Poor, neglected garden

I visited the garden this morning for the first time in a couple of weeks. I am a bad, bad garden momma. We went on vacation for a week, and I was out to pick the unripe tomatoes and whatever else I could find before the risk of heavy frost. My parents were treated to a bounty of green tomatoes.

We've apparently had a light frost in that time, but nothing too terrible, because most of the plants were alive and kicking. The drought had killed off the cucumber plant, and the peas are in bad shape - I moved the latter to our porch in the hope that it'll discourage the squirrels from pulling out the plants. But I saw ripe grape tomatoes, and peppers, and a number of green cherry and grape tomatoes. The garden greens are doing pretty well. The leeks are about as good as they're likely to get, so I'll probably harvest those this weekend. The eggplant is truly mighty, and is still a green giant out there. Not that it's produced anything to show for all the resources it's gotten.

I never got in the second round of carrots, and I didn't bother ordering saffron crocuses. I did get my composter, so one of this weekend's projects will be to start filling that bad boy up. The winter will be about compost, winter greens on the patio, and dreaming and planning for next spring.

My poor garden's looking the worse for wear at this point in the season. It's time to start considering which plants are going into the compost pile this weekend. The traitorous eggplant is a top contender.

I went out this morning to check on things, and harveted an overflowing handful of grape tomatoes. My head swam with plans for when I'd dry this batch to give me more oven dried tomatoey goodness, when a combination of wet wood, clumsiness, and sheer bad luck caused me to take a spill and crush most of them. Sadness! Despair! I managed to salvage a few, and then grabbed some Black Cherries, but I feel robbed of the good stuff.

The rest of the garden is obviously slowing down. None of the Husky Reds has ripened since I picked the last one a week or two ago. My third cucumber apparently offed itself when I failed to water properly last week. There are two smallish banana peppers on the vine. The other hot peppers are still growing like weeds. Only, you know, hotter. And slightly more colorful. The greens need to be thinned, so I'm thinking we'll be having a salad with the trimmings this weekend. My sugar snap peas, once so happy and carefree, have become angry and defensive after being continuously ravaged by some creature, and haven't given me any tasty treats. And of course, I never managed to get another round of carrots and radishes in the "ground," after their unfortunate run-in with the neighbors' dog.

I've started reading "Square Foot Gardening" to see if it would work for me next year. Here come the daydreams about lovely lush lawns punctuated with prim white boxes filled with lucious green.

It wasn't a fluke!

I made another batch of gorgeous oven dried tomatoes yesterday. This one's even darker than the last - I'm a little afraid I didn't let the first batch go long enough, and I'd really like to have some last through the winter. Actually, that's a bit laughable, as there's really not enough to keep me happy for more than a few dishes - less, if I share. But having the option to find them in my cupboard in 3 months would be nice.

I'm thrilled to still be pulling things off the vines, and I'm hoping the current string of hot days will help ripen more of those shiny beautiful tomatoes. There should be enough grape tomatoes on the vine to get at least 1 more batch done.

I am already daydreaming about growing grapes next year, and 80 trillion tomato vines.

Oven dried goodness

I plucked a bunch of the Principe Borghese over the past week, and decided to try drying them. So yesterday, when I had several hours where someone would be in the house at all times, I set the oven to 200 degrees, cut my tomatoes all in half, and set them to shrivelling up. While I was at it, I sliced up a couple of sweet banana peppers that were on the counter and slightly past their prime.

I'm calling the results an unqualified success. The peppers dried to an almost papery consistency, and have turned brown. I tasted one, and immediately wanted to add it to dark chocolate. I'm seriously considering drying the rest of the peppers solely for this reason now.

The tomatoes are tiny, dark, and very tart. I fed one to my husband, who shook his head around and blinked several times after swallowing. I do believe the rest of the grape tomatoes will be reserved for this purpose as well, because I'd really like to have enough for sharing.

I dreamed last night that I showed the garden to my mother, and everything was warped and mutated and ruined. The cucumbers in particular were blackened and diseased on the vine - one of them half some sort of stalk growing out of it. I may be a little preoccupied with the state of the plants.

I'm a bad tomato mom

We were supposed to get the season's first frost last night. I left my tomato plants outside, where frost will surely kill them. I've yet to inspect them to be sure they survived the night, though it looked like it wasn't much of a frost when I left the house this morning. I do need a long term plan, because it's mid-September, and winter in New England is inevitable.

We had a condo association meeting last night, and toward the end, our neighbors complimented me on how much the garden was producing now. Really, nothing but the tomatoes has done much, but I've learned not to underestimate the power of red spheres in an expanse of green. (Or in the case of our lawn, brown and dirt.)

We are getting a second cucumber. Huzzah!

My three types of tomatoes this year! The top picture is Principe Borghese, hopefully destined for some sun-drying. The middle is Black Cherry, which has a great texture & consistency, without a lot of tomato goop. The last is Husky Red, which has been slow to produce, but is now going pretty nutso. The remaining tomatoes on it won't ripen before the first frost, but that plant has remained less than two feet tall, so I'm pretty comfortable trying to winter it for a while. It's tempting to try to winter the Black Cherry too.

Sadly, the Principe Borghese is a bit too ungainly to bring indoors. I will definitely be growing that one again next year. It yielded a whole lot of fruit for a short growing season - I didn't get them in until mid-July. I learned a lot from these plants...next year I will not be afraid to hack them back to prevent legginess. I will also give them better sunlight; the one thing that truly gave me agita was the powdery mildew that built up incessantly on the grape tomato.

I can't believe the growing season is nearly over.

Pepper post

I harvested some tiny little peppers this weekend. So exciting! These started out creamy white, and they recently darkened to orange, and then red. Very bright, and it makes me happy just to look at them. Of course, I haven't -tasted- them yet. They're marked as "edible ornamentals," so I'm not convinced they'll be all that yummy. Still, they don't take up much room, and they're very cheery.

Here are my other "edible ornamental," Pretty in Purple. These are taking a very long time to fully ripen. They start off purple, but they're supposed to ripen red. So far, I've got purple, and purple fading to white, and something that may darken to red. Maybe. I wish I'd taken before and afters of the entire plant. It started out as a wee little bitty thing, and now it's easily as big as my banana pepper plants. Except it's growing horizontal instead of vertical. I think I'll try to use this one again next year, but to prune it back so it looks nicer.

The banana peppers are edible, and not ornamental. This one got very fancy, though! I'm not sure what made it curl up on itself like that, but I bet it'll taste just as good as its straight and narrow colleagues.

I need to go out and take some new pictures of the garden. The tomatoes are still going a little crazy right now, and I fed them more milk this weekend to encourage more out of them. The lone cucumber is ready to pluck this weekend, and I think there was a second starting to develop. Designs for next year's garden are starting to occupy my thoughts in the early mornings as I wake up. Things to do this winter: Borrow "Square Foot Gardening" from the library, work on building some raised boxes if we figure out what our next home's yard looks like, and figure out some dedicated space to start seedlings indoors.

I still can't eat the hot peppers in the garden in their raw state, but I cooked dinner for the whole family and significant others yesterday, and snuck a couple in to the enormous pot of beef. It was pretty great to be able to use them, just like that after picking them. I have visions of preserving leftover veggies, but this year's garden isn't going to produce enough for that. Next year's crop will be a little more ambitious.

Tomato Identification

I believe I've finally identified the grape tomatoes I've got growing. This is "Principe Borghese," which is fitting if only because Villa Borghese is one of my favourite places in Italy. It is apparently a determinate, but gets very big, which explains why I thought otherwise. From what I've been reading, these make excellent sun-dried tomatoes, and I'm going to attempt to do that. There are 8 gazillion on the vine right now, so plenty of room for experimentation!

I'd already figured out what these were, but I wanted to share a picture because I think they look pretty neat. They're Black Cherry tomatoes, and they taste like the bigger varieties of black tomatoes that are becoming more and more popular. These get to be about 1.5" in diameter on my vines. It seems I'm not letting mine mature long enough either, as they usually have a little bit of dark green stripage when I pick them. This does not make them any less tasty.

(PS - not my pictures.)

Insult to injury

I went out to water plants this afternoon, and realized the one lonely radish that had been left intact by the neighbors' dog is now gone. Vanished. I suspect smaller critters at work. The snap peas also looked a bit trampled, and all the sticks in the pot were smashed or broken again. I replaced those. I'll replant the carrots and radishes this weekend. Earlier if I can get out for more potting soil.

The single cucumber borne by the vine is looking very pretty, all shiny and green today. I moved the two mobile tomato plants into full sun for the afternoon to help them ripen, since it's not as hot today as it's been recently. The greens are starting to look distinctly different from one another...I need to pluck some sprouts to give them a little breathing room. That should happen this weekend too.

I wish I could chew, because there are several banana peppers that really want to come off the vine already.

Success and Failure

My acorn squash plant is gone, gone, gone. I went outside today to find my grape tomato absolutely covered in powdery mildew, and I blame the squash vine. It didn't seem to be producing anything anyway, so I yanked it. It's sad, because I'd have liked to see it do something, but I'll try again when I have a gardening spot that gets a bit more sun.

The grape tomato plant is pretty much bald now. So depressing. It has a gazillion little fruits on it, which is very exciting to see. I just hope there are enough leaves left on the vine to feed them.

Making up for a disappointing trip to the garden: I has a cucumber! An honest to goodness cucumber is growing on the vine. Also exciting was the discovery of more small tomatoes on the standard plant - I counted 3 more small ones growing. (I also discovered that I kept the tag in the pot, it's a "Husky Red.")

There are a bunch more Black Cherries on the vine, too. I hope all these tomatoes have time to ripen! I picked two purple beans, 1 grape tomato, and 1 purple pepper, just to test the heat on it...I really don't think they're going to turn red. This one seems to be getting white, not red.

There are several banana peppers ready to be picked, but I had my wisdom teeth out yesterday so I won't be ready to eat those any time soon. I can only imagine how much it might sting to have capseisin in tooth sockets!

Late August

A brief visit to the garden this morning revealed that I need to do some picking tonight! I've got a bunch of banana peppers ready to go, a couple of purple beans, a Black Cherry (or two), and one lonely ripe grape tomato. I think I'm going to scour the internets for recipes to preserve the peppers. We've got nothing for salad in the house except for those, and as we've already seen, I'm just not manly enough to eat too many in one sitting.

Somehow, the Pretty in Purples are STILL not ripening to red. It's been weeks now! I think the tag lies, and they will remain purple. It does not take any fruit this long to ripen, nevermind one that's not even an inch long.

The Black Cherry plant is producing a few more fruits, which is happiness-inducing. I tasted them this morning, and they're really quite yummy. Sweet, but not too sugary. Very smooth texture. I will be looking for these seeds next year...I already knew I liked the color. The grape tomato is astoundingly full of fruit. Both of those has really taken off in the past couple of weeks. The standard tomato has 3 fruits left, growing a little bigger than the last ones I picked, and 1 is starting to ripen. That plant hasn't gotten much bigger than it was when I picked it up mid-summer, so I suspect it's a determinate variety. Still tasty. I just wish I'd seen more than 6 tomatoes from it. But heck, it was a buck!

My cucumber lives to disappoint me, and the eggplant isn't far behind. Both behemoths that give me nothing. NOTHING.

Deep rooted seeds

My grandfather was in the hospital this weekend - fortunately, nothing life-threatening. I decided to visit, and snuck in some tomatoes for him. Papa had a big garden behind their little cape, and I remember him giving my family tons of cukes and tomatoes to take home with us whenever we visited - which was quite often. He'd save all his seeds and use them for next year's crop. I can still picture it vividly, rows of peppers, tomatoes staked on discarded metal pipe and tied off with cut up pantyhose, enormous cucumber vines, all on a bed of dirt surrounded by cement block. My grandparents had a lot of flowers around too - roses, geraniums, and lillies were predominant, and I still remember how wonderful it smelled to wander around their backyard. There were giant lilac trees on the property line that divided their yard and my great aunt's. They took a lot of pride in how that yard looked. (A grumpy "There's poison in the grass!" was one of the first signs of spring in my grandparents' home.) And a lot of pride in the veggies they provided to their family.

I'd picked a bunch of tomatoes Saturday morning in anticipation of seeing my parents and sharing the miniature bounty. (OK, I really just wanted to prove to my dad that I could, in fact, grow something edible!) I let them sample some of the Black Cherries, and gave them the standard red, but hoarded the rest for Papa. He is not a talkative man, but his whole face lit up when I walked into his pale green room, and again when I took out the plastic baggie full of little tomatoes. They're not quite what he grew in his garden, but I like knowing that he's seen proof that he's passed the torch down to his granddaughter. Hopefully, he liked eating those efforts!

(Also, the neighbors' dog has ravaged my garden again, though not so bad as last week. I need to move.)

Och, Powdery Mildew!

I may have one lonely radish hanging on through the Doggie Destruction. We'll see how it does. The potting soil that got dumped is effectively ruined, as it's all mixed in with the dyed cedar mulch - I don't really want to be growing edibles with whatever chemicals might be in there.

Yesterday's garden discovery: my grape tomato (for this, indeed, is what my "San Marzano Roma" turned out to be) is susceptible to powdery mildew. Seriously, this mold is the bane of my gardening existence. I trimmed the plant bald yesterday. Happily, it still seems to be throwing baby tomatoes my way. The hot weather + rain isn't great for the mildew, but it makes the plants pretty happy anyway. Growth on the tomato plants measures in feet, not inches. It's really amazing, despite the annoyance of needing to re-stake again.

I got a pretty good haul yesterday, about half a dozen of the heirloom cherries, a few grapes, and a banana pepper. I wish I'd taken some pictures of the heirloom cherries on the vine, they're beautiful. One standard tomato too. It looks like the fool plant really is going to give me just two more tomatoes. If it's going to throw any more, it needs to do so soon, lest the babies not have enough time to ripen before winter takes hold. I cannot say I'm not tempted to bring the tomato plants inside just before the frost and see how long they last. We've got a number of weeks before that though, and at least two more tomatoes to munch on before then.

I don't think my cucumber's going to produce a single thing. Sad. We're well past the time when everybody else's cucumbers have started being eaten. Stupid plant.

That's a spicy meatball

It turns out that the "sweet banana peppers" are actually hot! Just mildly so, but I neglected to get all the seeds out before I tossed a couple in a salad last night. After several pieces in one bite, I was completely caught off guard by the heat. And later, I had the misfortune to rub my eyes with PepperFingers. Aieeee!

I have to say though, that there are few things more pleasant than munching on veggies grown in one's own back yard.

*seethe*

I peeked outside today to check on the garden and noticed that the carrot/radish trough appeared to be on its side. And that some of the peas' climbing twigs were on their sides. I rushed out to investigate, and sure enough, the trough is nearly empty of putting soil and seedlings alike. I can only guess that our neighbors' Great Dane puppy was outside unsupervised and got into them. Nothing else was touched, and the seedlings weren't eaten, just uprooted.

I am so very, very angry. There's not a thing I can do, except replant this weekend. I may go back out tonight and try to salvage what I can, but it's disheartening. I can't wait to have a place that's not a condo, so we don't share a yard with anyone. This is the second time something in my garden's faced an early demise, and both incidents are linked to the same neighbors. It's not malicious, but that doesn't make me feel any better about it.

To cheer myself up a bit, I picked two more grape tomatoes, and 2 small banana peppers.

It didn't work.

Fruits of my labor

I ate the smallish tomato yesterday with my lunch. Like an apple, which I supposed is a little weird, but I didn't want it getting all messy. It was delicious! Sweet, and a little hint of crisp flavor. I wish the plant was planning to put out more than half a dozen fruits.

I suspect there'll be another ready to pick tonight, and I'm hoping the first banana pepper will be ready, too. There may even be a couple of cherry tomatoes ready. I'm clearly growing two different varieties...I had no idea what I had, as one came from a farmer's market and the other was mislabelled as a San Marzano roma. The latter is growing classic bright red cherries, and the former seems to be giving me something stripey and purple-pinkish. Neat!

I suspect a slug has been inspecting the garden. There are thin trails of shiny on the acorn squash, which is the only plant that touches the ground. I'm not sure what else it could be, but it's only in the past few days that I've seen it. I applied a second round of anti-mildew, as that plant still seems to be suffering, but it may meet the same fate as its cousin the cantaloupe. It doesn't appear to be getting any better, and the last thing I want is an invitation to hungry, slimy critters.

The Forest for the Trees

One of my most recent "crops," the European salad greens, is perhaps the best illustration of how I need to learn patience if I'm going to ever manage to grow a good garden. I used up an entire packet of seeds between two 14" round containers. An entire packet.

This was not the original plan. I wanted to put in 1 crop, then sow more seeds as I harvested. I'm not sure what happened...whether I was tired after working in the sun to get 4 other containers done, whether the seeds were just so tiny that it didn't seem right to just sprinkle in a few, or if some other madness overcame me. I have an entire tiny forest of seedlings now, whatever the reason. And no seeds left for later. To make matters slightly worse, most of those seedlings are concentrated on half of one container. What exactly was I thinking??! Sure, they're tiny now, but these are going to grow into good-sized heads of lettuce.

Ah, well. We'll be having some, er, "sprouts" on our salads for a week or two. This is why I really shouldn't garden unsupervised.

In better news, I saw teeny carrot greens poking through the dirt beside the radishes. Thank goodness I showed a bit more restraint with those seeds, because I really want to be able to replant right through the first frost.

Mini Harvest

The garden got no love from me yesterday, but a quick peek into the back yard confirmed that everything was doing just fine without me - better to avoid fixing what isn't broken! I wanted to take a few shots of what I've got going on out there today, so out I went. Of course, the finicky cuke was wilting on me by then. Ridiculous. I busted out the watering can, snapped a couple of pictures, and admired my little green world.

The picture is of the Pretty in Purple pepper. I'm somewhat suprised they haven't turned red yet - they've been at that large-ish stage for nearly a week. ("Large," of course, is a relative term here, as the fully grown fruits don't even reach 1".) It's a very pretty plant, all in all. The purple fruit is pretty and whimsical. It's labelled as an edible ornamental, so hopefully it'll taste good once it's ready to be picked!

I brought in 1 cherry tomato - closer in size to a grape tomato, really - 1 small standard tomato, and one purple string bean. I ate the bean myself, but fed the cherrygrape to my husband, who declared it "a pretty good tomato!" He may have just been soothing my ego, but who cares? He's pretty smart for a boy.

Got milk?

You know, ever since I learned that my cucumbers may not be cucumbers after all, the whole plant's been disappointing me. I got home yesterday to discover the leaves all wilted, despite a good amount of rain the day before. It's almost is if the plant is picking a fight with me just to avoid being sad when I say goodbye. (Little does it know that I'm not ripping it out - it's already bitten me once!) I think I'm going to do one of the homemade watering systems suggested by Gayla Trail of You Grow Girl. I'd been putting it off, but it's simple enough to do, and I've got the materials and the drill. May as well do something with them.

The other plants all seemed perfectly happy, but I gave them a drink anyway, in case we get some light showers today - if there's one lesson about gardening that's remained in my head since I was a kid, it's that shallow watering damages plants. If I do cukes again next year, I think a bigger pot would be good for them. Or perhaps just train the vines in a more vertical direction. Containers don't hold as much water as the open ground does, obviously, which creates one watering problem. But the cukes also have wide leaves that act like umbrellas over their pot, and I suspect less rain is getting in there than in the other plants' habitats.

I also fed my tomatoes some milk, another trick of Ms. Trail's. I'm mildly concerned about blossom-end rot, and I haven't supplemented with calcium at all. We had some milk that was long past its expiration date, so I went ahead and used it. Here's hoping it makes them happy!

I made a tomato!!

I've plucked a few beans off a vine several times in the last month, but this feels like the first honest to goodness "harvest." A lush, vibrant red tomato, just begging to be eaten with a little salt. A tomato! I did that!!

There are a couple of others ripening on the vine, but they're far smaller. Perhaps 2 or 3 green ones as well. That may be it for this vine. But heck, what did I want for a buck and not getting them in until July? There are a couple of cherry tomatoes ripening, too.

I was extremely suprised when I went out yesterday and discovered seedlings sprouting from all 4 new containers. At first, I thought perhaps they were weeds...they were as delicate as new clover. But the seedlings in the two greens containers seemed exactly alike, yet different than what was growing in the radish/carrot box. The peas were very obviously little tendrils, not weeds. I called my dad to confirm that these could, in fact, be my plants. I don't know why it suprises me that they'd come up in a matter of days, but I was just out there two days ago and didn't see a whit of green. Now they're a couple of inches tall! And a bit of an embarassment, as it's now perfectly clear how overboard I went with the salad green seeds. Oh, dear. There are about 8 million of them in there.

One other confirmation from my dad was more disheartening - I'd read on another garden blog that the female flowers of a cucumber look like cucumbers with a flower attached. I'd thought that these were already-pollinated fruits, but no. None of them seem to be getting big like everything else, so I fear there will be no cucumbers. I should have planted flowers to attract more bees; we really didn't get very many.

And now, a moment of silent for my canteloupe plant, which I ripped out last night in frustration. Despite a liberal dosing of inhibitor this weekend, it was mottled with yellowed holes, and I'm tired of wasting time and resources on it. It was never going to actually bear fruit anyway. If I plant it next year, I think I'll put it in a raised container, so it has a chance to air out between storms. I'm much sadder about my herb window box - I think our neighbors well and truly killed both sage and oregano when they sent it toppling 2 stories down. The basil is barely hanging on. The new farmer's market I visited last weekend had a guy selling sage and rosemary seedlings. They also had the best peaches and blueberries I've tasted this year, so I think it's worth going back despite it being so much farther away.

Mostly, I'm just excited about my tomato. I did it! I grew something edible!

Pea Mutiny

So last night, I peeked out my kitchen window to check on the garden, and noticed strange white pebbles in the snap pea container. Curious, maybe some animal had been digging and dropped them there. Or maybe something fell out of the trees. I didn't get a chance to investigate until early this morning, when I found out they were - peas! In all the rain, the seeds had swelled to the size of marbles, turned white, germinated, and somehow pushed themselves up out of the soil! So very irritating, especially given that I was dressed for work and had no time to change after getting filth all over me. I pushed them all back in their dirt, washed my hands off with the hose, and made a quick check of everything else.

Who ever realized peas could be so mutinous?!

Anyway. One tomato is perfectly, deliciously red. A smaller one isn't far behind, and several cherries seem ready to ripen as well. I count 3 fully developed banana peppers - one large enough to bend its stalk, so I need to stake it soon. The Pretty in Purple has 3 or 4 full size (about 3/4") peppers, about ready to turn red. The mini white pepper is also putting fruit out, but I've lost the tag so I have no idea how big they're supposed to get.

Both eggplants are monstrous, but show no signs of producing anything yet. I seriously cannot believe how out of control those plants are. They were wee little things when I put them in the ground, and now they dwarf everything out there. The cantaloupe really needs to just get dug out, is not doing well at all. I hate to rip anything out, though. Grrr.