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.

 

 

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Melons!

My heart beats faster when I see flowers on our squashes and melons. Today our first melons in the melon and squash bed began to flower!

These were the first melons that we planted in the bed, and are still the only ones on their side of the row.  They are from seeds given to me by my friend Sheila, and are Kazakh Melons.  We’re excited to see them grow and are cheering for them!

In the eggplant lasagna bed next to it, the crookneck squash is flowering and the zucchini has a few flowers open.  We finally have a female flower coming!

Notice on the right you can see a little zucchini under the bud.  Today when David and I went to the farmers market, we eyed the Safari zucchini’s  as that is what we have coming!  Having a cage over the zucchini seems to be helping keep the leaves from taking up so much space.  We’re optimistic that it will work and we’re hoping that we don’t have hungry bugs lurking in the yard.

We also have a tomato cage over the two acorn squash, and it’s been impressive to watch them climb.

It’s been a long time since either of us has had space to grow winter squashes in our gardens. While looking at the acorn squash, David and I observed that in the crook of each leaf axis there are flowers.  Hopefully that will translate to lots of acorn squash.  We could research more, and are curious about the male to female ration for these, but it’s more fun to watch them grow each day than to read about them online.

Practically underneath the acorn squash, is the fenugreek.  This week I noticed a flower and a seed pod thingy sticking straight out (9 o’clock position).

We have two other tiny fenugreek plants that were direct seeded next to this transplant. I know it doesn’t like to be transplanted, and it’s supposed to get about two feet tall.  This little flowering specimen is about six inches tall!  I’ve read that this legume can be harvested for their leaves as a microgreen, but my plan was to see how it grows and try to get seeds for the maple like flavor.  Time will tell.

Our garden has ants.  They are everywhere. They existed in the soil before we planted, and are common problems in California.  They don’t really bite, and they don’t seem to be doing much other than looking for water.  Hopefully we can co-exist.  Our lemon tree has ants and aphids working together as a team.  It’s not that great for the lemon tree, but it’s cool to watch and we still get fruit.

You will notice ants in many of our pictures.  They walk over everything.  I followed their path back to the fence, and they seem to going into the neighbor’s yard. David and I are conscious of them when we water, or walk around barefoot.  And again, hopefully they won’t be a problem.

We’ve been paying close attention to holes in leaves and bugs that we see.

I spotted this little guy on a marigold.  Also notice that someone’s been eating the leaf below it and leaving it’s maze-like trail.  I must read up on bugs in the garden this summer and would love advice and suggestions.

We have a few more tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos to plant. We need to buy a couple bags of soil and figure out where the pots can live for the summer.  I’d like to get it done this weekend, but it will probably be next week. The plants are still small, so there’s no hurry.

The tomatoes in the backyard are flowering now!  The plants are strong and we’re pulling suckers.  The side yard tomatoes are growing bigger, with the largest one being purple and half dollar size (for those of you who know how big that is).  We have one more tomato to plant in the side yard, but we must pull out our remaining chard plant to put in the tomato.  David and I aren’t sure we want to eat that much chard this week, so we’ve been stalling.

And lastly, our peppers are flowering furiously. It’s time to start buying canning jars, and I hope David likes pickled peppers!

Speaking of pickling, today David and I stopped at Penzys Spices and bought some pickling spice.  We’d never been to the store and were quite excited to see (and smell) the selection. He’s already planning how he can use some of the exotic spices with the food that we’re growing.

Time to get back out into the garden!

 

Fruits, flowers and bugs, oh my!

The plants are growing! Each day, David and I walk around our little backyard garden, inspecting for intruders, new flowers and growth.  We were happy that we had a few days off from watering, but are back to watering each evening and dreaming about soaker hoses and drip irrigation for during the summer.  That, and building bamboo supports for the plants, are high up on David’s project list for this summer.

Here’s a look at the back yard garden, formerly known as the morning glory jungle, now:

The aisles and edges need more mulch (as well as the front yard flower beds), which David picked up yesterday and I’ll be spreading today. We’ve used the firepit once, and plan to use it again soon!  The squash and melons are slowly getting planted in the front right bed.  I may end up directly seeding the Malali watermelon, as the two seeds that I planted in the nursery have yet to germinate.

Here’s the temporary nursery at the end of our driveway.  The cage on the right has our praying mantis cocoon, which we check daily. The warm driveway and full sun has been working well for the plants. We have been anxiously checking the perennial flowers that we started from seed.  This week the Munstead Lavender, Chamomile, and Verbena have finally started to get bigger!  The purple tomatillos, eggplants and tomatoes are nearly ready for planting- we’d like them to get a little bigger before they go into the beds.  The squash on the front right, buttercup, was planted right after I took this picture!

I hacked backed this flower and posted a picture of it in my first tour blog. It’s great to see the plant recovering nicely and shooting out lots of new leaves.

The plants all around the garden are growing bigger and bigger, and slowly climbing the fence.

The sweet peas are climbing quickly, but have yet to produce flowers. I’ve been training the strays to go up the fence as well, and to fill in the back corner.

On the other side of the fence, the asparagus beans and scarlet runner beans are slowly getting closer to being climbers. I know that once they get a little bit bigger, they’re going to take off! We’re already drooling thinking about our fresh green beans and canned dilly beans.

The bush beans are growing rapidly and starting to look like flowers are coming!  I planted tricolor beans, and am excited to see the purple stem on this purple bean plant.

The Safari zucchini, pattypan and crookneck squashes are all full of buds!  David and I love eating squash blossoms and are hoping to start having male flowers that we can pick and stuff with goat cheese.  Well, I want to pick and stuff them with goat cheese and he wants to let the plants keep their flowers and buy the blossoms at the farmer’s market. Either way, we’re keeping an eye on these buds and hoping to see them blossoming soon!

The tomatillos are getting taller and taller and are now full of flowers!  We haven’t put cages, or any sort of support on these guys yet, and it’s probably time soon.  This year we planted two tomatillo plants (and have two more purple ones in the nursery).  In the past, we have both had just one tomatillo plant and very little success with fruit.  I recently read that the plants need to be in pairs, as cross pollination is necessary.  We’re hoping that we get plenty of tomatillos this year, and have enough to make jars of salsa verde for the year.

Our four cucumbers are all growing well.  I as a little worried they’d be eaten by slugs, like last year, but they seem to have cleared that hurdle. This one, in the back yard, looks like it’s waiting for something to climb up.  We were planning on having them trail on the ground, but it may be worth trellising it.  Check out that tendril!

In the front yard, the peppers are full of flowers!  We ended up with an extra pepper plant that we didn’t mean to buy, so we will be finding creative ways to use cayenne peppers.  The thing is, I don’t like spicy food.  I’ve always loved growing hot peppers because the plants are so beautiful when they are full of colorful peppers.  I’ve never really enjoyed eating them.  Perhaps our friends like hot peppers and will take some off our hands once these little suckers get going.

Speaking of suckers… I’ve been pulling suckers from the tomato plants and shaping them as they fill their cages. And this week I discovered…

BABY TOMATOES!!

The Indigo Rose is already showing her purple. And she’s tall, lanky and has a glorious purple trunk! She also has lots more flowers coming.

We also have baby San Marzano’s!  David and I have been finding ways to use up the last of the sauce we stored in our freezer this past year.  After we use the last bag, we still have about 5 jars.  I have a feeling we’ll easily replenish our stock.  We also plan to dry, and roast them, and I’ve been looking into canning whole tomatoes also. Can’t wait until they come in and I’m on summer vacation (without graduate school or a wedding to plan like last summer).

The tomato plants are healthy, and host to many insects.

This crane fly (I think) was found resting on a tomato leaf.

I spotted a few of these little bugs on our flowers.  Anyone know what they are?  I grabbed my bug book, and know that they are true bugs. I hope that they are minute pirate bugs, as those are beneficial but I’m not sure about that being a correct ID. I really do need a better Insect ID book, as Peterson’s and my college textbook aren’t helping too much.  Suggestions for what these critters are, and for books, are welcome!

All of the tomatoes are doing really well, except for this one:

The Riesentraube has been battling insects and possibly disease.  I am a little embarrassed for the plant to show it to you, looking like this, but I feel that I must be honest about how the plants are doing. We’re keeping an eye on it and hope that it recovers, but we’re not sure what we can do to help.

It has neighbors that are getting munched also.

Most of the basil is looking great, and a few are even preparing to flower.  Our first batch of pesto will likely be prepared next weekend. This plant is the one that has made the most “friends” and hopefully having it next to the tomato is helping protect the tomato.

On the other side of the raised bed, the radish tops are also getting eaten. We have three different types of radish growing, and I’ve also been bringing some home from school.  I’m learning to like radishes, which David thinly slices into my salad.  He’s happy to eat the rest of them.

These fast growing white icicle radishes are a hybrid from Johnny’s.  I just ordered more white radishes from Baker Creek and can’t wait to plant them!

Hope you enjoy your harvest!