Vacation garden explosion

Gardeners know what happens when you aren't there watching your garden on a day-to-day basis.  You do everything you can possibly catch up on before vacation in hopes that you will return to a garden plot that just needs a little tweaking when you return.  Gardeners are a delusional bunch of happy souls.
I left my plot in reasonable shape as I had a trusted caretaker to watch over the water duty while I was gone.  My garden was treated to several days of 80 degree plus weather in my absence.  When you add water to plants and add heat, they grow exponentially.  Weeds do the same.  

I soaked and planted the rest of my bean seeds before I left to make up for the miserable showing on the first sowing.  Mid-July is not a usual time for sowing, but you have to improvise when the situation dictates.  I weeded the areas around the new rows to allow as much water and light to encourage my new seeds.  I did not have enough time to do the whole area.  This is the one spot in my garden that had not been covered over with weed barrier and it shows.  I should be down on my hands and knees right now, but the weeds will wait while I enjoy my Saturday morning coffee.  I need to have a day where I don't dive into work the moment I open my door.  I had a sister that asked me once what do I do so my garden is so clear of weeds.  I told her that I weed them.  She thought I was guarding some trade secret, a chemical miracle, that would make her life easier.  I was finally able to convince her that all the large pots stationed in corners of my yard were indeed for quick weed disposal when I pull during my garden walks and not a Frisbee golf course for the athletically challenged.  This year is the first time I ever purchased a product called Preen.  It does cut down on the germination of new weed seeds.  It does not stop rooted or rhizome weeds from making their way back to the surface though.  You also cannot use it on gardens where you are trying to germinate seeds as it will effect those the same as weeds.

 The good thing about garden explosions is the vegetables and fruits that start to produce in tremendous force in your absence.  During the young growth period, most of use wander through the rows eagerly anticipating the first fruits of the season.  When you take a vacation during this initial period, you miss the first fruits as the trickle in.  After unpacking the trailer, I took my garden walk without a bucket or basket.  Pretty soon I was balancing too many cucumbers and squash and had to head back up for a vessel to hold it all.  The heat has continued through the week after vacation.  I take a bucket with me every time now.

My biggest surprise of the garden explosion was the recovery and growth of my cruciferous crops.  The cabbage had suffered greatly from spending too much time in the cell packs and not enough time in the garden.  They were stunted and leggy along with all the other cole crops I started in the greenhouse.  I almost didn't put them in thinking they were too far gone for any recovery.  I was proven wrong.  This was one of those garden hope moments that came through with big results.  I just need to keep a careful eye on them for cabbage moths and others that would love to do great harm to these babies.  The kohlrabi is even putting on some girth after the move to the soil.  
I better finish up my coffee and get a start on the weeds.  I am glad for the quiet morning moments when I get to sit and enjoy the garden.  The birds have encouraged me to get up and get something done.  Here are a few more photos from the garden explosion.

Zucchini 8 Ball

Zucchini and pumpkins co-mingling

Fairy Tale Eggplant

Basil and peppers

Lancelot leeks

Dinosaur kale, salsify and parsnips

New veggies coming in

Bringing in the first picks of the season is always exciting to me.  The first radishes and lettuce are like manna from heaven.  I enjoy the sweet, little Alpine strawberries each day as they produce just enough to satisfy the taste buds.  The peas are producing and are even starting to show the signs of decline with the warmer weather.  These are my "quick" crops which I can have two or even three rounds of crops before the summer produce starts rolling in.

My 4th of July tomato has only green fruit on it.  The cabbage is not quite full headed.  The green beans have been blooming and are now bearing tiny little beans on my first crop of bush beans (I planted three bush bean varieties two weeks apart from each other to space the crops out for fresh eating).  The 8 ball zucchini are the size of large marbles.  I plucked several pickling cucumbers off the vine for the first real picking this year.  A few warm, sunny days will push many of these to full ripeness.  Of course, I will probably miss them while on a camping trip.  Like a working mother missing her babies first steps, I will enjoy my first beans as the first beans that I get to eat.  I will probably have more than enough zucchini to eat and then some.  The cucumbers will be there, too.  I will miss that first vine ripe tomato, though, as that is like tapping the keg on the new beer of the season.  I shall survive.

My daughter will be my caretaker while I enjoy some much needed time off work.  She has been working in a garden center at a big box hardware store this season.  After years of scooping custard, she was ready for a change.  She has been trained to water and care for plants from a stern teacher, someone other than myself.  It is fun to think that I don't have to rely on the careful eye of experienced gardeners in the neighborhood with my daughter on the job.   

I held off on publishing this post until after vacation for various reasons.  The garden came through great, very few fatalities considering an 18 year old was facing her first time alone and managing mom's garden.  This was compounded by the fact that we had no rain and the temps hit 103 degrees one day.  She has a full-time job working in a garden center (she's a newbie at this), but she came home and took care of business here as well.

I picked the first 4th of July tomato on July 21st.  The rest of the tomatoes were just buds when I left, but the heat and sun have set so much fruit that they didn't look like the same plants.  The onions were mostly fallen over so the tops have all been pushed over as well (see onion harvesting and other).  The beans that I thought would be ready got picked, but there was a whole bunch more ready for picking on my pole beans which became part of a post-camping supper.  

Since there is dill coming in, I may have to do some dilly beans which I posted the recipe for in the same link as onions (above).  I saved some dill before vacation in a jar with white vinegar in the frig.  This technique worked very well last year to preserve the dill until the vegetables were also ready.  My vines of everything else are going everywhere!  I am spending some time to separate and nip the tips to control where some of them are going.  Lots of flowers but no fruit yet. The pickling cukes are also doing well, the window box cukes hated the heat, the ones I nestle against the wall by the tomatoes are also starting to form very nice fruits.  I had to pick and slide the first one out between the wire trellis and the wall.  Any bigger and it wouldn't have made it out.  

This is truly the time of the garden race.  Enjoy the fruits of yours.

A Whole Day of Rain

We got 1.5" of rain in the rain gauge during the last 24 hour period!  It was a nice slow rain that took to the dry ground.  It is (amazingly) still dry out there even with all that moisture.  I loved being woke up by a rain storm outside the window.

We had cloudy skies this morning which brought the sunshine in by mid-morning.  With it came wind.  I stopped at the lake front during lunch and watch the waves crash over the breakwater at South Shore Marina.  The air show is this weekend, so we had a little overhead entertainment as well.  There were a handful of people who chose this little spot to enjoy some water watching as well as enjoy the company of strangers.

I bagged up my onions tonight and hung them in the basement.  I weighed them and found that I have 30 pounds of onions! I thought I was being optimistic saving so many mesh bags, but I filled three large orange bags quite easily.  I will be able to share my bounty this year.  I sliced up one with eggplant and zucchini and fried the whole slices dipped in egg and flour on the griddle with butter.  The results were like having a lower fat, less batter onion disc.

Tomorrow, I will have to pick green beans and soy.  I had a handful of soy which I cooked up and put in a tomato salad for lunch.  Edamame is a nice addition to salads or just eating with a bit of salt.  (August 3, 2011) http://gardeninggwen.blogspot.com/2011/08/soybeans-aka-edamame.html I grew half of my soy beans from new seed and half from seed that I ripened on the plants and harvested dry last fall.  Both plots germinated and grew equally well, so I think that seed saving was successful with this crop.

My neighbor has shared his early tomatoes with me as well as enough to share with the other neighbors.  His garden is quite large even after shortening it 20' or so this past year.  He grew a row of beans the full length of the garden which is well over 40' long.  They have already canned and frozen all they will use.  I passed the word on to others and offered the suggestion to donate to Harvest for the Hungry as they were opting to rip out the plants to stop the harvest.  Several soup kitchens and food pantries are also nearby, so I think they have abandoned the thoughts of pulling the plants.  They also have several cherry type tomato plants which are producing heavily.  I took a bag to work and put them on the basket on the corner of my desk.  My coworkers did a good job of eating them all.

I am thankful for some cool weather as it is time to can some French beans this weekend.  I will eagerly share the results of that job.

Try these beans

I have been so impressed by one of my varieties of bush beans that I have to share it now so you can all give it a try.  I got them from Pine Tree Garden Seeds.  They were in the French vegetables selections. Maxibel Haricot Vert.  They are the bean on the right.  Very slender, tender and no strings attached!  I have some bean beetle damage in the garden (I haven't sprayed because they haven't eaten much).  This variety in particular has sustained some leaf damage but the beans themselves have remained untouched by the beetles.  It may be that the other variety on the left, Slenderette, has been more to their liking.  It may also be that the praying mantis have moved in and stopped them in their tracks.  All the same they are the best beans I have grown so far, and I have grown a lot of different beans.  The Royal Burgundy beans are also a favorite as they are so easy to find and pick as well as being tasty.  All varieties were purchased from Pine Tree this spring.