Last Cukes of the Season

Last week we had just enough warm weather to encourage a few more cucumbers to fill out. For the most part though, the season is coming to a close at the Brunswick Street Community Garden in Jersey City. I tried sowing late season lettuce, but it hasn't taken off. We've had a very dry fall which probably isn't helping. 

Last week I picked some tomatoes that were just blushing and they ripened on my kitchen counter. I've found this to be one of the best ways to keep on top of the tomato harvest. As soon as the tomatoes begin showing color, I pick them and ripen them indoors, and they always turn out sweet and delicious, just as they would if they had fully ripened on the vine.  In fact, I am unable to tell the difference between tomatoes ripened this way and those ripened fully on the vine.  I think I read somewhere that the sweetness has been achieved at this point anyway. I also avoid the possibility of losing them to pests, garden thieves, and rot. 

Strangely, the warm spell last week seemed to revive my eggplant plants too. I'm patiently waiting for 4 eggplants to get up to size before frost hits. The plants put out so many flowers and the beginnings of fruits mid summer that I thought I was going to hit the jackpot.  Then we had cool weather and the plants stalled out. Nothing happened for a couple months and now they're back. I'll check on them tomorrow. It will be in the 70's through Thursday here in New Jersey. Hope they're ok with that. 

It finally happened!

I grew too many tomatoes in the Brunswick Street Community Garden in Jersey City!  Since joining the garden six years ago, I've always dreamed of the garden glut - something I had only heard about up until this point.  This year though, my trusty Beefmaster tomato plant has had a truly impressive yield.  Just yesterday I picked 9 tomatoes and there are still 9 more on the plant waiting to ripen.  This is in addition to every other red, non-paste tomato you've seen pictures of on this blog this year.  If ever there was a case for hybrid tomato plants, this is it. 

Look at these beauties!  The basil became pesto and that bright blue table underneath?  That's Josh Urso Design's Tabby coffee table looking all industrial spiffy.

Earlier in the week there were still other tomatoes ready on the vine, and a couple crazy looking carrots, too.

Not a great photo, but you can see the still vining cucumber on the left and the perpetual basil plants on the right.

We have a small butterfly garden bed with plants like butterfly bush, rue, milkweed, and parsley to attract monarch butterflies and their pretty cousins.

Lots of Veg

These are from the last few weeks. It's dropping into the 50s in the evenings here, so the plants are beginning to lose their green. There are at least a dozen more unripe tomatoes on the plants and a couple dozen carrots in the ground. They'll be fine but the baby eggplants and maturing cucumbers aren't going to be too happy. We'll see how they look later in the week. 

Harvest Photo Backlog!

Yellow tomatoes and more figs

yellow tomato, first eggplant (!), hot peppers, basil, plum tomato

cucumbers, tomatoes, hot pepper, carrots, lots o mint

Figs, etc

Last week I picked figs from the communal trees and made some jam. A kind fellow gardener traded a cucumber for a carrot. And the plum tomato plant is heavy with fruit, mostly green at this point. 

Beautiful Jungle

BIG cucumber, little pepper

Bee Hangout

My Beautiful Jungle

Summertime in the Garden

Big and Green.  The garden is enjoying the heat but could use a bit more rain.  I try to get there every other day but when the temps are in the 90's, the plants get thirsty.  The big leafy things are my volunteer sunflowers.  They'll be yellow with red and rust colors mixed in.  One in the center extends way beyond the top of the photo and trellis.  I think it's close to 8' tall.  There isn't a whole lot going on right now in the plot in terms of harvesting or flowers.  Everything is in production but not quite there yet.

The first Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes are coming in.  I've got three plants and they should all be big producers.  Depending on what i harvest, I might try making some sauce with them.

These red onions can be used as scallions or small onions.  I've picked some early and chopped them into salads and stirfry dishes.  If they last through fall, they might have more of a bulb on the end.  This is my first year growing onions and I'd probably get sets or plants in future seasons if I want actual onions in the summer.  I grew these from seed but they've taken longer than I thought to get this far.

I've got several 7" long cucumbers that are just starting to fill out, from the bottom up.  I won't be making pickles, but we will have our fair share of cucumber based salads.  Maybe I'll be able to contribute a little more homegrown bounty to this year's batch of Asian Gazpacho!

Harvest!

Everything is big and bushy in the garden.  I've managed to stay on top of the cabbage looper invasion and harvested lots of broccoli greens today for Mao Mao and I.  The cherry tomato plants are full of blossoms and a few fruits and my Cherokee Purple is flowering.  The shuyo cucumber has several 5" long fruits on it but they are about as thick as a pencil at this point.  The beans are just beginning to produce and look like they could be a prolific variety.  I threw a few more carrot seeds into the ground in the bare spots despite the unfavorable moon planting conditions.

The harvest today was surprisingly bountiful: garlic, kale, broccoli greens, carrots, purple onions, beans, and peas.  I enjoyed most of it for lunch.  Ahh, the sweet rewards of my gardening efforts!

Seedlings in the window

The broccoli, onions, and wild flowers are up. The lettuce leaf basil didn't sprout so I replaced it with cucumbers.

Amidst Heat Wave Garden Persists

Last week I harvested another bunch of swiss chard, 2 crystal apple cucumbers (that's what they're called!), a carrot, 5 beans, and a bunch of salad greens.

This week the garden practically turned to mush in the heat. After being away for the weekend and receiving little to no rainfall in the past week or so, the garden suffered. I arrived on Wednesday morning to a withered mass of green. Luckily a little hose work perked everything up except the poor mesclun mix. We are officially out of salad greens. Today I picked 4 beets, 2 carrots, and a mess of beet greens. There is still plenty of chard, carrots, beets, cucumbers in the making, and cherry tomatoes in the making.

Plot News and Let's add a cucumber to the mix...

The Jungle

12' Tall Sunflower

Salad Time (that's a little cucumber on the right)

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.

My Garden, It Grows!

May 6, 2011

May 12, 2011

May 27, 2011

June 9, 2011

June 15, 2011

So far I've been very remiss in posting updates. It was a slow start to the gardening season with the rainy, cold spring and it wasn't until the most recent heat wave that things really took off. We've eaten the wintered over escarole, lots of mesclun salads, plenty of tiny radishes, tasty fresh peas, and even a few little carrots. I'm holding off on the chard until it gets a little bigger, and I haven't dipped into the beet greens yet. My heirloom cucumber plants and heirloom tomato plant are doing well (thanks sis) and I've got burgundy bean plants flowering.

Collecting Pumpkins and Stretching the Harvest

Three additional pumpkins were acquired at a coastal Jersey farm last weekend.

Mao Mao inspected the minis as soon as they arrived.

Late ripening Mortgage Lifters are resisting late season blight and slowly turning pink in the garden.

There are a couple inch long cucumbers forming on these vines but they'll probably need some doomsday-type global warming for any chance of maturation.

I do think we'll have one last eggplant harvest this season. And yes, we still have plenty of hot peppers. See them hanging out in the background?

Garden Harvest Update

Yesterday I stopped by the garden after work to water and harvest some things for dinner. I picked enough escarole and beet greens for a salad, I had a Mortgage Lifter ripe and ready, and I picked a few dark maroon figs for a sweet snack. The garden hot pepper plant has a dozen more fruits on it and the cucumbers I started two weeks ago are almost up to the trellis. Although the tomatoes haven't been terribly productive this year, there are some developing fruits that may or may not ripen by frost. To check your local frost dates, click here. Looks like my tomatoes have until October 20.

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.

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.