Two weeks later we finished spreading the compost and tilling the garden.

Jessi’s half is on the left; Chris’s half is on the right. Let the games begin!

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It’s been cool and cloudy in the morning giving way to sun and warmth come afternoon. The summer squash is winding down even if it doesn’t know it. It along with the other squashes, pumpkins and cucumbers continue to make more flowers even as their leaves turn yellow and then brown. Here is our last and sadly only third summer squash (a story told on another post) still on the vine.

Yesterday I planted kale, corn salad, raddichio and parsley. Hopefully its not too late. I haven’t gotten around to building or even thinking about cold frames yet and more distractions continue to present themselves.

Also pictured are the mysterious onion sprouts I discovered when preparing a seed bed for the Kale. Supposedly brassicas do well after an onion crop. We had no luck with cabbage or broccolli this spring/summer and the brussell sprouts are more sprouts than brussell at this point. I am not expecting much, but I doubt those damn cabbage moths are still around. Last week I planted some spinach and green onions. Some of the spinach seem to have been eaten up (along with some beet sprouts) and there wasn’t all that much to begin with, but the green onions look great.

Still needs to be planted (and soon): radishes, more carrots, cover crops, and eventually some lettuce and more corn salad.

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We must have gone wrong somewhere with the herbs; either we planted them too late or the soil just wasn’t right. Now, in early August, we finally have basil plants that are about five inches tall… we’ve been getting basil in our food share for more than a month now!

The mint is also about 5” tall, but not big enough to use. Cilantro? Most of it didn’t germinate, and what did flowered when it was very small. The flat leaf parsley is finally starting to look good. We’ll see how much growing these herbs can do in the next six weeks! Fortunately, a lot of them are in pots so maybe we can bring them in when it starts to get cold.

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Though the papayas aren’t technically part of our vegetable garden, I spent a lot of time getting them to germinate, live, and grow. Actually, I probably spent more time fussing with the papayas than I spent weeding and mulching the vegetables.

The papaya plant, usually referred to as a tree, is actually a large, fast-growing woody herb. The plants usually start flowering when they are five months old, and have ripe fruit when they are 8 months to a year. The lifespan is usually only 3-4 years, but some papaya plants have lived for a decade or more. I guess it just depends on how well it is cared for!

My papaya fascination started in mid-march, when I read that people all over the United States successfully grow papayas in their homes and even get fruit from them! Also, I saw a few at the Como Park Conservatory last summer and they’re just so pretty – they would make a nice green addition to a home. I started planting seeds at the end of march, but had very bad results. These guys started germinating in early June, but it wasn’t until mid-July that I finally had a tray of seedlings that weren’t dying off. Supposedly, they will grow 8 inches in two months, and really take off after that.

The plan is to bring them inside for the winter – so I guess this can be a “winter gardening” project. I’m going to have to invest in some more lighting because we don’t have any good windows for plants. Depending on how many of them I have, maybe I’ll bring one up to the food co-op. I think I’ll line the walkway up to the house with them next summer (if they survive…).

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Well, mostly. Everything except about 20 eggplant seedlings, which are either going in containers or replacing the broccoli raab that we’re about to harvest. Containers would be best, because then we could position them to get enough sun… but the problem then becomes finding containers for that many eggplants, and then buying dirt, soil amendments, etc. My guess is that we’ll need to replace a couple of eggplants in the front yard though, so we’re still holding off for a few days.

On Tuesday, we planted 11 tomatoes, 22 chile peppers, 2 okras, and 11 eggplants in the new front garden. The eggplants are quite small, and I’m hoping now that they’re in the ground, they will take off a bit more. We planted basil with the tomatoes, and I still have a packet of dill to plant, which will hopefully be ready around the time that our cucumbers are. Still not sure where to put the dill…

On Wednesday, we had 24 tomato plants left to plant – we managed to fit all but the one I snapped in half when transplanting (oops…) into the garden in the back. That makes 34 tomato plants in all – I’m excited to see how well they produce. I have definited freezing and canning plans for this summer, and we have at least 8 or 10 roma tomato plants, so hopefully we can make some sauces too. We also grew some specialty heirloom tomatoes: Amana Orange, Prize of the Trails Cherry, Oaxacan Pink, and Early Red Chief. One hybrid: Marvel Striped (a yellow/orange tomato). We put the three broccoli in the back yard as well.

The neat thing is that everything in our garden was grown from seed this year. We didn’t buy anything that someone already started for us. Hopefully things will come along nicely over the next few weeks so I’ll have some more exciting pictures to show off online.

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