Summer Vegetable Garden Recap

Hello blog! It's been a while.

We had a busy summer around here, with short trips, visitors, weddings to attend, and work. The new job is still going well, although I'm currently working without pay because of the government shutdown. I wish I had insight as to when this will end, but we don't know anything. We just hope that we'll get back pay since we've been deemed "essential employees" and are required to work now. Just another reason to appreciate my low-maintenance vegetable garden and the ability to have some fresh veggies without having to buy them at the store! The plan worked like a charm and has been manageable with our limited time at home.

My container garden this year consisted of tomatoes, peppers, and four tomatillo plants. We had a relatively mild summer in the DC area--plenty of rain and not too many scorching hot days. It seemed like ideal conditions for the veggies. Bugs didn't seem to be as big of a problem this year as in previous years. We didn't grow cucumbers or any summer squash, so cucumber beetles, squash bugs, and squash vine borers weren't an issue. We had aphids and spider mites, but were able to control them somewhat by spraying the underside of the leaves with the hose on the high-pressure setting. We still have spider mites on some tomato plants, but it hasn't been enough to affect the yield too much.

I haven't been great at keeping track of how many pounds of tomatoes we have harvested, but I haven't bought tomatoes in about 6 weeks. This past week has brought back summer-like temperatures in October, and I think the plants are enjoying the surprise weather. The tomatillos have just starting ripening in the past week or so. You can tell they're ripe when the husk starts drying out and clings to the fruit. I'm looking forward to all the green salsa I'll be making once I harvest enough of them.

We just pulled these beautiful yellow bell peppers yesterday.

We've harvested more jalapenos, serranos, and habaneros than we can eat, so we've given some away. All of the hot peppers have had a lot of heat, more than in other years. I wonder if the milder temperatures and plenty of rain helped?

 

Our bell pepper harvest has been amazing. We're growing red, yellow, and orange bell peppers (all are green before they turn ripe) and use them in everything from soups to sauces to soffritos. 

And the sizes have been great, too. Several of them have been big enough to fit and my hand and perfect for stuffing.

 

We harvested this bowl of bell peppers mid-September and it yielded four pounds! 

I hope you and your garden had a wonderful summer. How's your fall garden looking?

The Low Maintenance Garden

I wasn't able to start many seeds this year for my edible garden, so we bought a few transplants instead.  This year's low maintenance garden consists of only 15 plants, about half the number I usually have.

Instead of planting squash, cucumber, beans, and other vegetables, I decided to keep it simple and focus on just two items for my kitchen garden this summer: tomatoes and peppers.
We bought both sweet and hot peppers, including a jalapeno plant because we have to have some hot peppers in the garden. So far the plants and pests have been manageable. There are even a few blushing Super Fantastic tomatoes right now.

I did start a few seeds, including two habaneros and two tomatillo plants, which are also doing really well.  Between the tomatoes, tomatillos, jalapenos, and habaneros, I expect to have a nice salsa garden this year. If only I could grow cilantro...

And here's a nice surprise--two potato plants from my failed crop last year made an appearance.  Last year potato beetles decimated the potatoes I had started from seed. I was going to turn this into an onion patch, and these two potato plants surprised me by sprouting this spring.  I've left them alone just to see what happens. Wouldn't it be nice to get some potatoes this year?

How is your summer edible garden doing?

Seed Sowing: Onions

The only seed sowing I've begun so far is my onion seeds. I started these back in February:

• Bronze D'Amposta red onions (ordered from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds)
• Sweet Spanish  (Ferry Morse, purchased at local garden center)
• Red Burgundy (Ferry Morse, purchased at local garden center)
• Hybrid Granex Yellow (Ferry Morse, purchased at local garden center)

I planted 5 of each seed. I got a good germination rate from the Baker Creek seeds-- 3 out of 5 germinated. I'm most excited to try these onions. They're described as "sweet...A great variety for fresh eating, as it is not too hot tasting." I think that means I won't repel my husband when I move in for a kiss.

Germination rates:
1 Sweet Spanish onion germinated, 3 out 5 Red Burgundy onions germinated, and only 1 of that wacky hybrid one germinated, but it promptly shriveled and died. Hybrids!

I think red onions are so pretty and I hope that my red onions seedlings pull through.

I mentioned weeding out my onion patch in my last post. I planted this onion patch in Fall 2011, and last summer harvested about 2 pounds of onions. I left the others in the ground (show in picture above) and they survived the winter. It smelled really good when I was weeding last weekend!

 {{Here's what I harvested last summer from the onion patch.}}

Sadly, I cannot remember what variety they are!! That really bugs me because I'd love to grow more of them. They are mild and slightly sweet, and the flavor is very concentrated. A little bit goes a long way when I'm cooking and they're OK when eaten raw.

I also have a small garlic patch, which happened by accident. I call this variety Farmers' Market garlic because I bought a head of garlic at the farmers' market last fall, put in it in the ceramic garlic house when I got home, and forgot all about it. A couple of weeks later I went to use it, and the cloves had sprouted little stems. So I broke them apart and planted them in my raised bed out back.

Are you growing onions or garlic?

Great Gardening Weekend

We had a beautiful sunny weekend in DC. I'm sure everyone who was in town for the Cherry Blossom Festival appreciated it too. Just to remind myself of  how time passes, exactly one month ago, on March 6, it snowed!

On this sunny weekend I had the windows open in my house each day. It felt so good to have fresh air circulating through the house. The rest of my April weekends will be busy with out of town travel, a crawfish boil, birthday parties, and a going-away party, so I took advantage of the nice weather to get some yard work done on my free weekend.

First, I started some sunflower seeds. (I am so woefully behind on seed starting in general. I only have some onion seedlings sprouting from seeds I started a couple of months ago).  I'm determined not to let the squirrels dig up my sunflower seedlings this year. We'll see who wins that war. I'm growing Teddy Bear sunflowers, Mammoth sunflowers, and Chianti sunflowers.

These are my Queen of the Night tulips. They're growing more every day and I can't wait to see those lovely dark purple blooms. I planted some peach colored alyssum seeds in the spaces between the tulips. I think the color combo of peach and dark purple will look nice.

My big garden task was weed work. Look at how these weeds have almost taken over my onion patch. Now imagine all of that on a 10x10 space. That's about the size of my backyard and it's all full of weeds. It's going to take a while to weed everything.

But for now I managed to liberate my onion patch. This was a lesson learned for me. I will mulch better and/or plant some cover crops next fall to prevent this from happening again.

I also squeezed some shopping in this weekend. I treated myself to these cute pink shorts. I don't think I've ever owned pink shorts in my life. I must have spring fever. I can't wait for the weather to warm up enough to wear them.

Did you get any garden work done this weekend?

Bush Bean Comparison

We're growing two different kinds of bush beans this year: Burpee Bush Lake and Ferry Morse Bush Contender. We've grown both varieties before but couldn't remember if one produced more than the other, so we decided to do a test this year. Which variety will produce more beans?

Both types of beans were planted on the same day in the same type/size/shape of container with the same type of soil and amendments. They are side by side on the deck and get the same amount of sun. (Ferry Morse is pictured closest to the front).

So far the plants are the same size, but Ferry Morse has these beautiful lavender flowers, while Burpee has white ones. I like the purple blossoms better.

Ferry Morse has already produced a handful of beans. A couple of weeks ago I harvested about 1/2  ounce of beans. It's not much, but Burpee doesn't have any beans yet. It's still early in the season, though. Which one will produce more? Will they be the same size? Which will taste better? I'll be keeping track to see which one finishes strong.

Do you grow beans? Which varieties do you recommend?

July Bloom Day

There's quite a bit blooming in my garden this July. Some flowers are on my vegetable plants and some are on flowery plants. The Pink Diamond hydrangea tree started to bloom a couple of weeks ago, right on schedule. These flowers turn pink in the Fall, although, with the crazy weather last summer, they didn't turn pink last year. They sort of just went from white to dead. I hope to show you some pink blooms this year.

My orange and yellow marigolds are in the raised box with squash, corn, and watermelon. The squash leaves are so huge that they're covering the flowers. They're still thriving though, and I feel like the squash leaves cover the marigolds so those stupid squirrels can't get to them and snip off the flower heads.

I've shown these bush bean flowers before, but I wanted to show them again because they're so pretty and light purple. I've only harvested a handful of beans but I see more coming!

The cucumber plants are blossoming like crazy and a lot of these tiny yellow flowers have popped up.

Before the rain came today, I saw a lot of pollinators in the garden, mostly bees. These little bees were getting drunk off the pollen (hence the bumble lush name!)

And here's one in a squash blossom. This guy wasn't moving and for a second there I thought I was going to have to pull his dead body out of the flower. But then I saw the little legs stretch and he drunkenly crawled out and slowly flew away.  Get some rest and come back little guy! There's much more work to do.

I'm linking up with Carol's fun Garden Bloggers Bloom Day meme. Stop by to see what's blooming in other's gardens this month.

p.s. Is anyone else excited for the new season of Breaking Bad tonight? I can't wait!!

June Harvests

It was too hot this weekend to do anything but stay inside and watch the Olympic trials. The streets were more crowded than usual, traffic seemed as heavy as it does during weekday rush hour. I wonder if these were all people who had lost power and were going somewhere cool? So lucky we didn't lose power from the Friday night storm.


We've harvested a fair amount of vegetables so far. The jalapeno and green bell peppers above came from the plants we overwintered. The bell peppers were small and total weight was about 10 ounces. The handful of jalapenos were about 2 ounces (they're small but mighty!)




In other pepper news, our new banana pepper plant has cranked out about 4 ounces worth of peppers. We put some on the grill last week when cooking burgers, and they had a nice mild flavor, not spicy at all.


That tiny zucchini looks like a jalapeno pepper. Sneaky!


We're in a lull right now with the squash plants. We've harvested about 2 1/2 pounds of zucchini and yellow squash so far, but the plants seem to be on break now. I've seen a lot of male flowers, and only two or three females amongst all the plants. We usually help the fruit along with some hand pollination, though I have seen quite a few bees in the garden.




Finally, we have garlic and onions. We stuck the sprouting garlic cloves in the ground last fall just to see if they'd grow into something, having never grown garlic before. The tops were brown and on the ground, and this is what popped up when I pulled them. Nothing big here, but it's nice to have some garden fresh garlic in the pantry, especially when participating in my local meal challenges. Same for the onions--these two onions weight about half a pound and smell so good! There are still a few more in the ground which look ready to harvest, so I'll be pulling them this week.


Thanks to everyone who left encouraging comments on my last post about my potatoes' death. I guess these things just happen sometimes. Hope you're staying cool, wherever you are.

Update: Forgot to mention that I'm linking up with Daphne's Dandelions to show off my harvests. Check out her site to see what other gardeners have harvested.

I'm also linking up with Two Gardens' Garden Bloggers Harvest Day. Visit their site to see their own beautiful photos and what gardeners around the world are harvesting.

Squash Blossoms

first squash blossom 2012, originally uploaded by Bumble Lush.

My zucchini and summer squash plants have really come to life in the last week. This first flower appeared last week on a yellow crookneck plant.

 

I've seen many bees and butterflies in my garden, but I helped the pollinators along a little by using a QTip to pollinate some of the female flowers. (You can see that we re-use some of our containers; this yellow squash plant is in an old Endless Summer hydrangea pot). I've already seen small batches of zucchini and yellow squash at the farmers' market. I hope my little plants catch up soon. 

We started most of our squash from seed but bought a few plants as well. One of the new varieties I'm trying is this Astia zucchini from Renee's Garden, designed for specifically for containers, which is perfect for us because that's how we grow. I started two of these from seed and it looks like I may be picking some soon. The zucchini are very small, which I suppose is to be expected since they're designed for containers.

I always hear about people growing so much squash that they drown it and have to give it away or sneak bags of it onto their friends' and neighbors' porches. I have NEVER grown that much squash, but I would love to know what it feels like.

What about you? Are you growing squash? Do you ever have so much extra that you have to give it away?

Best and Worst of My Garden - May 2012

ground cherries 5-30, originally uploaded by Bumble Lush.

Two days ago I was ready to list the ground cherries as a "worst." The seeds I started in April dried up and died during a week when I was out of town. I planted a couple more ground cherry seeds when I got back, and none germinated. I planted more seeds in late April and early May . One germinated, and then I got busy with work, forgot to keep the seed cell moist, and that seedling died. I tried a different container (the black one above), but because it was outside, I'm not sure if what germinated is a ground cherry seedling or a weed. It looks like other weeds I've yanked.

Every time a seedling would emerge, I would accidentally forget about it or go out of town, and it would die. When I was home and watchful, nothing germinated. Frustrated, I decided to plant exactly ONE ground cherry seed smack in the middle of this purple container so I'd know that it is a ground cherry--if it ever germinated. A week or so went by, and nothing. Then I went outside this evening, and there's the seedling, right in the middle where I planted it!! I'm cautiously optimistic about this. I think my "Worst" may be coming around!


Other "Almost Worsts" are the other tomato plants that I started from seed. Throughout May, they barely grew and there were several days that I came home from long 12-hour workdays and just forgot or didn't feel like tending them, hardening them off, watering them, etc. Some days I was too tired to even care that I was neglecting my garden. But then, after work loads eased up last week and I gave them a little attention, they began growing quite noticeably overnight. The picture above is a mortgage lifter and basil I started from seed.




As for the "Best"--May goes to the strawberries. We've harvested four pints so far!


This month I learned about how resilient plants can be, in spite of their sometimes neglectful owners. I thought I'd have nothing but dried up tomato seedlings and zero ground cherries, but I think I'm getting a second chance.

If you'd like to share any Best and Worst happenings in your garden this month, feel free to link up.