Garden E112009

The garden has come to an end. I’ve pulled up the last of the plants and picked what was left of the crops. All that is left is the black berries and raspberries.



I cut back all of the herbs and have been drying them in my basement. For the larger herbs like the sage and pineapple sage I just tied them together in bunches and hung the upside down in a closet. The smaller herbs like rosemary, thyme, and oregano I put in a small electronic dehydrator. Some of the herbs like chamomile, peppermint, and lavender I dried laid out flat in sheets. I ground the dried herbs using a small electric coffee grinder and made a few different spice mixes. I’m saving all the tarragon by itself in a large batch to make tarragon mustard. I used the dried chamomile, mint, pineapple sage, and lavender to make herbal tea.

Now that the weather has gotten much cooler I will be moving the blackberry and current bushes out of the garden patch and along the fence with the two raspberry bushes. I was surprised by how many raspberries we got on such a young bush. Hopefully we have berries until the end of the month. We might start getting frost this weekend though.

Well that’s it for this year’s garden. See you next garden season!

Garden E102009

The garden is winding down as the summer draws to a close. The weather here is beginning to cool and the sun is shining less. Every couple of days I cut down another plant.



The broccoli is done. I had to pull out the rest of the plants. It seems that once the florets have been cut the rest of the plant begins to rot.



The herbs are getting ready to go to seed. Many have already sprouted flowers. I cut most of the chamomile back leaving just a few leaves and the cute white, daisy like flowers. Hopefully the plant will come back next year on its own. I’m drying it out along with peppermint leaves and pineapple sage. Once it’s dried I’m going to keep it in an air tight jar and make herbal tea with it using a tea ball.

Garden E092009

The Garden is doing well despite the recent set backs of fallen plants. The tomatoes are producing rapidly and I’ve been surviving on a steady diet of BLTs and caprici salads.







I thought it might be the end of the cucumbers but I picked one today for my pasta salad. There were quite a few small cucumbers and even more small flowers sprouting all over the plants.



I cut down all the celery last week and already new stalks are forming. Hopefully I’ll get another small crop before the first frost.

The gypsy peppers are doing great. All the ones I had to pull down from the fallen plants ripened indoors beautifully. I noticed today when I picked some peppers for my pasta salad that they began to rot a little if I let them get red on the vine. I’m going to have to pick them sooner and let them ripen indoors.

I got another crop of broccoli. I steamed it the other night with dinner and added a little butter, salt and pepper. I’m not normally a broccoli fan but the last two times I cooked my home grown batch it’s been fantastic.



I grow some tasty vegetables.

E082009

The other night we had a violent thunder storm. I went out the next morning to check on the garden and found the large heavy tomato plants knocked over. Only two of the eight plants were left standing upright. Two of the damaged plants were completely knocked over and I unfortunately had to pull them up. I picked the many remaining still green tomatoes before I completely uprooted them. Hopefully the tomatoes will ripen set out on the picnic table in the sun. I’ll probably pickle and fry some of them while they are still green.



The fallen three grape tomato plants knocked over the red beauties and the Hungarian pepper plants. I cut the tomato plants back to a third of their size and put them back in their cages. With the space that was created I was able to stand the red beauty plant back up, packing dirt around it for extra support around its base. One of the three Hungarian plants was bent beyond repair. I picked all the peppers on the plant and then pulled it up. I pushed the other two plants up and picked most of the peppers to keep them from falling back over under their own weight and then packed more dirt around the base for extra support.







The garden had plenty more to be harvested. One of the giant broccoli plants had a large floret that I cut along with a three inch stem. I cut back the plant a little removing some of the largest leaves. I’m going to leave the plant in the ground, maybe it will grow more florets. Two of the other broccolis have florets of their own that should be ready to harvest sometime this week.






Two of the cauliflowers have florets that should also be ready to harvest sometime this week. The last plant has a small bud that should be ready by the end of this month.






I’m not sure if the cucumbers are done. I haven’t spotted any more cucumbers but I did notice some flowers so hopefully we’ll get one more batch before summer is out.



I think I may have picked the last of the green beans. I’m keeping the plants in the ground in the hopes that we’ll get at least one more harvest before summer is over.



I’ve been busy in the kitchen freezing and drying all that I have harvested. I hope to get some pickling done later this week.



These giant scary bugs were flying around the garden

They almost look like a kind of wasp or hornet. any guesses?

E072009

It has been hot and dry for days. The radishes in the garden grew enormous but every time I pulled up one of the huge plants all I got was a sad little red nub. I figured they needed to grow more and left them alone. Some of them started to grow flowers out the top but still no radish. A neighbor down the street told me that it has been too hot for the plants and that I should just pull all of them and plant more seeds when it cools off. I pulled every radish plant. It’s for the better. They were starting to choke out the beets and lettuce around them.

The broccoli has also grown to a colossal size but have yet to produce florets. Only one of the cauliflowers has produced florets. Maybe it’s been to hot for them as well.



The green beans have yielded another great harvest and seem to be sprouting new pods by the minute. I thought the snap peas were finished but I picked off 2 pods today.





The beats seem to be growing steadily but I’m not sure I dug them deep enough when I first planted them. The tubers are popping far above the dirt and are still quite small. I think I may dig them up and plant them deeper.



The tomato plants had started to grow out of control. I had to tie the wayward branches to their cages using nylon because they were blocking the sun from the peppers and celery.







I have been making some amazing food from my regular harvests; fried zucchini, cucumber water, pesto, and sauces.


The Carrots


Garlic ready to be harvested.


One of the Red Beauty bell pepper plants that was stunted by the unruly tomato plants.


Two of the many cucumber sprouting from the vine.

E062009

The Garden is in full bloom now. I went to Chicago last weekend and before I left I checked the garden. There were tiny cucumbers and tiny zucchini both with large blossoms at the ends. By the time I got back, a day and half later, I had about a half dozen large cucumbers so heavy they pulled down the vine and big round zucchini that held so tight to the plant I had to use sharp kitchen shears to free them.





I noticed a few pods on the bush beans but was surprised at just how many were hiding under the leaves of the plant. I picked a large bowl full. I blanched the whole harvest and quickly shocked them in ice water. I cooked some for dinner that night and froze the rest in small batches, saving them for the winter. I couldn’t resist steaming a small bag the next morning. I dipped the beans in a soft boiled egg for breakfast. There are plenty of small pods remaining on the bush and we should have another large crop in about a week.

The lady bugs are still eating up all the aphids and I only see a little bit of chewed damage here and there. I catch sight of the lady bugs every time I am in the garden and the other day I noticed two lady bugs at work making more lady bugs.



Every tomato plant is dotted with small green fruit. Tomatoes are always a bitter sweet event as they are red and ripened in the last weeks of summer, a reminder of the end of the end of the season.

Garden E052009

The weather here has gone from cool spring breezes to hot and rainy summer days. Not much work could be done for a couple of weeks because it rained most days. I tried to check on things during breaks in the weather. After the rain it became extremely hot and humid. The temperatures rose into the upper 90s. I weeded when I could but only did so in short intervals because of the heat. I would work in the evening but the temperature only dropped slightly and the days were very long, between daylight savings time and being at the very end of the Eastern Time zone, the sun doesn’t usually set here until almost 10pm.

Right after the rain our lettuce growth exploded. We harvested bowl after bowl full. I could it lettuce morning, noon, and night if I wanted. Unfortunately the arugula and spinach went to seed so they had to be pulled. I’ve started to sprout some spinach seeds along with some scallion seeds under a damp cloth. The sprouts are still tiny so I think I’ll wait a few days before I transfer them to small pots.



The radish seeds we planted strait to the garden are now as big as the nursery radishes we bought. We’ve harvested a few that grew so big they burst from the ground. They aren’t very spicy. They have a sweet mild flavor with a tiny kick at the finish.





Our sugar snap pea plant is growing strong and clinging tightly to its trellis. I noticed a bulging pod on it the other day and on closer inspection found a handful of smaller pods scattered on the vine not ready to be picked. I snapped off the bulging pod and popped it open. Three perfectly round peas were neatly packed inside. I ate them there in the garden. They were soft and sweet like candy, so tasty that I ate the outer pod as well which was sweet but greener tasting.

The black berries and currents are starting to sprout berries. Every few days, bright red currents are ready to be picked. There are only enough for a quick garden snack. They are more tart than sweet but delicious none the less. The blackberries are taking there sweet time. They were green for weeks and only today did I notice a red color beginning to take over. The raspberry plants still have tiny green berries while the strawberry plant still has no berries at all, only long shoots reaching out over its corner of the garden.



None of the other plants have yielded any harvest yet but I went out one morning to weed and found that the plants had all quadrupled in size. The Zucchini have turned into a prehistoric forest that may or may not be harboring miniature dinosaurs. The cucumbers are reaching out winding their tendrils on every available hold, even sometimes around themselves. The tomato plants are massive, reaching up and out, sprouting more flowers every day inviting large fuzzy bumble bees.









Unfortunately, because of the rain maybe, we’ve begun to see the damage caused by aphids chewing at the leaves. The potatoes were hit especially hard. We picked up a tub of about 5,000 lady bugs at the farmers market. I’ve been scattering couple hundred on the garden everyday in the hope that it helps and storing the rest of the ladies in the cool dark basement.





The weather is supposed to cool off this week and it is expected to rain over the next couple of days. Hopefully we’ll get another large lettuce crop before the heat of the summer sends it to seed. We should have our first big harvest in about a week or two and until then little garden snacks to much on while weeding.