Eat a bean!

This was one of two big harvests from last week. The Kentucky Wonder is aptly named. It has been the big winner this season. 

I've also been harvesting about a cucumber a week and a tomato a week (in addition to bottleneck and cherries here and there). I also pull 3-4 carrots and chop it all up (minus the cucumber) and sauté it for some dinner veg. It's great with a little home grown garlic and basil. 

The hot peppers are coming in now too. They love the hot weather. 

The kale is still producing too and a friend offered some mint last week that went into a very refreshing iced tea.  

The communal peach tree is ready for picking. I've brought home about a dozen little peaches for smoothies and salads. It's a nice change from all the vegetables. 

One big disappointment earlier this week was finding one of the two big Brandywine Purple tomatoes off the vine and on the ground in my plot. I'm not sure how it happened. Luckily it had just started to blush and was unmarred so I brought it home to ripen on the counter. I'll know next week how it tastes. 

The largest change in the garden this week was the removal of most of the bean plants. We're getting tired of all the beans and they're shading out the Celebrity tomato plant in the center of the plot. So here's a before and after photo so you can see the big cull in the back. 

It's a little hard to distinguish between all the greenery. The back left is now opened up. 

Cool August Nights

The kale never took a break this summer. It grew tender stems and leaves in June, it continued to leaf out under the sunflower long bean canopy in July, and now it's appreciating the cool August weather we've been having. Mao Mao and I are both very thankful for the greens that just keep going. 

My little melon is still growing. It hasn't made much progress since last week. Maybe all this sunshine will speed things up. 

A few carrots, a handful of tomatoes, and enough greens for a salad. Perfect!

Growing Food in the Garden

I've been pulling in some sizable harvests over the last few weeks. This week's haul of long beans was split and half wound up in a batch of long bean antipasto in a friend's kitchen. The other half is destined to show up in breakfast (smoothie), lunch (veg soup), and dinner (fresh in salad or steamed side) for the next few days. When we get really sick of them, I'm making a batch of refrigerator dilly beans.  Why did I feel the need to also plant green beans?

A few weeks back the lettuce was going strong and the green beans were a novelty. Chard, kale, carrots, and a tomato also made it home that day. 

The first tomato basil salad of the season tasted divine. 

Josh doesn't enjoy fresh tomatoes so these will be all mine!

Isn't it wonderful when you can supply your family's fresh vegetable intake?  It doesn't happen often, but this year has been special. The weather has been cool enough to keep the lettuce happy but sunny enough to satisfy the tomatoes and eggplant (coming soon).

 

How My Garden Grew in June

Last week in the plot, getting bushy. 

At the beginning of June, the sunflowers were only hinting at the obstacles they would soon become. At this point I moved a few to the common beds and left the rest, hoping a few would be the offspring of the unusual red/brown variety I planted last year. 

A week later almost everything in the plot doubled in size. I dug up 16 marigold plants to transplant at my parents' home and could have taken out 2 dozen more. I have no recollection of spreading the seeds. I think they just fell from the plants at the end of last season. Marigolds thrive in my plot. 

The Ramapo tomato really became a monster by mid-June. The plant was covered with flowers and itty bitty tomatoes by this point. The miniature musk melon plants in the lower left of the plot also began to grow at this time.  Everything is green and happy so it's difficult to distinguish one thing from the next in the photo. 

This was the situation last week in the garden. I added some stakes in the rear of the plot for the Chinese yard long beans to climb and trained the rest to the sunflowers. I moved lettuce seedlings out from under the sunflower canopy. I trimmed sunflower leaves and staked the plants to open up some space around my cute little white eggplant seedling. And I moved several more marigolds to the common beds. 

And the garden cat just sat there. In case you didn't know, being really cute can be exhausting. 

Spring Love

I love when the weather cooperates in spring and gives us a stretch of warm sunny weather. All the plants shoot up. The bees are going crazy. I'm picking fresh mixed greens for salads almost daily. And there is so much promise for the coming season. 

My Ramapo tomato plant has grown about 4" since planting last week and it even has a couple flowers. It's an old New Jersey variety so it should feel right at home in the garden. 

The bees are loving the indigo blue flowers of the borage plant. I haven't tried eating any leaves yet as they're an unappealing fuzzy texture, but they're supposed to taste like cucumber.  I love the flowers though, so I'm hoping it keeps growing through the season. 

I might be in for a bumper carrot crop. These are Amarillo carrots - bright yellow, juicy and sweet. Carrots are so easy to grow, I grow a different variety every year and always get a good yield. I sometimes leave them in the soil through the summer and have a few left in the late fall when everything else in the garden is finished. If you're wondering, "should I grow carrots?"  The answer is yes!

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. 

Growing Fall Decorations in the Garden



Last fall I bought a trio of mini decorative Indian Corn ears at a market in Lancaster, PA.  I saved the ears and planted a row of kernals in the spring.  They grew tall, tassels sprouted, and quite a few ears developed.  Yesterday, the stalks all looked well dried, so I decided to harvest.

One of the reasons I planted the corn was to see what colors I would get in the end.  The corn at the farm stand was very colorful, some ears were short and burgundy while others were long and slender and included different blends of red, maroon, orange, yellow, buff, and even blue tones.  I was curious to see if kernals from a single ear would result in similar looking ears or if they would reflect the chromatic diversity I saw at the stand.

As you can see, I hit the fall decor jackpot.  A little of everything is represented including some that look like raspberries (probably a result of too few rows being planted and poor pollenation) and others that are perfect little mini Indian Corns.  I couldn't be happier with the results.  I'm just not sure what to do with so many!  At the moment, they're arranged in a tall cylindrical vase on our media unit, right next to Pumpkin #1.



Another mini harvest included some carrots, parsley, and tomatoes.  The cherry tomatoes are from a volunteer plant in my plot.  It's a sweet variety (maybe Sweet 100 that I planted last season) but only a few ripen each day.  Garden Snack!

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. 

Eating local, real local.

I had a big harvest yesterday after not visiting the garden for a week.  Everything looked fine.  The Beefmaster plant is huge and still producing tomatoes.  It would probably do well with an 8' stake at this point but it's going to have to be content with draping all over the corn.  The beans continue to flower and my succession planting seems to be a success.  The younger plants should begin flowering in the next week.  To make room I thinned out some of the older plants that looked a little dry.  We ate the beets, beans, and carrots last night along with our first installment from our fish CSA (silver hake).  It was a very local dinner!

I'm growing a dramatic sunflower called Earth Walker.  I would like a whole bouquet of these but since I've only got one, I guess it'll stay in the garden.

Anybody want a kitten?  This little ruffian is running around the garden and sitting on my plants.  I love crazy face markings on cats though, and this guy/gal has one killer nose!

These trees are in bloom in Jersey City right now.  The big billowy flowers look great but turn into a disgusting sidewalk pulp once they come down.

Vacation Days

I'm watering two additional plots this week as many gardeners are on vacation.  One has allowed me to enjoy some of her ripe tomatoes while she is away.  What a treat!  Nothing is more delicious than that first homegrown tomato of the season, dressed with olive oil, salt, and pepper.  The two in the back were "payment" for my services.  I'm harvesting a pint or two of cherry tomatoes a week from my own plot.  And of course the broccoli leaves continue for Mao Mao and I.  I've added the chopped leaves to pasta, pizza, rice, eggs, and even pierogies.

The sunflowers have topped out at about 9' this year.  The tallest is supporting a very vigorous cucumber vine that has its sights set on the fig tree.  So far the flowers have all been a classic yellow with large brown center.  The mixed red variety I planted has had trouble catching up under the shaded canopy of jumbo leaves.  I might clear out the largest in August to see what happens.

The plot is just packed with foliage and flowers.  Everything is big and bushy and green and competing for space and sun.  As usual, I misjudged the capacity for some things to branch out when given the chance.  One misplaced tomato plant is stunting the growth of another.  Two misplaced pepper plants are wondering why it's been such a dark summer.  You never know what will thrive.  Every season is different and full of surprises and disappointments.  This year the broccoli has been a steady producer, loving its shaded corner of the plot.  Next year the hot peppers are getting a front row seat to the sun. 

The vegetable garden is never perfect, no matter how many times I read the seed catalog descriptions, draw planting diagrams, and consult the plant succession tables.  There are so many variables to consider.  Fun, fun, fun!

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!