garden work day

Or should I say 'garden fun day'. I love a Saturday when I can recruit help from my family in the garden.

Today's plan:
Pull beets and find a place to store them (I need a root cellar)
Ditto with carrots
Dig potatoes - this will be a big job as there are a lot of spuds down there
Transplant fall greens seedlings into the newly cleared beet, carrot and potato beds
Water the garden (first time in a month!)
Tie up the tomato vines in my home garden
Make a batch of tomato sauce with the pile of ripe ones I have waiting
Grate and freeze the giant summer squashes

Garden notes:
Gourd: The big birdhouse gourd vine that was growing up my window screen fell down today. I guess the gourd got too big for the tendrils to hold it up. Now the sun is pouring in the window and I miss the shade, flowers and bees as I work at my computer. I have another big gourd at the community plot on my fence and this one is able to hold on better.

Pumpkins: I picked my first pumpkin yesterday. A bright orange Baby Pam about 6 inches diameter and perfectly round. It grew in the pumpkin, gourd and sunflower patch next to my house. Maybe 3 lbs or so. The giant pumpkin at my community plot must be 20 lbs by now. It just started to show some orange color yesterday. I have a new giant pumpkin trying to set fruit in my home pumpkin patch. Maybe it will make it. I am watching.

Summer squash: This year I have almost too many summer squash, but so far I'm able to keep up with using them. I give many away to friends, in particular Elaine who often serves dinner to her church group and they seem to love fresh squash. Also, my husband brings them to the office where he says they disappear fast. I have four varieties, two plants each. I will remember not to plant more than this ever.

Kale: I have begun picking my spring planting of kale this past week. Not sure why I waited so long. Wasn't sure I liked it and it is very pretty to look at in the garden. In any case, delicious. I pick the upper young leaves. Lots of them. Excellent sautéed with potatoes, onions and choricho!

Broccoli: I STILL have new heads forming on my spring broccoli plants. The smaller ones that didn't head up earlier are heading now. Nice big heads. A great crop this year.

Lettuce: I resorted to buying a head of a beautiful red Boston lettuce at the store this week. My garden lettuce is still in its summer slump. I have a lot of summer crisp Batavian growing, but it seems to grow slow. I'll have to start this earlier next year. It seems like this holds well in the heat but doesn't necessarily grow well. I also have lots of little seedlings of col weather lettuce and greens ready for transplanting this weekend.

Skippy and the squash pile

Cucurbita pepo (squash)

cheers to another Friday night!

Cheers! We had my giant carrots in our martinis tonight.

Daucus carota
Topic: martini!

new potato and summer squash casserole

This is a fantastic casserole that I have made a few times now. Its a recipe I made up myself to use the abundant items in my refrigerator. I could eat it every night!

Prepare:
Freshly dug potatoes, any variety, washed and sliced thin (about 1/8 inch)
Summer squash, I like to use mostly yellow varieties, sliced about 1/4-1/2 inch

Layer into a baking dish:
potato slices
squash slices
salt and pepper
butter slices
repeat layers until all vegetables are used (or dish is full...)

Top with:
Grated mild melting cheese about 1/2 cup (gouda, jack or mozzarella)
Fresh bread crumbs (a good thick layer)
Grated parmigiana cheese
Salt and pepper

Add:
Milk (I use skim). Pour this into the side of the casserole dish until it reaches half way up the side.

Bake:
At 375 until its done. About 30 minutes. You can microwave it a bit first to speed up the cooking.

the best meal ever ....

... well, I have been having lots of good meals this summer, but this one was exceptional. My family was here. With picture perfect weather, we all harvested vegetables at my garden, made the food together and then enjoyed it together outside on the patio.

Menu

cheeses, olives and breads - white, wheat and zucchini
freshly steamed garden edamame
giant carrot slices
St Supery Virtu Meritage White 2006

rotisserie duck and game hens on the grill
new potato and summer squash casserole
green beans
heirloom tomatoes with mozzarella and basil
St Supery Cabernet Sauvignon

birthday cake
capucino

Tonight I picked up a copy of Micheal Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and I have to admit, that rather than starting at the beginning, I skipped right to the last chapter and read about his Perfect Meal. It reminded me of my Birthday Meal. Awesome.

I'm not sure I want to read about all of the other types of unpleasant food in the earlier chapters of the book. But I will. And by the way, I just finished reading his most recent book "In Defense of Food". I highly recommend this excellent book!


my back patio

more tomato pictures

These are Giant Belgian tomatoes ripening on the vines in my side yard.

These are green Tomango and Pink Beauty tomatoes.

tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum)

Skippy is in a gardening catalog - but I never new this

Last week, this advertisement at a small on-line vegetable gardening store was brought to my attention by a reader of this blog. http://www.tastefulgarden.com/store/pc/viewContent.asp?idpage=36 Hmm. There's Skippy, and there's my garden. The photos are from my blog in June 2006. Funny no one contacted me the ask about using these photos.

So I've been looking into copyright issues and blogs. Here's a good site with lots of information: Internet and the Law at Web Developer's. This is a quote from Thomas G. Field, Jr. from the same page:

Copyright arises automatically once an original effort has been started and some aspect of it has been fixed in a tangible medium. One need not even have notice on published copies. Registration is required only if legal action is warranted (and the work originates in the U.S. — ...

I've seen copyright notices on other gardening blogs and it seems to me they clutter up the site and distract from gardening. Nevertheless, I have now added a notice to my sidebar.

I suppose this happens to other blogs too. I'm interested to hear any stories of yours. Drop a comment below. I wonder if other sites are using my photos?

Of course, I'm thrilled if other blogs use my photos and refer or link to my blog. Also if you print or otherwise copy my work for your own personal purposes. The bottom line is : Please don't use my photos or text for commercial purposes without my permission!

sliced and yummy

This is a Brandywine. I took photos of a Giant Belgian tonight and hope to post them soon. This second variety is a new one for me and very much like a Brandywine but even meatier and bigger. I think I will list these two as my favorites, though neither produces many tomatoes. Quality, not quantity....

tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum)

tomatoes

Time to celebrate the beauty of tomatoes! Right now they are in abundance.

I have a number of different kinds of heirloom and hybrid varieties of all different colors and sizes. My favorite are the Brandywine and Giant Belgian, which are very similar. The Beefsteak are delicious and prolific too.

My earliest tomato by far this year was Orange Blossom.

The consensus around here is that this year has been a very bad year for tomatoes. Much too much rain. Even the best gardeners at my community garden say they have only half the normal crop.

My tomato plants are about 75% defoliated from leaf spot now. Spindly, bare stems with tomatoes hanging on them.

tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum)

poison ivy at the community garden

Well, it may not be a good year for tomatoes, but its a great year for poison ivy. It is thriving in all the rain here. Unfortunately, it seems like I got into a patch of it with my weed whacker. Oh my goodness. I'm itchy all over. Its on my hands and legs, my neck and face, even on my fingertips and palms. I took a photo, but will not post it as it is very ugly.

I weed whacked the paths on Thursday, and by Friday the rash started breaking out. Even today, more patches of rash are coming out. I suppose it is what they call systemic.

Finally today, I got the courage to visit my plot again. I walked around the garden paths and tried to find where the nasty ivy is growing. I'd like to know areas to avoid in the future. But unfortunately I couldn't find it.

So, I now have a plan for the next time I weed whack: Wear full protective gear - long sleeves, pants and gloves. Shower immediately after with poison ivy soap and throw the clothes in the washer. Keep Zanfel around to use immediately if a rash starts up. Here's an interesting site with opinions on poison ivy remedies and here's the US FDA site with information.

growing fast - pumpkin, winter squash and gourds

I have a remarkable giant pumpkin growing in my community garden. Its still dark green and hiding in the shadows next to my fence. But it gets bigger by the day. The variety is Big Rock, which produces fruit 20 lbs and larger. Oh my goodness. How will, I pick it up?

Also growing well now is a big birdhouse gourd, hanging on the fence of my garden. And a couple Delicata squash, a sweet winter squash that I am growing for the first time this year..

Pumpkin -- Cucurbitaceae spp.
Cucurbita pepo (squash)
Decorative gourds

companions

Here's two of my garden companions this year. Yellow summer squash (Zephyr) and red nasturtiums. Both seem very happy with each other. Who can say if they'd be just as happy on their own, but I think they look nice together.

Cucurbita pepo (squash)

yellow swallowtail on joe pye weed

Two of my favorites! A yellow swallowtail butterfly on Joe Pye weed. An awesome sight.

butterflies (Lepidoptera)

more weed wacking

It seems like an endless project. But Gretta told me recently that the will weeds slow down soon. Yes!

Maintaining the grass paths at the community garden is my new volunteer project. They need to be weed wacked and mowed every few days. I manage to do it almost once a week. It sure does a job on my shoulder muscles! The reward is the smell of newly mowed grass. Ahhh.

I ran into a Botany Professor from Harvard University today on the paths. He told me he is responsible for the beautiful Arnold Arboretum in Boston. But today he wanted to look at invasives, so where did he go? Well, he was walking the garden paths in Belmont. I guess he realized that I am fighting a big battle with my little push mower! He pointed out the terrible Japanese hops and bittersweet that we have in abundance.

april to august

Back in April of this year, I was assigned a plot at my local community garden. A high point for me. A new garden is an empty canvas, a new adventure, and a lot of work. Now its August. Four months have gone by very fast. It seems like a good time to put together a series of photos and see what's what.

Late June and early July were a time of rapid growth, lush and green. I was harvesting nice heads of lettuce, big radish, lots of fava beans, spring onions and baby early summer squash. Everything grew very well.

Then came an unusually hot and wet July. Many of my mid- and late-summer crops did not fare so well. My peas produced almost nothing, soy beans were eaten by critters, tomatoes succumbed to leaf spot and cucumbers failed since I forgot to fertilize and lime their patch. But other crops did and are still doing super. I have nice harvests of potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, beans, kale and summer squash.

The seasons go on and August moves toward autumn. I'm planting fall greens and watching my pumpkins and large squashes ripen on their vines. And I'm planning what I'll do differently next year. I asked for and was given permission to expand my garden to the east. Maybe another 10 feet or so. A project for the late fall and spring. I have visions of a small asparagus bed and more space between my tomato plants.

It seems like a good time to reflect on the way a garden is always changing. Gardening is a mix of planning and memories. I feel better that I can capture at least some of it in photographs.