The SDMB 2018 Gardening Thread

Cafe Society
61

:: bump ::

So how’s everyone’s harvest season coming along?

I think the seed company sent us the wrong kind of seeds instead of the Beit Alpha cucumbers I ordered - those are supposed to be small and smooth and sweet, but the ones we ended up with were spiny and got bitter if you let them get bigger than 3 - 4" or so. Luckily the Armenian cucumbers are just getting going now - we left town for the weekend and came home to 3 gigantic ones, the largest almost as long as my arm!

The acorn squash started out well, but then got hit by some kind of blight and died. We did get 4 nice squashes out of one plant, though. It didn’t trellis very well, but somewhat surprisingly, the butternut squash trellised quite nicely and spilled over the back fence into the alley until I redirected the vines.

The tomatoes are going insane and have turned into a lovely tomato jungle. We were out of town this weekend and got home just around dusk, so I ran outside and harvested whatever I could see and got a couple of quarts, but when I went out tonight I realized I had missed another couple of quarts. I think I’m going to have to do what I did last year and just roast a couple of baking sheets full of tomatoes with onions and garlic and maybe some thyme every couple of days, and then blitz it with the immersion blender and throw it in the freezer for winter. It tastes SO GOOD in, say, February on pasta!

Beets and carrots: I should have been much more aggressive about thinning these early on, but the beets are tasty. Should go poke at the carrots again.

We have picked a few red bell peppers and a few other peppers, but they are just about to start ripening in earnest. I hope we end up liking the Turkish sweet peppers, because we are about to be up to our eyeballs in them! Same for the Iraqi eggplants, which, as promised, are big and fat and meaty-looking; a couple of them are probably in the 3 lb. range by now. What can I make in quantity out of eggplants and freeze? I think we are going to be really glad we bought the standalone freezer last year. Eggplant curry freezes well; what else? Between that and the peppers, I think I might take my first crack at making ajvar, because it’s delicious.

We also planted an entire bed of garlic, which has been harvested and is curing downstairs on a rack in the basement. The basil is going bonkers, too, and the tomatillos are just ripening. What can I make with those and freeze?

Seeds are awaiting planting for a fall crop: kale, spinach, bok choi, radishes, broccoli rabe, tatsoi, more beets, cabbages, carrots. Maybe I’ll try overwintering the spinach; I planted some late last year, and it didn’t do much before winter, but it was the first thing to sprout in the spring under a makeshift hoop house (heavy-duty plastic sheeting over hoops of 1/2" PVC plumbing pipes). It worked out pretty well, even with how cold it got here.

62

After a bone dry and unusually warm June and July, August turned wet and cooler, so the harvest hasn’t been quite as good as I’d hoped. I had about 4 courgettes (zucchini) total, and my spaghetti squash plant rotted right through before the sole squash had fully ripened. Hopefully it’s far enough along to finish off indoors, 'cos you can’t buy them in the shops here. I may get one pumpkin, if we get another warm dry spell, but I’m not holding my breath. The runner beans were slow to get going, and the pollination’s been very poor, plenty of flowers, not so many beans. My leeks have apparently got confused by the weather and started bolting.

Now it’s wet again, the slugs are out in force, so any new seeds sown get nommed to the ground immediately. They got my promising looking fennel, kale and turnips as soon as the rain started.

On the other hand, the peas did amazingly, the beetroot have been great, onions pretty decent, cucumbers plentiful and I’m picking ripe tomatoes. Despite blight hitting the area, my one plant has been unaffected and is covered in fruit. First time I’ve grown that variety; it did say it had good blight resistance, I now believe it.

I think I have better idea for what to do differently next year at least!

63

I meant to post in this thread when I first saw it, then completely forgot after a rather terrible season. Here’s a recap:
[ul]
[li]Most of my cucumbers succumbed to the heat; others rotted after excessive rains. I have a few somewhat healthy looking vines left (straight eight and SMR 58, if anyone is interested), but only one is actually producing anything.[/li][li]I only planted a few sugar snap peas this year; I got a very small harvest before the heat destroyed them. [/li][li]Best okra harvest ever! I can’t stand the stuff, but Mom loves it. They’re planted next to the porch, which is good for harvesting because two of them are over my head now. [/li][li]The black mission fig bush made an amazing comeback from its apparent winter die-off, but it doesn’t have much fruit yet. [/li][li]The brown turkey fig bush (tree?) has produced so much fruit that I’ve had to resort to making jam and chutney to use it all. For once, I haven’t minded sharing with the birds; they tend to attack the higher-up fruits, meaning I don’t have to pull out a ladder for my harvests. [/li][li]For my flowers, the zinnias turned out to be some miniature variety with super long stems. I have a whole bucket full of Johnny jump ups, my morning glories are still flowering, and the random mix I planted in the bucket that used to hold an African violet appears to be recovering from the heat. Also, the African violet appears to be trying to regrow.[/li][li]A leftover poinsettia (possibly from 2016) has thrived in the heat; it’s very green and bushy now. The random plant I brought home from work is not recovering at all though. [/li][/ul]

64

Was away in August but my late-planted hop bine ripened late too, so now I am air-drying at least, um, several ounces of nice hops!

Got many tomatoes but the garden sitter came in for the best of them as well as the cukes and beans, oh well!

Need to do massive weeding and succession plant one last crop of beans/lettuce/etc. to get it before the cold sets in.

What’s your harvest look like?

65

The cucumbers and melons petered out, finally - we pulled the vines and put away the trellises a couple of weeks ago to make room for some fall seeds (carrots, beets, radishes, parsnips, Japanese mustard, bok choy, tatsoi, kohlrabi, and broccoli rabe). Those are sprouting now.

The acorn squash produced 4 or 5 before succumbing to vine borers, but the butternut squash is still hanging in there. One of the ones on the vine is huge - it probably weighs 5 lbs.!

Eggplants and peppers are plugging along - the tomatoes, which had been inundating us, have slowed down, but are still producing decently. I think we will have to figure out something to do with a bunch of green tomatoes when frost hits, though.

Also, padron peppers are sneaky little bastards - if you let them ripen to red, they are inedibly hot. I dried a bunch that I didn’t catch in time and made hot paprika, and it’s so hot that I go into coughing fits just smelling it!

The raspberries are going gangbusters - I think we’ve been picking a pint every day or two. Not a problem - they are one of my favorite things in the world!

The tomatillos have gone completely insane, too - I have been just husking them and freezing them whole. The variety we grew is kind of sweet; I will need to come up with some recipes other than salsa. Any favorites?