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?

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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!

 

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!