Greenhouse Update

Tomato plants in the greenhouse are really tall, the ones in the quart yogurt containers are between 18 and 24 inches tall. It must be the greenhouse making them grow like this, they look leggy to me.

More weirdly tall tomato plants. It's been a warm and very very windy last couple of days so hopefully the ground will dry out soon and I can get some planting done.

Can you see the blossoms forming on the tall one in the middle? Yeah, they're everywhere. Almost all the tomato plants have flowers.

Nice fluffy leaved eggplants. I've killed 3 flea beetles and there doesn't seem to be anymore damage so far.

And the pepper seedlings are still doing ok. Most of the plants are of the Numex anaheim types like Big Jim and Joe E. Parker, but I also got Jalafuego hybrid and Aji Lemon to germinate as well as Early Jalapeno.

And the Mizuna and Tatsoi are out of control. There's 6 Mizuna plants in styrofoam cups under that mess of leaves, I've been picking off outer leaves lately and they actually seem happier for it.

It's probably a good thing I wasn't able to get anything planted before the rain. By Sunday our entire backyard was underwater. My husband said a couple of roads were still washed out on Monday when he went to pick up some rabbit manure for the garden. But luckily a couple of really windy warmish days have dried out a lot of it.

In other news, my partner built a deck in our backyard in April which has been inspiring him to do some grilling. Today he grilled steaks, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, and pineapple. So good. It's going to be a wonderful summer of grilling.

Harvest Monday, 9/12/16

The tomato beds have been cleared out so these are definitely the last of the tomatoes for the year. It's still been in the mid 90's all last week (35 degrees Celsius), so peppers still aren't setting much fruit. It's supposed to cool down now but I'll probably start pulling pepper plants up since it's late in the season for them to be putting on fruit.

Eggplants along with loofa and peppers are pretty much the only things left in the garden. (I accidently mangled the winter melon plants cleaning out the beds.) The green eggplant at the bottom is Cambodian Green Giant which is seedless and incredibly tender at this size, the plants themselves set fruit very late with this being the first.

It's mid-September and the loofah plants are finally covered in blossoms. Summer Cross is one of the varieties we're growing that's supposed to be day length neutral, even so they didn't start blossoming till August.

I had to pull out all the Brussels sprout and broccoli plants, they were dead or dying and covered in harlequin bugs. Harlequin bugs are kind of pretty compared to squash bugs, but they quickly overwhelmed the two beds and sucked the life out of all the brassica plants. Next year I'll be covering the plants.

Today is set to finish cleaning out the garden and maybe do some direct seeding of turnips, fennel, and radishes and then I'll start a few seeds for greens.

I hope everyone in the northern hemisphere is starting to enjoy the cooler weather and the coming of fall. Please join us at Harvest Monday where gardeners come together to share the joys and trials of gardening.

Harvest Monday, 8/29/16

Peppers are still coming in and with all the rain the later peppers seem to have much thicker walls which is nice. The sweet peppers were added to a beef stir fry with store bought peppers mixed in, the sauce is soy sauce, Lea Perrins Worcestershire, sugar, and hot pepper flakes.

Hot peppers haven't done as well this year, that end of the pepper bed seems to have very distorted tiny wispy leaves.

Eggplants are doing ok, the long thin one is a Mazu eggplant which was very tender.

The last of the Korean melons. The white flesh is really good chilled, when well ripe it is tender and juicy.

There's some strange insects infesting the brassicas. They look like squash bugs but they're yellow with black spots. Brussels sprouts are starting to form on the plants, but the leaves are dying off. The bugs are probably spreading some kind of virus.

I picked four more grocery bags full of basil, three were taken to work and quickly nabbed. And of course I made and froze more pesto. There's still the Asian basil "Siam Queen" to deal with, whole leaves will probably get frozen in freezer bags so pieces can be broken off easily. I find normal basil to be very herbaceous and fresh tasting, whereas Asian basil has a cinnamon sweetness to it.

I'd been making lots of dishes with roasted tomatoes, chickpeas or potatoes, Indian curries and coconut milk. And then I tried a pasta dish with pesto, snap beans and potatoes from a Nigella recipe. My partner is appreciative of the efforts but I think it's too many meals with too many bright bold flavors. So lately it's been lasagna with salads, and today I cooked cube steak with mashed potatoes and gravy, and fried corn. It's funny how simple things can be so satisfying.

Please join us at Harvest Monday, a celebration of vegetables from the garden.

Harvest Monday, 8/22/16

Fall is rushing towards us even as summer plants perk up with cooler weather and wet cloudy days. This has turned out to be the wettest August on record for us. Tomatoes and eggplant are still trickling in, although tomatoes are very much at their end.

The Ginkaku Korean melons have been a sweet surprise for us. Seeded May 1st and planted out in the garden May 30th, it feels like the plants have been giving us innumerable melons for months. At this point we're freezing cut up melons for smoothies.

Bell peppers and Jimmy Nardello sweet peppers are still coming in, and the cherry tomatoes are a surprise harvest. The thieving squirrels that used to frolic through our neighbor's oak trees and rampage through my garden haven't been around lately, nor the multitude of chirpy little birds. Something has them spooked and I'm guessing the hawk that's been flying around, or maybe the owl that can be heard at twilight.

Tomato season is definitely at an end. The plants will get pulled up next weekend, which is marked for the big garden clean up. Even so, eggplants and peppers are truly coming into their own with these wet 80 degree days with many starting to flush with fruit.

The last of the tomatoes have been made into roasted tomato sauce and frozen. Our plans for salsa this year just didn't work out, the early heat and the late pepper start really did me in. I'll have to be more disciplined and start those persnickety chile peppers in February rather than March.

I picked three big grocery bags full of basil. One bag equaled a huge colander full of leaves once destemmed. Three quarts of thick blender-ized basily goodness now rest in the freezer, topped off and protected by a layer of olive oil. Now there's only one variety of basil left to make into pesto. (Yes, I made separate pesto batches from each variety.)

The luffa vines have taken over all the bean and cucumber trellises. The long trailing vines that clamber over fences with leaves the size of dinner plates are finally blooming. I'm hoping for mountains of tender young loofah. The fry pan awaits.

Once the tomato and bush bean beds get cleared, and some of the pole bean trellises that aren't swallowed up by luffa. The peas can get planted and hopefully lettuce, spinach, fennel, turnips, beets, winter radishes and all the greens will find a place.

Please join us at Harvest Monday where rowdy and raucous gardeners share their love of vegetables and cooking said vegetables.

Harvest Monday, 8/8/16

We are still getting tomatoes and Jimmy Nardello peppers. The tomato with the green/yellow stripes on the bottom is a chocolate stripes tomato.

Happily, the melons keep ripening. Although, half the plants have died at this point by animal intervention.

The yellow tomatoes are Kelloggs Breakfast which as a later variety generally gets processed rather than eaten individually.

The squashes seem to have given up at this point, so the whole row will get pulled soon. But surprisingly the cucumbers are still producing. It seems like the yellow and black striped cucumber beetles have moved on.

A little bell pepper also got picked on Saturday, along with these just ripening tomatoes. I'm still picking the tomatoes early, but the squirrels seem busy with their manic digging these days. And of all craziness, the squirrels chewed a huge huge hole at the tope of our gas can for the lawn mower. It was shocking. Must have just happened this past week. We need to get one of those fake owls to scare them off but I keep forgetting to pick one up.

I spent Saturday and Sunday roasting ripe tomatoes layered on parchment with sweet peppers, onions, garlic, and basil that were drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with a touch of sea salt. After each tray spent four hours at 250 degrees Fahrenheit in the oven they got put through the blender. And we ended up with 4 gallons of blended sauce with minimal work over 2 days which all got frozen. It was a nice way to use up all the tomatoes in the fridge and on the countertop, now there's just the tomatoes that were picked Saturday.

There's a recipe for double chocolate zucchini bread I'm going to try on Tuesday along with my mother-in-laws recipe for zucchini bread. They both should freeze well.

Please join us at Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

Harvest Monday, 7/24/16

It's been a hot year and I'm starting to look forward to fall and winter. We had such a mild winter last year, I wonder what this year will bring.

Tomatoes are coming in but the squirrels have discovered and are getting tons of them. They've been tearing the fruit off the vines or just eating them where they hang. What I thought were peck marks from birds, turns out they're claw marks from squirrels.

Cherry tomatoes are really nice to have around, they're great in omelets or just to pop in the mouth.

Combined the bush beans and pole beans are producing terribly this year, but at least they are starting to produce more. I'll probably be pulling them to make room for a fall planting of peas eventually.

Cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini, and summer squash still coming in steady amounts. Squash bugs have invaded, so every couple of days I go out with duct tape to collect eggs and the occasional nymph and adult squash bug. After being hit by vine borers, the plants just aren't producing many squashes, plus there are cucumber beetles everywhere.

Three small ripe melons and a summer squash. The Ginkaku melons keep making melons, I counted eight still on the vines. Squirrels have been digging in the bed, killing one of the four plants.

I also picked a more ripe melon that isn't pictured to see how it would taste, very sweet and still crispy but starting to get a bit mealy. We much prefer them crispier with their sweet citrusy kind of honeydew flavor.

I picked a few tomatoes on Sunday that were just starting to ripen, to beat the squirrels. You can see the puncture marks from their claws on the Black Brandywine from when they got a couple of the other fruits. I'll probably go back to using fencing as supports for the tomatoes next year.

The loofah plants have started taking over the whole row of trellises but not a single bloom has yet to form, which makes me think their blossoming is dependent on day length. The winter squash and wax melons have just started vining, hopefully there's enough time left for some fruit to set. And the first Jimmy Nardello peppers are just starting to ripen, which I'm very excited to try.

Please join us at Harvest Monday, a place where gardeners and vegetable enthusiasts share their love of growing things.

Harvested this week:
10.632 lbs. tomatoes
3.932 lbs. melon
2.336 lbs. zucchini
2.000 lbs. cucumber
1.158 lbs. green beans
0.536 lbs. yellow summer squash
0.402 lbs. eggplant

weekly total: 20.996 pounds

Hot Chilli Peppers are Finally Planted in the Garden

My husband and I saw a funnel cloud forming while driving home from dinner Wednesday, luckily it started breaking up once it neared the river. Just a few weeks ago a small tornado hit a town 20 minutes from here. The tornado sirens in our town are incredibly loud and unnerving, a strangely forlorn up and down cry like a voice wailing in anguish.

I'm so happy the hot peppers are finally planted in the garden. In just a couple days the chilli plants have already doubled in size (it just seems like that), they love being planted in the ground and sure are enjoying the heat and humidity. This bed contains 38 pepper plants with 31 of them being hot chilli peppers. There's  about 2 feet between rows and 1 foot between plants within a row.

The tender new growth on this Corno Rosso sweet pepper plant are a pretty lighter green in color. My plants are still small because I had to reseed after a tragic overheating incident where I believe the seeds got cooked.

Aji Lemon Drop hot chilli pepper with its cupped leaves, these are supposed to be especially hot with a wonderful citrus-y flavor.

Serrano hot peppers immediately start producing side shoots when they're very small, they even have side shoots at their cotyledon's point of attatchment. They're a very hot pepper, although not as hot as Santa Fe Grande which I'm also growing.

Four Korean Ginkaku melons were planted amongst the pepper bed. I'm hoping they're similar to the melons we ate while visiting my dad in Virginia.

The tomato supports will get put in some time next week because this weekend I'm helping my husband put in the support posts for a fence. So exciting! The tomato support system I've decided to use this year is the Florida weave which just uses t-posts and twine, two things I have lots of.

On Tuesday, I accidently sat on this Celebrity tomato while planting basil the next row over and snapped the top off, it was just hanging by a piece of skin. I taped the stem back into place and it seems to be doing fine.

But I don't know what happened to this Pantano Romensco tomato, the top part just flopped over and died. The stem isn't broken or anything, makes me think of insects or some kind of disease, or maybe it got wacked with the heavy hose. 

I'm going to have to give up on growing eggplants in the ground, it's impossible to fight the flea beetles. Should I dig them up and replace them with pepper plants, or just leave them in the ground and keep fighting the battle? I still have a few eggplants in pots that'll probably end up making the front porch their home.

Gray-blue little mushrooms, very delicate and only lasting a day before disappearing.

Planting Eggplant Seedlings in the Garden

Eggplants were planted today in the garden. They're a  mixture of Asian, Italian, and Middle East varieties. The 16 eggplants were planted about 18 inches apart which only filled half their bed so sweet peppers will fill the rest of the bed.

I had re-seeded a few of the eggplants due to low germination, so there's a bunch of 'extra' seedlings that are barely more than cotyledons.

Aswad eggplant

The peppers didn't get planted today. I was a little sore after spending yesterday in the garden, so my working pace was slow.

Purchased Crookneck yellow summer squash. 

But I did manage to get the summer squash and zucchini seeded and laid down some soaker hoses. I did give in and purchase a little container of Yellow Crookneck. The lure of early squash harvests was irresistible.

To the left is the newly planted and seeded row of zucchini and summer squash. Underneath the mulch the clay soil is still pretty wet and still cool.

That big swath of weeds to the left will get tilled in and mulched once we get a fence put in. I'll be giving an accounting of the exact varieties planted in the garden later this week.

Tomato Varieties and Pepper Germination Issues

 Tomato Seedlings

Broccoli, Brussels sprout, and very sparsely germinated pepper seedlings.

I haven't been blogging as of late because our little one is finally letting us do things like reading. Since it has been years since I've read a book, I have been devouring them these last couple months. Oh how I missed you, books!!

So blogging and seed starting has definitely taken a back seat to my shameful insatiable consuming bookish needs. At least the seedlings are still getting watered everyday.

The peppers haven't been germinating. I started them in a peat moss based seed starting medium and that always seems to give me problems, but at least 5 varieties managed to germinate out of 11 types that were seeded. Usually I use coconut coir to start peppers and those hard to start seeds like asparagus.

Peppers and eggplant were seeded March 14th. Tomatoes and Italian eggplants were seeded April 2nd.

Below are lists of varieties that have sprouted which I will try to keep updated.

Pepper varieties:

Aji Lemon Drop

Corno Rosso

Carmagna Rosso
Fish Pepper

Jimmy Nardello

Joe E. Parker
Numex Big Jim
Santa Fe
Serrano

Eggplant varieties:
Aswad
Cambodian Green Giant
Tonda Bianca Sfumata di Rosa
Thai Long Purple
Violetta Lunga

I went ahead and re-seeded pepper and eggplant varieties that haven't germinated yet, so fingers crossed.

Tomato varieties:

Abe Lincoln

Ananas Noire
Aunt Ruby's German Green
Hill Billy Flame
Big Rainbow
Big Zebra
Black Brandywine

Black Krim

Black Prince

Black Tula
Box Car Willie

Brandywine
Break O Day

Celebrity (F1 hybrid)

Cherokee Purple

Chocolate Stripes

Cosmonaut Volkov
Cour di Bue
Fat Cherry
Sun Gold
Black Cherry
Dark Brandywine
Delicious
Djena Lee's Golden Girl

Golden Siberia

Goldie

Granny Cantrell

Henderson Pink Ponderosa

Homestead

Jersey Giant
Jubilee

Kelloggs Breakfast

Lilac Giant

Mexico

Money Maker

Mortgage Lifter

Pantano Romensco
Paul Robeson
Pilcer Vesy
Pink Berkley Tie Dye
Pink Oxheart

Prudens Purple

Red Pear

San Marzano Redorta

Valencia
Yellow Brandywine

Garden Tilled, Go!

50 tomato plants out of 23 varieties were planted in three rows, the Prudens Purple plant perished in a terrible accident. Plants were seeded just 42 days prior.

A row of tomatoes sharing a bed with 15 eggplants. Eggplants take a couple weeks to germinate but they size up quickly once they get their true leaves.

Sweet peppers and the mildly hot Poblano pepper.

Di Cicco, Waltham, and Summer Purple broccoli. Di Cicco are the smallest plants of the three varieties. Leeks will be sharing the broccoli bed.

In the middle are 3 beds seeded with bush green beans, bush limas, Purple Hull Pinkeye summer peas, and summer squash.

The empty bed next to the tomatoes will have a trellis for cucumbers, pole beans, luffa, bitter melon, Delicata squash, and Papaya squash.

The garden is finally tilled on May 4th! Yayyyyy! And now the planting and watching things grow.

A few people raise rabbits around here, so rabbit manure is available for free if you shovel it yourself or $5 per 50 pound bag. And our city provides mulch for $5 a truckload and compost for $15 a truckload. A truckload ranges between 1000-2000 pounds depending on who is working the front end loader, but they're usually a bit more generous with the more expensive compost.

The new garden space was amended with 500 pounds of composted rabbit poop, and it will be mulched with 2000 pounds of compost.

On May 7th the tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers were planted out. And then on May 8th the broccoli was planted out, and the bush beans and Pinkeye Purple Hull peas and summer squash were seeded. It started raining while I was planting the broccoli bed and then proceeded to rain for 3 days. Hopefully the beans don't end up rotting in the ground.

The leeks still need to be planted in the broccoli bed, and the last bed still needs to be trellised and seeded. Then the whole garden can be mulched. The flea beetles are already starting to decimate the eggplant leaves, so I dusted them with food grade diatomaceous earth since it's going to be dry the next few days.

We were going to till and plant the old garden space, but there's just too many other things going on. There won't be a big stand of corn, and no winter squash or melons. And I ended up giving away a few dozen plants to coworkers and friends.

Growing Eggplants or Aubergines in the Vegetable Garden

I try to start eggplants at least 8 weeks before the predicted last frost free date, this year it was more like 6 weeks. Eggplants need consistent warmth in the 70's to 80's to germinate, personally I keep the seed starter tray on top of the fridge. After the seeds germinate each seedling is transplanted to individual containers like a plastic or styrofoam cup that gets reused year after year, the plants are then kept under 24 hours a day light till it is warm enough to plant outside. When daytime temperatures finally reach 70 degrees and nighttime temperatures are above 50˚ F eggplants can be planted outside.

I have been growing eggplant in the garden for a few of years now, and they have always been a challenge. Most years the plants seem slow growing in the beginning due to early flea beetle damage, and once the hot temperatures hit in the height of summer they stop producing fruit till it starts cooling down again.

This year looks like it is going to be a banner year for eggplants. The plants are sizing up quickly and the leaves are huge in comparison to the short stature of the plants. Eggplants are sensitive to the cold which can stunt them, but they also need to get in the ground early so they produce fruits before it gets too hot and the pollen becomes sterilized from the heat. So, I try to put eggplants out a week or two later than the tomato plants. Then whenever the temperatures are going to dip down below 50˚ F  at night (10˚ C), I go ahead and cover them with a vented clear plastic cup in the afternoon so some heat gets trapped in there to keep them a bit warmer at night. Soil mounded on the bottom of the cups will hold them in place in case of wind.

This year when the plants got too big for cups they got covered with the Agribon floating row covers or agricultural blankets, it can get quite warm under there during the day. I keep the floating row covers on for a few weeks till the volatile temperatures of spring settles down and it warms up consistently. The row covers also excludes flea beetles and other pests from the eggplants, without the early seedling damage the plants are showing exuberant lush growth. Then as the plants grow, whenever there are signs of aphids and flea beetle damage, I go ahead and dust with diatomaceous earth which is an inert powder and organic way to manage insects. Once the plants get larger, they should be able to withstand flea beetle attacks.

The Ma Zu Purple eggplant grows very long, at 14 inches (35.6 cm) the fruit is not seedy at all so it can likely grow much longer while still being tender and sweet. The plant itself is very short probably because it is on the outside edge of the garden, all the ones on the outside edge are stunted.

This Thai Long Purple plant has 7 fruits forming on its branches. You can see the Ma Zu Purple plant at the bottom right of the picture with it's purple stems and veins, it is less than half the size of the Thai Long Purple plant.

The Cambodian Green Giant plant is just starting to set fruit. This variety is supposed to have truly massive eggplants.

The leaves from the Cambodian Green Giant are huge compared to the Bangladeshi Long leaves to the right.

Many of the eggplant plants are just starting to set fruit like this Malaysian Dark Red with its 8 little dangling eggplants.

It looks like a bunny rabbit has eaten another Thai Long Green eggplant. The brown rabbit seems to only like green vegetables like green beans, green tomatoes, and green kohlrabi.