the view outside my kitchen window

So you see why i have no tomatoes. I love the way that it's not enough for the squirrels to take them and eat them...they have to mock me as well. Fuckers have an attitude!

wow i have not been updating this blog

Actually it is because this is such a depressing year in the vegetable garden. The only thing which grows well are the zucchini & the pumpkins. It is August and i have almost no tomatoes. Part of the reason is that the damned squirrels get them first....that is a story in itself. Oh, and do you know what else grows well? Those MARIGOLDS. They are TAKING OVER THE GARDEN. It is insane, i have never seen such marigold plants. Not much in the way of flowers, but lots of leaves. Indeed i don't have many bugs on my tomato plants. Here is a picture of the mess:
Can you believe it? They are even bigger than the zucchini plants! I should take a different picture so that you can see the scale. Maybe i will....sigh.

i should be sleeping

I suppose i will try that again in a few weeks, see how it looks. Hopefully, a little redder!

I was looking back through things here -- last year of course is a wash, what with the birth of the twins. But the year before i do have things documented nicely enough. I found that by this point in the year, i already had beans, cukes, and even the occasional tomato.

This year, i have none of those things. I did plant them, and they are sprouted but no food yet. So far all i have this year is (bolting) lettuce and zucchinis. And those damned marigolds which i swear are taking over the place.

The squirrels are starting to steal my tomatoes, too, even though they are still green. I found a half-chewed green tomato on the steps this morning. See, not only are they stealing them, they are rubbing it in my face. I really have to get a gun.

idiot

I knew i didn't have the space to grow pumpkins. So then why on earth did i plant them??? And not one plant even but two. Actually i know why i planted two -- the seeds weren't germinating well, i think i actually planted 3-4. But i was supposed to cull, and i didn't...i went to visit my mother instead. So now the whole space alloted is already completely taken up by these two already huge plants.

I know i will have to kill one. I hate to do it. It seems so evil. Why didn't i pull it up when it was little, somehow that seems so much less destructive. Oy, i have to learn to be more hard-hearted towards plants.

I am leaning toward letting them take over the lawn, which is nothing but weeds (and a play structure) there anyway. But i think dh would be very unhappy about that. He likes things neat. I wonder how he ended up with me?

zucchini grows fast

I left this baby zucchini on the vine when i picked the other baby zucchinis on tuesday to make that zucchini & basil thing. This one was very small, but 2 days later it is bigger than most of the ones i picked.

Yeah, news flash, zucchini grows fast. And the sky is blue. And the garden is full of weeds.

a nice recipie

I made this tonight -- Fettuccini with walnuts and zucchini. I really liked it, but noone else in my household did. A flatly refused to eat it at all, and dh said 'don't make it again, these walnuts are terrible'. C refuses to eat anything green at all, so her opinion is moot. The babies would've liked it, but they were asleep already/ But actually i might try to make it again, because i like it. I like the concept, which is sort of a pesto with zucchini. I like the fact that i can make it with zucchini (i have the stuff growing in the garden but dh only likes it fried, well that is not very healthy kwim?) and it has a really nice fresh taste. (Due to the fact that the zucchini isn't even cooked) Plus, it is easy & done quick.

I used baby zucchinis & fresh basil from the garden, which was nice. I left out the mint (i don't have any mint, hate the stuff) and i probably used too much basil because my version tasted like a pesto with some zucchini thrown in. But i didn't have enough zucchini to do it right. "I like regular pesto better", said dh...."do i have to eat this?" said A. In fact, he refused, and i made him clean the kitchen in consequence.

Next time i will use more zucchini and less basil, and no walnuts (they were bitter. Pine nuts might work, or no nuts at all -- that would certainly be cheaper). I probably wouldn't do it with mature zucchini rather than baby ones -- the baby ones are tender & have a nice sweet taste.

basil seedlings, for zoey

I have been waiting for my basil to sprout, and a bunch of stuff sprouted but i couldn't tell if it was basil or weeds. Finally, today you can tell.

these are basil
these are weeds
this is a basil seedling surrounded by weeds.The variety of basil is 'Sweet Genovese' so i imagine different varieties will look different.

pictures

Zucchini leaf. I am not sure if the white coloring is just the variety or if it is some kind of disease. Because, you know, i always think positively like that.
Pumpkin plant, and some baby leek volunteers. The pumpkin plant that we started inside met a bad end (somebody broke it clean off, stepped on it i suspect) so i threw in some seeds. They have grown relatively quickly but i am still not sure we will have time to actually get pumpkins from this variety. 120 days to maturity, blah.
I staked my tomatoes. I am attempting to prune them this year, i am hoping to keep some order in the garden with this pruning thing. Some of them have a blight already, like the one on the right in the picture. That is a marigold in the front.
Here is the flower of the marigold. This is an heirloom variety named 'Harlequin'. The flowers are very beautiful but you sometimes learn why things have fallen into 'heirloom' status. The plant is huge & bushy with just a few small flowers....like this one for example.
That's fine for the vegetable garden but i wouldn't want it in my flower border. Maybe they will bloom more later in the summer?
Dill is very pretty.
I didn't actually plant it, these are all volunteers from last year's dill.

proof

This is a lousy picture because i took it out of the back bathroom window as C got ready for bed, but i put it here as proof that at one point in the summer the garden was actually *weeded*. In fact i weeded two Sundays in a row. This is big.

I have not posted here this summer. I have been working in the veggie garden but i have not been happy about it. The raised beds were nearly gone after last year, so they not only needed to be weeded, but also redug, reshaped, and have compost added. Which doesn't sound so bad but somehow it took me, like, weeks. I swear. I don't know *why* it took so long -- i actually stayed home from work for a few days to do it and it *still* didn't get completed.

Somehow it seems like this vegetable garden is a full-time job. Well, i already have one of those, or two if you count the kids. I am doing my best to keep it up this year but i am considering just plowing the whole damn thing under next year. I hate it when it gets away from me and is a total mess. My husband hates it. I hate my husband. (no, not really, just sometimes).

On the other hand, for the kids, i do think it is really good to grow vegetables. Especially when they are growing up in the city -- they have so little connection to the land. The twins, at a year old, have never even seen a cow. That's pretty crazy, huh? We don't get out much. Next week we are going to visit family in PA and they will surely see some cows there. My mother will think i am insane -- "let's go look at some cows!"

So i am torn about it, really. We will see how it goes this year. Weeding two weekends in a row is promising...i hope i can keep it up.

seeds started!

I actually managed to start seeds this weekend, with C as my little helper. New this year, she didn't want to get her hands dirty (!!??) so she wore some ridiculous gloves of mine -- i will have to see if i can pick up some kid's size gardening gloves.

We started:

Tomatoes: Aunt Ruby's German Green, Great White, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, St. Pierre (that is this year's novelty! ) I am sick of cherry tomatoes so i didn't plant any this year. I hope my Cherokee purples sprout because the seed was several years old.

Eggplant Thai Long Purple

Chile peppers "Ancho Grande" (a freebie)

Marigolds -- "Harlequin", a striped heirloom, and a variety of tiny ones that i saw at Greenfield Village and stole, uh, collected some seed from last year.

Pumpkin "Musquee de provence" which i think from the picture are the very tasty ones we used to get in France.

Yes, i started pumpkins inside, because the 'days to maturity' of this pumpkin said '120' which seemed like a lot. They are in those peat cups so we will see how that transfer goes.

Yes, we started marigolds inside also, for C's pleasure. Because "i no yike 'matoes."

All seeds were from Baker Creek this year.

I still have not done a garden plan. Hell, i still have not taken down last year's tomato cages. So i don't know what else we will plant. Lettuce, beans, basil, sunflowers, summer squash likely. Beets maybe. C wants corn which should be popular with the squirrels. So we will see.

Next week is our spring break, and i hope the weather is temperate enough so that i can get out there & clean out all my gardens & mulch....

seeds 2008

It is January. I guess i should start thinking about what seeds to start, and if i need to order any. Maybe i will do that.

tomato tastings 2007 postscript

So here it is mid-October & i was cleaning out the flower garden. Lo and behold i noticed that my 'Persimmon' tomato, which had previously produced two dry, rock-hard items that could barely be classed as tomatoes, was now laden with huge juicy offerings. I mean really big ones, and very tasty too. Not sure what happened there, but i did enjoy them! I would say now that i would grow it again, if i wanted an orange tomato.

Also the green tomato, 'Aunt Ruby's german green', got some sort of blight & dried up. So though it was prolific before then, it is a mess now.

from August

We grew a giant zucchini! It was so big C could hardly lift it. The neighbors said we should've entered it in the state fair...however we were really hungry so we ate it instead.

kate's tomato tastings 2007

If you recall, i was too busy being pregnant to actually start seeds, so i got all these from a local plant sale. The twins arrived safely and now i am too busy being mommy to actually weed the garden. However in the intervening time i was able to throw some plants in the ground and eat some tomatoes. Here are my (albeit brief) impressions:

-Arkansas Traveler. My hubby picked the first one of these and i didn't believe him when he said it came from our garden -- it looked like a storebought one. They are about the size of a peach and perfect perfect perfect looking red tomatoes. The taste is kind of average though, i wasn't impressed. Probably be a good tomato to sell or something, but i like a tomato with some kick.

-Aunt Ginny's Purple -- not much kick here either, and the plant wasn't very prolific. Another average one.

-Aunt Ruby's German Green -- OH MY GOD I LOVE IT. This is my favorite this year, i will have to find where to buy the seeds. These are huge and flavorful and there are alot of them. They really are green when they are ripe, though, so you have to keep checking and feeling them. They look lovely in a tomato salad or as pasta fresca. Here are some pictures:

-Black from Tula -- another good one. This one almost made up for the fact that i didn't have any Cherokee Purple this year. Prolific and tasty.

-Great White -- another good one! OK, all the good ones are together in the list. A big tasty sweet yellow one! It is now my favorite yellow tomato. Well, ok, 'white', but can i say in the yellow family? I will grow it again and again and again and again....the pic is of Great White & Black from Tula.

-Mortgage Lifter -- this plant got choked out by weeds so i got nothin'. Dommage....

-Paul Robeson -- the squirrels love it. I had one not-quite-ripe tomato from this plant, that i managed to pick first. I did not think it was as good as 'Black from Tula' but it is hard to compare....simply not enough data. Maybe it just wasn't ripe enough. Thieving bastards. I swear one day i am going to get a gun.

-Persimmon -- not sure what happened here. Partly the plant was choked by weeds.... but i did get some tomatoes. They were kind of hard & leathery, and didn't taste very good. Looks pretty chopped up with others though. I think something went wrong, i don't think it was the fault of the variety.

-Yellow Pear -- was mismarked & was in fact Red Currant (or some related variety). Well, screw that. The squirrels liked these too, and they are welcome to them. I mean, they are cute as a salad garnish but other than that i don't have a lot of use for currant tomatoes.

My garden, though, is chock full of them -- the 'White Currant' from last year seeded themselves with a vengeance. I didn't quite manage to pull them out and as a result they are everywhere. Which is in fact kind of convenient, because i have plenty of tomatoes to give away and i didn't do anything to get them. Saves face, somehow.

sunflowers

just a cute pic. All the sunflowers are volunteers, coming up in various places in the vegetable garden. The sunflower on the right is 'Lemon Queen', a 'decorative' variety that i planted last year. The one on the left is the one from the birdseed. C loves to fill the bird feeder but tends to drop seed everywhere, so these are coming up all over the place. Oddly enough, i think they are alot prettier than the so-called 'decorative' ones.

bastards

Something ate most of my squash seedlings, and a few of the others. The basil has not sprouted at all. The weeds are growing just great.

Gardening sucks!

my seeds sprouted!

summer squash, cukes, beans, zinnias, and lettuce did, anyway. Still waiting on the rest of the stuff. Hopefully we will see more of them after this weekend's gentle rains (because i have not yet managed to set up a sprinkler, so nothing has been watered since i put it in, oops) Of course, more weeds will sprout too, but whaddya gonna do?

i did plant veggies after all

Here is a lousy picture, i mean i could explain the thing of the leaves-as-mulch and all that, but i will keep that for another time. I will try to get better pics soon. None of the seeds have germinated yet so there is nothing to really see, except some tomato plants and whatever is left over from last year.

I got some heirloom tomato plants (9 in total) from a local plant sale, i will have to look up what i got because i don't even remember. It was not what i planned to get.

So what is in there?

-Those tomato plants and a bunch of volunteer tomatoes from last year. We will see what actually comes of it.
-Leeks from last year (they are getting kind of fat finally).
-Beets (mix of three kinds, will list later...they were planted too late though)
-Rainbow Chard (ditto on planted too late, i guess we will just eat the baby greens)
-Lettuce -- merveille des quatres saisons & black-seeded simpson, like last year, also planted too late. But actually we have some volunteers from last year that we are currently eating at dinnertime
-Arugula volunteers from last year
-bush beans, royalty purple pod
-cucumbers, white wonder
-summer squash, blend of 7 varieties, will find & list later
-basil, sweet genovese
-dill, i forget which variety
-silver thyme & greek oregano plants
-some sunflower volunteers
-flowers for cutting -- cosmos (seashells blend) and zinnias (state fair mix)
-marigolds, for keeping off the bugs. This year i got a flat of the orange two-toned ones, called 'disco queen'...just to be different from last year.

Nothing is planted in the center oval, just some marigolds, because C loves to fill the birdfeeder & watch the birds. So we will keep the shepard's crook which refuses to stand straight and the tiny birdfeeder there (so she can fill it every day! Oh the fun!)

How am i going to keep this garden from getting away from me, when twin boys arrive in three weeks (knock on wood)? I won't, it is not possible. But my neighbors needled me until i planted veggies, because they want enough to share, and promised to help with the watering & weeding. So, when it all goes to hell, i can blame somebody else, and that's really the most important thing.

***********

Edited to add -- if anyone actually reads this anymore, i should answer the question that will undoubtedly be asked: how do you plant a garden when you are 34 weeks pregnant with twins, and thus cannot bend down? The answer is you crawl around a lot, and hope noone is watching you. You may laugh, but it works...

Tomato varieties 2007

I have to list the varieties i have here and now, before i forget and it is never done. So we have one plant each of:

-Arkansas Traveller
-Aunt Ginny's Purple
-Aunt Ruby's German Green
-Black from Tula
-Great White
-Mortgage Lifter
-Paul Robeson
-Persimmon
-Yellow Pear

I have actually never had any of these before (except the ubiquitous Yellow Pear) so it will be interesting. I hope i will have time to record my reflections on these tomatoes here. I am upset because i have no Cherokee Purple, which is my all-time favorite...they did have them on the list at the sale but by the time i got in, they were all gone. We were there, in time, before the opening even....but some people had already gotten in the day before because of an error in the paper. So i was really annoyed. But i am hoping that either Paul Robeson or Black from Tula will prove an adequate substitute. I have little expectation for 'Aunt Ginny's Purple' which is described as 'deep pink productive beefsteak'. Well, if it's pink, it ain't purple. Maybe Aunt Ginny couldn't see very well...

The volunteers i have in the garden are probably from the White Currant tomatoes from last year, and i see one Brandywine volunteer. There is one that i am hoping is a Cherokee Purple but i am not holding my breath. I am surprised there are no Yellow Bell volunteers, but maybe the leaves on that bed were just too thick....