It’s nice to have a reminder.
Categories: Garden News
A garden is not like a dog. If you stop paying attention to a dog, the dog will stop doing what you ask. If you stop paying attention to the garden, it still grows. Case in point? This week’s harvest. I didn’t think once about the garden for the past 10 days or so, and yet my garden grows.
Sure, the weeds are there, but so is the zucchini and even more tomatoes — more everything. I feel like we’re in its heyday: these are the golden days of gardening. The Roma and Sungold tomatoes just keep producing. The sage overflows like a fountain, and the basil shoots up with abandon. I even got my first butternut squash and green beans — although I figure we’ve seen just about the last of the cucumbers at this point, thanks to those darn squash beetles.
I was impressed with the way our produce spread across the entire kitchen counter. If it doesn’t look like much to you, just figure that half the green beans and a third of the tomatoes were in my stomach at time of photo.
Categories: Harvest Time
I heard that lacto-fermented cucumber pickles are a sight harder to make than lacto-fermented sauerkraut. But I didn’t grow any cabbage this season. I grew cucumbers. And one of the things they don’t tell newbie gardeners is that cucumbers appear in the blink of an eye. One minute I had spiny lumps resembling overgrown caterpillars, and the next thing I knew, there were six cucumbers wider around than my wrist.
I stole a grape leaf from a neighbors garden and put it in a jar with salt, water, mustard seed, garlic, dill, and the cucumbers. And then I waited. I have bad luck with lacto-fermentation in that I need mold-free food (surprise!), so I’m trying a method where I fill a little plastic bag with brine and use it to weigh down the cucumbers, and then rinse the bag every day to discourage mold growth. The other benefit to this method is that cucumbers take far less time to ferment than sauerkraut. Supposedly, of course. It’s not like I’ve had a successful batch.
Seth and I tried this batch on day three. These cukes are pleasantly garlicky, but don’t have a the tang that I crave. And so we wait. And watch. And rinse my little baggie. This is what gardening is all about, isn’t it — waiting?
Categories: Food
What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a wasp nest the size of a football — only you wouldn’t want to play football with this because it is humming with activity. And it’s growing a mere four feet away from my tomato bed. Whenever I prune the tomatoes closest to this thing, wasps buzz around in dismay. What are you doing? Those are OUR tomatoes!
I don’t think so, my six-legged friends. But I’m too scared — er, I mean smart — to try to reason with them, and instead I steer clear. The wasps live on the other side of my neighbor’s garden fence, nestled along the edge of his towering weed bed tucked behind the hundreds of cloves of garlic. I’m not even sure he’s noticed it. I sure have!
I emailed the garden coordinator for suggestions. She said she’ll look into it, maybe with an exterminator on her side. Maybe can’t come fast enough for me.
Categories: Pests
At long last, tomato season has arrived. I picked what felt like 10 pounds of tomatoes this week, along with six cumbers and two zucchini. One of my neighbors gave me five heads of garlic, and another gave me a long skinny zucchini. All I need is eggplant, and I could turn the contents of my kitchen table into one awesome ratatouille.
Next up: spaghetti sauce. And cucumber pickles. And stuffed zucchini? And I think I’m going to need a bigger kitchen.
Categories: Harvest Time
Six big ones and six cherries, to be exact. But then I ate most of them. Got a nice zucchini though.
Categories: Harvest Time
This. This is what’s causing our bean plants to die a painful death. I have no idea what these are, but they’re eating my leaves down to the veins.
Across the garden path, our neighbors plucked a leaf off their own beans and showed us how they spray with a mixture of dishsoap and water. Potato beetles, they said, but I’m not so sure. My frantic Googling suggests a Mexican Bean Beetle. Whatever the case, our neighbors across the way weren’t too concerned. Their bean plants are six and seven feet tall with fat bean pods despite the lacy leaves. I try not to be jealous. Seth, I think, feels it worse than I do. It’s hard not to be envious in a community garden where hundreds of other gardeners have lush, rich plots.
Still, some of our beans look pretty good.
Categories: Pests
It’s not enough to last us a week. Heck, the tomatoes didn’t make it more than a day. But I am proud of our little garden harvests.
Categories: Harvest Time
Globe zucchinis and butternut squash.
Categories: Garden News
We’re picking up steam in the garden. Seth and I gathered another quart-sized jar worth of sweet peas, which are starting to die out in all this heat. They’re tangled up with the bean vines, so I am careful with the clippers as I clear out the bed to give the beans room to grow. Problem is it looks as though someone is tatting lace with my bean leaves. It would be nice if I knew which bug to blame. There’s got to be a book out there called 1001 Garden Pests and How to Murder Them All or something. When we started this garden, Seth insisted we should let the pests be because they’re just doing what they do. But now that 80 percent of our bean vines are dying, his tune has changed and he grumbles like the rest of us. The rest of us being me.
We didn’t stay too long today, just long enough to give everything a good water after a week of 100 degree heat, and to pick our precious tomatoes. We dole them out like rations. If I had my way, I’d eat them every meal, but I guess it’s fair that Seth gets some too.
Categories: Garden News, Harvest Time
Earth Morning: an ever-growing tiny adventure 