Month: July 2011

Glimpses

I took my camera out to the garden today to snap a few pictures.  We’re in a happy place with the garden- I feel so much better now with the fences up around them.  Every day I would go out and dread finding something else missing or decimated- now, I know the critters are not in them, so it’s a real pleasure going out to the beds.

This first picture is of cucumber blossoms.  I have quite a few blossoms, and have just learned how to hand pollinate, so I will be keeping an eye out for female blossoms in need of pollination.

Next, I have a new picture of the mystery pepper.  The peppers are getting quite big, which means they are not the tabasco I first thought they might be.  Nor are they any variety of bird chile- they’re simply too big.  If they weren’t growing pointed up, I would say hot wax, so I am now thinking that we have a cross-breed here.  Sure would be nice to know what it is though.

These next peppers are fascinating me.  These are the Bulgarian Carrot Pepper that I got from Seed Saver’s Exchange. Woops! So I totally lied there! I just consulted my map and it would appear that these are my Cascabella peppers, not the Bulgarian Carrots, which are on the opposite side of that bed.  I’m confused though, because I grew Cascabellas last year (from the same seed packet!) and they were definitely a round pepper- not a pointy pepper.  The plants themselves are a much lighter yellow-green than any other pepper plants- and the peppers are this pale creamy shade of yellow.  And they are abundant, so I’m very happy and very excited to watch these little guys grow!

And then we have some tomato action!  First up are a few Roma tomatoes.

Next we have a Cherokee Purple.

And a Green Zebra.

And Purple Russians!

There are quite a few other tomatoes growing, and blossoms as well.  The hot peppers are the most impressive to me-  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many baby peppers and blossoms on my hot pepper plants before.  They’re happy here!  It’s going to be a scorcher here the next week, and I expect my tomatoes and peppers will thrive in the heat.  I went out today and fertilized, and a little later on I’ll give everything a good watering if it looks like it’s not going to rain at all.

All of the beans I replanted have sprouted and are growing great- broccoli has come up, and many of the lettuces have sprouted as well.  The garden grows well, and I’m looking forward to tasting.

Just a Few Hours Changes Everything

I posted on Friday about my garden observations and plans.  A short while later- no more than 2 hours- I went out to harvest my greens for dinner.  I stopped in horror when I realized that there was a rabbit IN my garden that had the bird netting.  He dashed out the back, getting caught in the netting before sprinting away.  All I could do was sit there and stare- what the heck! I mean, I knew the rabbits were getting on the garden beds- they ate the beans.  But this was a whole new level- he had to work at getting underneath that bird netting.

And in those 2 hours he ate all my broccoli, my dinosaur kale, and several lettuce patches.   I was livid.  Further exploration of the garden showed me that two of my hot pepper plants have also been nibbled on. They’re still alive, and should bear fruit, but that was the last straw.  I spent the rest of Friday going out to the yard about every 30 minutes or so to scare away any rabbits that came near.

That meant that Saturday was toast.  We were to spend all day Saturday in the yard building and installing fences, and I had replanting to do as well.   I replanted all of the beans, plus added a few squares where peas had originally been planted.  I replanted the eaten lettuce patches, as well as the dinosaur kale and broccoli.  I’m not sure there’s enough time now for broccoli, but since it is a smaller variety, there’s a shot.

So here’s what the gardens look like now:

They actually look really nice all fenced in and freshly weeded.  The mulch in between the beds is actually making them look a bit classy!

This is an updated picture of bed number one.   All the naked spots have been replanted with seed.  I am thankful that the rabbits had the timing they had to decimate the gardens.  Just a few more weeks and I wouldn’t have been able to replant.

As we attached fence panels yesterday I did find a few new surprises as well.

There are two good sized bell peppers on this plant! I think this is my ACE pepper square.  Always reliable for me- I was super excited to see how big these are!

Moving over to the hot pepper bed brought a whole new mystery to the table.  Meaning, these peppers on these plants are supposed to be habaneros.

They’re not, and we have no idea what they are.They’re a lighter yellowish green, and who knows.  They’re also strangely growing pointed up- there are only a small handful of peppers that do that.   Hopefully as they grow we’ll get more clues.  Right now I’m leaning towards a Bird Chili- whether African or Asian, who knows.  And it could also be a mutant cross I suppose.  We got these peppers from a vendor at the farmer’s market, so there’s really no way to find out what the possibilities actually are.

Gardening.  It’s a never-ending adventure.

Five Weeks Of Growing

And things are surely looking different!  After a week away camping, we arrived home to find radishes and greens, and also some bolting already.  I guess it got hot while we were gone.  Unfortunately somehow the bunnies have figured out how to get on the beds- or the squirrels are bean eaters, because ALL of my beans are gone.  Just the beans.  (And the parsley.)  At first it was just the blossoms, but now the leaves have been eaten too, and all I have are these little spikes of stem all over- bush beans, pole beans, roma beans, all gone.  I’m sad about that, but it’s not too late to replant if I can get creative with protecting them.

How about some pictures? I’ll post the beds again, left to right.

First is bed one.  My greens are looking great, the tomatoes are healthy, and the kale is looking pretty good too.  I have bird netting over this bed, but I think something got in last night, because one of my red kale plants has a few branches that have been pushed off.   The greens right at the front are broccoli raab, flanked by swiss chard.  The broccoli raab is bolting, so I’m thinking tomorrow it’s going on the dinner table.  Some of the swiss chard and mesclun is going on tonight’s table.  I cannot wait!  After I harvest tonight, I’ll be stapling down the bird netting in a few spots.

Bed two is great, except for the pole beans.  The sweet peppers have plenty of blossoms, and the tomatoes growing on the Florida Weave in the back are looking great.   Right at the front are some radishes.  I’ll be harvesting a few for tonight’s salad too.  Towards the back on the left are my Mizuna and Ruby Red Streaks (a red mizuna).  The red has already bolted, sadly, but the mizuna is ready for harvesting.  Delicious, delicious mustard green.  It adds a fantastic peppery punch to a salad or sandwich.  I will grow both of these again, and am going to try them as a fall crop this year.

Bed three is doing very well.  The hot peppers all have blossoms on them, and the zucchini plant is looking nice and healthy.  In fact, look at what I found on the one jalapeno plant:

The first hot pepper! I sure hope all his cousins and brothers come out to play soon!

And then there’s bed four.  Sorry, it’s kind of a wonky view, but this bed needs some love.  I have a lot that never came up, and of course, there was a lot of beans planted here- along with some snow peas which were eaten by rabbits as well.  To the right you can see my makeshift trellis for the cucumbers to climb up.  I’m also hoping it’s a bit of a rabbit deterrent.  I’m trying to figure out what to do with all the space where nothing is growing.  Any carrots or beets that came up have been eaten.  The watermelon and cantaloupe plant are still chugging along in there though, so we’ll see.

My tomatoes are blossoming and some are showing fruit.  I believe this one is from my Lemon Drop- a yellow cherry tomato plant.   I still don’t think my garden gets quite enough sun- though I see exactly what Andy needs to remove to make it better.  Just a touch more and I think my plants would be loaded with blossoms.  I’m confident I’ll get a respectable harvest this year, my plants are happy and healthy, but another hour or so of sun and they would be burgeoning!

Oh, and then we have the corn and pumpkin patch.  This is doing better than I expected.  This bed has a 3-foot fence around it, and I’ve covered it with bird netting, so nothing’s getting in there.  By the time I have to remove the netting, the corn will not be desireable to the critters.  I hope.

Ultimately, I’m hoping that Andy can find some time in the next few days to build me more of these fence panels.  If they were up on the other gardens, I could use the fairly inexpensive bird netting to keep the animals out.  I’m already making my notes for next year, and am going to plant things differently.  The tomatoes will all be in one bed, the beans in a second, the peppers in a third, and then the fourth bed will be for the greens.  Other beds will receive carrots, beets, and miscellaneous.  For now, I’m just so happy to have a harvest with the greens and radishes, and I’m looking forward to more.

I didn’t take pictures of the herbs yet- my parsley has been eating down to the nubs by rabbits, but everything else is doing really well.  I’ve even had a miracle tomato come back to life.  It literally was snapped off at the dirt line, and a little shoot took off from there.  It’s a respectable small plant now- I don’t know if I’ll get any fruit from it this year, but the little Valiant plant is the little engine that could!