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.

Garden E042009

There was one row of space left in our garden because we couldn’t decide what to put in it. We finally settled on broccoli and cauliflower, two vegetable I’m not exactly crazy about but know that if I grow them myself I’ll be excited to eat them. We went to Young’s Nursery near our house to get the broccoli and cauliflower. Young’s has a greenhouse behind the store and one down the street where they grow all the plants they sell. Can’t get much more local than that! We picked up four young broccoli plants. The cauliflower was mixed in with Brussels sprouts and at their young stage they didn’t look very different from one another. I made sure to ask the sales clerk for help because Brussels sprouts are pretty much the only vegetable my mom doesn’t like. I found the cauliflower and picked out a pot with four healthy plants. I also found very young beets and grabbed a pot of four tiny plants.

The store had chives and leeks but no scallions. We’ve tried to plant scallions twice from seeds with no luck. I decided to get the leeks instead of the chives as I think there are more cooking options with leeks than with chives. I don’t want to give up on growing scallions so I got a seed packet along with a spinach seed pouch. This time I’m going to sprout the seeds before I plant them.

We needed some cages for our rapidly growing tomato plants. We stopped by Aco Hardware after leaving Young’s. We bought six cages but neither of us could remember how many tomato plants we had in the garden. We also got a small bag of potting soil for the flowers my mom picked up from Young’s and the extra basil plant we got to compensate for the under performing one we already had in the garden. We’re going to have a little competition between the garden basil and the potted basil. Which ever one survives the summer wins!


garden basil


potted basil

The cauliflower and the broccoli had to be planted 18 inches apart. The 8 plants we took up the extra row. We put the leeks in the empty spot next the garlic where the scallions never grew. Hopefully the leeks will fair better. The beets we put near the bare spots in the lettuce row. It seems that only patches of the seeds we planted came up. The ones that did are strong. We’ve already harvested from them.

It turned out that we have eight tomato plants. We used five of the cages on the tomatoes. We staked the remaining three and tied them with old panty hose as not to damage the plants. The last cage we used for our sweet peas. The plant seemed to slip through everything else we tried to hang it on. It seems that one of our bush bean plants is actually a pole been disguised itself. We used the small trellis that the sweet peas refused to climb to instead support the masquerading pole beans. It was a much happier fit for both plants.






sweet peas

Garden E032009

Memorial Day has passed and we are safe from frost. My mom and I went to a roadside nursery to gather more vegetables. We picked up three kinds of tomatoes; beefmaster, better boy, and grape. We’re going to have more tomatoes than we know what to do with. We gad some trouble finding red bell peppers. There must have been a mad rush because we only found a handful of Red Beauties hidden amongst the Gypsy Peppers. I grabbed two of each kind of pepper along with hot Hungarian Peppers. We looked over the beans and couldn’t decided whether to get Pole Beans or Bush Beans. “What’s the difference?” my mother wondered aloud. I shrugged, but a nice man in the shopping in the same aisle explained that Pole Beans grow up and need to be trained to a fence while Bush Beans grow low to the ground like a bush. We decided to go with the bush beans. They sounded like less work especially since we are also growing cucumbers and sweet peas. Both plants require a fence to climb on.

We wandered over to the herb section and I was excited to find Summer Savory. Now I have all the ingredients for Herbes de Provence, French herbs mix of lavender, thyme, rosemary, and of course savory. The herb mix is amazing on roasted vegetables with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. It’s also great rubbed on or stuffed into lamb. We also came across a curry plant. I had never seen one before. It was so aromatic. We rubbed some between our fingers and the strong sweet smell burst into the air. The aroma stayed on our hands for hours afterwards. We didn’t buy any. I’m not really sure how to cook with it. We tasted the leaves of all the different kinds of mint; orange mint, pineapple mint, I tasted a menthol leaf and it was disgusting, I cleaned my pallet the amazing taste of a chocolate mint leaf.

We bought two red raspberry bushes and a strawberry plant. It had one bright red strawberry on it that was eaten by either a bird or a squirrel while waiting to be planted on our picnic table. We’re going to have to find a large menacing plastic owl to watch over our garden perimeter.