Home Alone

Left the plantation on its own for a few days, was not looking forward to what I'd see when I got back. I figured everything would be shrivelled. The bucket tomatoes were somewhat less than happy, but I'm sure they'll be perked up tomorrow. A couple zucchini plants have collapsed, I think due to squash borers, I'll have to check it out more carefully tomorrow. And some creature has eaten most of my bucket eggplant. I suspect it's the groundhog.

Dead or alive

Did get a nice little harvest, though.

The harvest

The tigerella tomato was really nice.

Tigerella

Looks like the cukes will be nice and steady.

Cuke trio

And a photo of the poor eggplant.

Turkish Orange

Turkish Orange is now Green

Here's the dill - it flowered and now there's a preposterous amount of dill seed. One of the flowers -

Dill seed

The basil is looking pretty good. I planted a whole bed of it that's struggling, but most of the basil I planted in buckets with the tomatoes is doing very well. They are supposed to be companion plants, but they're doing so much better. I suspect that they like the semi-shade the tomatoes provide in this scorching weather. And I admittedly am a little better at watering the basil in the tomato buckets.

Bucket basil

The tomatoes are coming along nicely. We've harvested (and consumed) 9 or 10 Sungold already. They're a pleasant bright orange and taste great. Tigerella is also just starting to color up. Also got a photo of a nice sized Brandywine.

Sungold

Tigerella

Brandywine

The Turkish Orange Eggplant in the 5 gallon pail is flourishing.  I moved it to a shadier spot. Also, and I think this helped a lot, I mulched with grass clippings. Checked them out online, when they're ripe the look a lot like tomatoes. Right now they're tiny, but there a a bunch of them.

Turkish Orange Eggplant

Finally, a friend in the fight against bad bugs.

Baby Mantis

Eggplant Emergence

The Pingtung Long eggplant is starting to, well, elongate. Based on my last experience with eggplant (something like 4 measly eggplant from 5 plants) I wasn't optimistic. But these guys are already way ahead of the last attempt. Here's one of them:

Pingtung Long Eggplant

Yes, I need to weed a bit...

The purple basil the Mrs. planted is looking great.

Purple Basil

And a shot of the pattypan summer squash Bennings Green Tint.

Bennings Green Tint

Everything else is doing ok. Something (I assume deer) got at some of the zucchini and pumpkins I planted outside the fence on the back side. I didn't think they ate that stuff. Well, as a safety measure I draped some chicken wire over them. I'll use some of the old boards from last year's tomato prison to make a crude protective structure this weekend.

First zucchini, first borer

Harvested the first zucchini today. Weighed in at 1 lb. There are three more ready to go in the next day or two as well. And our Bennings Green Tint turns out to be a pattypan type. Hmmm, did we know that when we ordered the seed? Looks nice, anyway.

Also saw the first confirmed squash borer fly. Tried to kill it but missed. I suppose it's only a matter of time before these zucchini are done in. Damned borers. Although have taken a step towards beating them - we have a second generation of zucchini started up, they're a few inches tall right now. Also purchased some zucchino rampicante seeds. They have a tough solid stem that the borers can't get into. I guess we'll put that to the test. Apparently if you leave the squash on the vine too long, the skin gets too tough and they end up like a winter squash, so will have to give that a try.

The tomatoes are looking good. No squirrel intervention yet. I'll probably do nothing to protect the tomatoes until after the squirrels do their damage. Here are some of the tigerellas, they look pretty sweet.

Tigerella

Looking Good So Far

Been a while since the last update. The peas have come and gone. Seemed like we had fewer than last year. I'm pretty sure we planted fewer, so maybe that's not unexpected.

Dying peas, removed shortly after

This is from June 12, already dying. We did get a few meals of peas out of them at least. And the Mrs. whipped up a killer peas soup.

The black raspberries came and stayed for a few weeks and then the birds took care of the leftovers. Did manage to graze a ton of them and gather enough for a pie one day. That was a nice pie.

Homemade black raspberry pie

We've picked about half of the garlic that we sowed last fall. Used a bunch already, very tasty. Although the outer skin is a lot thicker than I remember it being, and the cloves smaller for the most part. I suppose it's the varieties or maybe the weather. I think I'll try a hardneck variety again next year if I can find one. This year was just two random varieties - storebought #1, and storebought #2 (a reddish variety). Here's half the harvest laid out to dry. There's a cleaned up bulb in there for comparison.

About half the garlic harvest

Eggplant is doing better than I last time we grew it. I think last time we got one eggplant per plant, later in the summer. This time I counted about 15 flowers on one plant already.

June 12

Only growing 1 eggplant in a container (it's doing remarkably well...). It's grow a LOT in a few weeks.

June 29

Cukes have put on some good growth as well. Right now we have tiny little proto-cucumbers on them, about the size of a paper clip.

June 12

June 29

I'm hoping in a couple weeks we'll be making a small batch of refrigerator pickles with our own cucumbers, dill, and garlic.

Peppers were a bit of a disappointment this year. Tried starting around 8 different types from seeds taken out of storebought peppers, only bell, jalapeno, and serrano managed to survive. Only in about the last week have they don't much, and only a few of them. Today I bought a couple Anaheims - we were really hoping to have some of them, we enjoyed them when we lived in southern New Mexico. But none of our seeds sprouted. So I cheated and bought some plants. *hang my head in shame*

I've been in a bit of a love affair with pesto of late. So I've gone big time with the basil. The Mrs. planted a purple variety which is coming along nicely. I've planted some normal sweet basil anywhere I can find space.

And finally, tomatoes. They're coming right along. The ones I started on time in March are looking great. Tigerella have some beautiful clusters of fruit about ping pong ball sized. Sungold is just covered with flowers and little green tomatoes. I think both of those will be perennial favorites unless the taste is sub par. Everything else is coming along, with some flowers.

June 12

June 29

Planted a number of leftovers in 5 gallon pails.

June 12

June 29

Sungold flowers. Lookit all of em, wowzers.

Now that's a cluster of flowers

Corn is a few feet tall and zucchini is starting to produce.

And finally, a weird mystery veg. I think this is where we dumped the pumpkin after Halloween last year. The bush is HUGE.

The mystery beast

Mystery fruit, about 4 inches long

Oh, and our hops plant is taking over a whole side of the garden fence.

And the crabapples in the parking lot at work are starting to turn red. Soon, apple butter time.

Planting mostly done

We've already gotten some produce from the garden. I've enjoyed some chive flowers and the first strawberry just ripened.

First Strawberry!

The first set of garlic we planted should be ready in early June, hopefully the other two sets should be ready shortly thereafter.

Should be ready in a couple weeks.

We planted these two plots later.

We got some onions from a fellow gardener that raised them from seed. They're looking nice.

Onions

Eggplant just went in this weekend. We're going to prepare a bed out behind the fenced in garden but that bed is not ready yet.

Pingtung Long Eggplant

Sugar Snap Peas are looking good. And in front of the peas is half a row of lettuce and the other half spinach.

Peas, lettuce and spinach.

Pea flower

Tomatoes are in, some have a good start, others are just barely sprouted.

Tigerella Tomato

I caged all the tomatoes this year. Last year I didn't because I was concerned that the cages weren't large enough. But the tomatoes went all over the place. I think the cages will help this.

The hops that barely limped through last year has put up a mighty vine this year. The top of the post is 8' above ground level. Also note the tenant in the whimsical bovine birdhouse in the photo.

Mighty Hops!

The flagship jalapeno looks unimpressive right now.

Finally we visited a local place that sells gooseberries - Yellow Springs Farm - and got some gooseberries and elderberries.

Doesn't count as growing our own gooseberries if they came this way from the farm

Happy Elderberry plant.

And end it out with the current state of the black raspberries.

*yawn* -stretch-

Hibernation is complete, time to get things going in the garden again. As we raked up the pea patch a bit we were rewarded with this beauty! A carrot which survived the winter. So we unexpectedly had our first produce from the garden in early March, yuk, yuk. It was tasty, very carroty.

So anyway, peas. Planted a few 8' rows of sugar snap peas. Some were extremely wrinkly peas saved from last years end of the season. Don't know if they'll flourish or not. On top of that some year old peas from last year's leftovers. Peas did very well last year, I'm hoping they do again this year. Instead of painstakingly planting each individual pea, I scattered them in a furrow. I predict great success again this year.

We ran out of peas before we ran out of garden bed, so we decided to put down a little spinach and some Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce. It may be too early for them, but it's little loss if they die off.