Summer Garden

Early summer harvest: onion, potatoes, and tomatoes

Last year, right around the time that Abram was born, the weeds in my garden went into hyperdrive, growing so fast you could almost watch it.  Being rather busy at the time, I mostly closed my eyes and looked away.  (Other than dragging various family members out to hoe for me....)  This year most of the plants going into hyperdrive are producing food, so I don't mind so much.  Of course, the weeds are going crazy, too, but they don't have quite as much open territory to work with this year!  The picture above shows some of the early fruits of my labor: some potatoes I dug up to try, the first onion, two tomatoes I picked a little early in case they split with the rain, and one green one that I broke off by accident.

 The pepper plants are doing really well, too, with big, plump peppers hanging from all of them.  Well, all of the first-planted round (to the left of the milk jugs in the photo below).  The ones from the second round of planting (to the right of the milk jugs) are still not very happy campers.  They're greening up a bit, and some are finally starting to bloom.  Overall I think that the opportunity to turn this ground after pulling out the pak choi and spinach was NOT worth the delay planting the peppers.  The peppers on the left were interplanted between the romaine and spinach as babies; I think I'll do more interplanting next year.  What do you think?

Early- and late-planted pepper beds

Eggplant blossoms

The eggplants are just beginning to bloom.  The flea beetles are still chewing them up, which I thought they wouldn't do once the plants reached a decent size, and last week I found a potato beetle on one of them.  N is not a big fan of eggplant, and I did plant 5 plants, so maybe it's just as well if they aren't too productive.  However, the plants are still growing and trying to bloom.  Aren't the blossoms gorgeous?

 

Potato "patch", almost ready for harvest

 My potato patch is getting close to harvest ready.  Several of the other gardeners have already dug their potatoes, but I'm waiting until the vines are done, since I'm not really ready to start planting fall lettuce yet anyway.  The ones in the foreground of the picture are the Yukon Gold that N wanted to plant - they're really almost ready and I've already dug some of the them.  Then in the background, kind of all over the place, are the german butterballs.  They won't be ready for at least a couple more weeks.

Marigolds taking over my onion patch

 I've been really surprised by how happy my marigolds are.  They are growing almost as fast as the weeds.  (But at a significant advantage since I don't rip off their tops periodically.)  I ended up scattering them here and there throughout the garden, wherever there was an empty spot I could take advantage of.  In some places they've become almost a nuisance - for example here they cast a lot of shade on the onion plant behind them and the bulb is noticeably smaller than the others.  But they are supposed to be helpful for keeping away pests, and how could I get mad at them, anyway?  They're so cheerful and happy! 

You can see in the picture some of the onion tops fell over during the crazy-fast storm system last week.  I've been watching for the tops to fall over so I know when they're "done", but I don't think this counts since the leaves are still green.  At this point I'm picking them as they're needed.

I'm definitely much happier to have the food and flowers than the weeds.

Garden Update

I was just sniffing around the garden blogosphere and realized I'm not the only slacker who's gotten too busy with spring craziness to keep her blog up-to-date!  Here's some of what's going on:

1) R and I transplanted basil, dill, and eggplants into our home garden plot.  I have completely abandoned the original planting plan in favor of just getting things in the ground quickly.
2) The azalea bushes and irises are in bloom.
3) The potatoes are up in my backyard container as well as in my community garden plot, which was planted almost three weeks later.  (They're a little smaller.)
4) The first planting of peas are more than a foot tall.
5) Both of my gardens are covered in little sprouted weeds.
6) N came out to the community garden plot with me last week and helped me move a bunch more compost from the pile out there onto my plot, and turned over the soil in the zucchini bed.  I'm ready to plant the corn and put out some tomatoes, I think.  (More on tomatoes in a second post.)  We've had an odd spring, with lots of thunderstorms and cold weather, and geese still flying overhead even yesterday, so I've been a little reluctant, but the rush of all the spring stuff blooming lately makes me feel like it's time.
7) Also a couple weeks ago N brought two of last year's been teepees out to the community plot and we set them up at either end of what will be the bean bed.  From a distance it makes my plot look as though someone who knows what they're doing is working in there!  And, none of our recent thunderstorms have been able to knock them over, so that's good.
8) My neighbor at the community garden set up a fantastic fence around his three plots, with a neat little gate and everything.  He took down the pieces of small plastic fence that I'd stretched along that side of my plot to keep R out of his cauliflower, and rolled them neatly around my fence posts.  What a sweetie!
9) I'm still debating about how to stake my tomtoes.  I've been hearing a lot of good things about the "florida weave" method lately, but the upfront costs are awfully high.  You need a 7- or 8-foot metal T-post for every two or three plants (I think I could get away with 6 of them at about $8 apiece).  It's true that you can reuse them for many seasons, but I've told myself that about the staking methods I used for the last three years and here I sit, debating trying something new, again...
10) The strawberry flowers have opened and are just starting to turn down.  I'm in a hurry for them this year because I feel like I need to pick them before I go into labor or we might miss the whole season in post-baby sleep deprivation.
11) Lots of flower buds are forming on my unruly raspberry vines.  I hope we get to eat a few raspberries this year!
12) My spinach is starting to grow upward, letting me know its time is limited.  The seeds I planted this spring are still tiny, which makes me think I may not get anything out of them before the heat hits.  We'll see!

Hmm, I think that's it for now.  I'm going to try to get an updated photo of the community garden this week, which - despite the fact that I haven't planted anything in there except one short row of potatoes - is starting to look like a real garden!

Some Late-Summer Holdouts

Here are a few of the summer plants still struggling to finish up in this unusually chilly fall we've been having.

Eggplant

Chili Pepper

Lima Beans

Jalapenos

The jalapenos were very prolific - I made several batches of salsa, although I didn't try to can any because I was so busy this fall - and two have gone red on the plant waiting for me to pick them. I think I'll save the seeds from them and try to plant them in the spring.

Many of my summer plants didn't really get going until late July, I think because I didn't do a very good job fertilizing when I installed the new garden bed. Next year I'll do better, I hope.

Growing Things

I thought it might be fun to post some pictures of all the things growing in my garden. Here is a happy little baby squash.




And a vigorous cucumber patch busily trying to escape our yard for the neighbors'.


Here's a nice bunch of cherry tomatoes (carried off by squirrels before this photo made it to the blog).


And here I managed to catch one of my eggplants actually growing. I have found during the last two years that they just don't do well until it gets hot. Next year I'm not going to plant these until it's warm enough to plant them outside.