Garden

Usually I am aware that official change of season is close by on the calendar and start noticing the changes in the length of the days and nights.  Other things had my attention last month and it was a surprise to hear mention that it was the autumnal equinox already.  Sure enough, it was getting darker a lot earlier.  The weather started varying instead of the same thing as yesterday that is the forecast for the entire summer around here.  And no wonder the garden looked like it was well past its peak.  The veggies obviously were paying a lot more attention to the amount of sunshine than I was and it is time to harvest and store the results to have in the coming months.

There have been both successes and failures with the garden this year.  And a lot of learning experience which should help for next year’s attempt.  There was just too much, too close together after a while and the peas fell victim to powdery mildew.  I did not take action quickly enough and it spread through the pumpkins and squash.  It was either that or an equally annoying result of vegetation crowding that has been killing the leaves and stems of the tomato plants.  While the peas were a loss, I got a decent crop of pumpkins – one white, three cinderellas, two plain ones so far, and two more still turning orange.  There was a giant pumpkin vine, but the two pumpkins that started growing, did not continue ripening after a point.  The spaghetti squash vine was quite prolific.  We have not had any of that yet, so hopefully when I try it later this week it will be as good as the acorn squash.   The acorn squash plants were supposed to be producing fruit just right for two people to shares, but the majority of them turned out a bit smaller than that.  Hopefully, that was just the result of the growing conditions and it will be more uniform next year.  And of course, there was the zucchini.  We probably got enough of that, but it has not been as productive as expected due to lack of male flowers for pollen.   I will give it a try again next year to see it having a better layout of plants in the garden will solve that problem.

The potatoes have also been harvested and we got a lot of small and medium sized ones, and a reasonable number of large ones.  No Costco sized monsters in the batch, thankfully.   We baked a couple of them last week and they were excellent.  The attempt to boil and mash was not so successful since  they started falling apart before they were done and were too watery to mash well.  They should do well boiled in their skins, the way my grandmother used to do them.  While there were a lot of potatoes dug up, I was actually hoping for more.  I think the soil mix used for the beds may be partially to  blame.  I have found someone who has a much nicer blend that we can use for the additional beds we are going to be making and will distribute this heavier mix around to the bottom layers where it will be fine.  At least it was good enough that earthworms had worked their way up into the beds.  While I was being careful to avoid poking the potatoes as I dug them up, I was also finding worms that I did not wish to injure.

The tomatoes are a partial success.  Like the corn, they seemed to take a lot longer than the catalog indicated to get ripe.  They have produced a lot of fruit despite the problems.  Yesterday I canned the first big batch and had seven and a half quarts.  There are a lot more still hanging on the plants so depending on the weather this week, I could be doing the same again next weekend.  The tomatoes that were supposed to be the ones for sauces turned out to be a problem.  They weren’t just lobed like the pictures, but distorted shapes with all sorts of folds that made skinning a very slow process.  It will probably be easier with those to just core and then put through a food mill. 

The corn was the biggest disappointment.  The SE varieties were not supposed to need isolation.  However, apparently they did need to be separated from other types of corn.  When it was time to harvest them, one patch had a lot of colored kernels.  Most likely that was the result of pollen from the ornamental/flour corn.  That was listed as having a harvest time much longer than the others, but they all produced their silk and tassels at the same time.  And the normal corn was not as sweet as I expected.  I will try one of the super sweet varieties next year — and definitely not let any other variety ruin it.

There are still onions and shallots growing.  They should be about done, but have not gotten the message that it is time.  With both I tried sets and seeds.  The ones from sets were a complete failure.  That was probably due to the huge tomato plants on either side.   For some reason, I did not expect to get much when trying to grow onions from seed.   They took a long time to get going, but now there are some very respectable sized onions out there.  I probably will not bother with sets again if the results in the kitchen match what it appears to be in the garden. 

According to the garden calendar for this area, I should have started a winter garden already.  Apparently garlic, leek, carrots, broccoli and other cool weather crops are better when started in the late summer, allowed to winter over and harvest in the late spring.  Maybe next year when the rest of the beds are in place I will give that a try.

While there were plans on paper, it sometimes turns out that the real situation does not work out as well as paper. So here stakes and flags are being used to test out the plan. The stakes at the bottom of the hill are the proposed fence line, small wood stakes at the top are additional raised bed locations and the flags represent trees or groups of trees.

For dinner tonight we had our first green beans from the garden. Instead of the classic Kentucky Wonder or Blue Lake snap beans, I planted a filet variety, Maxibel. I am not sure if the taste was as great as they said.  However, since these beans are a lot thinner than the other kinds, I suspect that the timing given for steaming them was too much and they were overcooked as a result.  If I had paid attention to all the details in the seed catalog description I should not have been surprised at how big the bean plants got — the description does say the plants are tall. 

Maybe in just a few more days the corn will be ready to eat. The seed catalogs said these varieties should be ready to harvest in about seven weeks.  However, perhaps because it has been pretty cool here this summer, it has taken several weeks longer than that. Also, the catalog entry for one of the varieties indicated that it would be about six feet tall and that the other six and a half feet.  They got the first one correct, but half the other patch is more like eight feet tall.  Not that I care as long as they fill out lots of sweet delicious ears.

Meanwhile we got several pounds of green beans from the initial two square feet planted and have much of it in the freezer for later.  The bean plants are pretty much past their prime and I should probably pull them out next week.  A later second planting did not do so well because the growth from the first batch and other veggies in neighboring squares encroached on their space.  That is fine – we will still get enough from the second batch to have fresh picked green beans for a few meals. 

The shelling peas got a bad case of powdery mildew on the lower parts because the vegetation was too thick and close together on the shadier side of the beds.  It looks like they are a lot taller than expected and would have been better on a trellis or other support.  While the top half now seems like it will be producing nicely, the powdery mildew has spread through the squash and pumpkin leaves and makes for a not so pretty garden.  Hopefully, we will do better with how things are planted next year. 

Van Gogh’s sunflower painting has always been a favorite of mine.  My parents had a framed print of it.  So of course, I had to try a few in the first garden I have had in a long time.

The sunflowers are starting to bloom. The plants are under 3 feet tall but flowers are large.

Another sunflower, only this one is different from the others. The flower looks as if some seeds of another variety slipped in with the others.  Which is just fine.