The Canned Finale

Ah, summer vacation.  For me, it’s wrapping up and next week I switch back into prepping for the school year.  I’ve spent the past two days in the kitchen making sure that I get as much done as possible before time is up.

David and I just returned from a two week road trip (which explains my blogging absence).  I’m going to try to keep this post short, with mostly pictures of food, but there’s a lot that grew while we were gone.

Before we left we majorly trimmed the winter squashes and melons.  After being sprayed for powdery mildew, many of the leaves died.  I got a bit excited with my pruning shears and took down most of the buttercup and red kuri squash plants. The plants were not looking that healthy to begin with, and did not have any new fruit.  We picked what fruit was there, hoping they would set more fruit while we were gone.

We picked our Kazakh melons!  (We had one earlier in the season, bringing our grand total from the sprawling vine to three melons.) They were sweet with a honeydew-like consistency.

We also harvested three pinnacle spaghetti squash, two buttercup squash and four red kuri squash (we ate one before heading out of town).

As we don’t have a root cellar, we’ve put them in the hall closet to store for a while.  I’m a bit embarrassed about the state of the closet, but I’m sure you all recognize the important tools like a salad spinner, food dehydrator, crock pot and lots of towels! The box under the towels holds the canned goods that don’t fit in our pantry.

Before vacation we decided to try canning whole tomatoes in water (Ball Book recipe).  After we make enough sauce and salsa to last the year, we’ll do this again at the end of the season.

I’ve been getting a system down for canning.  Whole tomatoes requires skinning them first.  I prefer to do this with David’s help, but I think he was outside working in the yard when I did it this time.  Yard work is just as important.

We canned three quart jars of mixed tomatoes.  I love the mixed colors and hope the mixed flavors work just as well!  We used San Marzanos, Indigo Rose, Jaune Flamme and our neighbor’s mystery slicing tomatoes.

Our neighbor helped keep an eye on our cats and garden when we were gone.  We returned a couple of days earlier than we originally planned, and he told us that he had planned on mowing our lawn for us before we got back.  It’s great to have good neighbors!

The first thing we saw when we got back is two Sugar Baby Watermelons hanging from our A-frame squash/melon trellis!  They’re not mature yet, but they look like they’re getting there quickly.  I’ve read up on how to tell if a watermelon is ready to pick, but I’d love some advice if anyone has some.

The morning after we returned, I woke up early and went outside to harvest our veggies.

Our Little Leaf pickling cucumbers were the size of normal slicing cucumbers.  I wonder if I should have been picking them at this size the entire season.  One of the two plants on the ladder held six large cucumbers clustered tightly together.  Notice at the top of the plant, there are still more coming.  These are an impressive hybrid!

Between the two vines in the front and the three in the back, I picked quite a few cucumbers.  We set aside two for salads, and I began slicing and dicing the remaining cucumbers.  After weighing it out, I decided to make a three jars of bread and butter pickles, a half batch of Indian relish and a full batch of pickle relish.

Of course, each recipe had a different prep and lots of chopping.  I did all of the prep one day, and then the canning the second day.  I also sliced up the smaller parts of the zucchini for zucchini pickles.

The bread and butter pickles needed to be salted and iced.  Last batch we made was from the Ball Blue Book, this batch was from Put ’em Up!  We’re quite excited about this new (to us) cookbook and also used the Indian and Pickle relishes from it.

The bread and butter pickles look so pretty while they’re cooking.  This recipe didn’t seem too sweet and seemed to have just the right amount of liquid.

And our three jars!

I’m just getting started now.

The zucchini pickles have a similar process.

They had to salt and ice for two hours.

Then instead of cooking the zucchini in the brine, they were supposed to soak in it for two hours THEN come to a boil.

I decided that these would have to wait until the next day, as I had a lot going on already.  So, they went into the fridge while in their brine.  Hopefully they won’t be too soggy.  To attempt to compensate, we’re going to throw a grape leaf (thanks to our neighbor) in each jar.

The relishes took the most time.  We also have the most jars of them!

The Indian Relish (top) contains cucumber, onion, carrot and cauliflower.  It is seasoned with cider vinegar, curry powder, turmeric, mustard powder (which I ground myself), and fresh ginger.

We canned six 4 ounce jars and four 8 ounce jars of this fragrant pickle that will be a great addition to our dinners.

I’m having a hard time accepting the pickle relish because of how it looks.  Earlier this summer I made a sweet relish that looks bright and colorful in the jar. The pickle relish is brown and dingy with flecks of celery seed.

Our pickle relish is also with cider vinegar.  The brown is from ground allspice, peppercorns and celery seed.  Typically we grind our own allspice, but I dug around the cabinets and found some pre-ground that I brought back from Belize a few years ago.

I hope that was a smart decision.

And now the tomatoes.

The Indigo Rose are beautiful, a little meaty and not that strong of a flavor.  They are consistent in size.  All of this makes them perfect for roasting, which will concentrate their flavor.

The amount that we had fit perfectly on two trays.  I sliced them, brushed them with olive oil, and then sprinkled them salt, pepper and fresh thyme. They were roasted in the oven at 275 for about 4 hours.  After they cooled, I put them in a ziploc and tossed them in the freezer to be used.

I also have one tray of cherry tomatoes to roast.  Roasting is perfect for cherry tomatoes that split, and our Isis Candy have been splitting like crazy these days.

The San Marzanos are ready!!  They are perfect: large, meaty and very few holes.

These will make a great salsa (later) and make a great tomato sauce (now).

The San Marzanos were added to a sauce pot with a chopped onion and a handful of garlic cloves.  We kept the sauce simple so that we can add more to it when we use it.  After it cooked for a bit, we used an immersion blender to chop up the chunks.  When it was thick enough, we canned the sauce (with a little bit of lemon juice to assure the right acidity) and processed it for 35 minutes.

We figured out that a full bowl makes 8 pints of beautiful sauce. The small jars for when we make pizza.  We decided that we need to make one more batch of sauce this summer, and we’ll be good for the year.  From looking at the plants, we think that we’ll easily have enough for that and for canning salsa.

While we didn’t make tomato salsa (this time), we did make a salsa verde.

I picked all the large tomatillos that I found out back.  There are many more coming from the two plants in the back yard.  And our two purple tomatillos in the front yard are finally starting to set fruit.

As we planned on canning the salsa verde, I decided to follow the Ball Book recipe.  I also included some green tomatoes that came off the plants while I was tidying them up.

I added onion, garlic, the one jalepeno we had growing, crushed red pepper, vinegar,and lime juice.

After it cooked down a bit, we used the immersion blender to chop it up. When we tasted it, we decided to put in a little sugar also.

We made three pints and two half pints.  The sauce is a little thin for a dipping salsa, but will be perfect for enchiladas!

Our dining room table is full of jars.  My next step is trying to make space in that closet for more jars.  I’m also working on arranging a food swap in my town.  We tried to register for the Los Angeles one, and it “sold out” in 4 minutes!!  We figure that means it’s time to start another one.  With all of our food that we just made, it’s hard to think about parting with any of it, but it’s exciting to think about exchanging it for things we haven’t made.

As I look at the window, I see a cucumber that needs to be picked.  Looks like it’s time to think about the next round of canning.  Oh wait, I mean it’s time to think about heading back to teaching.

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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!

 

Beginning of July tour

The past week has been spent more in the kitchen than outside.  Finally the heat wave broke and it’s back to the 70s outside!  David and I took advantage of the cool weather and spent a couple hours outside tidying up and working on projects.  I figured it was time to show what’s been happening in the garden.

The roses are in full bloom again.  I’ve been searching for ways to preserve the blooms and am thinking about everything from rose water to rose petal preserves.  I found a decadent recipe for coconut rose petal semifreddo, which may be an option also.  I’d love suggestions if you’ve done anything with your roses before.

Notice the tomatos in the raised bed are getting larger.  David and I staked them up the other day and we can finally see the fruits.  I also spotted two finches taking advantage of the perch.

This is Rosie’s obedient look. She just is wandering around the yard, hasn’t found her ball yet and may be getting a little impatient with my photographs.  I asked her to stop by our Abe Lincoln and Purple Prudence tomatoes.  They are both (finally) just starting to flower.  Notice the stunted peppers on the right.  I believe they are serrano or poblano and hope that they get the message to grow soon.

Behind Rosie is the mystery garden area.  There are now two mystery tomato plants as well as prolific nasturtiums.  These nasturtiums are the current source of seed pods for our pickled nasturtium pods.

We decided that it was time to fertilize the potted plants and cucumber vines.  I recently watched a video about fertilizing cucumbers and noticed that mine were starting to get a little yellow around the edges, as he described.  So, I grabbed a box of Epsom salt from under the fish tank (I bought it for the fish water years ago, and never used it) and the organic fertilizer from the garage.  I mixed the two together, applied the side dressing and then watered.  Hopefully the little guys will enjoy it!

The front herb bed finally got cleaned up.  There’s still more to do, but I started with cutting back the bulbs.  The chasmanthe had become too large for the space, so in addition to cutting them back, I dug out a couple dozen corms to bring to school this fall.

I felt like I was pulling potatoes while digging them out.  Some were large, others were tiny.  Often there was a large one with little ones clinging to it.  We will probably pull out a few more to make space in the front of the house.  I didn’t want to take out too many, because it was so wonderful watching the hummingbirds flit by this winter.

I finally pulled out our giant coriander/ cilantro plant.  We had planned to harvest the coriander, possibly in it’s green stage, but ran out of time.  At this point it is full of powdery mildew, and I’m not sure that we should harvest the coriander.  I brought the plant back to our compost bin, because it was full of lady bugs. Some of them were even spotted making new ladybugs.

Our garden in the back, near the compost bin, is full of aphids.

The borage has had ants and aphids living on it for a month now.  David and I decided to sprinkle cornmeal around the plant, hearing that it could help get rid of the ants.  It seems to have worked well so far; we have noticed significantly less ants, more ladybugs and other insects.  There are still ants, as you can see by the is two poking the ladybug in this picture. The ladybugs seem much more brazen these days.  David told me that he spotted a ladybug being chased by ants while carrying an aphid in it’s mouth!

The tomato next to the borage has it’s own ant situation.  When we returned home from vacation, we noticed that our tomato plants in the back have ants frozen in place along the stems.  They are dead and it’s an odd and gruesome scene.  We have no idea how it happened and would love to know any theories that you have.

While I played with the bulbs in the front yard, David raked up avocado leaves and added them to the side yard.  This is the last stretch of dirt with nothing in it.  We recently mulched it and then added grass clippings.  David put down avocado leaves.  Next we’ll spread a few bags of composted manure, then mulch it again.  This area has to be hand watered, and the hose is not convenient.  Our succulent pots have been hanging out here recently.  This fall we plan to plant sages, lavenders and possibly native grasses.

The backyard area is starting to fill in.  We’ve been needing to finish the A-frame squash support, but the squashes don’t seem to notice that we are slow.

The cucumbers and delicata are attempting to climb the bamboo tripod (front left).  I snagged an unplanted little leaf cucumber from the school greenhouse the other day, and planted it to fill in the front of the support.  Two baby delicata squash were flowering when I took this picture. Behind the cucumbers are the overzealous tomatillos.  We’ve been checking their paper husks, and we’re hoping to start making salsa verde in a couple of weeks.

The buttercup and red kuri squash climbing up the cattle panel trellis are doing great!  We’ve started to guide the squash back down the same side that it came up.  The supported squashes are maturing and the small arbor provides shade for us to rest on a hot day.

This is taken from underneath the trellis where a new red kuri squash is growing.  It seems to be supported by the fence and we’re debating giving it a little hammock.  While watching our squashes grow, I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell when they’re ready to pick.  A lot of what I read is not helpful for Southern California gardening.  For example, I learned that I should harvest winter squash before the first frost, but it’s ok to leave it on the vine if it’s not a heavy frost.  We don’t get frost.  Ever.  (Year-round gardening is wonderful, and our bugs are huge to prove it.)

So from what I gather, I look for mature fruit color and size, as well as the stem starts to turn brown and my fingernail can not pierce the skin.  I’d love confirmation on this from the people who know.

Our sweet dumpling squashes are just starting to grow.  I put straw underneath them, and now I notice they are covered in tiny black bugs.  Looking at the pictures, I notice that the straw is as well.  This is new to me. I wonder if it’s from the straw and hope that the squash are healthy.

We’re watching our Pinnacle spaghetti squash and I wonder why I thought smaller squash was better to order than larger squash.  The compact vines have three fruits right now, and we’re hoping for more.  The plants are getting a bit hidden by their prolific neighbor, a buttercup vine, and we’re working on fixing that problem.  The A-frame trellis got a bit held up, and we’re rethinking the support system.  I’ll write more on that as we resolve the issue.

Our Kazakh melons are taking over.  There are three fruits right now, the largest is about the size of  a softball.

The vine, however, has taken up four feet of the 8×8 bed.  You can see the thai basil poking through by the bamboo pole.  This melon has many branches, and I’m trying to get them to grow up the fence, or up the start of the trellis, but they are resistant to being tamed and keep making more vines.  This variety is supposed to be a good climber, so perhaps if I give it more attention, it will climb.  We’ll see how the melons taste before deciding if we’ll grow this again next year.  Our space is small, and we both really want squash but this year is more of a test year for the vines. Most likely we will still save seeds from this rare heirloom, even if we don’t plan to grow it ourselves.

We have a chocolate sunflower! Besides sounding delicious, we picked these because of their size.  We are enjoying it in the garden while it’s flowering.

Our yarrow has opened and the color is so bright, it’s almost florescent.  We made our first three cuts of apricot branches to allow this plant to grow up straight.  The yarrow had been reaching into the garden aisle because there was a tree branch over it’s head.  We haven’t wanted to cut our baby apricot tree, but it was time to take a few snips and help it branch out.

While we were in Florida, we picked up a friend to keep the tree and yarrow company.  This is our new giant fly, and it will hopefully protect our garden from bad bugs and welcome in the good.

We planted our sweet peas too late.  All spring we watched them climb up the fence.  Currently they are covered in powdery mildew and will be torn out this week.  So now they start to flower.  And they are beautiful.  Each of the two blooming flowers is beautiful.

Further down the fence, our yard long beans are starting to grow beans.  They are filling in the fence, flowering and climbing away.  David loves long beans.  I haven’t quite acquired a taste for them.  I’m excited to see what he does with them.

We’re also starting to get scarlet runner beans.  This is our first year with these plants and I’m in love with their luscious red flowers.  I’ve found a few recipes for them, and think we’re going to let the seed pods dry on the vine.  I must chat with people who grow these regularly to find out what they do with the beans and how they enjoy eating them.

Our zucchini that fell over during vacation is back up and fruiting!  We look forward to grilled zucchini and more zucchini pickles.

And finally, we have our first eggplant flower.  This is an oriental eggplant (unknown variety).  We are also growing rosa bianca, hansel, gretel and fairy tale.  We had grand plans for perfecting our baba ganoush this summer.  We were hoping to have so much eggplant that it was coming out of our ears.

We are thankful to have a flower.

David and I also decided that we haven’t been watering our garden enough.  We read an article that suggested when you water, dig in the soil a couple of inches down to see how deep the water percolates through the top layer. It flat out said that soil lies.  The next time we watered, with a sprinkler for 15 minutes, I barely scratched the surface and saw that it was bone dry underneath.  Having a new garden, our soil is still breaking down and we are learning what it needs.  As we don’t get rain in the summer, we must learn how to properly water our garden.

Today it is cool and overcast.  Often the marine layer burns off and it warms up.  I plan to get the tomatoes in the dehydrator started soon, and start some seeds in our nursery.  It’s time to replant green beans and plant another crop of lettuce, carrots and radishes.  Hope you’re enjoying your long weekend!

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.

 

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!

Flowers on everything!

Each day I notice more and more flowers in our yard! You see, I’ve always had a thing for flowers.  When David and I moved into our house and began maintaining (and adding to) the gardens, we consciously decided to remove many ornamentals, like the Canna lilies who engulfed our sprinklers and hid snails armies.  I joke with David about how he wouldn’t let me plant flowers; he felt stronger about it than I did.  I understand and agree with the reasoning that we have such little space and want to grow as much food as possible.  When we began discussing what we’d do with the property, with no debate, the rose garden stayed.  We put a few annuals in our herb bed and after building our raised tomato bed, we dug a bed dedicated to flowers and perrenials.

The dedicated flower bed doesn’t hold much and I’ve been thinking about what to do with it.  We planted bulbs too late, and most of them haven’t bloomed.  Three of the five sagos look great and I just decided it’s time to take the other two out.  The asparagus fern was given to me by my sister, and it was half dead when we got it.  It’s now probably our healthiest looking plant in the bed.  There are other plants, not pictured, which were all experiments and the plan is to move the perennials in here around a bit later this year.

For now, I transplanted a few cosmos in here and they seem to like their new spot.

In our yard, the succulents do really well!  Most of them are cuttings from friends or neighbors, and a few of them are from David’s aunt.

This is the succulent on our porch that we’ve been waiting for.  Many of them have been flowering recently and it’s been so interesting to see all the shapes and colors.

I’ve been more enthralled with watching our vegetables blossom, bringing with them the promise of food.

These flowers bring David the promise of food, and are ones that I avoid like the plague.  It’s cilantro, or will be coriander.  The flowers seem to always be covered in flies and just rubbing on the plant makes the slightest breeze reek of cilantro.

Off to the backyard gardens, where flowers are everywhere!

The potted flower that I cut back this spring is getting buds!  I can’t wait to see it covered in pink flowers again, and am so glad that the chance I took on it has paid off so far.

In the backyard we have many types of squashes and melons, and many of them are flowering!  In the squash bed, the only one flowering right now is the Kazakh melon, but the others are getting close!

I love looking into these flowers.  I haven’t noticed a female one yet, and I’m wondering how different the female melons are.  I’m keeping watch!

This week the sugar baby and buttercup have been taking off. The first female pattypan flowered today.  We currently have three baby yellow crookneck squash on the way!

There are about five zucchinis growing!  I had originally planning on growing Sunburst yellow zucchini alongside of the Safari, but they were backordered.  I have the seeds now, and David and I were just talking about planting some if/when we do a second planting of zucchini this summer.

I’m already in love with the Safari zucchini.  I can’t wait to see them pickled and in jars.  Or grilled with fresh basil and tomato.  Or in zucchini bread.

We haven’t had space to grow squash before. I haven’t grown it myself in about 15 years and I’m excited about the harvest from our one plant. I’m hoping we have the perfect amount to keep up with.  In fact, that’s how we’ve planned our plants- enough to can and eat but not be over inundated at once.

Our acorn squash plants already have about five or six fruits coming.

We have it crawling up and over a tomato cage.  I love how it’s strong tendrils are gripping the wire.  David and I were talking this evening about pruning back the plants a little, so they don’t take over the garden. I think I made him nervous by suggesting that I did not water the plant to grow as large as possible and wanted to… gasp.. cut it.

Our cucumbers are starting to take off.  There are lots of male and female flowers and they are crawling through their beds.  We haven’t set up climbing structures for them.  We just talked about it and will hopefully find time in the next couple of weeks to do that.  The end of the school year is always tough to find time, but I think we have a rather speedy solution.

We’ve been planning our pickles and we’re keeping a close watch.

The beans have started to grow but are still tiny.  I planted the ones in our school garden a bit sooner, and I’ve been munching on fresh green beans throughout the day. 

The Dragon’s Tounge beans are flowering and growing.  We’ll be eating some within the next couple of weeks!

I really thought that the variety we had was pole beans, but here’s how they look:

Apparently they are bush beans!

The dill was just planted here, and has already begun to flower.  We pinched it back and are hoping it will bush out a little.  We need the dill for our cucumbers.  The two cukes here are both a little leaf pickling variety. These are the ones that should get another pole and a trellis to climb soon.

Both David and I will be busy this weekend, but hope to find some time to get plant supports in, and transplant the Malali watermelon.  This should be our last weekend in a while before we have a larger harvest.  Right now we have radishes and lettuce ready to harvest.  We just pickled more nasturtium capers tonight. And tried them for the first time- they are like capers with a kick!

Siamese twin flowers, using the Roo and first pesto!

When I went back outside to try to determine if the melons growing are male or female, I found out that one of the flowers I had photographed in the melons post is a mutant!

You see that flower on the right?  It has two flowers growing out of the same caylx!I tried my best to get a picture of the base of it, and you can hopefully see through the blurriness that the calyx is a fused one.  I’m not sure if this is common.  I’m not sure it will make a difference, as I’m pretty sure it’s a male flower.  My understanding is that plants from the family Cucurbitaceae often produce male flowers before female flowers. I wonder what this melon would look like if it grew from a double flower like this… I wonder if it could.

This weekend had a lot of garden excitement.  David finished weeding the flower beds and spread the rest of the mulch yesterday. We finally tied up our rambling oregano, replanted parsley and thyme and planted the last of the tomatoes, tomatillos eggplant and peppers.  Yes, I’ll probably write about those soon, but my biggest thing that I am excited about (and even sent picture texts to my gardening friends) is that I got to use my new Roo!!

I first read about the Roo on Garden Betty, and knew that I wanted one but wasn’t sure that I needed one.  This spring, as we expanded our gardens, I decided that I needed one (and it came in purple).  You see, I used to wear long skirts quite often, and I would fill them with the harvest.  The Roo is much more practical. Here’s some pictures of me demonstrating it’s use after harvesting our first batch of basil.

I’ve already used to Roo to hide Rosie’s ball.  She hasn’t figured out how it works yet.  You can see the basil peaking out of the giant pocket. When I went inside, I enlisted David’s help to photograph how the Roo works.

The ropes are easy to unhook.

After unhooking the ropes, I opened up the pocket.

The harvested basil was hiding inside!

With a gentle shake, the mass of basil fell onto the towel. 

A little more shaking for this action shot. 

And soon it was out!  I have a feeling this will be much easier than the paper bags I used to fill. 

I checked to make sure all the basil was out. (It was.)

And here is our first crop of basil!  We have basil growing in both the side yard and back yard. Some of it was beginning to flower, but it was perfect timing as I only found two opened flowers in the whole harvest. I took pretty big cuts off the basil, shaping it for growth throughout the summer.  Typically David and I harvest basil about 4 times during the summer, and I think we have twice as many plants.  This shouldn’t mean twice as many harvests, it just means twice as much pesto (we hope!).

When we make pesto, the first step is cleaning the plants. I enjoy doing this in the morning and love the smell and feel of it. It sometimes reminds me of when I worked on a farm in Vermont, and we would gather around the table to begin our workday by prepping basil for pesto.

David then takes the basil leaves and makes pesto! I prep, he cooks. We’re both happy with that deal. The cleaning part is still undecided.

We freeze it in ice cube trays, pop them out and keep them in bags that last the year.  We are now cleaning out the leftover ones from last year, and will be having pesto with as many things as we can during the next couple of weeks.

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!