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Recent VEGarden Posts

Two bread racks full of red, blue, and white potatoes

Potatoes

Now that it’s November, we’ve actually been gardening. Actually, Chris dug up his potatoes the other week, and they are stored for the winter in our crawl space under the steps/pantry. There are two bread racks full – hopefully they will stay cool and dark enough to last through the winter. He grew red, blue, and white varieties. The red don’t store as long, so we’re using them first. Today we spent most of the day outside cleaning up the garden for the winter. I pulled a lot of onions and carrots out of the ground, and hope to have time over the next few days to post some more photos.

Our new, remodeled kitchen!

Update your blog, pretty peas?

Sorry about that. We grew a lot of stuff, took some pictures, posted them on the Internet … and then during prime picking and eating season, our kitchen was completely gutted and remodeled. So the garden kind of fell off the radar. Here’s what we now have to cook in this winter, though: Definitely worth the 6 weeks without counter tops. I planted peas at the end of August, and Puck and I snacked on them yesterday. We also have massive collard greens, brussels sprouts, and the cabbages are making new heads after being picked! I’ll work on posting more photos before the snow comes.

Carrots picked late August

Carrots

The carrots are ready! Just in time for my kitchen remodel, too. Fortunately, I should be able leave these in the ground until it freezes and they will keep on growing, and be just fine. I think carrot soup (in a crock pot) would be an easy meal to make without a kitchen – though that requires a food processor and I’m just not sure if I’m up for washing that in the laundry tub. We have about one full month without a kitchen sink (or countertops). Cooking is going to get very creative now… and I think I’ll be taking some veggies over to my mom’s house to prepare for freezing!

Pink Eggplant

Eggplant: Another Summer Favorite

We grew three varieties this summer – Rosa Blanca (pink), Snowy White, and Black. This weekend, I think I’ll make some pita bread and baba ganouj.

Cantaloupe - fresh picked from the garden!

Cantaloupe

We’ve never successfully grown melon before, so it was really neat to walk out to the garden last weekend and see a whole bunch of these small, ripe fruits. I brought in about 15 fruits that had fallen off the vines. They are much smaller than the cantaloupe you typically find at a grocery store – some just the size of a softball. But they taste so much better, and they are ripe all the way to the skin – hardly any melon rind at all. The perfect size to eat a half (or a whole!) with a spoon for breakfast. Chris has been enjoying them every morning with some Wildwood Soyogurt. We have honeydew as well – though I’m...

Sundried Tomatoes (Prize of the Trials cherry tomatoes)

Dehydrated Prize of the Trials

The Prize of the Trials Cherry Tomato is probably my favorite tomato to grow… and to eat. Even our terribly blighted tomato plants have been producing these like crazy this summer. They are perfect little sweet orange tomatoes, and we’ve never had a problem with blossom end rot or cracks. They are quite a bit larger than a standard cherry tomato. Wonderful halved or quartered in a salad, or – my favorite – two of them sliced on a sandwich. We had so many of them this year, and so I cut a bunch in half and threw them in the dehydrator overnight. We are just now finishing our sundried tomatoes from last summer, so it’s time to stock up...

Jimmy Nardello's Sweet Italian Frying Pepper

Jimmy Nardello’s Heirloom Peppers

I am 90% certain that most of the peppers pictured above are Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Italian Frying Pepper. If I’m wrong, someone please correct me! I decided not to label my peppers this year because I figured by the looks of them, I’d know which was which when they were ready. Silly me. I know they aren’t Ancho, Czechoslovakian Black, Cayenne, Purira, Szegedi, Banana, or a bell variety. So that leaves the Nardello family heirloom.

Sweet Refrigerator Pickles

Sweet Refrigerator Pickles

You know that summer is in full swing when the cucumbers are ready! Sweet Refrigerator Pickles 4 wide mouth pint mason jars 1 head of dill per pint 3-4 slicing cucumbers 1 large onion 2 banana peppers (or hot peppers) 4 cloves garlic 2 cups white vinegar 1 cup sugar 2 tsp mustard seeds 1 tsp salt Place a bunch of dill (we used the heads, with immature seeds – but the leaves work well too) in each pint jar. Thinly slice cucumbers, onion, peppers, and garlic and pack jars tightly. Bring vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, and salt to a boil. Fill jars with liquid, cover, and refrigerate 2-4 days. Enjoy!

Trying to catch a bumblebee in motion... this is the only photo (of about 30) that wasn't blurry.

Luffa (sponge gourd) Update

I ordered three varieties of luffa (sponge gourds) this year. The one above, Rama F1 (hybrid), is supposed to be edible. Maybe we’ll try that next year. I wanted to grow them on our deck in pots, to see if they would vine out and cover the railing. They did a pretty good job, but our deck only gets sunshine for half of the day, and there is a large maple tree in back blocking out a chunk of sun too. Also, I do not have the patience to water potted plants every day once the temperatures hit 90º. So, part of the reason they aren’t thriving and producing more fruit is probably my fault.

Compost bin made out of 1x4 and 1x6 boards

New Compost Bin

Last weekend I was getting kind of sick of our composting system (piling up compost behind the garden and blocking it off with skids so that Puck won’t eat it), and so I built this. It is made out of untreated 1×4 and 1×6 pine boards. Chris treated it with linseed oil after it was built. I picked up the boards in the standard/less than perfect pile for next to nothing at Menard’s last Saturday. I’ve been neglecting our blog a bit because I’ve been very busy working… and also, we are planning a kitchen remodel this month! This means that during prime canning and freezing time, we won’t have a working kitchen in our house. Hmm. Not sure if...

Melons

Melons

I had some extra garden space this spring, and decided to pick up some cantaloupe, honeydew, and watermelon seeds when I was out running errands one afternoon. We tried a couple of melon plants last year, but they didn’t produce any sizable fruit. These are doing really well, and are quite healthy. They don’t appear to be touched by any type of pest. We do have a woodchuck who lives under the shed though … hopefully Puck will do a good job patrolling the garden and keep him away from these!

Entrance to Jessi's Garden - July 17th

Mid-Summer

I’ve been incredibly busy with work, and the garden seems to change faster than I have time to spend in it! We have cauliflower, broccoli, turnips, potatoes, beans … and by the time 5:00 roles around, all I want to do is crack open a cold beer and not think about making dinner. I’m going to try and make scalloped turnips tonight – but I think we might be out of soy milk. I’ll take some pictures and post the recipe when I do!

Tomatoes after removing every blight-infected leaf

Tomato Blight

If you’ve ever tried your hand at growing heirloom tomatoes … then chances are you’ve run across Early Tomato Blight. Early tomato blight is an infection (caused by the fungus Alternaria solani) that starts out as dark brown spots, yellowing leaves, and eventually spreads quite rapidly through the crop killing the leaves and fruits if it has a chance. The fungus spores form in hot, humid weather and then wait for a nice, cool, wet evening to start destroying the plants. We’ve definitely had more than ideal weather for blight this summer. It shows up just as the plants are starting to set fruit – and once the infection starts, it is nearly impossible to stop from spreading. If you’re...

First sunflowers of the summer

I was just looking back on photos from last year, and these sunflowers are opening up an entire month earlier than they did last summer! We had a warm spring and everything got off to an early start. I always associate sunflowers with the end of summer, beginning of fall …. nice to see these so early this year! These are dwarf sunflowers, about 3 feet tall with nice large single-flower heads. I planted them all along the front of the garden. I’m hoping they will all open up together soon, and make a very pretty border.

Lettuce, Broccoli, Summer Squash, and a Turnip

Today’s Pick

Jessi’s half of the garden is reaching full-harvest mode! I probably should have picked the broccoli a couple days ago – it’s just about to flower. There are some nice cauliflower heads out there that I didn’t notice last night. I have more than 20 cauliflower and broccoli plants in the garden, and they seem to be taking quite a while. I started them way back in March – you’d think they would have matured by now. It was a hot spring, though – so maybe that had something do do with it. It’s also getting a bit too hot for lettuce – Chris’s lettuce bolted already. I’ve still got a few heads out there that look like they’ll be...

Grilling Summer Squash

Grilling Summer Squash

You know it’s summer when every meal looks something like this:

Nigel eating a turnip - 2009 photo

Root Crops

Flowering Onion (click for a close-up) We’ve never had much luck growing onions or other root crops. In Morris, our soil was too heavy, and root crops were leafy at best. We ate a lot of beet greens, actually! When we moved to the “Great Anoka Sand Plain,” I was excited to see how our carrots, onions, and potatoes would turn out.

Fredonia Grapes growing on our fence

Fredonia Grapes

We fenced in our entire 1+ acre lot last summer, and we planted a lot of vines in hopes of one day having a “green fence.” I know it takes a few years, and I’m not quite sure how close you are supposed to place the vines to achieve full coverage.

Catnip

Catnip

I cut down all the catnip in the garden, which should give some of the other herbs a bit more room to grow. I’m sure well get a couple more good pickings from it this year. Once it’s dried I’ll bag it and hide it away for a snowy day!

The Arbor - July 2

Daisies!

I don’t have the patience for annuals (unless you can eat them), so I figured I’d add some perennial flowers to the garden this year. This spring, I picked up about a dozen daisy-like plants at a really neat family-owned nursery that is literally two minutes down the road from my house. Terrific plants at $2 each – and they are already flowering and gorgeous, lining the entrance to my garden.

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