Harvest This Week - Pics to Follow

This is gearing up to be a bountiful Summer in the garden! This week we have massive amounts of yellow wax beans, and a delightful up-and-coming crop of green beans. Pole beans are just starting to blossom.

We ate some of the beans with our last cup of peas with chopped baby carrots - a real life version of the frozen, tasteless "mixed vegetables". The carrots have such intense carrot flavor - sooo delicious. We ate our first zucchini pan fried with parmesean cheese.

We have plenty of green salad to which I have added diced zucchini , store bought tomatoes (boo), grilled chicken and cheese cubes. Light and yummy. Tonight I will also add what little broccoli we have (most of it flowered before it was even worth picking). I might even pick a carrot or two for shredding.

A friend told me that homegrown broccoli grown has little green worms in it and that you need to boil it in salt water before use. The salt water should cause the worms to float to the top. I tried this the other night but found no worms...I hope I didn't eat them!

We also discovered this week that the yellow hot peppers are the perfect kick to add to scrambled eggs. I can't wait for all that is to come!

Harvest

Another harvest with no photograph. What is the matter with me? It was only a bag of Swiss Chard and Lettuce that I brought to my grandmother. It was the first time I have really gotten into the lettuce to notice that there are nice full heads on the buttercrunch and it is all getting so BIG! I am really impressed.

Photo Update - Finally!

Peppers, Lettuce, Potato Patch (not producing anything to speak of)

Tomatoes (unstaked) are falling all over the place but producing well. Beans are going to be plentiful! Notice the giant Marigold "bushes" - we cannot believe how big they are!

The Mesclun and Oregano flowers are so pretty. I almost don't want to pull the Mesclun to replant Fall lettuce!

Harvests

It just occurred to me that I should list our harvests to date. I had hoped to take a photo of each harvest. I will try to do better in terms of photos going forward.

Swiss Chard
Romaine Thinnings
Buttercrunch Thinnings
Peas (Approx 4 cups)
Three Hungarian Wax Peppers
One Jalepeno Pepper
Cilantro
Basil
Broccoli Buttons – Sadly, that is all we got! No head grew big enough to speak of.

Our Garden Rules!

I'd like to brag for a minute and say that our garden is the best around that I have seen! Okay, so I only compared it to the community garden plots, and our friend Frankie's, but still, it is just so glorious! I think the main thing that sets it apart is the structure. Its got dimension, layers, different mediums. The brick walkway, the potato box, the tomato pergola-esque staking technique...it breaks up the monotonous rows. What we need now is a bench to sit an enjoy it.

Garden Beauty - Without Trying!

Yesterday, after returning from a weekend in the Poconos with old friends, Kevin and I took stock of the garden progress. Wow! What a difference a day makes! Or in this case, three days, but still a long time in the July garden world. The plants are finally starting to explode with growth. Our yellow wax beans went from flowering to ready to pick. A sampling was excellent!; the carrots are developing nicely - we thinned the rows and got several baby carrots. A fine change from last year when the rabbits/woodchucks ate them all. We have many, many more peppers - hot varieties and bell. The squash is finally on its way. Lettuce is big and we should have plenty of salad for a while.

Note for next year: Kevin suggested only planting small 2 foot rows of lettuce varieties, with more succession plantings. We just cannot keep up with the huge amounts of greens!

All of the mesclun that I haven't been able to bring myself to pull is HUGE and has pretty white and yellow flowers. I'll bet that Mesclun is not a typical choice for its flowers, but it is so nice to look at I think I might even plant it as a border next year. The contrast with the purple oregano flowers is amazing.

I was skeptical of the Marigolds grown from seed. I didn't even think I liked Marigolds. Turns out, they are a fabulous burst of color and a great addition to the garden. We will certainly do these again next year.

I'll get some photographs up here soon. A garden blog is nothing without pictures!

The Neglectful Gardener - Yep, Me.

I am feeling bad about my lack of gardening this year. For some reason I just cannot get into it - mostly because of the awful "Summer" weather. I was also out of town for a long weekend. Regardless, when I arrived at the garden yesterday after a WEEK of not even setting foot inside the gates...well, lets just say I have my work cut out for me now! And I go out of town again tomorrow! It is nearly impossible to locate the cucumbers under all that grass, the tomatoes still badly need to be staked, the mesclun and broccoli have tons of flowers on them (not really the way these things are supposed to look), and the garden path is overgrown.

On a brighter note, we do have tons of peppers, the lettuce is getting nice and big and the carrots are as well. We have some eggplant flowers, a bounty of tomatoes, many beginner green and yellow beans, and a few baby zucchini and squash.

I need to pull the peas and replant, together with some fall spinach and lettuce, and perhaps more broccoli. Kevin did start the staking process for the tomatoes and I was able to do a bit of weeding.

Weeding and Waiting

I spent an hour at the garden last night trying to tame the out of control weeds and also getting eaten alive by the mosquitos. I wish there was something exciting to report. Things look just about the same as they have for the last two weeks - which is strange considering we are in mid July. We don't even have any flowers yet on the zucchini plants! This constant rain (except for yesterday), cool days and cold nights are just not working for me.

Slowly It Grows

Does anyone else feel like the Summer is missing this year? We have yet to have one day in recent memory that is nice from morning to night. It was 52 degrees this morning! And typically, though it is sunny at 4pm, by 6pm it is cloudy, rainy and cold.
The garden is not appreciative.

Flowering Plants

Eating food from the garden is such a pleasure. It's as if you are tasting the food for the first time. After savoring our first picking of garden peas (in a yummy tuna casserole last night), we are anxious for the next round, whatever it may be. It will be a while before the potatoes, beans, and eggplant are ready, but atleast they have started to flower! That is a good sign!

Garden Work

When I first started to mention to people and we were going to start a vegetable garden, we were met with a lot of skeptics. People would say "Oh really, well, a garden is a laaaat of work," spoken with the titled head and tone like a parent would say to a little kid that wants a puppy. In reality, I don't find the actual gardening part to be a tremendous amount of work. Rather, like most things, you get out what you put in. If your idea of a successful garden is a few squash and tomatos, then so be it - these guys will grow regardless of how much (or how little) you weed and feed them. If you want a bountiful harvest of a variety of veggies, it requires a bit more TLC. I think the part of the garden that requires the most actual work is the harvesting, preparing and eating. But that is the best part as well.

Our first harvest (Aside from lettuce):

PEAS!!!

Looking Back...

One year ago, we were enjoying a sunny day in the garden, which seemed to be a lot further along than this year...

Us v. The Rabbits

Despite our best efforts, the rabbits return! We have a fence buried into the ground but apparently some spots are more buried than others. I swear they must case the entire fence searching for a possible opening. The first time they got inside the fence they could not find a way out. They destroyed the interior perimeter and finally found a small opening to take advantage of. This time, they seemed to have it down to a science - in through a hole in the side, out through a hole conveniently right next to the lettuce. They ate most of the Romaine and some of the carrots. And I really want carrots this year! I think it is time to invest in an electric fence.

It's Been Too Long!

Five days without an update. Really, I haven’t been spending nearly enough time in the garden. The holiday weekend was busy with other things (like Margaritas), and of course, there is the rain factor. Thankfully, I have read that the rain problem is not limited to my little garden, but spread all across the northeast.

Nevertheless the vegetables are growing! We finally hilled the potatoes on Sunday – there were no flowers to be seen yet, so I hope we were not too late. And we began to devise a plan for staking the peppers with bamboo stakes and string, but it didn’t pan out too well. And I did a little weeding…much more needed asap.

In terms of food stuffs, we have been sampling the absolutely amazingly delicious shell peas while we wait for enough to ripen to make a meal out of. Kevin does not like peas so he was skeptical of my desire to grow them, but one taste of these beauties and he is hooked now. He said that they tasted just like what his Uncle used to grow. Such sweet treats. We will definitely be growing these again, perhaps as soon as the Fall.

We also tasted some broccoli buttons (at least I think that is what they are called). The heads of broccoli started to separate from tight clusters, got taller and looked stretched out – also were going to flower. So we ate them before they could do so. What is the deal with that? Are we supposed to cover the heads with the leaves?

Garden Humor

A friend of mine sent me this great garden joke:

An old Italian lived alone in New Jersey . He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard. His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:

Dear Vincent,

I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over.. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.

Love, Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Pop,

Don't dig up that garden. That's where the bodies are buried.

Love,Vinnie

At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Pop,

Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances.

Love you,Vinnie

Flowers - Wild & Tame

Our walk to the garden includes some gorgeous wildflowers. I would love to dig some up and plant them on the bank behind our house. Kevin is working on creating a very naturalized landscape in that area with perrenials that require minimal maintenance and look like they belong. Besides the wild daisys that sprung up this year, we also have Lupines. I am leaving that project up to him and I know it will be beautiful.
The flowers in the garden are adding a brilliant splash of color to the green foliage. The marigolds all have multiple blooms of reds, yellows, and oranges. The oregano has a very dainty purple flower (sadly I am letting all the herbs flower before I can harvest them as I said I wouldn't). I am still waiting for the Livingston Daisys and Sunflowers to pop.