Thursday, August 13, 2026

Recent VEGarden Posts

White Eggplant
01 Jul 2011
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White Eggplant

I picked up a package of white eggplant seeds at Monticello this winter, and I’m really excited about these! I wasn’t sure what shape to expect from the fruits, and I’m glad these are long and skinny. I’ve never successfully saved eggplant seeds before, but this fruit came out early for the season, so I’m hoping it’s a good northern variety that we can keep growing. The rest of the eggplants are loaded with flowers. I put in standard black eggplant as well. Looking forward to seeing the garden explode after this heat wave!
June 28th - Garden
28 Jun 2011
2

A few garden pictures

We’re just about to enter the best time of the year for gardeners… time to eat! There is a lot of space left in the garden for sunflowers. We cleared out a good section in Chris’s half of the garden (not pictured….) for sunflowers as well, so assuming my planting schedule is fairly accurate, we’ll be set for the wedding this September. The perennial beds have filled in quite a bit! I put basil in the holes in the front, and just weeded/thinned that out this weekend. I had originally planned on strawberries, but I decided that I like my concrete beds so much that I’m going to build another one, twice the size of each of these, along the...
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Radishes
24 Jun 2011
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Radishes & Dill

That’s what we pulled today! I’m hosting a baby shower tomorrow, so the dill went in the potato salad and the radishes are cleaned and ready to eat! I planted four different varieties of radish. Even with the hot weather earlier this month they aren’t very spicy. A few are a bit too large, and there are a lot more where these came from! Broccoli and zucchini are next, within the week!
flowering onions
22 Jun 2011
1

Flowering Onions

Onions are biennial plants, which means the first year they make bulbs (which you typically eat). If you don’t harvest onions the first year, they will come back the second year and go to seed (flower). Last year we missed quite a few onions, and I transplanted them into the back of my perennial herb and flower beds. They are now as tall as I am, and just starting to flower!
strawberry
21 Jun 2011
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Strawberries

My nearly two-year-old nephew visited last weekend, and enjoyed eating these out of the garden. Puck also found them…. go figure! These are finally starting to produce after two years. It’s a pretty small bed, so not enough for jams or pie yet, but they are a nice sweet morning or afternoon treat!
Elite Zucchini (green)
21 Jun 2011
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Zucchini

Once again this year, I planted both yellow and green summer squash (zucchini): Yellow Sebring and Green Elite Zucchini. I placed a row cover over half of the young plants hoping to keep out vine borers this year. I haven’t seen evidence of the borers yet on any of the plants, but it is still early. With any luck, we’ll be eating zucchini this weekend!
June 20, Minnesota Tomatoes (Valencia Orange)
20 Jun 2011
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Tomatoes

A week of rain followed by 100º heat makes me forget what state I live in! But it does wonderful things for tomatoes in Minnesota. The tomatoes tripled in size in a week after the weather we had early June. Next year I need to invest in some taller tomato cages (or build some). This is probably the greenest my garden has ever been; there is a lot of space left to fill in with sunflowers for our wedding this September. I haven’t posted pictures for a while, so I have a few pictures lined up for this week: flowering onions, zucchini, strawberries… stay tuned!
Flowering Asparagus
11 Jun 2011
2

Asparagus

A few days of 100ºF heat is all it takes to turn asparagus into a giant, flowering bush! This is our third season gardening here, so we haven’t harvested asparagus yet. Unfortunately, it is planted in a bad location; it was one of the first things we put in the yard and didn’t give much thought to where the garden would go before we planted it, so it is awkwardly right between the garden and the compost pile, and it gets walked over a lot. I’ve read that asparagus is difficult to transplant, but I may try moving it to a better location.
1-month old Grapes from Great River Vineyard
10 Jun 2011
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Greening a Chain Link Fence

Three months after moving in, we had most of the yard fenced in for the dogs. It’s a big yard, so we picked the cheapest option with the intention of turning it green. The first summer, we transplanted a bunch of wild grapes from my parents’ cabin. I thought they were a complete failure but they are doing very well now! A few months later, a local restaurant called “The Vineyard” closed its doors, and I called up the owner to ask about their vines. Obviously, a restaurant named “The Vineyard” is required to have some pretty spectacular vineage going on outside their front door. The plants were more than 30 years old and too large to transplant, but we...
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Catnip
24 May 2011
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Chives & Catnip

Why do the herbs always need to be picked when there is no other food in the garden to season with them? I have more chives and catnip than we will ever use, so if you’d like some… please let me know. Of course, last week I also planted catnip seeds that I bought at Monticello. Because one can never have enough catnip. (Maybe this is why we have a grey cat who visits our back yard now…)
May flowers
21 May 2011
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May Flowers

A lawn care company left a flyer in our door yesterday. We are part of the 57% of families in our neighborhood who don’t use herbicides on their lawns. I prefer watching gold finches eat dandelions to the noxious smell of weed killer. I think we’ll try making dandelion wine this year.
Praying Mantis Ootheca (Egg Case)
20 May 2011
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Mantis Ootheca

When temperatures are in the 60s for long enough, hundreds of tiny mantis will emerge from this egg case. They will seek out aphids and other tiny insects – and eat eachother if there are not enough to be found. They wait in stillness until their prey comes close enough, and with incredible speed catch and devour. They have the ability to mimic leaves and ants in order to escape their predators. I secured this egg case to one of our daisies in the garden, so it won’t blow away with the wind. I hope to catch them hatching.
Enjoying the garden
16 May 2011
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Tomorrow… Tomatoes.

Today… here’s Puck: Checking things out. He stays in the paths (mostly). “Broccoli…. cauliflower… kohlrabi! My FAVORITE!!” Enjoying his garden We’re finally seeing spring days in the 60s and 70s, with beautiful sunshine. But the temperature at night is still dropping into the 30s, which means that our nightshade plants are still traveling between the deck and the kitchen every day. Tomorrow I hope to put in a good chunk of tomatoes. I’ve had problems with transplants dying off the last few years – not sure if it’s due to planting before a big rain, cutworm, or something else – but recently about 1/3 of my tomatoes’ stems have broken off right above the soil line after planting. So I...
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When to plant sunflowers so they are definitely in bloom on our wedding date (leaving a lot of room for error, and also just to enjoy cuttings throughout the summer)
08 May 2011
1

Excel Spreadsheets = Garden Nerd2

I spend my days being a semi-nerd by profession. In my spare time, I garden. And just to tie the two together, I make spreadsheets. Here is what my garden looks like now: And here is the sunflower planting schedule, so we are guaranteed to have flowers in bloom on September 10th: I realize now that I am addicted to growing cole crops. I have 18 tomatoes, 16 peppers, 8 eggplants, and a variety of melon/zucchini seeds that I wanted to plant. I need a bigger garden!
Jessi's garden, and raised beds
08 May 2011
1

Perennial Herb & Flower Beds

My my terrific brother picked up three loads of these 16″ blocks for me at less than $1 per piece. There are 26 blocks per bed, bringing the project to a grand total to $52 for the frame. (Well, plus labor… but I needed the exercise!) Not too bad. The garden is on a slight hill and so they aren’t perfect. The beds are planted though! They are about 15′ x 4′ each (inside measurements 13.33′ x 2.67′). I’m holding off on strawberries this year. Inside the beds are catnip, sage, thyme, chives, daisies and artemisia. I may have to move the artemisia out of the beds in a couple of years as it could get too large. In the...
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Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplant, and Leeks
07 May 2011
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It Finally Feels like Spring!

I finally started hardening off tomatoes and peppers this week. Last year I decided to start fewer plants inside, and purchase more at the local greenhouse… but I ended up buying seeds anyway. It is just so hard to resist starting plants inside! I already put in all of the cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and kohlrabi – and seeded radishes and carrots. The rest of the garden should be seeded within the week, so all that’s left will be tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. They look pretty good; if the weather patterns hold most of these should be able to go into the ground next weekend. I do have a row cover and some fabric in case temperatures drop into the 30s...
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Cole Crops
18 Apr 2011
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Seedlings and More Snow

The smell of young tomato leaves in mid-April is hard to beat. It’s funny how that smell can be so nauseating in September, yet delicious in spring. If the weather patterns had mimicked 2010, these cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts seedlings would be long planted in the garden. But with temperatures barely above freezing, and snow predicted through the end of this week, the garden is doomed to have a late start this year. All I can do now is sit in the spare bedroom, gaze at my young vegetable plants, and dream of sunny days ahead.
12 Apr 2011
2

Perennial Beds made with Concrete Blocks

Last year I put up a flimsy wood fence to add some definition to my garden’s border. It barely survived the summer, so I wanted to think of something different (and more permanent). I have been reading a lot of garden blogs this spring, and saw pictures of some great beds formed from concrete blocks. I decided to give it a try, so this year I am putting in two beds lined with the blocks at the front of my garden. These will be planted with perennial herbs and flowers (mostly transplanted from other areas in our yard). I am also going to try growing strawberries and basil in the holes. … Also, this post is coming at you from...
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