I will not buy any more seeds this year…

 I will not buy any more seeds this year. I will NOT buy any more seeds this year. I will not buy ANY MORE seeds this year. I WILL NOT buy any more seeds this year. 

Still Gardening

Last night, I dipped into the freezer and 
got my second-to-last bag of my tomatoes,
and my last peppers, to make a sauce.

It's February, and that means there is a stack of seed catalogs on my coffee table four inches high. I just placed an order for seeds and supplies, due in next week. At the end of last season, I bought some planters on sale, and I've been musing about where they go (in my limited sun) and how to protect them from deer (my excellent deer fence mostly protects the shady part - the bulk of - my yard).

In the mean time, I am growing inside. I did a round of lettuce that all got eaten the week before I went on vacation. I'm participating in a group challenge for indoor growing - my online group selected specific vegetables and varieties, and we all planted them at the same time. It's not a competition, we're comparing notes and tips. I've got cherry tomatoes, shishito peppers, and nasturtiums going, besides a basil plant on the window sill. I've got the usual house plants inside, including three citrus under a strong grow light - two limes and a lemon, I think, though since there is little to no fruit its hard to be sure. Plant tending is a great putter while listening to a book or podcast.

Tomatoes and peppers in the basement

Closeup of the pepper plants blooming away
I do some fertilizing them using an old electric toothbrush

My kitchen window, just before going away
Tomato, basil, thyme, pepper in window
nasturtium in tabletop unit
I also like having the bright lights in the kitchen

 

Vegetable Bounty

Salad tomatoes, paste tomatoes, cucumbers,
mini cucumbers, peppers, cherry tomatoes

 There's a pretty good harvest going in some of the vegetables. I don't pick every day - I plan for when I can spend time cooking or otherwise preserving the harvest. The peppers were coming on strong when I got home from vacation on August 1. The cherry tomatoes were also full steam. The cucumbers were just starting.

Banana peppers, long green peppers, eggplants, basil,
shishito peppers

I grew two types of main crop tomatoes - early girl, and money maker. I think the ones I'm getting are money maker. They are big salad-sized, not huge slicers. They are still going strong, after a month. 

 I grew San Marzano roma-types. That plant started turning yellow from the bottom up, but I still got more than one sauce crop out of it. 

The bulk of the cherry tomatoes are gumdrop. They are bigger and darker than most cherry tomatoes. The plant in a pot is not doing well, but the one in the ground has become a jungle all by itself. It spread to all four trellis supports, and then up through the roof of the crop cage to cover it!  The fruits from the potted one are much smaller. I'm guessing the constrained roots can't support the rampant growth.

 I'm growing several varieties of sweet peppers in the green stalk. Mostly I cook with them, though I have some small bells that I have eaten as snacks. I bought a single shisito pepper plant at farmer's market and it has been prolific from June on. I fry the peppers in olive oil whole and just chomp them while holding onto the stem. Tasty!

The little eggplants persist. Every week or so I get a handful and cook them up in the oven or air fryer. I've mostly been eating them as a single dish, but this week I added the cooked eggplant to a ground lamb dish I had made, and it was not entirely unlike moussaka, after I added creme fraiche for creaminess. 

Roasted eggplant and fried shisito peppers

I have two kinds of cucumbers, pickle sized and full sized. I mostly eat the small ones as finger food, just munching on them. I grated up most of a full sized one to added to yogurt and garlic to make tzatziki sauce. Yum! I'm getting a half dozen little ones a week, which is more than I want to eat. But they are good snacks.

I seem to have failed to take a picture of my single zucchini. I have several very healthy plants, no sign of vine borers or other blights, but there are only male blossoms! I spotted one embryonic female about to bloom, and came back 48 hours later to find it a foot long and past optimal picking. I keep searching under the foliage but see no other fruits happening.

 My countertops are full of vegetables ready to be processed. I visited a friend and was amused to find she was the same, with tomatoes finishing ripening and peppers needing to be frozen.

I'm popping cherry tomatoes into bags and right into the freezer, whole and raw. I hear they will still make good sauce, which makes sense. The peppers I either cut and freeze raw, or saute with onions and freeze that way. I'm eating some form of pepper-and-tomato saute, some form of spaghetti, a couple of times a week. The eggplants get eaten right away, and I don't know if its possible to preserve cucumbers, so some of those go to waste.

Early August: It's a Jungle Out There!

The pot farm

 I hired a neighborhood urchin to water my plants in pots while I was gone. The pots need watering every day it doesn't rain - but it rained a lot! I had told the kid to help himself to vegetables, but there were still plenty for me. Things will start coming fast!

I have one tower of peppers (none hot). They are prolific!

I have one tower of eggplants, giant plants, the little fruits are coming in.

The middle tower had pak choi, but I harvested all of it and need to put something in - maybe flowers? Visit to Home Depot in my future. 

Harvest

Harvest cleaned up and ready to cook

Tomatoes on the left growing through the roof
Zucchini and cucumbers on the right; 
blooming but no fruit yet.

 

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!