Harvest time: Successes and failures

This summer has been quite a learning experience. I just got off the phone with my mother who compared notes with me on what has worked and what has not.  We both had a generous crop of cucumbers which seemed to be largely untouched by beast or bug. I had one or two large cucumbers daily for three weeks, and now I have one every three days. We both had a lot of difficulty with pepper plants, the leaves being devoured by some unknown bug (not slugs, we decided). This is interesting because our gardens are more than 100 kilometers apart, with completely different soil conditions, and altitudes, though fairly similar weather conditions. 

Tonight we pureed and froze a few dozen tomatoes, and picked a whopping 89 more. Within a few weeks we will be ready to make a years supply of pasta sauce. It has been a race against slugs, who have become better climbers now that the tomatoes are turning red.

The bag of potatoes which I found sprouting eyes in late July were thrown under the hay instead of composted, in a reckless moment, and are now shooting leaves and stocks through the hay. I am letting them be until next year. I seem to have at least one potato grow from compost each year, so maybe they will ride out the winter under the hay and sprout in the spring. I have small but mature broccolis, (brocolinis?) which we are harvesting before the flowers open. We had some for dinner. We planted Romaneso broccoli, which were supposed to have grown in a strange circular clusters of pyramids, but they just looked like tiny little broccolinis on huge, leafy plants. I left them until the first flower opened pretty and yellow (who knew?) and knew it would be too late if I left them another day. Needless to say, I was disappointed. It is worth checking an image for Romanesco brocolli on line to understand just why I am so disappointed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brassica_romanesco.jpg)

Knowing when things are ready is not easy. My cukes often look like partially inflated balloon animals. Josh says that mature hot peppers are not green so wait until they turn. I have nine different varieties, and although I attached the seedpack to stakes in the garden to identify which was what, they got wet and I cannot make out the pictures anymore. I can’t remember if some of them are supposed to be green. I am trying to follow a basic rule of thumb. If the slugs suddenly take an interest, pick them immediately. Ready or not!

There are butternut and spaghetti squashes taking over an entire third of my garden, they are in the broccolis and tomatoes and the highest flowers are 15 or more feet up the neighbour’s lilac tree. I will take and post a picture when the squashes grow up there. The basil is still keeping ahead of the slugs, so I will have more pesto by the end of the summer. My lettuces, the original row which the ground hog has left intact, have stopped growing at about half size. The green onions I planted in spring are holding on well and I am gradually picking them and using them in cooking and salads. The second batch I planted in late July are still tiny little wormy sprouts, and not getting bigger. The squirrels have eaten two of my giant sunflowers before the seeds even had a chance to develop. There go my plans for peanut-free home grown school treats for the kids.  The sweet potato vines are lovely, I keep forgetting they have sweet potatoes underneath.

My orpine is doing great. I got three small orpine plants from my friend Jasmyne, who has an extensive knowledge of edible and medicinal wild plants, and has supplied me with a few interesting and unusual plants in my garden. It is related to sedem, has delicious leaves which are great in salads or for cooking, and gorgeous pink flowers which attract bees like nothing else in my garden. My three plants have spread to ten, and my selective harvesting of leaves seems to have not done any damage. The slugs have not noticed them. I have no idea what they smell like because I would have a noseful of bees if I found out. I plan to plant some colonies of orpine in my flower gardens. I figure if they spread too much I can eat them, or maybe give you some to have in your garden. Let me know!

My flowers have had some great successes and some dismal failures. I finally looked up how to root a rose cutting on the internet. I checked a few different sites and none seemed to reflect what I had done, nor agreed with each other. Of the six cuttings I tried to root, two are alive and well. I had one under an empty vinegar container and the other under a clear plastic soda bottle with the bottoms cut off to make mini-green houses. I took them off the surviving cuttings today. I had given up on my first few attempts which had no leaves left.

There is one part of my garden which has been a black hole, but I think I will save that for its own post. Other than the patch of death, I have had a few random failures of flowers that I tried to grow from seed directly in the garden, to no avail (black eyed susans, irises, poppies, and bleeding hearts). I had success with all of these plants when I transplanted them from someone else’s garden, sometimes right next to where I put the seeds. Except the poppies which are still in my mother’s garden up north, and I have not forgotten that she said I could have some at the end of the season. I hope she hasn’t forgotten.

I also had a bunch of tiny daisy sprouts from Iulia which keeled over and died shortly after I transplanted them in the front of the yard. Iulia’s did well, so maybe it was the lousy earth I put them in, or not enough light. I am looking forward to next year when we can swap all the things that are spreading too much. 

Josh and I are already discussing what we are going to do differently next year. There will be no sunflowers in the front yard. They were stunted from lack of sun and the squirrels beheaded them before they had time to bloom. We will have learned by then how to make our own beer so we can afford to keep our slug traps flowing. We will employ a coyote full time to make his territory around our yard. Maybe the whole block if we are feeling generous. We will rig up a scarecrow so I can grow corn. We really should do that this week, as our single stalk of corn has two ears and the crows are going to notice soon. I think we will forget the broccoli, too much space for a few mouthfuls. The chicken wire for the tomato cages needs to be a bit finer as the San Marzano tomatoes are a bit long and skinny and have been getting stuck. I guess I will write about tomato cages as some point too. In fact, given the relative weight of tomato compared to everything else combined in my garden, I think tomatoes deserve an entire post for themselves. I am, at least, developing some knowledge of tomato cultivation. Josh really wants asparagus. We will continue to fight about giant sunflowers, but if coyote piss doesn’t save them from squirrels next year, I may just give up on them.