Herbs Doing Well

 I've harvested vast quantities of herbs over the past couple of days. From outside in the Greenstalk, I've had cilantro, parsley, and dill. I also have marjoram and fennel, but I'm not sure what to do with them.

Herbs in the top tier of middle tower (pre-harvest).
Eggplants in bottom 3 tiers of blue, peppers in bottom 3 of green

It's all experiments, both growing and harvests. I made a dish that used a cup of cilantro, and then the rest of it I chopped in the mini-food processor with a small amount of olive oil to bind it, and froze into just two ice cubes. I'm always startled how much the volume goes down. The dill, I stripped off the stems with my fingers and then stuffed it all into a small 4 ounce plastic container and froze it as is. I'm pretty sure I'll end up having to use all of it at once.

From left: mint, basil, thyme, Thai basil, parsley
I started these in December, and really chopped them back today
Hydroponic, no dirt, and no bugs!
I found this shady windowsill benefits from supplemental lights

The Thai basil (really great flavor!) I treated like the cilantro, except I used a neutral oil instead of olive oil. Again, two ice cubes. The mint, I mostly discarded after using some in a drink last night. It's ok flavor, but I don't use mint a lot and it grows fast a vigorously. The window-sill basil I decided to handle differently, since I already have basil/olive oil cubes from last year. I'm trying to dry it in my air fryer (which has a "dehydrate" setting). Then I'll crumble it into a jar. It's not done drying yet, but again, the volume decrease is amazing!

Where to Put my Vegetables?

 I have limited space to grow vegetables. While I have a substantial yard, I can only grow vegetables where there is (1) sufficient sun and (2) protection from the deer. In addition, I'm reluctant to plop a vegetable bed down smack dab in the middle of my yard - I'd rather have them on the edges. As a consequence, these are the spaces I have:

This is a metal 3'x4' raised bed on the side of my house.
It is planted right now with broccoli and red cabbage.

This is a wooden 4'x8' raised bed I built years ago, at the back of my house.
I bought the frame and netting that covers it (new netting this year).
It has tomatoes in half of it, and I plan for zucchini in the other half.

This is a collection of pots, all planted with tomatoes.
They are easily moveable. Currently sitting on a wooden pallet
next to my driveway. Needs more deer & rabbit protection.

These are my latest additions, "Greenstalks". Not a gimmick.
Each tier has six pockets, so I have 72 planting pockets to fill.
I'm in the process of building a barrier behind them for deer protection.
They are where the Vespa used to park, at the end of my driveway.
(Now the Vespa is on dirt in the shade, I need to build a new pad).

 I try to rotate my crops in the raised beds, to minimize pests that overwinter in the soil. Last year in the metal bed I raised zucchini, so this year I've gone for the brassicas, broccoli and cabbage. Also, conveniently, this bed was easy to clean and prepare for spring planting with the addition of bagged compost, so it was ready when I spotted broccoli, a cold weather crop, at Home Depot. Last year, the big 4x8 bed had tomatoes in one half, and corn and beans in the other half. So this year, I've put tomatoes in the half that had corn, and I plan to put zucchini in the other half once it warms up enough.

I refresh the dirt in the pots and the greenstalk, so rotation isn't necessary. Basically, I empty them out (usually to a tarp on the ground) and then stir new compost and maybe new potting soil into the old dirt. I fish out any big chunks of last year's roots, and then put the refreshed mixture back in the containers. It's actually a fair amount of work, but since I wanted to move and add greenstalks, it was worth it this year.

The big experiments are the Greenstalks. I belong to some on-line gardening groups which is where I learned about them. I had seven tiers split into two stacks last year, mostly with peppers and basil. They revolve on their bases, so I can vary the sun exposure. This year, I have twelve tiers, with six spots each, for a total of 72 planting pockets. But I've started more seeds than I have spaces!

So far I have 18 various peppers out in the bottom 3 tiers of the light green tower; lettuce and scallions from seed in its top tier. The top tier of the mixed tower has various herbs from farmers market; the second tier has mini cabbage plants. Inside under lights I have a dozen pak chois, six Swiss chards, 18 eggplants, and 30 (!) basils coming along. The seedlings are too small, and it's too cold, to set them out today - but it'll be time soon!

I'll be able to squeeze a bunch of basil plants along the perimeter and between tomato and zucchinis in the big raised bed. Discounting them, I've got 36 planting pockets, and 36 seedlings (12 pak choi + 6 chard + 18 eggplants), so it just works out! 

Also, I am going to start harvesting my broccoli (in the metal raised bed) today. It'll continue to bear from side shoots for a while, but I may end up ripping it out and putting something completely different in there. Some of the herbs and greens in the greenstalks will also sputter out and I'll be able to put something new there. So as long as I don't go overboard at farmer's markets or starting any more of my many seeds, I guess I'll be ok.

Roses and Peonies, Oh My!

 While I'm all in on native plant gardening, there are certain ornamental flowers that are long-lived and spectacular. I've got roses planted in four places in my yard. On my fence along the walk up to my house, a single climbing plant is enormous and amazing. Peonies are well known for lasting fifty years or more. there were a couple already here when I bought the place, and a few years back I added a bunch more. In contrast to the elegant roses, peonies are overblown and, in the phrase of a friend, "always seem like they belong in a French whorehouse". But they certainly buff up a place!

 

Still Growing!

I'm still kind of coasting on gardening this year, but I haven't been completely inactive.

First, on the coasting, I've got some blooms showing up from prior years:

The trout lilies have made a big patch,
but not so many blooms

The bloodroot continues to shine bright
It moves around as the ants plant seeds

The sole remaining tulip from a big bunch
planted in 2019.

I do have plans for vegetables this year. I've rearranged some things in the yard, because I realized the parking pad I built for the Vespa was the sunniest spot in the whole yard. So I moved the Vespa, and I'll be doing Greenstalks on the parking pad. (Need to build a new pad for the Vespa but right now its on the dirt.) I'm rotating crops in the ground - I'll grow cruciferous veggies in the raised bed where the zucchini was last year. I got a six pack of broccoli at Home Depot and plopped them in there, after topping off the bed with LeafGro and compost. I plan to put tomatoes in the half of the big raised bed where I had the corn and beans last year, and zucchini in the half where the tomatoes were. I'll need to put some tomatoes in pots.

My baby broccoli

The hard thing is deciding how to fill up three 4-tier greenstalks - a total of 72 planting pockets. I need to get going on seed starts or buying plants will bankrupt me!
 

Countertop Gardening

Lettuces. Could be eaten at this size, but
I'm greedy and keep them going.

 I'm still using my indoor hydroponic gardens, though all but the basement tomatoes were shut down for the summer. I started lettuces and bok choi the second week of October. I was able to start eating in about five weeks. I started my second batch of lettuce then - the third week of November. 

Baby bok choi

I finished the bok choi (baby sized) the first week of December - so about 9 weeks total. The first batch of lettuces, which I'd been using for salads and sandwiches straight through from when I started the harvest, was pretty much done by then. I left them, and got a few more leaves before finally trashing them this week - so 10 weeks total.

Isn't this gorgeous?

I started swiss chard about a week after the first batch of lettuce, mid-October. Tonight I based a meal around harvested chard - the third time I've done that. It'll keep going, I think, for quite some time. I base my harvests on when it grows too tall for the container, and the stems are still relatively small and easy to cook and eat. I could move the chard to jars to get bigger, but I'm going for at least one more batch in the machine. I think they are really attractive! They brighten the place up considerably.

Post harvest, I swear they grew an inch in a couple of hours!
I think these will keep going for quite some time.

I've started a batch of herbs, just last week. Not all have even sprouted yet.

2024 Vegetable Wrap-Up

My peppers, bought onions

I thought I would recap what happened this year, what worked and what didn't work. It was my most successful vegetable gardening in years. While we haven't had a frost yet, and the plants are mostly still alive, there won't be any more harvests.

First, peppers. I only put them in the Greenstalk, my rotating vertical grower. They did very very well. When I first set them in place, they took a small beating from small pests (holes in the leaves) but I sprayed with an organic bug spray and also trapped many slugs in beer traps, and from then on they took off. I watered daily during the drought and I fertilized them every couple of weeks through the end of July. 

I probably won't grow the same varieties of peppers again. I mostly planted "mini-bells", sweet peppers that only get to be a few inches big. They were very tasty, but WAY TOO MUCH WORK TO EAT!!!  The teeny little things required de-seeding just like a big bell, but it took a lot of them to make a meal. The orange variety seemed much more prolific than the red ones, and I had a purely green, round, one as well (Cupid) with an especially good taste. I also planted one variety of normal-sized banana peppers, long and skinny, and they were good, but more prone to insect damage than the others. I'm going to look for classic bells and fatter Italian frying peppers next year. (I do not do hot peppers.)

And basil! I had SO MUCH basil! I started 24 basil plants from seed, and plopped in a plant to each of the unused slots in the Greenstalk. I had four varieties - Napolitano, Genovese, Tuscany, and Thai. I also put a half-dozen plants into the ground. I had basil extravaganza for the whole summer! It loved the heat, and I watered daily during the drought. The Thai basil plants in the ground got as tall as me! It's not my favorite variety of Thai, I'll look for a new one next year. I bought parsley plants, flat leaf and curly, at farmer's market and put in the Greenstalk, where they did well. I also bought cilantro plants, twice, and placed in the Greenstalk, but they both died quickly.

And tomatoes! I did regular tomatoes in the ground and in individual pots, and cherry tomatoes in the Greenstalks. (Same variety cherry tomato as I grow inside hydroponically.)  I basically got no cherry tomatoes outside, maybe one or two. I think the bunnies may have gotten to them - they were accessible, though slightly protected. And my big tomatoe plants were partially protected. I had four plants in the ground, inside netting that was easily broken by the animals - and it was shredded by them on Bastille Day, in the middle of July, when the plants were bursting with plenty of green tomatoes and no ripe ones. (see this post). I had picked a few green-but-clearly-ripening tomatoes before the massacre. I repaired the damage as best I could a few days later, and the plants survived their haircuts and proceeded to set a new crop of fruit. I got maybe a dozen tomatoes in all (maybe a bit more). The tomato plants in pots were basically unprotected from the critters and took many haircuts besides having fruit stolen. I did get a couple of handfuls of tomatoes from the five plants in pots. I fertilized all the tomato plants every 2-3 weeks (pots slightly more often) through the end of July. I don't think I fertilized after that.

I did two of the three sisters, corn and beans. I got some little corn before the massacre. The beans, inter-planted at the foot of the corn stalks, continued to grow post-massacre, and I harvested a few handfuls of very attractive pods. I shelled the beans, they yielded about 3/4 of a cup, and boiled them, ate them in a vinegar and oil dressing, and was pleased. But I don't know that either the corn or beans were worth the garden space. Corn from the farmer's market is easier, and I like beans from a can. 

I had my best zucchini harvest in years! It wasn't anything to boast about, by zucchini growing standards, but I actually got maybe a dozen or more zucchini to eat! I planted in my raised bed with new soil, and draped the whole thing with insect netting, fastened down all around the edge of the bed. After the plants started blooming with female blossoms, I replaced the fine-meshed insect netting with wider-meshed critter netting, to allow for natural pollination while still keeping the deer, rabbits and squirrels out. I watered, but far from daily, maybe more like weekly. I sprayed the plants with the organic insect spray, put out slug traps (but slugs didn't seem a problem) and sprayed a couple of times with BT, which is specific for caterpillars. I think I thwarted the squash vine borer, which is a moth that lays its eggs inside the vines, for the emergent caterpillars to eat their way out. 

This was my first year for potatoes! I bought seed potatoes on impulse at the hardware store, and I planted them into three 5-gallon growbags. I harvested one bag at the end of July, and the other two about 10 days ago. It was so fun to peel back the bag, and plunge my hands into the dirt feeling for the little potatoes! The thing to worry about potatoes is their turning green. The green is actually just chlorophyll, which is fine, but bad chemicals (solanine) often develop as the potatoes are turning green. I scrubbed, cooked and ate the potatoes the day they were harvested, and I think a few of the potatoes had some solanine. Some of them were bitter to the taste, and I felt queasy after eating them. How odd, but I won't be doing potatoes again. 

But it's all an experiment, and the fun is in the doing and finding out. I don't know what I'll do next year, but whatever I do, I know I need better pest and critter barriers.

Promises Fulfilled!

On the cloth, clockwise from top right:
Sweet Sunset banana peppers,
Cupid pepper mini-bell,
Fresh Orange not-yet-ripe,
Flambo Shell beans,
Fresh Orange mini-bell,
Fresh Red mini-bell,
with various tomatoes along the top.

 Tomatoes and peppers, and a few beans.

I'm picking tomatoes before they are fully ripe, because critters (probably squirrels) are also going for them, though they like them soft and red. 

I'm pretty sure I'll be making a version of spaghetti sometime soon. Right now, I've got the banana peppers cooking slowly in a pan with onions - going for a couple of hours.

I'll have to do some research on what to do with the beans. The idea is to eat the beans not the pods. I don't know if they can be boiled and eaten right away, or if they need to be dried, and then soaked, before cooking.