Cactus Fruit Agave Ale and Mixed Veggies

We're bottling our very experimental brew this evening.  The stuff floating on top is the cubed cactus fruit.  It was bright pinkish red when it first went in, then the beer turned red, then it turned black, and now it's a medium brown.  I've read mixed reviews of prickly pear beers so it will be a surprise tonight when we sneak a taste.  It will carbonate in the bottles and be ready for drinking in a couple weeks.

I removed one of the kale plants this morning to free up some space in the plot.  I also pulled and thinned the carrots and moved a hot pepper into a sunnier spot.  Between the fig tree behind my plot and the massive sunflowers in my plot, I'm battling shade and trying to maximize my season.  Two of the three cherry tomato plants are next on the list to go.  They haven't been super productive and I'm trying to make room for late season crops.  The broccoli plants are finally bulking up and turning purple (they are Purple Sprouting Broccoli, after all) so they could use more room.  I might have to say goodbye to one of the sunflower trees. 

This morning I sowed beet, lettuce, and bean seeds to see if I can get some in before winter.  Last year we had an extended mild fall.  If we get the same thing this year, I should be able to get a few salads out of the planting.

Post Irene Gardening

The tomato plants fell over and there were a few decomposing figs in the plot, but otherwise everything made it through the storm. I was expecting all my unripe cherry tomatoes to be on the ground, the plot to be flooded with a foot of water, and the gardening season to be over. We were spared!


My Mystery Melon that popped up in the corner of my plot continues to grow. Can anyone identify this guy?

The bell pepper plant has decided to start producing, just in time for fall weather.

I've been dead-heading the sunflowers and getting great successive blooms.

Tomatoes, basil, and a fat carrot for salads were gathered Sunday after the storm blew through.

Beets, beet greens, a funny looking carrot that didn't taste so great, and some figs were harvested yesterday.

Beets, Baby Cukes, Swiss Chard Yum

Lemon Cucumber plants are flowering and covered with tiny cucumbers. Pickles, anyone?

The beets are doing fine and providing a mild supplement to the spicy mesclun mix salad greens.

The Swiss Chard is enjoying the rain and sunshine. I've got ten or so plants growing in succession (happened naturally somehow) for some excellent side dish portions.

The plot is in fine health despite the overwhelming numbers of woodlice (pill bugs) rolling about. In researching the problem, I've discovered that they are crustaceans, not insects, and they thrive in damp conditions. I'm hoping they'll be content to munch on my bolting radishes and leave the rest alone.

Last Beets, New Brew

I pulled the final beet crop yesterday at the garden. After snapping their portrait, I removed all the greens for salads and sauteing and bagged the beets. Since they've been in the ground for months, I'm not sure how they'll taste. Maybe it's time to learn how to make borscht?

The marigolds are still doing their thing and I'm a little reluctant to remove the garden's final splendor. The pepper plant is still flowering so I didn't have the heart to pull that either. I have one bunch of escarole that's survived the frosts and harvestable. I pulled some leaves for yesterday's salad. Everything else was relaxing under a blanket of fig leaves, including some little lettuce sprouts.

In the kitchen we have a new batch of beer that we're drinking: Hopp'd Chipotle Ale. After tasting it for the first time last night, I think we're all impressed with our efforts. It has an up-front smokey pepper flavor, it's clean on the palette, and it has a warm-on-the-back-of-your-throat finish. A chocolate and coffee stout or porter is next.

We're gearing up for the holiday season here. We'll be kicking it off this weekend with a craft show at a friend's apartment in Brooklyn where I'll be selling some Mao Mao Kitty jewelry. Then it's Christmas shopping on Sunday (guess we'll miss Eagles vs Giants) and holiday baking next week for Thanksgiving. I've already seen Charlie Brown trees for sale at the grocery store and I'm thinking about locating our box of decorations. I love this time of year!

Eggplants

I picked the last two eggplants today in the garden. I also grabbed a handful of escarole and beet greens for a salad and noticed that I have some lettuce and spinach sprouting. I'm hoping some of that matures before frost. There isn't any frost in the forecast this week but we will be getting temperatures in the forties at night. It's time to start thinking about cleaning out the plot, adding compost, and planting garlic bulbs for next year.

Make Way for Eggplants

After spending a long holiday weekend at the Bay, the garden was in pretty sad shape when I returned. I had asked several people to water while I was away but who knows if anyone got around to it. Temperatures in the low 100's didn't help either. Most of the bean foliage was fried, the cucumbers shriveled beyond recognition, and the remaining beets wilted to a stringy pink mess.

The situation forced me to make some tough decisions about the beans. We had already eaten quite a few, they were taking up most of the plot, and at this point they looked horrible. So into the compost they went. I spared two plants off to the left. After mulching and giving everything a loooong drink, the plot looked a little more respectable. I trimmed off the dead beet greens and pulled a few of the larger ones for dinner. I also planted three salvia plants between the marigolds to the right side of the plot and added two musk melon plants by the carrots. I put in two escarole plants behind the large marigold row in the front hoping to take advantage of mid-day shade. All of these plants were abandoned and left to die on the picnic table in the garden. I was happy to try some new things.

My hope is that with the beans gone, the eggplant will get more light, water, and soil and grow big and strong and make a huge crop of eggplants. I would settle for just one eggplant. So far the blossoms have all fallen or been knocked off before anything has had a chance to happen.

The pepper seems totally fine. It's the healthiest in the plot and making a few new peppers which I plan to leave on the plant until they ripen to red.

Yesterday the first red sunflower began to open. You can see the big yellow guys in the background already drying out post bloom and preparing their tasty seed crop. This has all happened much earlier this year. I may be pulling the sunflowers in August at this rate.

Today the first red sunflower bloomed. I noticed it is still a favorite to the local honeybee population.

Harvest

The first true harvest of baby beets, english peas, and two decently sized carrots took place today.

It's Tall Purple Flower season in the garden right now.

Last Week in Bloom

Garden Report: Stuff is blooming, growing, and happy. We got through our last cold spell and are looking forward to the days of late spring and early summer. Last week I took these photos at the garden and have yet to get back there since I've returned from my Telford trip. Before I left, the roses were peaking, lots of early perennials were adding flashes of color here and there, and the peonies were threatening to go at any moment. I'm sure I'll catch the tail end of their display this week when I go to get the salad greens.

Pretty in Pink (and later: Pretty in My Kitchen!)

Indigo and White

Peonies About To Burst and Those Skinny Pink Flowers That I Love

You can't really tell from the photo but this Peony was almost fluorescing! The bud was about the size of a lime and there were at least three more on the bush.

The bush beans are beginning to get bushy and in hindsight are probably going to crowd out my spinach. Lesson learned. Everything else is doing well. The peas are finally making flowers and one squash and a few cucumbers are making a go at it. I thinned the carrots and tried to encourage the already giant sunflowers to grow on the fig side of the trellis.

The lettuce was full and leafy and there were a few marigolds to replace it when it bolts. I also see a rogue tomato in the top of the photo. That will probably have to go.

The tasty beet greens have been adding some extra crunch to our salad bowl. I'm glad I planted so many and I think their location in front of the trellis will be just perfect. They aren't easily accessible but it doesn't matter because they're not going anywhere until August.

We ate some very large salads last week to keep up with the lettuce supply. I expect to find big plants when I return to the garden tomorrow.

Salad Season Has Begun!

Yesterday I harvested the first of the lettuce thinnings for a dinnertime salad. Two White Icicle radishes and a Cherry Belle also joined the mix. Everything was delicious, of course. Alas, I did not have my camera at home to document it.

Thinning the lettuce is such a win win situation: we get to enjoy many tender green salads and the remaining lettuce gets more sun and soil and grows even bigger. Bigger lettuce then means bigger salads for us.

Plot News:
I can now confirm that the cucumber, squash, and four varieties of tomato seeds are sprouting. I know the cucumber will have no trouble catching up once the weather is a little more sunny. I think the squash should do well also. I planted three of the tomato seed types because I've had such lousy luck with growing things indoors and figured I'd try a new approach this time. Knowing I'd be getting tomato seedlings regardless of what happened, I just threw the seeds in the soil instead of going through the minor agony of starting them indoors. The fourth variety of tomato has sprouted from the droppings of the rather unsuccessful cherry variety I planted last year. Although I never had the chance to harvest more than a handful of the little orange tomatoes, there were always plenty all over the ground that I just missed. We'll see what happens.

The spinach is sloooowly getting larger. The bush beans may surpass them and could even cover them. Timing and space allocation is something I am still mastering!

The carrots are all short and frondy. I wish I planted more! After the huge rainstorms last month and the seeds getting washed everywhere, it doesn't look like I'll have as big a crop as last year. The beet area is a different story. I may have gone overboard but I'm really looking forward to stealing their leaves from time to time for some braised greens. Last year we accidentally pulled most of all the leaves off the beets thinking they were chard and the beets seemed totally unfazed. They are a hardy bunch.

The peas are also slooooowly getting bigger. It may be somewhat of a struggle to keep them from using the baby tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash as a trellis. I'm adding lots of other stick options whenever I can get to the garden.

No More Cabbages

This photo was taken on Monday just minutes before a very knowledgeable fellow community gardener suggested I go ahead and pull the cabbages and eat them. They had begun bolting and I was going to loose the only tight little head that the large plant produced if I let them grow any longer. It's been a very warm spring and things are getting a little confused around here. The cabbage thinks it's summer already. So we ate it Monday night. I chopped it up and we had some slaw to go with the grilled cheese on fresh garlic and herb bread that I baked in the afternoon. A simple but tasty meal.

You can see that they lettuce in the lower left is growing. In the upper left are radish. Some of the larger green things around the plot are volunteer sunflowers from last year's flowers. I left the seeds on those through the fall figuring I was feeding the birds. Looks like they missed a few so I gifted some to the other gardener and transplanted some to the public areas.

I filled in some more radish and beets. I located the spinach (it looks like grass at first). The marigold seeds that I planted outside my plot in the front have sprouted. The carrots are identifiable. Lots of red sunflowers are sprouting. The peas are slowly doing their thing.

Happy Peas

Iris Aplenty

Cherry Tree Extravaganza

The Plot Thickens

I visited the garden last Friday and took some update photos as well as some Pretty Spring Flower photos. I didn't have my camera wire at home last week so they never made it up here. Yesterday I also spent some time at the garden snapping photos, planting more seeds, and even doing a little Spring Harvesting! First we have two Before and After photos with the pics I took last Friday and the ones I snapped yesterday.

You can see the cabbages are a little bigger and there are a few more green things showing up around the plot. At this point, I can locate peas, lettuce, beets, radishes, and carrots. I cannot tell which sprouts are the spinach. There are some other volunteer seeds poking up that may or may not be something from last year. A couple sprouts look like chard and there may even be a sugar baby watermelon but I won't hold my breath.

The peach tree in the garden is in full bloom now and the bee population is very busy with all the blossoms it has produced. We'll have to do some thinning if each of these turns into a little peach.

I'm hoping the peas survive this heat wave we're having (they're predicting 88 tomorrow). They haven't changed much over the past few days so I'm guessing they would prefer cooler weather. They have been joined by some squash seeds, cucumber seeds, and tomato seeds just in case.

My Big Plan included replacing the peas with some trellised vining vegetables. I'm hoping to get a cucumber plant out of the seeds I planted but if that doesn't happen I'll buy a seedling. The same goes for the tomato seeds. Last summer I saved seeds from some particularly tasty tomatoes and decided I'd give direct planting a try. The squash seeds were a mixture of acorn, crookneck, and summer. I would be very happy if one of the vines took off and made a couple of fruits.

The radish section of the plot must have turned into a lake last week during the storm. The seedlings are sprouting up in clumps rather than the tidy rows I had created for them. I filled in the gaps yesterday with additional seed.

A green leaf lettuce is sprouting. Again, the row was in disarray so I filled in areas with additional seed. I guess we're doing a little sussession planting.

The Gourmet Blend lettuce is sprouting. Three or four different leaf lettuces make up the mix. Somehow this row remained intact so between it and the next I put in additional carrots. The plan is to have the carrot tops shade the lettuce in early summer.

In other areas around the plot I put in mixed red sunflower seeds and more marigold seeds. I noticed the snapdragon plant from last year is springing to life and I added some new snapdragon seeds around it for company.

Around the garden everything is blooming. Big clumps of this white flowering stuff are everywhere!

I harvested the three chinese cabbages! I'm pretty sure the florets were a sign that it was bolting so I took action, cut it down, sauteed it with some garlic and ginger, and called it a success. It tasted good and now there's more room for other stuff like the bush beans I planted.