Putting up our harvest

There’s a heat wave in Los Angeles, and honestly it’s nothing compared to the heat we just experienced in Florida.  David and I didn’t even run the air conditioning, and had the oven on all day, so you know it wasn’t that bad where we live.  We usually get a breeze blowing through the house, until the wind shifts in late summer and the Santa Ana’s arrive.  August is usually when we run the air conditioning, and many houses in LA don’t even have it!

Dave and I spent the better part of Friday and Saturday preparing food to bring to a food swap!  I’ll write a separate post about that, as we just returned and we’re very excited about how it went!  But first, here’s what we prepped to bring with us.

Roasted tomatoes (recipe linked in last post, but here it is again.)

We slow roasted our small harvest of three types of tomatoes, and I’m looking forward to doing it again later this week (after it cools off).

We’ve never grown the Jaune Flamme tomatoes before and they’re already a favorite!  They are fairly uniform in size, a rich color and just the right combination of seed and meat.  Our plant has giant clusters of them weighing it down.  Actually, I’m going to run outside and pick a few right now, as I’m getting hungry for some!

The Indigo Rose are so purple!  These all seemed a bit mealy or underripe.  Roasting them should make their flavor more intense, which they’ll probably benefit from.  We’re hoping these are tasty enough to be salad tomatos, and maybe part of the trick is learning what color they’re supposed to be when it’s harvest time.

The San Marzanos are weird to slice.  The ratio of meat to seed was weird and I had a hard time making it even while slicing.  This heirloom isn’t designed for slicing- it’s a beauty of a sauce tomato.  The fruit also had lots of caterpillar holes, and I remember cutting out a lot of spots last year.  In the past, we have made sauce, dehydrated, and roasted them.  We just finished the roasted tomatos from our freezer; we have a few of the dehydrated ones left.

We had a full tray of jaune flamme, and half a tray each of indigo rose and San Marzano. Before the trays went in the oven, I brushed them with lots of olive oil and sprinkled them with salt, thyme sprigs and whole garlic cloves. They looked so beautiful when they went in. I thought I took a picture, but I can’t find it.

The tomatoes were roasted at 250 for 5 hours.  We then let them cool a little, packed the different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, in thick layers, adding garlic, thyme, and fresh basil in between the layers.

I then added a teaspoon of lemon juice and filled the jar with olive oil.  We processed it in our canner for the time in the recipe (I never seem to remember numbers).

I was actually kind of sad to bring these to the food swap, because I really wanted to keep them.  But then I was excited that other people get to eat these, and we get to make more for ourselves!  The idea of the food swap is to bring stuff we made or grew, and then trade it for things that other people made.  Since we have such a variety of produce to use, our strategy was to bring a small amount of a wide variety of items.

While David was at the store picking up ingredients for the baking of our giant zucchini and leftover bag of carrots, I prepped all of the pickling things.  I measured out how many spears or disks would fit in each jar, and decided on the amount and type of jar.  We decided on one jar dilly beans, four jars dill pickle spears, 4 jars bread and butter disks.

This was a great first use of our new canner and canning tools.

Last summer, after the frustrating experience of canning tomato sauce without any tools, we decided that we needed to buy a canning kit.  David and I picked one up a few weeks ago, as well as two boxes of jars.  The first day of canning was something that we were excited to do and knew we would have time for during summer vacation.  David and I took turns using each type of jar grip, and the magnetic lid grabber.

Each pickle was made a different way.  The bread and butter pickles were boiled together in the brine for 10 minutes.  We followed the Ball Blue Book recipe.

The bread and butter pickles are on the left.  I was never a huge bread and butter fan until I had fresh bread and butter zucchini pickles in Vermont.  Lisa, the owner of the farm that I worked on, made the best zucchini pickles and I 15 years later I still salivate at the thought of them.

On the right are the dill pickle spears.  We used the Ball Blue Book, and added the seasoning for Kosher style pickles.  I must say, I didn’t realize that Kosher style involved simply adding garlic, mustard seed and a bay leaf.  I was surprised because I’ve always thought all dill pickles include these things.  Also, the Ball Book didn’t mention a blessing or cleanliness or any of the other Kosher rules.

We also made one mini jar of dilly beans.  I used powdered cayenne, forgetting that we have a cayenne pepper plant (and that there were probably more ripe after I did my initial harvest).  The dilly beans were out of the Blue Book also and contained a mix of about six different varieties of beans.

After we finished processing all of the jars, we put away the canner and called it a day.

Day two, Saturday, was for baking.

David got out the food processor and shredded carrots for about 10 minutes.  Then he switched to zucchini.  He shredded the entire 4 lb one.  Each of the piles filled a large bowl.

We made double recipe carrot cake and triple recipe double chocolate zucchini bread.

I’m fast forwarding the description of baking.  David and I worked together to measure, mix, clean, scoop, bake and test the cakes.  At the end of the day, we had 4 large carrot cakes, 2 small carrot cakes, 4 large chocolate zucchini and 6 small chocolate zucchini breads.  These would be our main “money” at the food swap.

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A long vacation and a rich harvest.

I didn’t plan on missing blogging as much as I did. It’s been almost two weeks since my last post because we went out of town on vacation.  We asked our neighbors to water the backyard every two or three days and crossed our fingers for the best results.

By now our plants are well established and the lasagna garden has broken down quite a bit.  We knew the weather would be hot and sunny, and that it never rains in Los Angeles in the summer.  We also know that our neighbors don’t garden and get home late at night from work (sometimes after dark) and we hoped they water.

David and I arrived home from the airport at 11pm last night, and grabbed a flashlight to inspect the plants.  Except for the zucchini that fell over because the fruit was too large, things looked really good!  The plants need tidying up, but overall it was a great time to leave the garden and the supports that exist are still holding up.  The tomato cages will soon need staking (like tomorrow), the cucumbers and melons need more ties and we’re starting more zucchini and beans in the nursery.  We were happy to see that the plants definitely had water while we were gone (one indicator was that the squash leaves have powdery mildew beginning). By flashlight we picked the giant zucchinis and righted the plant.  We resisted a midnight harvest, and I did it most of it before David even got out of bed this morning.

Our harvest after the vacation.  I’ll go through each item, and how we plan to use it.  The only reason I snagged the bunch of mint, was that it was crowding the cucumber plants.  We don’t plan to use it right away.  We have fresh mint year round and have plenty of dried mint on hand already.

The largest Safari zucchini weighed four pounds and the smaller fruit was two pounds.  These are both destined to be double chocolate zucchini bread.  We’re taking the bread with us to the LA food swap on Sunday.  The food swap is our first one and we’re planning on bringing a variety of items made from this harvest with us.

Our mixed green beans.  This is enough for a small jar of dilly beans.  I didn’t take pictures of our dill but we have three plants which will provide all the dill we need for the canning session.

The Indigo Rose (front) and Jaune Flamme (back) are beautiful and ripe for roasting.  These are our first fruits from the plants and there are many more coming soon.  The plan is to roast the tomatoes and pack three jars of them with olive oil.  

The Jaune Flamme are a rich golden orange when ripe.  They have a great flavor (I snuck one more that I found on the vine) and will be fun to roast and can this summer.

The Indigo Rose are ripe when there’s red on the bottom of them.  We’ve been anxious to pick them, and I think we’re having trouble determining if they’re ripe.  Roasting these should help intensify their flavor.

Our Isis Candy cherry tomatoes are ready!  Last year we grew these in a pot, and they were our favorite cherry.  This year we gave them prime real estate in the raised bed, and the plant is our largest so far.  These will be enjoyed in our salads, and next week we should begin to have a small supply daily.

San Marzanos!  Two years ago, David discovered how wonderful these sauce tomatoes are and we’ve been growing two plants ever since.  This is the first of our harvest.  Many had caterpillar holes in them, which doesn’t really matter when it comes to roasting the good parts.

These are our Tounge of Fire shell beans harvested from plants that we pulled.  David and I enjoy the color and having a shell bean around, but these hybrids were taking up valuable space.  We decided to harvest what was there and we’ll use the space for something else.

These will be served with dinner. These shell beans have a fun pattern.  I’d like to get heirloom shell beans when it’s time to order more summer seeds.  Any suggestions of your favorite varieties?

These easter egg radishes grew in the new lasagna garden and have twisted up tips to show for it.  We didn’t have enough to do much with, and David’s happy to have them in his salads.

Our little bell pepper plant was sagging under the weight of four bell peppers.  I picked the two biggest and figured we leave the others on the plant to turn red, or until we need them, whichever is first.  These will be fun to use in salads or cooked.

The hot peppers are doing well.  That’s not entirely true… the cayenne, jalepeno and banana pepper are doing well.  The rest of our hot peppers have been stunted and we’re hoping a shot of fertilizer will help them snap out of their growing funk. The cayenne will get tossed in the pickles, and I’m not sure about the jalepenos yet.  We have about 6 more that are the same size, and I’m thinking about making a jalepeno jelly.

The nasturtiums had more seed pods on them, so I figured it’s time to pickle up another jar.  These were mostly from the two new plants that are now taking over the mystery garden.  These are currently soaking in a brine on the kitchen window, and will be pickled tomorrow.

Another “soon project” will be picking the green coriander seeds.  I’ve been reading about the treat of green coriander and dreaming of ways to use them.  I’d probably be more excited if I actually liked coriander, but David loves it so I’m channeling his enthusiasm.  I read about pickling the green pods, and would love suggestions if anyone has them.

Pickling cucumbers is the way to go!  Most of these are from the little leaf cucumber vines, and one of them is a Straight 8.  They will all become either dill pickle spears or bread and butter chips.  There are a few more on the vines that should be ready when it’s time to prep them.

We picked our first winter squash!  The delicata is one of my favorite.  This one looked a little small, and I am hoping it’s ready.  The skin is hard so I guessed it was time to harvest. A lot of what I read said to harvest winter squash before the first frost… which just didn’t help.  As with most of this harvest, I decided to pick it and then pay attention and learn as we cut into our veggies.

Our first buttercup squash.  What a beauty! This one is from the plant that we thought was an acorn squash and was one of our first squashes to begin growing.  It may be a little soon, but not much.  There’s four more that are close behind this one.

This little pattypan squash is our first one. The poor plant has been hiding under Red Kuri and zucchini leaves for the past couple of weeks.  I figured it was time to pick the lone fruit, and see if the plant can start growing more.

David and I are keeping busy, and I hope to update the blog soon on what the plants look like and how the preserving goes.  Isn’t summertime grand?

Support

David hit his head when we unfurled the cattle panel, and I scratched up my foot as we placed the arch in place, but we did it!

We now have a beautiful cattle panel arch in the garden!

We like the interesting shape of the arch.  We still have to tie the squash up on it, and hopefully they’ll begin climbing on their own.  The red kuri already has quite a few baseball sized squashes, so it may be time to sling them up also.  Growing squash vertically is new to us, but I read a good article on Pinterest a while back: Make Room for Melons.  Oh, and speaking of being addicted to Pinterest, here’s the thread I found about how to build a cattle panel trellis. 

First thing we did is buy T posts and a post tool to help pound them in.  David put in the four posts pretty quickly (although he realized afterwards that he needs earplugs next time).

Notice how crazy the squash is getting!  You can see the young red kuri squashes near the wall.  In the foreground, on the left, is where the acorn squash has been climbing up a tomato cage. This week we realized that the acorn squash is really buttercup!! I don’t know why it took us so long to notice that they weren’t pointy…

It was a bit scary to move the squash out of the way.  It’s even scarier holding the vines while tying them to the trellis.

After we had the area ready, David cut the twine from the cattle panel.

David and Rosie posed for this picture right before they both got hit by the unfurling panel.  Note to self: there is tension in the rolled up panel and use two people next time.

After we checked that everyone was ok, David and I folded the panel in half and moved it into place.  We secured it with zip-ties and voila!

David is 6 ft tall and you can see how it towers above him.  After this picture was taken, we continued to untangle and tie up the vines.

Tomorrow we build the A-frame trellis for the remaining squash and melons!

 

The tour, June edition

The harvesting has begun, and it’s time to show the progress!  This week we have to build a lot of support systems for our floppy plants.  We’ve also started to pickle, freeze and nibble food in the gardens.

Today I wanted to share with you all a look back at how much we’ve grown since building our gardens.

This was day one.

[Insert entire garden pic from today] At the end of the blog I’ll show you what it looks like today, but there’ll be bits and pieces as I take you on a tour around the garden!

The acorn squash/ eggplant/ bean bed. I couldn’t take a very good picture from this angle, because the two little squash plants on the front left of the picture are now taking over a tomato cage and going everywhere!

The beans and summer squashes are starting to produce.  The eggplants are finally taking off.  I have one more Rosa Bianca in the nursery, which I’d like to plant this week.  Part of the hold up has been that Mardi, our tomcat, likes to sit (and occasionally leave us presents) in the open space in this bed.  We’ve been working on deterring him, but he’s strong willed.

This was taken in April, after bringing home the half dead yellow yarrow.  We had yet to plant the okra behind the apricot.

Isn’t the apricot tree looking great?  We have been watching it and letting it take it’s shape, so that when it comes time to prune it this year we can encourage more main stems.  It’s too bad it isn’t closer to the wall, because it seems to be flat and would have been perfect to espalier.

We planted a little chamomile  that we started from seed, towards the back of the apricot.  There will be verbena and hyssop going in also.  Right now those seedlings are in the nursery, and I’ll probably transplant them into larger pots and keep them in the nursery until fall.  I hear fall is a good time to plant perennials.

Here’s the yarrow on planting day.

And today!  We will have flowers soon, and I’m pretty sure they’ll be yellow.  But the plant wasn’t labeled so we could get something else!

Here’s the potted daisy after pruning.

And we have flowers!  I am enjoying the shape of the plant, and loving that the pink flowers have come back.  Notice the red kuri squash is overtaking the pot?  David is hoping to pick up a cattle fence panel while he’s in Bakersfield this weekend.  Then these squash vine will be growing up and over this pot!

In the side yard, the shell beans and cucumbers are growing well.

This is right after I transplanted the little leaf pickling cucumbers and the nasturtiums.  (sorry it’s not a great picture, but I wanted to show the size.)

Today the cucumbers are climbing up the ladder, the dill is tall and attempting to flower and the shell beans are nearly ready to be picked.  We harvested our first cucumber from these plants today!

On the other side of the cucumber ladder is the tomato raised bed.

Here it is after we planted, and when we were still finishing up our winter growing season.

Today the tomatoes are coming along, the basil is ready for it’s second harvest and we have a pepper growing.  We have a few varieties of radishes and carrots growing, a small patch of lettuce, and one small leek that just won’t be done growing.

In the front yard we also have our mystery garden area.  

We let the compost sprout, and sprinkled a wildflower mix.  The first batch of sprouts that you see here was mowed down by hungry snails.

The snails have long been killed and we’ve discovered that wildflower mix= alyssum.  The nasturtiums survived the snail onslaught, as well as the one cosmos.  We’ve been more diligent about watering this area and we’re starting to notice a tiny bit of variety appear.

David has almost no allergies, but he’s allergic to alyssum.  It’s too bad because I think it’s beautiful, and the cats enjoy rolling around in it.

Our herb bed was cut way back when the bulbs were flowering.

This was taken right after the sage and basil were planted, and during that small window when the cilantro was ready to pick.

Currently the cilantro and oregano are flowering and ready to be cut down. We’ll be cutting back and pulling out most of the bulbs shortly.

The cilantro/ coriander flowers attract flies.

And ladybugs.

We plan to harvest some of the coriander seeds, and let the plant self seed.

And of course, here’s Rosie to point out the peppers.

This is pretty soon after we planted the banana pepper, jalepeno and cayenne.

The cayenne are green and growing well.  We haven’t had any turn red yet, but we know soon enough we’ll be drying them and searching for ways to use them.  Anyone have suggestions?

The banana peppers have already been picked and been added to salsa.  There are a handful more ready to pick this week.

And of course, the jalepenos.  We’ve picked four so far, and have a few more waiting for us to use.  These plants are small but full of fruit.

We also have other pepper, tomatillo and tomato plants but they’re not doing much yet.

And here’s the backyard today!

The tomatoes on the left were just trellised, using the Florida weave.  The arch and squash trellis should be up this week. It’ll be great when we can freely walk around again, without worrying about squishing squash vines.

I’ll try to do another tour update soon, but it may be a couple of weeks.  Life is getting busy, summer vacation is about to start and we’re already preparing food.

Harvests and pickles

 

This weekend I began perfecting my pickling recipes, as the harvesting has begun!

When I was watering the cucumber vines in the backyard, I discovered this little leaf pickling cucumber half buried under the leaves!  There’s another in front yard that will be picked this week, and I believe these are both destined for our salads, not pickles.  The vines are full of baby cukes, and we’re eagerly awaiting them!

As I have mentioned, the zucchini harvest has begun.  This past week we’ve harvested one, but there’s another to pick in a couple of days.  The first few zucchini on our vines seem to be falling off, perhaps from lack of fertilization?

I did pickle the zucchini, as well as the yellow squash, and made a tasty bread and butter pickle from the Ball Blue Book.  They’re a day old, in the fridge, and delicious already.  We didn’t bother getting out the canning equipment, as we know we’ll devour them rapidly.

 

Here’s the yellow squash right before I picked it.  Notice the small one next to it has a flower shriveled up and is rotting at the end.  Anyone have suggestions as to what’s going on?

This weekend we also made our first jar of dilly beans (also in the fridge and getting devoured).

Plant nerd that I am, we have 7 different types of green beans, and I think I managed to sort them out.  Or at least they look like it so let’s just pretend. These are the tricolor bush bean (green), Tavera (filet), and Provider (feel kinda fuzzy).  I’m working on my palate, but they all pretty much taste the same to me.  We had the seeds, so I’m looking more at yield and plant health to decide which to plant in the future.

Of course, we have other colors of beans too! 

The Burgundy pole beans (ok, the one plant) is yielding a few beans here and there.  I think they are the straight ones on the left.  Then we have the tricolor bush bean (purple) and Velour (filet).  There are also yellow beans from the tricolor mix, but I guess they didn’t make a picture because we only have one variety of yellow bean.

This harvest was the perfect amount to make our first jar of dilly beans.

I picked a few sprigs of fresh dill, grabbed two pearl onions that I planted at school, peeled a clove of garlic (ok, we’ll grow that next year) and made a brine to pack them in.

I love the look of fresh dilly beans!  Here’s the recipe we used this time.

Today I harvested another large handful of mixed beans, and am thinking these will be eaten fresh.

We also pickled watermelon radishes last week, and I chopped up garlic and put a little too much garlic in it for my taste.  I don’t like radishes much to begin with, and the recipe I used was a gentle experiment with lacto-fermination which seemed to make the radish flavor stronger.

Also, this week I picked a bunch of shell beans.  I remember shelling beans as a kid, but haven’t ever prepared them myself.  

These are Tongue of Fire, and they are supposed to be colored inside.  I wonder if I picked them too soon, or didn’t let them dry enough.  We’re cooking them tonight.

This weekend was a guacamole and salsa making weekend.  We harvested the avocados last week (and have a seemly endless supply if we’re able to reach higher into the trees with a ladder) and we had some that were ripe this weekend! The tomatoes were not ours, as we’re still waiting, but our neighbor brought us a bag from his garden.  Luckily we’re growing peppers, so salsa was easy to toss together.

I picked four banana peppers. They went in the salsa. (I’m a lightweight when it comes to spicy food.)

And I picked four jalepenos, two of which went into the guacamole.  David always deseeds and deveins them so I can handle the heat.

In the back lasagna gardens, I also found this little surprise.

It’s an easter egg radish, and a fun one to find.

The food we’re getting is already keeping us busy, and it’s just a little bit here and there.  We know that soon enough we’ll be harvesting so much that we’ll be giving it away, and we’re ready!

 

The promise of a harvest

 

David and I have been eating our borage flowers.  One of our two plants has started blooming, and we’ve picked a few flowers to taste.  We have yet to start decorating our salads or freezing them in ice cubes. I enjoy having flowers in my food. 

Remember I said there were ants all over the backyard?  They seem to have found the borage. 

The ants have begun farming aphids on the borage.  I’ve trying spraying them with a hose, but it doesn’t deter them. I know the aphids can leave a sticky honey (which the ants milk and eat), but I’m not sure this symbiotic relationship will hurt the plants. I watched a ladybug try to get the aphids and the ants jumped on the ladybug. I was able to intervene, one time, scooped up the ladybug and knocked off the clinging ant.

Next to the borage, we have two rapidly tomatillo plants.  One has a small tomato cage around it, the other does not. 

 

It’s a little hard to tell, but there is a noticeable difference in the growing styles of the two plants- one is bushy and the other is tall.

We have another squash variety with it’s first baby squash!

This is from the silver leaved delicata squash. Yum!

While I was poking around the delicata, and the cucumbers next to it, I was shocked to discover a mature pickling cucumber!

This little leaf cucumber escaped my watch.  It was half buried under the leaf mulch and was the perfect size to harvest.  There are many more on the way in both the front and back yard.

The other plants we’re watching eagerly, are the tomatoes. The indigo rose keeps looking like it’s ready, but we’re waiting for the green to turn red. The isis candy, and San Marzanos are full of fruit.

These Jaune Flamme will be yellow, and these clusters are quite heavy.  I wonder how much longer until we’re canning tomatoes?  

The basil is beautiful right now.  It’s time for our second pesto harvest of the season.  Rosie could care less, but she’s happy to point out her ball hiding next to the plant.

On the other side of the pesto is the little radish and carrot patch.  This is where we have Spanish black radishes, French breakfast radishes, and carnival carrots to round out the mix.

Our red bell pepper plant is coming along.  Hopefully we’ll have the patience to let them mature and eat them when they’re red.  The plant is so small right now, that we probably will end up picking this first one when it’s green to allow the other ones more energy to grow.

The acorn squash is still throwing out more flowers, and has fruit that is getting quite large.  As you can see, the tendrils are clinging to anything they can.  We still need to figure out more space for these guys to climb, as they have already taken over our walkways and are looking for more room to grow. I do love acorn squash.

In fact, the entire squash bed is looking great right now.  David’s going to get more bamboo on Thursday, and build the a-frame for the squash to climb.  They are ready for it.

The Kazakh melons are so fuzzy.  These were the first in the bed and have multi-branching vines right now.

The biggest vines in the squash bed are actually the buttercup squash, and one of them has reached all the way to the other side. The watermelon radishes have sprouted, and we’re still waiting for the carrots to come up. Hopefully the zinnias will begin flowering soon.

They are looking lush and promising.  As is our garden.

 

It begins

Bring on the zucchini!!

Our first squash is ready! The yellow crookneck will make her debut later this week. Acorn is getting bigger (3 are bigger than my fist), buttercup, delicata, and red kuri all have fruit starting. And June gloom kicked in, so we hope it stays hot enough.

Harvest Monday 6.3.13

So I’ve been reading Harvest Monday posts, and been wanting to do them.  We haven’t had much that we’ve been harvesting these days, aside from a sprig of basil or mint here or there.

But it is beginning!

As I posted earlier this week, David and I ate the first two green beans from the garden. Today we picked three more!

The bottom two are Provider beans and the top is from our tricolor mix. We have a lot more beans on the way, and David and I are already researching pickled bean recipes.

We also snagged our first two jalepeno peppers from our plant.  One was laying below it, falled from an overcrowded plant. The other we picked, hoping to let the others grow bigger instead of falling to their death.

This weekend we also cleared out one of radish patches to make space for more. We’ve been trying to get radishes, lettuce and carrots in more often so that we constantly have some available. These radishes are destined for pickling.

With just a slight hint of green on the outside, these are a variety of watermelon radish. Right after we picked these, we went out and planted more seeds, as they’re a favorite.  (Of course, we haven’t harvested the French Breakfast or Black radishes yet.)

Saturday morning we had a visit from our handyman. A pipe broke under our sink Friday night, and we spent the night without water.  When he arrived to do the repair, one of his coworkers went out back to pick avocados.  Once people know about our trees, they always come back for more!  We helped him pick about a dozen avocados, and then picked a dozen more for ourselves!

This tree is finishing up right now.  We just purchased a new avocado fruit picker pole, and with a ladder and the pole we think we can get another dozen or two over the next couple of weeks.  And then we wait for the other tree to grow.

After picking avocados, we had a big salad for dinner and used lettuce from our garden.

The summer leaf mix was starting to form nice heads. Our lettuce patch is finishing up right now, and we’re waiting for the new lettuce patches to fill in.  It’s going to be a while, as many of the new ones were eaten by slugs and snails and didn’t make it. We seeded another patch after picking these and hope they fare better.

While cleaning the lettuce, this little guy scurried by.I know it’s a blurry picture, but it was moving quickly.  I love the colors!

Recently I’ve been really interested in the critters on our plants, and would love bug book suggestions for a little summer reading.

 

 

More buds, flowers and squash

I don’t know how we could have missed the obvious! In my blog last week, I showed a picture of the bush beans that we thought were pole beans, and cucumbers in need of trellising.  The plan was to build a support structure with the existing pole and the cucumbers could climb.

Silly me, making more work than necessary.

We saw the solution when we looked at the blog and picture together.  Move the ladder!

I pulled out broke the pole, moved the ladder, tied the cucumbers gently to it with twine, and DONE.

The cucumbers in the backyard are a different story.

The little leaf pickling hybrid in the front is growing in all directions.  The straight 8 in the back has just begun stretching out and reaching for anything near it.  The plan is to build a 3 bamboo trellis, like for beans, and use twine to help give the cucumbers space to climb. We may need to add wood or bamboo cross bars, as we also want our delicata squash to climb up it. (By the way, I’m not sure I like the look of leaves as mulch. We’re continuing to build our lasagna garden on top of the plants, and will add grass clippings next.  And we’ll water with compost and worm tea, once we make those.)

Here’s the delicata squash.  Probably one of my favorite plants in the backyard because of it’s silvery textured leaves.  I’m pretty sure the plant is healthy and supposed to look this way.  It’s just started flowering, although still all male flowers. This plant is grown from seeds from Johnny’s.  I must admit, I love looking through the Johnny’s catalogue, but I wish they had more heirlooms rather than hybrids.  For now, we’ll use the seeds we have, and save the heirloom seeds we’re growing.  (We have so many seeds, that we won’t have to purchase summer veggies for a few years.)

All the squash are starting to perk up, in fact.

The acorn squash (back left) and red kuri (back right) are taking off.  In the squash bed (future home of David’s magnificent A-frame structure) we are growing: (back row, left to right) marigold, thai basil, Kazakh melon, sweet granite melon, charentais melon, Malali watermelon. Front row, left to right: Pinnacle spaghetti squash, buttercup, sweet dumpling, sugar baby water melon. I can’t believe we fit them all (so far).  I found one more watermelon package we didn’t plant and may try to squeeze in another plant on the outside edge.

We decided to put a few plants in yesterday that will grow under the A-frame.  They are against the wall, and short rows right now.  We planted Purple Haze carrots, Parisienne carrots and watermelon radishes.

Hiding behind the Acorn and Red Kuri squash plants, are the summer squashes.  Our pattypan has it’s first squash about to flower. I love the shape of the buds!

The Red Kuri has as few squash coming along. This little baby has a long way to grow.

The okra, tucked in behind the apricot tree is taking off.  We noticed it has buds starting to form. So soon.

We’ve been waiting for the borage to open up, and today we got our first flower! We plan to eat these, but this first flower gets to stay and attract bees.  We’ve been watching bees come and go to the squash blossoms for the past few days.  Each time we see a bee, we cheer it on!  It’s impressive that even living in an urban area, next to the freeway, we have honeybees come to pollinate our flowers.

The pink flowers on the plant I massively pruned have finally opened! I’ll post a picture of the whole plant once it fills in.

The front yard has huge flowering herb plants right now.

Rosie took a while to understand what I wanted, but here she is posing with our cilantro plant. This one self seeded, and our plan is to harvest coriander and hope it will self seed.  The bulbs behind it will be thinned shortly, making space for more herbs and flowers.

Today we plan to fertilize everything, harvest lettuce and make radish pickles with the watermelon radishes I harvested yesterday. This morning I did a little research about using radish greens and would love suggestions if anyone has them!

We ate our first thing from the backyard!

Today, while David and I were planting the Malali watermelon and a new flat of plants for the nursery, we decided it was time to eat our first vegetables from the lasagna gardens!

 

We shared this one tri-color mix green bean and another from the other side of the bed, a Provider.  Soon we will have handfulls.

Tomorrow the green beans (which are looking a little yellow), and all the plants, will get fertilized with the EB Organics vegetable fertilizer we purchased today.  Our little peppers and eggplants in the pots will get a stronger fertilizer to hopefully get them growing.