Trellised melons, squashes and our first okra

With summer in full swing, we’ve noticed more growth and vibrancy in the garden.  Our neighbors have a pool on one of the adjacent walls, and we often hear children splashing and smell grilled meat in the air.  It’s quite odd to be working in the garden and hear the sounds of play in the city.

The vines on the back fence are growing well, but they still aren’t cutting it with covering the fence.  I just transplanted two more scarlet runner beans, and may toss in a few more pole beans.  The morning glories did a much more through job of hiding our neighbors from us.

When I was next to the fence, I looked at the section in between the garage and the fence, and found Mardi sleeping away!  I ran inside to get David (and the camera) and he still didn’t wake, as we were quiet.  Once us humans continued to poke around the garden, the needy cat awoke and started meowing at us.

The two squash trellises are holding up. The melons and squashes are each climbing on their own. On the left is buttercup (big leaves), Kazakh melon (small) and Malali watermelon (on cattle panel by wall, but hard to see).  There’s a sugar baby watermelon on the far right side of the A-frame, by the window.  Next year we’ll move the A-frame; I plan to put a window box under the window.

The right hand side is mostly part of the Kazakh melon!  It’s quite a climber, has three large melons and tons of small ones.  I’ve been making sure the plant gets plenty of water, as I think it suffered a little from our vacation.

The Kazakh melon has a visitor.

The Sugar Baby watermelons are starting!  There are a few of them, and each has hooked itself over the wire, preparing to grow on the trellis. These little guys are so fuzzy; it was a little surprising for me.

We’re getting more buttercup squash, and have two that are nearly ready to pick.

I planted a small parsley patch (and two spinach plants) under the squash A-frame.  We hope that it is shady enough to grow these without them bolting.

Rosie, as always, enjoys hanging out in the garden with us.  She finds the best shady spots to relax.  I think she’s just as happy with the new arch as we are!

Our delicata squash has five new squashes coming!  Five!  That’s great, especially because these are the only ones on the entire plant.

Our string beans are sad.  I planted new ones in the nursery and plan to transplant them in.  Gardening in a new bed, I think this area dried out too quickly after watering.  When the new ones are ready to transplant, I’d like to dig in compost and worm castings to prepare the area. I planted two salvia here to spruce up the area in the meantime.

Our tomatillos are starting to take over. The ant/aphid covered borage hasn’t flowered in a long time. It looks like it has buds forming.  Near the wall are three tomato plants that David staked using the Florida weave technique, more or less.  We’re happy with the support technique and may use it more in future.

We picked our first two okra!  I’m hoping that it stays hot enough for them.  I just planted a Santa Fe Grande pepper behind them.

There will be more cucumbers in a couple of days.  Looks like I’ll be making pickles again this weekend, and have just selected a fermented pickle recipe.  It’s almost time to play with lacto-fermentation!

This week I’m hoping to get the last of the transplanting done (for now) and play in the kitchen a little.  I’m at a training for work during the day, so I don’t have hours to spend canning.  Although, David says he’ll make the peach-jalepeno jam that still needs to get made.

The peaches are telling us it’s time!

 

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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!

 

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.

 

 

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.