Tag: garden

Spring Garden 2011: A Time to Reap

The spring/summer of 2011 garden's "Ultimate Form"

September has brought with it cooler days and cooler nights and that has slowed down the garden as well. We haven’t harvested a zucchini or tomato in weeks and the beans and cucumbers have begun to wither on their own. It is getting late in the season anyway and D is excited to put the fall/winter garden.  So, today we did a complete once over of the garden harvesting everything we found and then pulled it all out. The harvest turned out to be mostly green tomatoes; Diana has never had any before and I figure now is the perfect time to introduce them to her (fried, of course).

Half way there... Hey, stop staring at my wife!

In addition to tearing out the garden I turned over the soil,   “harvested” all the compost that was made this year (about a bucket and a half), and cleared out 1/3 of the vermiculture composter. The compost and worm castings and compost were then worked into the garden plot and everything was lightly watered. We’re going to let it lie for a week, or so, and then plant the winter garden. Much like last year we are going to plant a lot of greens (chard, spinach, kale, arugula, celery, etc.) I only hope that this year isn’t as wet as the last…

Soil enriched, turned and watered. I'll probably manure it too before we plant the winter garden.
Last fruits. All those reds tomatoes were completely hidden. That is what I get for growing monstrous tomato plants...
...and just a little more

Lastly, we found a couple of these enormous caterpillars while tearing everything out. These guys were as long and thick as my index finger! Anyone recognize it?

Is this a Caterpie or a Weedle?

 

How my Garden Grows: Summer 2011 part ?

Jungle-like density

Since last I chronicled the progress of the garden the pole beans have overgrown the fence and have proceeded to begin colonization of the front yard, I’ve lost an overgrown zucchini plant that spilled out of the box and then broke underneath its own weight, and some sort of animal has begun poaching all of my tomatoes! We’ve also been eating a lot of cucumbers (the regular and lemon varieties), zucchini, and green beans. We’ve been collecting so many of them in fact that almost every meal that is prepared now has one, or more of those three things in it. Bread salad is always a popular choice (seeing as it requires fresh basil and we have plenty of that as well)

The beans migrate into my neighbors yard...
Pole beans and cucumbers scale the growth screen and the fence...

That first picture is of the beans growing over one of the support ties for the tomato plants. The beans infiltrated into the tomato plants and then co-opted their supports. Next time I’m just going to plant bush beans. I can get the same, if not higher, yield, and not have to worry about the plants overcoming everything else in the garden. The second picture shows both beans and cucumber plants growing up their growth screen and over the wall.  One of the bushes in the front yard, planted to screen view of the electric meter and the fence has already been reached by a bean creeper and, I’m sure, will soon succumb to the pole beans. The funny thing is people said the soil in the garden was spent and nothing would grow! We’ve had a higher yield this year and more robust plants!

A cucumber blossom
Bean blossom
A cuke!

No picture of the harvest today. We’ve been going over the garden every day or so and so we pick a little produce everyday as opposed to a large pile of it on the weekends… This way we can incorporate the fruit into food throughout the week and have it at its freshest!

 

You can see previous entries in this series here, here, and here.

I Made Zucchini Bread or Cake

Not delicious yet...

I can only eat grilled, boiled, or fried zucchini so much before I just want to rip the plants out of the garden and throw them on the compost heap. Thankfully, those aren’t the only ways to prepare zucchini; you can also put the vegetable into baked goods such as cakes and breads. In fact, I’d say you can put zucchini in to just about anything the vegetable is mostly water and has little to no flavor of its own so it makes excellent filler. This morning while I was poking around in the fridge for breakfast I noticed one of our zucchinis was getting soft and failing to find anything to eat I decided I could use said limp zucchini to make bread. I dug out my mom’s recipe for the stuff and went to work! This is a really simple recipe so I’m just going to include it here at the top of the post instead of the bottom. (Unlike other cooking blogs that make you scroll through dozens of pictures of the dogs and kids and endless text that gets you no closer to the recipe you’re actually looking for.) Continue reading “I Made Zucchini Bread or Cake”

How My Garden Grows: Summer 2011

To be honest it's kind of out of control

Despite the unusually moderate weather summer is in full swing and as you can see from the picture above so is the garden! The wall of greenery you see in the background are my cucumbers scaling the 6 foot yard fence. Everything is beginning to produce with the zucchinis and tomatoes being harvested daily. D and I are looking into canning and pickling recipes to handle all of them.

A zucchini blossom
Eggplant blossoms

Eggplants are the only thing we haven’t harvested yet. The poor plants have had to fight with giant tomato plants on one side and aggressive beans on the other and haven’t done as well as I’d hoped.

Eggplants are starting to show up, though

Despite how aggressively the beans are growing they aren’t producing very meany beans though. Only a handful every other day or so. Not enough to do anything with but throw in salads or eat as a snack.

These blooms better be beans soon
Cucumbers and beans climbing up the trellis
A tiny cucumber and blossom
Fried green tomatoes, anyone?
This was the complete haul for last Saturday

The harvest for last Saturday was 11 tomatoes, seven bean pods, two zucchinis, and a cucumber. The cucumber, tomatoes, and zucchinis we all be going into a bread salad that I’ll be enjoying tonight!

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