Garden
We’ve been harvesting a lot lately. Right now Christina’s downstairs canning the second batch of tomatoes. Our sunflowers are opening up, and while the zucchini seems to be dead, the bell pepper plant has four or five babies coming in, and the japanese eggplants have been producing steadily for weeks. We’ve been munching cherry and grape tomatoes fresh from the vine since mid-July, and although we’ve got that yellowing problem on the leaves, cutting back on the watering schedule and augmenting with liquified worm castings has helped the plants to keep going. So without further ado… the garden.
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No joke, the liquefied worm poop has been excellent for out tomatoes. We love the stuff.
This is our dinosaur kale, so-called because of the thick, nubbly leaves. It’s delicious.
This is a Japanese eggplant, which is much skinnier and longer than Italian eggplant (we also have one of those going too, but so far it hasn’t produced more than one little baby). I like to grill them with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper until the flesh gets buttery and the skin gets crisp.
We’ve had good luck with the sunflowers this past year. If you look closely at the last image, you can see the bees gathering pollen. We were concerned about the honeybees this year: they didn’t seem to appear as early this year, no matter what we did to attract them, whether it was planting bee balm, or allowing our cilantro to go to seed. Speaking of cilantro going to see, we allowed most of the seeds to fall to earth in hopes of more next year, but have been collecting a good bunch as well: cilantro seeds are better known as coriander, a necessity in Indian and Mexican cooking.
Did I mention I really like this Worm Poop stuff? It’s awesome. And here are some tomato shots: if it looks like the plants aren’t doing so hot, it’s because we’ve already harvested so many, and we’re waiting for new fruits to come in.
immature cherry tomatoes
more baby cherry tomatoes
Out bell pepper plant put forth one measly pepper early this year. We thought it was through, but now we have some new growth!
The beans are also really tasty. Christina’s been saving the seeds to propagate next year.
Yay for beans!
The hops are also coming along well, although to our surprise the cascade hops have left the nuggets in the dust. They’ve grown taller than the trellis and are following a line up to our bedroom window. Is uspect next year, I’ll have to hang a line down from the roof.
I also got a close up of the tiny baby flowers, but for the time being that file’s too big to upload: I’ll try to crop it down later tonight, since it would be a waste to resize it. We don’t expect much this year, as hops tend to spend the first two seasons growing roots and establishing itself. Still, it’s nice to see the little flowers and get an idea what a REAL harvest is going to look like.
The map of the garden..
Have a happy! I’m off to Shakespeare in Clark Park…
August 5th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Dang! I gotta get me some of that worm poop. I looks like you guys have done a great job of utilizing every inch of soil in your yard. A goog lookin’ garden indeed. And those sunflowers, it wouldn’t be complete without big beautiful sunflowers.
My most beautiful plants this season are two Rose of Sharon bushes on each side of the entry of my porch. I’ve never seen them so healthy, and full of purple flowers. They are going crazy.
August 6th, 2008 at 9:35 am
yellowing of leaves on tomatoes can be from too much nitrogen. on the other hand, sounds like your eggplants could use some high P (middle number in the fertilizer) fertilizer.
if you can get your hands on some pine needles you should mulch your eggplants with it. they love it and it really increases the yield.
August 6th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Thanks for the advice on the eggplants! should they be dry pine needles or fresh?
and thanks for the nitrogen info, but i suspect it’s too much water.
September 14th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
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