleven watermelons, friends.  After trying to grow a watermelon off and on for around 25 years, I have grown 11.  I am so pleased.  I'm sure the hot and dry weather we've been experiencing this summer helped.  I don't even mind that they're tiny.  Because let's face it: if I had 11 full-sized watermelons, that would be a little overwhelming.

The other day, I noticed that one was half rotted.  I removed the rotten melon, and split it open.  It looked like it had been ripe, with fully developed seeds.  That made me think maybe it was time to start paying attention to the signs of ripeness in the watermelon patch.  For one, the white spot on the bottom where the melon rests on the ground should turn a creamy yellow color.  For another, the tendril closest to the stem should wither.  

Looks like I might get some Brussels sprout sized cabbages this year.  Better than nothing?  It's been a fun experiment, to be sure, and there's still a lot of time before frost, so maybe we'll get some bigger- than-Brussels-sprout heads.

I also don't know how to tell when the beets are done, so I think I'm going to pull them up later this week.  The radish plant that I let go to seed hasn't set any fruit, probably because it's been hot and dry, so I'm going to pull that out, too, and probably plant more radishes in both the beet and radish boxes.

And finally...

This is not a drill, ladies and gentlemen.  We have grown, and eaten, a watermelon.

Similar to the Sakata melon, I wasn't sure if this guy was actually ripe yet, but I didn't want to let it go too long.  Its tendril was withered and its ground spot was creamy yellow, so I tried harvested it.  It had salmon-pink flesh, just like it supposed to have.  And it tasted good!  Sweet and juicy.  And so cute!

The garden tends toward chaos at this time of year.  It feels rich and indulgent and impossible and wild.  And I love it.  And even though there's still a lot of life left out there, and a lot of fruit to be eaten, I find my thoughts turning to next year's garden, dreaming of another year of growing goodness.  What a pleasure it is to bear witness to everyday miracles in the garden.

It's time for a garden update

 It's been about a month since I talked about what's happening in the garden, so I thought I should bring y'all an update. 

The watermelons and Sakata's sweet melon have really taken off, and they're filling the garden bed.  There are also lots of flowers on the plants, but I don't think there are any actual melons yet, or even female flowers.  Of course, I didn't really look closely, so maybe they're there.  It's been so hot this summer, which is perfect for melons, so I'm hopeful that we'll actually get a harvest this year.

The grape tomato plant is huge.  I started the season pruning off the suckers, but then I decided to just let it go.  The cage fell over repeatedly, so I added a heavy pole to counteract the plant's weight.  So far, it's holding.  There are lots of fruits on the plant, and even more flowers.  Hopefully we'll be eating these right off the plant in a few weeks.  Fresh cherry tomatoes right off the vine are a sublime experience.

The sunflowers are huge compared to a month ago.  I think they were maybe an inch tall in my last garden post, and now they're a solid 4 feet.  I am so looking forward to seeing their sunny faces.

The zinnias are also a lot taller--around 2 feet, and I think all of them have buds.  They have some Asian beetle damage--every time I see them, I pick the beetles off and feed them to the chickens.  The marigolds are also doing well, but I haven't seen any buds yet.

The sugar snap peas have been a disappointment.  I mentioned last time that I had reseeded due to poor germination, and one of those came up.  One.  Ugh.  Plus, since these are a bush type instead of a vining type, they will produce fewer per plant.  The plants I do have are flowering, and this one even has some set fruit.  I was hoping for more, though.  I still have plenty of seed, so I think I will plant this variety again next year, but I will start them indoors so the squirrels or birds or whoever stole my seeds won't get a chance to do so again.

I've thinned the cabbage plants down to three per pot, which is still too many per pot.  But y'all!  It gets harder and harder to bring myself to thin plants as they get bigger.  This is definitely something good to know--next year all the plants need to be thinned by the time they half an inch tall.  An inch max.  I thought I would wait to thin them down to 1-2 per pot until they were bigger and leave the strongest ones, but I have not been able to pull out anymore since the last thinning.  Fortunately, there's plenty of room in the pea bed if I want to transplant the extras instead of just feeding them to the chickens.  I was noticing quite a few cabbage moth larvae a few weeks ago, but after about a week of diligent picking, I haven't seen any since.

Yes, that is a radish flower--your eyes are not deceiving you.  I decided to let this one plant bolt to try to see if I can catch the seed pods when they're delicious and tender, rather than tender and bland or delicious and tough.  This one was from the first planting, and it never bulbed, so we weren't going to eat it anyway.

And here's one of my beets.  I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to be sticking out of the ground and I'm also pretty sure that it's supposed to be round rather than long and skinny, but this is the farthest I've ever gotten with beets (in all the two years that I've attempted beets), so I'm still hoping for the best for these.

That's all I got for ya.  There are some disappointments and some encouraging signs.  I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.

Garden update

 Hi friends.  It's time for a garden update.

Last time I talked about the garden, I had just planted cabbage, radishes, and beets outside in pots.  

I have about 12 cabbage plants spread between three pots.  I've been thinning them as they grow, and will end up with one, or at most two, cabbages per pot.  Or, I should say, one, or at most two, cabbage plants per pot.  Who knows if they will actually form heads?  Seems kind of impossible, to be honest.

Both my homegrown radish seeds and the store-bought seeds from a few seasons ago had a good germination rate, and we harvested and ate some the other day.  I reseeded in the empty spots left by the harvested radishes, and will continue to do so as I harvest them, so hopefully we'll have radishes throughout the summer.  Also hopefully, they won't go to seed this year.

We have beets!  One of the weird things about planting beets is that the seeds are actually a cluster of 2-5 seeds inside of a dried fruit.  So when they come up, they come up as multiples which need to be thinned so the roots will have the space necessary to develop.  About half of my beets germinated, so I resowed in the empty spots about a week ago, and a few are already up.

I've got high hopes for the melons this year.  I've got three Sakata's Sweet Melon (pictured above) and seven  Otome Watermelon (pictured below) that I started indoors and transplanted outside a couple of weeks ago.  They have plenty of space, and a trellis to climb, plus they don't take as long to ripen as other melons and watermelons, so maybe, just maybe, this will be the year I successfully grow a watermelon.  Those seven were the last of my watermelon seeds, so if I want to attempt watermelon again after this year, I'll have to purchase starts from the nursery, or buy more seed.  

Or harvest seed from these watermelons.  Keep your fingers crossed!

No, don't keep your fingers crossed, because you might need to do something with those fingers at some point in the next couple of months.  But do cross them in spirit: in solidarity with my watermelon growing dreams.

I planted sunflowers, zinnias (seed I saved from last year), and marigolds (the last of the commercial seed from several years ago, plus some I saved from last year) in the middle garden bed about a week ago.  These might be zinnias.  They're in the spot where I put the zinnia seeds, and they look sorta like zinnia seedlings.  I am really looking forward to a bed full of beautiful flowers.  I also transplanted a cherry tomato from the nursery into one corner of this bed.  

Fewer than half of my sugar daddy snap peas came up, but those that did are looking good.  I have heard that squirrels, or maybe other small rodent-type creatures, will watch where the humans plant peas and then dig them up later to eat.  I did not see any evidence of this, but perhaps the small rodents are clever and covered their tracks.  Small rodents digging up my seeds would certainly account for the poor germination rate we seem to always experience with peas.

I replanted in the blank spots earlier this week.  It'll be nice to have peas ripening in succession rather than all at once, because we love (and I do mean love) sugar snap peas, but even we have our limits, and I don't think we would like them as much preserved.

I decided not to plant potatoes this year, but I think I probably will next year, especially if I can get my hands on a red, white, and blue seed potato mix.  I think red, white, and blue potatoes would be so much fun.

I deployed the butterfly bombs in front of (or behind, depending on your perspective) the chicken coop.  So far, they're still looking like lumps of clay, although there might be seedlings emerging from one of them.  The seeds in the bombs are perennials or self-seeding annuals, so my hope is that the plants will decorate the front (or back) of the coop for years to come, providing food for pollinators and beauty for my eyes.

And that's it.  What's growing in your garden?