June 2nd Harvest - Garden/Yard Updates

A couple of landscaping jobs came up this week giving me some sun, fresh air and exercise. It also gave me a few dollars to put into the yard and garden kitty - but spring/summer is a time to focus on the yard, and me doing the odd landscaping job while having a rubbish area of dirt and straggly grass around the kids pool was getting on my nerves - so I spent a little time and money prettying it up. I still have to put down some more pine bark and a couple of concrete pavers - but I think it's looking much better!
The garden feeds the body but the yard feeds the soul. So time and money well spent if you ask me.

Out With The Old / In With The New.

A couple of changes around the garden and as the fast/immediate plants start to slow, the longer ones start to come in - and production overall seems to be chugging along.  Although weather, circumstance, and a few boneheaded errors got my Spring off to a shakey start - I think even my penchant for overthinking and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory may be thwarted by Nature - I think she has a soft spot for me to be honest.

Beans, you've seen the bed a hundred times - so just a harvest pic. Even better than last week. It amounts to very full quart sized ziploc bag of beans.  My wife tonight is going to be (cross fingers) making up a bean casserole (one of my fave dishes of hers and one of the reasons I wanted to grow as many beans as I could).  We'll also be trying some other produce from the garden, but more on that later.

Peas have made their last hoorah and died out.  The spring heat was just a little too much for the variety of asian snow pea that I grow and love.  This of course finally explains why when I planted them in garden #2 they failed to take off - I planted them in Spring.  It's an interesting lesson in learn-by-doing as the packet said they were fine for this zone in Spring - and although I got a small tupperware container full of shelled peas, and a lot of snack pods while working in the yard, it was in no way comparable to the Autumn / Winter harvest.  Would I do it again?  YES - although not 2 squares - and there's a reason:  I've had those seeds for some time, and the variety I really like, however I've not been able to source them again locally - none of my regular go-to places have that variety stocked, and the last seed I had went into the garden (because I'm boneheaded).  Now when I pulled the plants I pulled up what I thought was a weed, but turned out to be a half buried brown pod that had fallen down between the plants - it had sprouted 2 plants from the 3 peas inside.  It was a bittersweet moment as I had told myself 'save these next pods for seed' but no more came - and I'd found these two while pulling up the plants, and them.. Now the heat would have killed them off in no time flat, so even had I recognized them and let them grow, I still wouldn't have gotten anything. The happy ending to this tale was tucked up the back of the overflow container. A solitary, stunted, pea vine, in the final stages of going from green to brown. But it had flowered and actually produced 3 very small pods containing 8 peas.  This little wonder gave me the exact number of seeds to start a new square out in Autumn, and if I don't track down new seed - I'll plant those out and use them solely to stock up for next year.  Even if only half of them sprout they could potentially produce enough seed to last me a couple of years.

In it's place has been planted some Kale and some Broccoli from the overflow container, the squares amended with the newly attained worm castings.  I took the opportunity to replace a pepper plant that succumbed to the heat and a couple of other things.

Carrots are hard to guess - the tops can look great but as you can see - not really an indication of what's going on below - and once pulled, that's it... Putting them back in the ground is a 50/50 I've found.  I pulled 2 to see where they were  at.  A little disappointing - but it tells me to change a couple of things. No more going over them with the foliage spray anymore (I cut back on root crops once they have established, but obviously not enough here) - also I need to cut back on their water.  Having the water sink deeper will force them to grow longer. These carrots are in a bed that's dug down a foot deep, so there is ample grow room for them.  Radishes are slowing down a little, and one of the squares has been replanted with an Eggplant from the overflow - I'm curious to see how it does.  I have one in a container already so it will be fun to compare them.  Again no pics of the bed as we have ample - Turnip Greens are still getting bigger, which reminds me; Last week I cooked Turnip Greens with Ham Hocks and Dumplings - the result was on the whole pretty good.....however I did get a few bites that were WAY bitter.  Now it was my first time cooking with them, but a visit with my mother-in-law, and my granny (in-law?) gave me the following tips:

 #1 no matter what the recipe says, wilt down your greens then throw away that water. Base the rest of your dish on fresh water and add the wilted greens to that.
#2  A "touch" of sugar (a teaspoon or two I'm guessing by that) will knock the last of the bitter out of them.
I'll get this southern cooking thing down eventually - either way in Autumn I'm growing Collards.

The last of the harvest for today (there are more things to come out, but I'll leave them there till they are ready to be eaten, and do update harvest posts over the week) was this Kale.
I left my hand in there to get the scale of the thing.  My hand is around 8 1/2 inches from the base of my palm to my fingertip, and this is easily 3 times that size.  That would be around abouts 2 feet across.  Broken down it took up 1 1/2 gallon sized ziploc bags. I've never had Kale before, but I tore off a leaf and tasted it raw.  It seemed to me like a very nice blend between fresh broccoli and cabbage (both of which I've tasted raw).  Since I like these two things, we're going to prepare it in a manner suited to both - a steam to soften it. It will go tonight with our roast chicken.  In the prep of that we also have fresh Thyme, Basil, Parsley, and Garlic.
As is becoming the normal Sunday affair, the only thing not from the garden will be the chicken and a few staples in the prep.
If the Kale turns out well I'll certainly be growing more - as something that tastes like cabbage and broccoli (both of which I have growing), it grows a LOT faster than either of them.


That covers the Harvest... now for some updates:

 Squash in a pot seems to be going pretty well - the plants aren't all that big, although the Butternut squash has sent a vine out onto the driveway (which is what I wanted it to do) and a very small squash is already developing there.  The plants are all healthy and seem to be growing fine. I have 2 in self watering pots and 2 in regular pots of the same size (I think they are 5 gallon). I'm going to see which works best for them before I invest in larger pots to upsize them.

As you can see, they already are starting to put squash out - I'm going to have to stay on top of water and fertilizer for these I think.  I'm curious to see what sized veg I get.  As it's all about how much I can grow in as small a space as I can - it will come down to how much attention they need and if I need larger pots for larger veg.  Either way they are putting out more flowers and baby squash than the first planting of them I did in Garden #1 (the successful garden).

 Toms seem to be doing well as well - there's been some growth since last week and the other plants now have some smaller fruits on them too.  The sucker I replanted was knocked out by the heat, and I've not seen any new ones really sprout forth. This has me scratching my head a little and has me rethinking my research last week. I'll be taking seed from these plants (and I'll cover the saving of tomato seeds when I do), I have a doubt in the back of mind about the status of these plants (determinate/indeterminate) and it won't be answered until it's too late to do anything about it - I'll hedge my bets.

Other areas of the garden I'll cover in followup harvests this week as I have to pull Turnip Greens this week (so I get to redeem myself in the kitchen) and I'll be following up the progress of Corn, Peppers and other things. At this point with Summer temps hitting and the Blueberry harvest just around the corner - I'm pretty much locked into the garden at this point, and the time for adding and tweaking new plants or what didn't make it has passed.  It's kind of sad that I missed the window for spinach this year (so it seems) but it's time to switch gears - clear out the overflows so they can be used to propagate plants that are doing well and change over from establishing the garden to running a 'production garden' - which I'll be getting into over the week, time willing.

Happy Sunday!

(As I write this I see lightning in the distance - YAY my rainwater is replenished again!)