Gardening
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Bounty
I wasn’t expecting to have this much of a harvest last Thursday. It started raining around 4pm, a heavy rain, one that I was hoping would refill the rain barrel. I was glad I didn’t have to water as the last time I went the well had run dry, spitting air out instead of water and twisting the hoses around like one of those old 80s water games. I started poking around not expecting much but I’d lift a giant zucchini leaf to find a fruit waiting to be harvested, and cucumbers cautiously hiding behind leaves. It was a surprise every time I went to a new bed, finding more…
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Late October at the Garden Plot
I’ll start off with a major symbol of autumn and Halloween, the pumpkin. This one is the ripest of the bunch, there are a few more that are still green. I wonder when you really know to pick them? Squash are producing prolifically. Chris had hand pollinated a lot of the zucchini so I have been picking quite a lot of them. This monster was waiting for me when I got back from PA. It ended up in a butternut squash soup I made. So you could see the size of the zucchini fruits. As an aside, that t-shirt is one of my favorites. I played softball but not for…
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Seedlings|Cotyledon
Cotyledon noun Botany . 1. the primary or rudimentary leaf of the embryo of seed plants. It’s always amazing that these first leaves keep on dividing and turn into plants that give us wonderful food. Some of these seedlings are radishes, lettuce, kale, and beets. Getting down on the ground to inspect the tiny starts is the best way to check them out. Of course making a macro photo of it helps, too. I’ll keep you posted on their progression.
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More Harvest
Cucumbers are coming in by the handful every other day or so. I’m in love with them. They have probably upped themselves in ranking as favorite thing to grow to #2 on my list. Tomatoes are still first. The golden zucchini are showing some weird genetic patterns. We’ve got a bunch of green aphids on our cukes and I think assassin bugs. Hoping we can just ignore them and they won’t make too big of a mess of things. A photo from 2008 in Florida—our tomatoes. Miss them! I’m going to miss checking the garden out while I’m away but I’ll have Chris upload photos for me to share.
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A Quiet Corner
‘Kohleria Bristols Possibly Bronze’ ‘Alsobia dianthiflora’ ‘Rob’s Boolaroo’ ‘Chirita Silver Surfer’ We had this bookcase from my mom which her dad had built. It’d been sitting in the garage holding other things and mom said we could take it for extra shelving. It now holds what books we have and Chris’ little collection of violets and violet allies. It’s cozy little corner and we always leave the blinds open to let some dim light in. Below, Samson will lay in his cat bed in the dim light of the window on the other wall.
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Garden Update | Helping Hands Community Garden
Lots of things going on at our community garden. New beds and need seedlings, plus what has been established over the last few weeks are starting to take off. Love seeing a full garden! The garden is next to a horse arena so on the weekends it isn’t uncommon to have rodeo competitions going on. The pee-wee kids are the cutest! Little tykes my niece’s age and a little older riding their horses around barrels! Super cute! (need a few more !!! ?) Chris engineered this cucumber tunnel with tomato cages. The cukes are climbing like crazy right now and little fruits are starting to appear. See, aren’t they cute?…
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Garden Update | Common Ground Community Garden
A week or so ago we went home to gather the majority of the last items lingering at our parent’s houses. Chris and I popped in my mom and brother’s community garden to see how things were going and growing. This garden is very different from the one we are participating in at our new location mostly because there are actually full beds and members that are active in growing things. At the garden we are at, other than a school group we are the only private beds. Chris has been planting in the other empty beds in order to fill the garden up, harvest extra things and to share…
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Harvest #1
The garden is coming into full swing. Soon we will be harvesting daily or at least every other day and putting food away for the winter. I’m very excited about this! The golden zucchini was half this size on Saturday evening. We had about 20 minutes to run by our plot and water and check on things after four days doing field work and before heading to DFW for the weekend. We opted not to pick the squash because how could it have gotten much larger? Apparently it could have gotten much larger! It’s ginormous! I love the flower bud still attached to the cucumber in this photo. I tried…
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Early September in the Garden
Chris spends most mornings at the plot watering and doing random chores. Right now we’re waiting on compost before starting more seeds in other beds. Here’s a snapshot of what’s going on: Watermelon’s from a school’s plot. We took one of them but it was not quite ripe and very seedy. Chris hand pollinated a few watermelon flowers to see if he could get a few more out of the season. Brussels sprout seedlings…I think Chris said Long Island Improved is the variety. Sweet potato vine flower Remember it a few weeks ago? Sumter cucumbers. More cukes The corn and zucchini bed Little zucchini flowers!! I went around doing random…
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Helping Hands Community Garden
Chris didn’t waste time finding the community garden where we could get some plots. The garden itself is different than the one my mom and brother have at the Common Grounds garden, a bit differently run and definitely less activity from individuals. In fact, we were able to score two plots for ourselves and then Chris is working on four other empty plots since no one else is managing them. The extra food grown will go to the food bank next to the plot. Another difference is that we barely see anyone else tending their crops other than a few people, and even those people will water everyone else’s plots,…