weekend harvest

9 japanese cucumbers and 3 sugar snap peas (i actually harvested another 1/2 handful)


9 zucchini


harvest overview


my lone sweet 100 tomato harvest. how pretty!






3 onions (2 red, 1 white). these red onions grew really well! i am curing them now. (which will take about 3 weeks)

Left Garden

Here is the weekly update...





here in the upper left side of the photo, you can see the 2 light green plants - these are the blue lake bush beans that i first planted. for some reason, they are not happy here. actually all of the bush beans that i planted in the left garden are not doing well and they are all this light yellow-green color. i don't know if its too much water or too much sun. i did lighten up on the watering, but so far no change. im a little worried about these...it could be the soil.


as you can see i pulled up all of the broccoli. it started to become an aphid feeding ground that was going out of control, so i decided to just uproot all of it. i was trying to save some seeds from the plant, but i have ordered some anyways. no real loss.








here you can see 3 onions that i harvested today (you have seen them in my harvest post). there are some great looking red onions! two onions are left in the ground.



Top Garden

the zucchini garden


as you can see, the sugar snap peas are slowly going down. this is mostly due to the zucchini plants just growing out of control and its pushing the metal support around it (which the pea plant is latched on to) outward. it is also due to the fact that the height of the pea plant (over 5 ft) is just too tall for the metal support (which is only 3 ft) and the wind is just pushing over the plant. i have had to trim down some of the pea plants because they have been breaking. (i need to either get 6ft supports or stakes)




the japanese cucumber plant is slowly growing over into the grass..at least it will add some green to the lawn. :-/








see the blue lake bush bean in the lower left area of the photo? this is part of the second planting of bush beans and these guys that i planted in the top and right garden are growing wonderfully! the green is a normal green, unlike the bean plants planted in the left garden. very strange....




my watermelon plants are continually getting bigger. no slowing of growth since i have been watering them daily.





Right Garden

flower bed...see the new plant i planted in the center of the flower bed? (it has the white tag on it). it is a dwarf mandarin orange tree. it is about 2 ft tall. at maturity, it should reach 4 - 6 ft. something in my head said that a dwarf citrus tree would be perfect for this area, and i just followed that "calling". it has a few fruits already on the tree, which is exciting. we'll see how this works. i think all these flowering plants (except for the forsynthia and calla) are annuals, so i will have to replace them anyways.


a healthy blue lake bush bean plant

tomatoes are a' coming!

here are some proof that the tomatoes are growing nicely! i actually harvested my first tomato (sweet 100) today and it was tasty! most tomatoes are still green (including those that are on my heirloom tomato plants)

Spitze


Mini


Boutiful Harvest Grape


Grape (okay, so when i went to the grocery store and looked at the grape tomatoes they are selling, the size did actually correspond to the ones growing here. i guess it just looks bigger on the plant. :-) )


Sweet 100

just because flowers are pretty...

the unknown purple-bluish flower


african daisy




alyssum


petunia


marigold




nasturtium

Independence Day and Freaky Friday

okay, i thought i saw everything yesterday while i harvested cucumbers, peas and zucchini. but when i went out there this morning, i discovered some weird things going on...oh, by the way, happy independence day!

first up, the tomato plants i planted from seed. these were the ones that i planted WAY too early outside and i thought it was going to die in our light frosty spring weather. well, i'm happy to say that it survived! and i spied some rather large tomatoes. keep in mind that the seed package said "grape tomatoes". you know the ones that you buy in small plastic containers at the grocery store? usually no more than an inch or so long? well, these must be at least an inch and a half, maybe two! and they are still green! i can't wait to try these, but isn't that weird? okay, maybe not, but very cool to seeing it grow so big.


and everyone knows how prolific zucchini/squash plants can be. i'm almost getting tired of mine already, and it creates such HUGE plants. (note to self - more spacing and limit zucchini plants to two or three). well, till now, i've only seen fruits grow from the base of the plant. this morning i saw this...


this zucchini is growing on an arm of one of the leaf stalks! and THAT leaf stalk is growing multiple leaf stalks! talk about using plant surfaces to the extreme! it's like the "head"/base of the zucchini plant is growing a second head! i know i'm going to have "fun" chopping these plants up in the fall. i might just wait till it dies a bit from the fall cold air and then dig it into the ground as compost. (oh, by the way, last night i ordered my first compost bin and worm bin. yay! time to make some of my own compost for a change. unfortunately it will take about 4 - 6 weeks to get here...:-/ )

then there is the soybean plant. i've been patiently waiting to see the flowers bloom on these plants but so far nothing! the little "buds" i took pictures of last week thinking they were buds? nope...but i was close. take a look at the picture below...


is this some kind of soybean immaculate conception?? where are the flowers? are these plants out to tease me as i eagerly look for flowers yet they somehow are able to hide them from me and *poof!* - beans? what the heck is going on? i find that really odd. well, one thing is cool - i've got soybeans coming in! woohoo!

and for the finale - WARNING: if you don't like spiders, your presence on this blog has now come to an end. close the browser and don't look any further! don't say i didn't warn you!!!

this spider has been guarding (or just hanging out) on this particular japanese cucumber plant for a few weeks now. i don't usually see him, but he makes his presence known every few days. i don't bother him, and he doesn't bother me. i just kinda wonder what kind of spider this is and what kind of business he has around my cucumber plants. i don't actually see a web around the plants that he would use. but i figure, i'd just leave him alone since he does eat bugs. i'm just a little afraid that one day i will move some cucumber leaves and out jumps this spider at me with open mouth...argh!

it has been a wonderful eve of the 4th of July! at least in the way of harvests.

i have been wanting to harvest the garlic for the last 2 weeks now, but since i just planted them 2 months ago, i thought they would need more time. i also read that just before being ready to harvest, garlic plants grow scapes (flowering stems), but mine never did - i think its because i just planted them in april (they normally go in the ground the previous fall) and it has already gotten very hot. considering that they were only in the ground for 2 month, the size of two of them are rather good - both around 2 inches in diameter. the other one was about 1 1/4 inches. i am trying to cure them in our garage (which we use for storage). but we may just eat it before that happens. (we only HAVE three...plus, we are garlic lovers).

i have no idea about the species of garlic this is...it is just one of those garlics that you buy from the grocery store. we let our garlic lie around for too long and three started growing, so i planted them. (this year, i ordered garlic cloves of different species to be planted later in the year...that should be interesting!)


this is the second part of the harvest...4 japanese cucumbers and 2 light green zucchini. the larger zucchini went completely unnoticed until now (that zucchini jungle is HUGE, what can i say) which explains the size (i would have otherwise picked it at the size of the smaller one). after scrubbing off the spines on the cucumbers i went to eat dinner. i then found out that we will be meeting some people tomorrow who showed interest in some zucchini and cucumber, so i went out to look more closely at my plants for a second time...


(oh, this is the "group photo" of the first harvest i made today)


after going through all the harvestable plants with a keen eye, i found these - 1/2 a handful of sugar snap peas, 2 more zucchini and 3 more japanese cucumbers. those cucumber plants are amazing. i still see a bunch more getting bigger.


i also harvested half of our remaining yellow and red onions. the yellow onions are somewhat small, but the red one is our largest so far. not bad, huh? again, these are plants that we bought at a plant nursery as seedlings. i will keep them outside to dry and i might take a couple to my aunt's house tomorrow.

wow, it's the first of july already! it has been 5 months since we moved into this new home and so far, i've harvested about 15 - 20 zucchini, 2 cucumbers (i just harvested one today), numerous sugar snap peas and strawberries, 10 - 15 carrots, and about 10 heads of large broccoli (not including the many smaller broccoli heads that grew out of the plants after the larger heads were cut). its just amazing what kinds of food i can grow in our backyard!

i am currently waiting for the tomatoes to get ripe (10 different kinds), the soybeans to blossom and harvest, almonds to harvest, plums to pick (probably not for at least another year), harvesting the rest of the onions, all of the garlic, trying the sweet potato once its ready (..around september) and the planting of the fall crops.

i just got my packets of onion (red and white) seeds from seedsavers.org, as well as some monnopa spinach. i never really ate spinach but the description for this variety is that it is the "sweetest" variety. im hoping its a easy way into get me interested in eating spinach. :-) (i haven't told hubby yet that i bought spinach seeds, and he has told me that he doesn't like them...shhhh)

i've done some reading, and i think carrots are something i can plant year-round. this is good since both of us eat carrots. i just may have these always in the garden somewhere. something else we can grow all year are turnips...i don't think i've ever eaten a turnip, so i might just try this one day. maybe next year.

because of the heat and drought, the lawn in the front and back yard have been turning brown and crispy. we are thinking of putting raised beds for more growing capacity instead of redoing the lawn. not sure if we actually need more growing capacity, but it would be more eye-appealing and edible instead of a dead lawn. what do you think? :-/

i really love being in that garden. every day after coming home from work, i put my stuff down, say hello to the birds and walk directly out to the backyard. it's like a "good" habit of mine, and it really melts the day's stress away for me. i check for bugs (helpful and destructive), admire the flowers, harvest ready vegetables, water the watermelon patch (gosh, do they need daily water!! if not, they just stop growing), look for new seedlings (german chamomile and calendula), as well as new tomatoes in the tomato garden, see how the new transplants are doing, water the seedlings and potted plants, peek into the zucchini forest, and trim some invading vines or leaves from space belonging to another plant (those h-u-g-e zucchini leaves can be rather "assertive" in their growth, so trimming them down to size is sometimes necessary). i have also been on the look out for soybean flowers. from what i've seen (and photographed), i think i only see buds. outside seems like a great warm/hot day so maybe they will finally bloom for me. :-)