Garden Wrap-Up

This is the time of year when we take apart the garden and put it back together for winter gardening. We were so busy doing that, and getting sticky and dirty with sap, compost, mud, etc, that we forgot to take pictures! So I did catch-up pictures of the items left over, minus a couple of big stir-frys. This is the time of year when we have the funkiest-looking veggies, as we clear everything off the plant when we take it out of the garden.



As usual, we got a lovely return on our beans. I think beans are one of the great gifts to gardeners. I plant a couple of dozen beans of various types and harvest a quart of dried beans, plus eating several meals of fresh young whole beans. The plants themselves are great nitrogen fixers, and can be shredded and mulched in place on the garden beds at the end of the season, or composted.

This year we added Painted Lady to the runner bean collection, growing it separately on a carport support. The plants quickly climbed up to the roof, and were claimed delightedly by a couple of the local hummingbirds. The Painted Lady beans are white with black squiggles, in contrast to the pink and black Scarlet Runner beans. I've picked out a batch for next year's planting (and for sharing!), from the longest and best-formed pods. Here the harvested beans are drying a bit more on the shelf, along with previously harvested peppers.

Our melon experiments were much more successful this year than last. We also discovered that a local squirrel or rat likes melons (grr!). Despite losing a couple of melons, our mini-melons did very well in the self-watering planters. We got a couple of tiny yellow watermelons, some mini-charentais, and a couple of a variety I've forgotten. I think all of these were supposed to be larger. I don't know if our soil wasn't amended richly enough, or if the cold snaps in the summer did it. I skipped the usual midsummer composting, being away, and I feel that was a big mistake.

Yes, we're being cute here. Still, we find cardboard egg cartons to be a good place to store veggies that we don't like to refrigerate. They allow good air circulation and are handy. I'm thinking of finding some small wire baskets on drawer gliders and hanging them under my kitchen cabinets over the countertop, which would be less cluttery than the egg cartons, and would be safe from countertop spills. There were several Ichiban long purple eggplants in this carton, too, but they went into the frypan before the picture was taken. Really like the Ichiban and the Fairy Tale (shown here) for tenderness and no trace of bitterness.

I've left our big Early Girl tomato plant alone, but the Green Zebra is history, as is the Pineapple Beefsteak and the Persimmon, so we have plenty of green tomatoes ripening up. The startlingly dark one is the Purple Russian; they never got more than a pale pink outside before something four-footed harvested them, or we did in self-defense. I had great hopes for a complex, smoky flavor in this, as is supposed to be true of many black or dark tomatoes, but I found it actually rather bland. Purple Russian tomato won't be returning to my garden next year. I'll try Black Krim or Black Prince, and rig netting so that I'll have a chance of ripening them on the vine.

When you're picking green tomatoes for later ripening, especially if you're pulling out the plant, take a good chunk of stem along with them. The ripening tomatoes will pull sugars from the stem, which slowly withers and hardens. The resulting tomatoes are almost as sweet as vine-ripened, certainly far and away better than supermarket tomatoes, even hothouse ones.

Our plans for a bountiful potato harvest were dashed by the construction of new fence between our property and the neighbors' in the back, as we didn't find out it was coming in until the workmen were already there. They dug out my potato patch to put in a posthole, and I was only able to salvage the area where I'd laid down the standing plants straight out from the fence and covered them with dirt for an extended harvest. That led to a nice batch of small new potatoes, about half of which are pictured here. They were delicious! They are mostly Russian Banana, with a few Russets here and there.

A few larger potatoes survived the shovels of the fence-builders. They'll be chowder someday soon!

Days of Squash and Roses

Summer is clearly coming to a close here in Silicon Valley. Breezy days in the high 70's wind down to chilly evenings and cool nights. I've got floating row cover over our peppers already and one of the eggplant beds.

Our roses are blooming again after a severe pruning in early August. The ultra-hot weather didn't do them any favors, even though I cut back on watering them to try to stave off any mildew or fungus problems. I'm participating in the Apartment Therapy 8-Week Cure, and one of the first things that comes up is to bring in fresh flowers. OK, they say 'buy', but I can just go out front right now, so I did.

Normally I'd have cut dahlias, but mine, alas, were just destroyed this past weekend by workers putting in a fence replacement. They might come back for the season or they might not-- they were completely uprooted. I reburied them and watered; worst case, they die back for this season. I'm planning on moving them this winter anyway. Still, there were a LOT of blooms left, and I'm sad about that.

What I think will be the last of my squashes are in now; I planted the ebicata kabocha too late, and it got hit with powdery mildew during our hot spell and hasn't set fruit yet. Too bad! But the red kuri / kabocha cross came through very well, and I may get another straggler from my Waltham butternut.

When the nights get cold, the squashes toughen up and get ready to pick. If you still have some ripening, be sure to gently lift them off the ground and make sure they're clear of little pillbugs or other critters trying to eat into the rind. Use a piece of old potshard or a tile to get them off the ground, or even rest them on the vine itself. There are two primary signs to look for in squashes. The first is that the stems will start to get hard, and may turn tan or shrivel up. Butternuts typically need a pair of bolt cutters to snip off the vine! The other sign is that the skin hardens to the point where it is difficult to mark it with a fingernail. Store fresh-picked squashes on a screened porch or on an open, well-ventilated shelf for at least a week or two to let them shed excess moisture. I keep mine on an open shelf as decoration, and gradually use them up in winter.

If you haven't grown your own squash, don't worry-- the ones at the Farmer's Market are perfectly lovely. Buy them now, when the markets are fairly swimming in them, and store them yourself at home for later. Don't wash them, but if they're dirty or mucky, you can polish them off with a barely damp cloth. Treat as you would your own fresh-picked, and let them cure a while before putting in a cupboard.

The rest of the garden is still busy turning out, as Mike's late grandmother would say, "a bissel of this, and a bissel of that". A friend of ours came over and we responded to the plethora of ingredients by making ratatouille, a perfect solution to lots of ingredients in quantities too small to make any one of them the centerpiece. OK, there are always huge quantities of zucchini; we balance them off against the rest of the ingredients that way!

Harvest Snapshot: Sept 10

September harvests usually end up to be something of a mish-mash, and this one is no exception. Fortunately, the best veggie stir-fry has lots of different kinds of veggies, and we're definitely getting good material for that!

Time to round up the winter squashes and bring them inside. Make sure there's plenty of airflow where you store them, and let them 'cure' for a bit in the open air before putting them into a cupboard. Butternut squashes may drip slightly from the stem for a day before settling in, so make sure they won't drip on another squash.

Harvest Snapshot: Aug 24

Garden volunteers make up a nice part of this harvest. The colander of yellow cherry tomatoes comes from self-seeded plants along our side yard. We moved some dirt around last fall, and apparently it had some tomato seeds in it. The pak choi was a straggler from a planter that had been harvested previously and was dumped in the side yard to help build up the soil layer there. I was very surprised to see it during the hot-weather season, but suspect its location in the fence shade is why it survived so well.

Zucchini and beans continue in mass quantities, often going straight into the freezer or the saute pan from the garden.

Harvest Snapshot: Aug 17

The usual beans and zucchini, and the beginnings of pepper season. Our particular picoclimate gets pretty chilly at night, so our peppers take longer to mature. Near the top left you'll see some tiny purple bell peppers, and in there's a long very dark green pasillo baijia chili at the very front of the tray. That's a mild to medium chili used in making mole; it dries to a rich chocolate brown, and is supposed to have a complex flavor of which 'hot' is only a part. This is the first year I've grown them.

Another pepper experiment is in the lower left, the small round 'Alma' variety paprika pepper. Supposedly both spicy and fruity, Alma is a very pretty plant, with creamy white peppers that ripen to yellow and then to a deep orange-red. I have this one drying on the bookcase right now, along with the pasillo. It's turned a deep wrinkly red.

Garden Desktop: Delicate Harvest

Today's garden desktop celebrates some of the finer things in garden life-- delicate strawberries, a baby fancy bi-color squash, and the aptly-named "Fairy Tale" eggplant. Enjoy!

Higher-resolution versions available by request, leave a comment here if the one at FlickR isn't large enough for your desktop. I've stopped posting the 1080 versions by default.

August 12 Harvest Snapshot

Dry bean season is here, partly from the time of year and partly because I stopped picking young beans a week or so ago, to let pods mature for dry ones. These are the heirloom I call "Monte's Italian", given to me in 2003 by a friend from the photo club. He got them from his family in Italy. This year they returned true to type, as my back-fence neighbor Jack didn't plant beans, so no cross-pollination occurred.

The larger harvest is, of course, dominated by zucchini. Good thing we pick them small... when they don't get away from us. Just a single day can make a (literally) huge difference in the life of a zucchini. I grow the "Mediterranean" zucchini from Renee's seeds. I believe it's a French or Italian courgette variety, as it is ridged rather than smooth. The best thing about this variety is that it has a wonderful flavor when small AND still has a very good flavor and texture when large. Even very, very, VERY large. The generic dark green or black zukes one finds in the seedling section of the hardware store have very little flavor, even when tiny, and become appallingly bland and watery when they get huge.

August 7 Harvest Snapshot

Garden Desktop: Dahlias

There's nothing like dahlias for summer bouquets. Long-lasting, intensely colorful, and in a variety of shapes and sizes. Best of all, they're easy-care perennials that will come back for you year after year!

July 26 Harvest Snapshot

Harvest Snapshot: July 22nd

A wonderful assortment of veggies greeted me upon my return. No strawberries in this picture, as I wandered through the garden munching them. We lost a few to overripeness, but most were cheerfully ready for a garden snack. A number of zucchini came and left while I was on vacation, faithfully transported into the office or eaten outright by my darling hubby, Mike.


Flowers abounded, as my dahlias burst into bloom during early July, and have been going strong ever since.


The summer squash that I planted too early, and which were shocked by cold, are now starting to tenatively offer up flowers, and even a squash or two. The small white patty pan squash and the two-color yellow-green summer squash are, I hope, the first of many.


Some of the cherry tomatoes were splitting from a daytime watering (wups!) but they all went promptly into the freezer, making a nice flat quart bag. Ditto with the non-cherry ones, which needed halving or quartering and went into a separate container. I like to freeze them flat, for quick freezing and thawing, and also in the right quantity for most of my cooking, which is for only two folks, me and Mike.


I was really shocked at how much change can happen in only a couple of weeks, though, when those weeks are in July and the hot-weather plants kick into high gear. Wow! Bush beans that had barely come over the top of a six-inch (15 - 20 cm) support mesh are now two feet tall and covered in flowers. Their counterparts planted two weeks previously rewarded me with a big double handful of beans, shown here.


Vining beans, such as my 2nd crop of Runners and my Chinese Noodle beans, had just come up and reached barely knee-high when I left on July 8th. The same plants today are over my head, nine and six feet tall (3 and 2 meters) respectively. The second planting of maize corn was similar height, knee-high, and has now doubled in size, while the first planting has sprouted ears in many places. One, as you can see in the picture, was ready to pick!

Harvest Snapshot: July 8th

A quick run through the garden while packing for my trip, but plenty of goodies. Self-defense picking of zucchini. (Is there a THEME here?!) More tomatoes, including some Green Zebra, and some nice cucumbers, too. I put the salad veggies, which Mike doesn't generally eat, into a soft-sided cooler and brought them on the train with me. The attendant, Cynthia, who really likes fresh tomatoes, had never seen the green kind before, but thought they were great. :-) Posting post-vacation, with a back-dated post, which is how I know.

Harvest Snapshot: July 5th

A slow day in the garden, but we didn't need any fireworks there. Some tomatoes put in an appearance, with the ubiquitous zucchini. Can you believe I planted two? If only it was cool enough after 8am to fire up the oven for zucchini bread; by the end of the day, the house is still in the mid-70's, and doesn't truly cool down until the wee hours of morning. Someday I'll get a convection oven, which cooks quickly and cools down quickly. Ah well.





The first peppers of the season, a pair of sweet bananas. Most of my pepper plants are still small and scraggly. I'm not sure what's up, but I seem to recall that last year they didn't really get going until the hot dog days of late July and early August. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Harvest Snapshot: June 29th

What better way to welcome in Weekend Herb Blogging than with fresh herbs?



Time to cut down the overgrown variegated sage, which likes to crowd out everything else, and nudge the variegated oregano back as well. Also snipped some of the big fuzzy spicy oregano. I thnk I'll have more than enough rubbed sage when I get done (MORE than enough!) but I can always package some up for gifts. I'd like to get another Biergarten (Beer Garden) sage, the oversized leaves were nice to fry crisp in a little olive oil and use as a tasty and stylish garnish. The same can be done with the variegated, but the lighter color leaves tend to look too brown to me and not as attractive. The flavor is more subtle, too.



Believe it or not, with the vast and spreading lavendar bush in the backyard, I actually hadn't considered cutting lavendar. I'd bought some dried in bulk a couple of years ago, and hadn't used it up. However, lately I've noticed that some things aren't setting fruit the way they should. I've started using some foliar feeding, which may help, but I really think the problem is the lavender. Between that, and all the borage over there, it's like having one of those chocolate fountains at a party. Who's going to make it all the way over to the healthy veggies tray? Only the really dedicated!

So trimming the amount of lavender down to where at least SOME of the bees decide to check out the other end of the garden is a good idea. I'm also letting marjoram, cilantro, and a couple of lettuces to go flower at the far end of the garden, and have transplanted at least one borage seedling. Need something special over there to distract the pollinators from the endless lavender party! Normally I'd try to choose stalks that were primarily buds, with few open flowers, as those will retain their scent longer. In this case, I was fairly indiscriminate.

One thing that's great to do with lavender is to make sachets for drawers and sheets. The easiest way is with the little gauzy bags sold at craft stores for wedding favors, but one can also use squares of tulle. Bind several stalks with ribbon, trim the stems so they look neat, and put the bag over the flower heads. If you're folding a square of tulle over, just tie it with ribbon. Wind some ribbon around the stems in a complementary color, and tie it off in a double bow. When we were on sabbatical in the motorhome a few years ago, I did white tulle and blue ribbon and hung them in our bedroom from the white and blue curtains, and got a lot of compliments.

You can also get some plain muslin drawstring bags, or sew tulle pockets, and put lavender buds or flower heads inside and use them in the dryer. I like to add a sprinkle of Mexican cinnamon chunks, or broken cinnamon stick. The resulting scent is wonderful-- fresh and spicy but not cloying. Highly recommended!

If you're really gung-ho, you can weave lavender wands. Some great instructions, with pictures are available at Garden Gate Magazine and at Dharma Trading. It looks more complicated than it is, I've done it and you can too!

Harvest Snapshot: June 26th

The first of the red kuri squashes are in. They could have waited a bit longer, as the stems were not fully brown, but had gotten tough. In general, wait until you can't break the skin of the squash itself trivially with a fingernail. I wanted to harvest these two a little bit early to encourage the plant to set more fruit. Otherwise it might give up and just ripen the other 2 or 3 on the vines, having made seeds already.

The tray is approximately 14x20 inches. Yes, I blinked-- the HUUUGE zucchini in the back was one I ignored a few days ago because it was 'too small yet'. You can see that this time I even picked the 'too small' ones. Fortunately, my husband's manager (and co-workers) haven't been overloaded with garden produce yet.

Harvest Snapshot: June 23rd

Trombetta climbing summer squash, more Romanesco zucchini (Renee's Seeds), cucumber 'homemade pickles', red onion started from set in January.

Beans from left to right: Monte's Italian Heirloom (private, via a friend), purple italian pole beans (Renee's Seeds) x Monte's, green italian pole beans (Renee's Seeds).

I didn't deliberately cross the Renee's purple pole beans with the Monte heirloom, but given the times they were growing and the proximity, as well as the great change in the bean shape, I'm guessing that's what happened. The flavor is superb, so I'm happy with that. Normally the purple pole beans look like the green ones, rounded and pencil shaped, in contrast to the flatter purple beans of Purple Queen bush bean. It is also possible that they crossed with Purple Queen, but the broadness of the pods makes the Monte's cross more likely. The fun of saving seeds at home, when you just let the local pollinators decide what works! :-)

Harvest Snapshot: June 13th

Young garlic (planted Dec or Jan), Monte's Italian heirloom green pole beans, Purple Queen bush beans, a few Yellow Wax beans, some everbearing strawberries, a Pak Choi.

Harvest Snapshot: June 7th

Greens from Violetta cauliflower. Never got heads from the Violetta, that hot spell in March/April really confused them, and I planted in spring rather than fall. Ah well, next year. A couple of spring potatos, Russets that naturalized and pop up in various places after we couldn't bear to toss a few bought ones that went bad. Plus a late chiogga beet or two!

In the colander, a spring or two of cinnamon basil, some strawberries, more zucchini, yellow wax beans, Purple Queen bush beans, some thyme, a couple of early Monte's Italian heirloom beans, a Trombetta climbing squash, and a couple of nasturtiums to garnish a fruit salad I'd planned on making.

Harvest Snapshot: Spring Herbs

My garden and a book project have been keeping me way too busy, but the book project is finally put to bed and I am going to give myself a mini-vacation for a week or three! I celebrated by going out this morning while it was still cool, but not damp, and snipping a big basket of herbs to dry. They looked so good that I thought, hey, I should send this to Weekend Herb Blogging! From left to right, marjoram, variegated sage, greek oregano (spicy!), and variegated oregano. A couple of young garlic that I pulled as well are laying across the basket.


The herbs I will separate and dry on a plate, indoors on the bookshelf or armoir top, out of any direct sun. The young garlic I snipped up like scallions or chives, and put in the freezer. I don't pre-wash it, so it freezes up nicely without ice all over it. Put it in soups, stews, or drop in a roasting pan with veggie end-snips (which I also freeze), spray with oil, and pan-roast as the base for a rich veggie stock.

I don't pre-wash most veggies, since I don't use any sprays or pesticides in my garden, other than point-treating any stubborn aphids with Safer Soap. This year, knock on wood, no real aphid problems other than some Gray Plague in my broccoli when it got too hot for a week, and I took the floating row cover off (doh). I've been letting various weeds stand as attractants to the aphids, and sure enough, the 'phids go there instead of on my tender beans and peas, at least so far. When they have frighteningly infested the attractant weeds, I carefully snip those off and get them the heck out of the garden (carefully! so none will fall off!). Seems to be working so far.

Oh, my usual Garden Help does not care for garlic, but was coaxed into happiness with a treat and a kind word. Here is her little smiling face for all my fellow kitteh lovers out there. :-)