July overview

Things are really moving along. I can only manage an overview post right now.

Left to right, front to back -- peppers, lettuce going to seed (who knew it had such pretty flowers?), with elderly potato plants and lovely sunflowers behind that. The tomato jungle along the left shows that the Sungolds win the "tallest, biggest, get a machete" race, and although you can't see it, behind that is a bed of clover, buckwheat, and soybeans for a cover crop. The last bed has kale seeds scattered over half but not started yet.

On the right hand side, the front bed has pouty basil and happy Early Girl tomatoes, with stubby paste tomatoes behind that. The tomatillos all over the middle bed are actually ripening, and there are two empty beds behind that.

Behind everything, in the corner, pattypan squash are romping wildly, and the butternut squash is doing well along the side bed. Fallow beds along the wall, and the kids' beds are demonstrating a variety of their interests.


That trash bag is full of kale seeds. Literally full. I may end up eating sprouted kale all year long.

Spuds

The potatoes were such a disappointment last year that I almost didn't try them again. But little bags of organic eating potatoes tempted me a few months ago so I tried greening them up and then planted them in two trenches, as an alternative to standard hilling methods.

They grew fine for a while, then looked horrible in the heavy rains of spring. But the other day, I did an experimental dig near one corner of the bed, and came out with a purple potato the size of my fist, just right for part of a casserole. Hooray! Could there be more?


Today I found out that there were more! Almost four pounds of lovely thoroughly purple potatoes. The big ones were roasted tonight, and I think those little ones might enjoy being planted out in an empty bed, starting the cycle all over again.

The rest are going to have to wait a bit -- I'm not ready to harvest and process a lot of potatoes right now. Have to clean the basement and reorganize a bit. Some is still awash in garlic or shallots, and the empty jam and tomato jars are in need of restacking, plus the bee equipment could use a nice straighten. I'm sure I'll have time to do it all really soon.

Hahahahahaha.

Gemelli

Twenty-some years ago, my sister and I went wandering in Europe for a few months. In some countries, our appearance elicited more comment than others. We picked up some useful phrases in many languages, including my personal favorite, "Farlo a tua sorella," which we were instructed to use on Italian men in buses who thought that close quarters was license to grope freely.

Another Italian word we got very familiar with, used as a free-standing question, was "Gemelli?" which means "Twins?" Growing up, I focused on the differences between Denise and I, but looking back it's clear that we are closely related.

Does this have any relevance to my garden? Not usually, except that we're both gardening. But when I was checking the pickling cucumbers today, guess what I found:


Gemelli? Si, gemelli.

Of books, covers, and judging

I get, on a visceral level, that lovely produce isn't always the best, if by best one means "most flavorful," or "not sprayed with poison." I've eaten enough fruit that bugs tasted first, or knobby-looking carrots, or greens with -- gasp -- aphids on them to not get all caught up in the beauty contest that is modern food sometimes.

But apparently, I'm just as judgy as the next person. I confess, really I do, and I won't fall into that trap again too soon, I hope. This fall, alliums ruled the garden roost. Garlic, keeper onions, leeks (which still escape my gardeny success, drat them), and of course shallots.

"Of course," because nothing makes a fresh tomato soup like a shallot. Nor a cream sauce, nor many other delicate and lovely tasty things. And because I'm practicing to be a food snob. At any rate, I tried three different kinds: Gray shallots, Dutch yellow, and Santé, all from Territorial.

The Dutch yellow and the Gray got pulled early this month. The Dutch are sort of long, like bulby scallions, and not at all what I remember planting. I must have done something wrong. The Gray shallots proved that black aphids are gourmands, because 90% of them were gobbled up into slime by the bugs.

The Santé were off in a side bed, completely ignored. Then right after dinner tonight I wandered outside for some reason, and got sidetracked. The light in summer keeps me outside much longer than usual. I can't get enough! I was poking around and noticed some Evil Bermuda Grass in the shallot bed. I'd ignored the bed, because the shallots looked awful. Not awful as in "ready to harvest," but puny and unprepossessing, like anemic grass.

Imagine my surprise when, as I was pulling a weed, up came a classically-shaped shallot bulb:


Maybe not the biggest, although some were adequately sized, but definitely the nicest shaped ones in the garden. Go figure. They're out there so the roots can dry a bit, then I'll sift through them and clip them for storage. Maybe these are the shallots I'll replant next fall.

260 yards

This came out to somewhere in that neighborhood.

I figured that I needed to spin through my fiber stash as well as knit through my yarn stash, and in order to do that I'd have to loosen up a little. Instead of working for perfection, I'd concentrate on speedy and soft.

This old batt, held back for when I was "good enough," seemed like a fine bunch to let go of some self-imposed perfectionism with. I think it's bamboo/silk/alpaca. The black hairs showed up much more in the spin than they did in the batt.

Over the fold, medium whorl on my Lendrum, and a few spinning nights at the library. I tried to spin loosely and ply tight.


Not perfection, no, but done, and already planned for a sweater yoke -- swatched and everything. On size 10 needles, it knits up at about 5 stitches to the inch. And it's very soft. I don't want to spin everything like this, but it was a good exercise.

Volunteers

Since I spend so much of my gardening time planning where plants should go, sometimes serendipity gets forgotten.

That's real serendipity, not the "Oh no, how can I fit another one in here?" or just plain forgetting the plan kind of changes.

I was utterly committed to getting a blog post up today, especially after reading some great posts all around the garden crew last night. I may not have much time, but I do love reading your posts! But when I went outside with the camera, the reality of doing a real catch up post daunted me. Suffice it to say that the summer crops are coming on, although we're some time away from ripe tomatoes, I'm experimenting with cover crops -- who knew?, and I may still have underplanted pickling cucumbers, because every recipe I see says "Take ten pounds of pickling cucumbers," and I'm getting one about every three days. Any ideas?

But what did strike me, besides an overwhelming urge NOT to overwhelm anyone with my whole garden, was how many plants I had nothing to do with are popping or popped up.

So, I give you my volunteers. (This does not include the small tomato plants that keep popping up in the old tomato bed, in between the cucumbers, because I am ruthlessly ripping them out whenever I see them. Some restraint must be exercised, I believe. Nor does it include the true, and truly tenacious volunteers, my weeds. I'm doing as well as I can with them, but under control they aren't.)

Those would be the tat soi babies. Everywhere a seed dropped, up they popped. In walkways (some being stomped on), in beds, beside bean plants, everywhere. So if you were wondering? Tat soi is apparently a year-round plant in the Bay Area. Good thing, too -- it's a nice green. Perhaps I'll actually sow some after I eat these up.

This baby is something big. A pumpkin? A Marina di Chioggia? Something huge. I'm going to let it go a bit and see what happens, although that's not my general inclination with big volunteers. I'm just so impressed with the size. Each seed leaf has to be 3" long.

For some reason, I don't have my pictures of the tomato and rasperry right by the chicken coop, nor the oregano taking over part of the front yard, nor the volunteer tomato out front with biggish green tomatoes on it -- that plant is easily 6' tall now.

So I'm enjoying the ease with which these plants are popping up, and in the true spirit of volunteers, I'm not babying them at all. We'll just see how things go. Maybe I can figure out how to get more of that spirit into my planned plantings too.

Blahgging

I'm so behind in blogging I can hardly function. And it's not just updating my blog -- I love to do it, and I love to hear from people, but because I'm also behind in reading other people's blogs, I have to contend with the guilt factor.

Instead of catching up on blogs and leaving lots of insightful comments, I'm avoiding reading the blogs I most enjoy, because reading them and not commenting feels so incredibly rude, I keep planning to catch up later. . . and then summer hit, and well, "later" might be Christmas.

It's all good stuff -- lots and lots of work, many children, activities like today's berry picking, and gardening, of course. We had a small but intense heat wave that had me quite worried for a couple of days. I was draining bath tubs and siphoning rainwater to coax along baby plants and recent transplants, but fortunately the weather seems to have remembered its place, and we're back to milder days.

So, a summer overview first:




The sweet peas are down (you can see the "hay rick" load of them in the wheelbarrow), which made the garden seem more horizontal for a bit. I miss them, but some other flowers are starting. I don't think I planted quite enough though.

The pole and bush beans in the back left hand side of the garden made it through the heat snap, planted around transplanted sunflowers for poles. Here they are without their row cover on:

Because if the row cover blows off, say, a bird gets them:

Cherokee Purple and Sungold tomatoes are rocking along. The volunteer out front is probably a CP, and it's set fist-sized fruit. These haven't, but they're doing fine.

In the back, the herbs and summer squashes are rollicking. They liked the heat.

Maybe this will be the year I remember to fry some blossoms?

A semi-jury rigged support for the butternut squash. They seem to think it's an okay idea. I'll tie more ladder rungs on to it as the season goes on.

Also happy about the warmer weather are the cucumbers. This bed is nearly all Ohio pickling cukes, but along the left are three Mexican Sour Gherkins, just overtaking their teepee supports.


The tomatillos (visible behind the cucumbers above) are going to produce a bumper crop, I think. And they're so pretty. Tucked in there on one side are two Mini White Cucumbers, which I keep gently pushing back into their support cages out of the tomatillos.

Paste tomatoes got in late, but I assume that since I want to harvest them all at once and not use them fresh, and the tomatoes will cheerfully bear into November, it's okay.

Ellie has been tending her garden carefully. Yesterday saw the construction of irrigation channels. I have got to get these little beds either made bigger or put on a drip system like everywhere else.


Cat's bed has one of the garden's two strawberry plants.


And with that, we're off to a strawberry ranch. Jam tomorrow!