roll call

the tomatoes are really coming in now, and as the next couple weeks may be their last hurrah (more on that below), i thought i’d introduce the cast .

Sungold.  My first tomato to come in (on july 23rd) and now they’re coming out of my ears.  An orange cherry that is very very sweet and easy to pop into salads or salsas.

Yellow Pear.  Still a small tomato – more like a cherry tomato with a pear-like stem and a super bright yellow color.

Carbon – A purple beefsteak variety, and probably my most prolific grower (aside from the sungolds)  Mine turned out a dusky red, with a little green at the top.

German Red Strawberry – At least, I think this is a German Red Strawberry.  The labels I had in the ground got washed off before I could write down what I had planted where.  It doesn’t fit the seed catalog description perfectly, but it’s the only large red variety i grew this year.

Roman Candle -  Even though these look like yellow Roma tomatoes, I don’t think they’re related to the Roma.  Romas are considered paste tomatoes, meaning they don’t have as much juice inside, making them better for tomato paste and tomato sauce.  These are pretty juicy, but I love their shape and color.

Green Zebra – The tomatoes are actually meant to stay green.  As they ripen, they get greenish yellow zig zag stripes.

Moneymaker -  This was a variety I grew last year and I enjoyed them a lot.  They’re not huge slicing tomatoes (only about the size of a ping pong ball) but they’re bright red and almost perfectly round.

Now for the bad news…  my tomato plants have Late Blight.  I would never have known what this was if I hadn’t been reading a few other garden blogs this season.  basically, its a fungus that can spread from long distances through the wind and thrives in cool, wet conditions – our summer has been unseasonably wet (which i have never complained about until now) and presents as small brown patches on plant leaves and stems.  if it infects the fruit, the fruit turn dark brown and shrivel up.  there isn’t a cure, only uprooting the entire plant, wrapping it in plastic and throwing it away keeps the fungus from spreading.  the fungus isn’t harmful to humans, so that’s the one upside – if i can keep it under control by cutting away bad parts, i can continue harvesting any unaffected fruit.  since our tomato season can easily extend into october barring any big frosts, i’m pretty bummed at the thought of losing everything only 1 month into harvesting tomatoes.  but everything else is looking good and i can always try again next year.

abundance

i know some people with gardens are in that surplus stage where they’re being overrun with squash, zucchini, and tomatoes.

we haven’t quite gotten to that point here, but when i was home last weekend my grandfather loaded me down, literally, with his garden surplus:  a five gallon bucket of corn on the cob,  a bag full of yellow squash, another bag of miniature roma tomatoes, three containers of homemade strawberry jam, three quarts of jarred green beans, about 10 pints of last year’s frozen corn, a watermelon, and a cantalope.  did i mention my grandfather is 87 years old?!

so with all of his abundance, i’m hustling to make everything last (whether by eating it now or finding creative ways to freeze it for later).  on top of that, i harvested a renegade zucchini roughly the size of a child’s baseball bat that had been hiding from me.  enter my Cuisinart food processor to save the day.  With less than half of bat-sized zucchini, i made two loaves of zucchini bread and then with a small bag of potatoes from our garden, the rest of the zucchini, some of the yellow squash, a couple small onions, and a chunk of cheddar cheese i made a great shredded potato-veggie-cheesy casserole topped with French’s fried onions (literally i could put these on anything and ross would eat it – they’re magic).  we popped a couple ears of corn in to boil and voila, dinner was made.

didn’t get around to any pictures, but as a consolation prize i’ll post some pictures soon of some homemade wontons ross and i made two weekends ago. they were actually good!

garden update – early july

shots snapped in the garden last weekend.

early summer harvest

i’m harvesting a handful of beans every day along with lettuce + herbs enough for 2 generous salads.  throw in 3-5 new ripe strawberries a day (not bad for the little guys’ first season) and the harvest has definitely begun in the garden.  last saturday, ross and i broke out the grill and made an amazing meal of grilled rib-eye (from a friend’s farm in blacksburg), grilled peppers/onions/our own green beans tossed in EVOO and herbs, and a heaping side of our own salad.  now all i need is a tomato to make me feel complete.

speaking of tomatoes, the tomatoes, squash and peppers aren’t ready yet, but they’re getting there.

i’ve decided that late june/early july is my favorite time of year for the flowers in the front yard.  nearly everything is in bloom and there’s so much color up there!

the garden: june 8

welcome to our garden: june edition

front left box:

several tomato plants, with basil in between.  the back left corner is a squash seedling.

i just planted several varieties of lettuce last week and it’s already coming in!

the basil that got hit during a random freeze towards the end of may is trying to make a comeback.

another squash plant.

front right box:

bush beans

Carmen bell pepper.

tiiiny little pepper buds

the first strawberries of the season.

bloomsdale longstanding spinach.  part of our first harvest of the season.

second box, right hand side:

garlic and shallots.  these guys are doing really well.  and i’ve been nibbling at their stems every now and then.  really good.

last box, left side:

potatoes and onions.  i read recently that marigolds planted near potatoes helps ward off bugs that are attracted to the leaves of the potato plant.  even if it doesn’t work, the color is still nice.

some of the oregano i got for free on freecycle.  i decided to pot it in order to contain it better.  oregano is known to be quick growing and invasive if given too much space.

all the seedlings left to transplant.  mostly tomatoes. and really – can you have too many tomatoes?

and growing in the rest of the yard…

last year’s mint – back with a vengence.

also, a little bit of wintergreen.

the two types of sedum from the M.I.L.

the clematis is blooming!  most of the varieties i’ve seen are hot pink, but ours is a very very deep maroon.

the hydrangeas have also started to bud.

the strawflowers are still hanging in there.  no blooms yet though.

so finally, i’m caught up on garden updates.  hopefully i can keep track of everything better from here on out.

what’s growin on: june 3

i hate blog posts with no pictures, so i promise i’ll add some when i finally get them on my computer. i mean, honestly, it’s june already and i still haven’t posted any pictures that actually show the trees with leaves!  this will all be remedied.  6/4 UPDATE: pics below!!

in the meantime, this is what’s going on in a nutshell:

- i bought an entire flat of strawflowers  (here’s what they’ll eventually look like) from the farmer’s market and planted them in a small bed next to our garage.  i hope to fill it in more with some zinnias.  both are annuals, but are prone to reseeding themselves.  let’s hope.

- all of the boxes have been constructed, filled with soil, and marked into square foot grids.

- ross and i have done a lot of weeding – in the front, in the back mulch bed, and in the garden.  we’re not all there yet, but much better.

- our peonies are blooming!  i have two different types: one light pink that had it’s biggest blooms yet, and one dark pink that bloomed for the first time this year.

- we’ve been wracking our brains to figure out a system to make all of my climbing veggies happy and not sprawling all over the ground – aka some sort of trellis system.  we’ll be putting that little experiment to the test this weekend.  more to follow.

- everything but the basil survived a random frost we had two weeks ago.  i’ve reseeded some of it, but this year i may just have to give in and buy basil seedlings.

- already growing: garlic, shallots, strawberries (tribute), red and yellow onions, two rosemary bushes, and potatoes (yukon gold and banana fingerling)

- now planted: 4 red peppers from the farmer’s market (carmen), 2 of each of the 3 peppers i grew from seed (Orange Bell, Red Belgian, Golden Treasure), two types of bush beans (one green variety and one yellow), spinach (bloomsdale longstanding), dill, oregano, cilantro (not sure if that will make it), a couple types of lettuce that may or may not make it, 2-3 of each variety of tomato i grew from seed (Roman Candle, Green Zebra, Moneymaker, Carbon, German Red Strawberry, Wes, Yellow Pear, and Sungold), squash (horn of plenty and white bush scallop), zucchini (costada romanesco), pie pumpkins (winter luxury pie), cucumbers (diva), and watermelon (white sugar lump).  i know it sounds like a lot, but there really isn’t that much of any one plant.  just small amounts of a lot of varieties.  so we’ll see how they do.

- nabbed some free oregano off of freecycle, so should have a nice crop of that this year.  also nabbed two types of sedum from the mother-in-law and planted them in front of the garage.  our clematis (planted last year) is blooming in front of the garage as well.

- i’m sure there’s more, but those are the highlights.  the most important task right now is a trellising system to keep everything growing up and not everywhere like some sort of plant vomit.

p.s. this is my 100th post on almost eden!

i’m not gonna lie…

…this blog (whenever i get around to updating it) is probably going to be overtaken by garden posts for the next couple of months.  not that i won’t try to put some other things up here – we’ve been doing some projects around the house I need to post about – and there have also been a few new recipes flying around too – but to be honest, my brain is really going to be in the garden for quite awhile.

i posted the pictures of my tiny onion seedlings trying to make a go of it.  but since then i’ve planted 3 kinds of bell peppers, 8 kinds of tomatoes, a whole bunch of herbs, an eggplant (was a free gift with my order, so why not try it out), leeks, and several types of lettuce. 

then this past saturday, ross and i went down to our local southern states and came away with 2 rosemary seedlings, dill, chives, another type of lettuce, two types of onion sets,  two orange tomato seedlings, and two flats of colorful pansies to plant out front.  over the next couple of weeks, i’ll finish out all the planting: squash, zucchini, beans, watermelon, and a pumpkin.

and finally, ross and i made time to turn all those pieces of lumber into our raised beds and stapled weed blocker to the bottom to keep out unwanted plant life.  we’ll lay them out in the garden in the next week or so – after we give the ground a nice tilling and remove as many of the weeds that are already growing.  the plan is to fill in the extra space with wood chips from the local landfill to create walking paths.

so with perhaps the exception of my father, i may not have any visitors until growing season is over.  if so, i hope you’ll at least rejoin me in the fall.   or for the occasional time i’ll talk about something that doesn’t have to do with dirt.

start your garden engines

Well we did it.  Wilsie Garden 2K9 is officially in progress.  On Saturday I finally sat down and ordered the seeds for this year’s garden.  We’re pretty much growing everything we did last year (tomatoes, pole beans, zucchini, swiss chard, spinach, bell peppers, and onions)  plus a lot more.  But nothing we can’t handle, I don’t think.  Ross is convinced that we’ll be garden slaves for all of spring and summer, but I think we were pretty realistic with what we chose.

Maybe its the byproduct of living in rural southwest Virginia, or maybe its that Tomko blood finally kicking in, but I am totally enamored with the idea of growing my own food – interesting food (can i describe food as interesting?) and doing it in as natural and economic a way as possible.

last year’s garden

Even the planning of the garden excites me – which plant goes where to get the best results, when can i start it, when can it be transplanted into the garden, and how can i design my garden to fit everything while looking aesthetically pleasing.  you know, the basics.

for the most part i still have no idea what i’m doing, but that’s just more of the fun.  i’ve convinced myself that i’m actually going to keep a garden journal, if for no other reason than to know which parts of this garden business i totally botched and need to improve upon for next year.  we’ll see how well i do with that.

Below is what we’ve finally decided on.  Most everything is self-explanatory, but there are some flashier names like “Horn of Plenty” (yellow squash) and “Banana” (a type of fingerling potato).  All my seeds are from either Pinetree seeds or Baker Creek seeds.

I got a little trigger happy when I bought my Baker Creek seeds, so there’s no screen shot to show, just a list of what I purchased.  The flashy names in this batch are  “Contender”  (a bush bean), “White Scallop” (white summer squash), “Green Zebra,” “German Red Strawberry,” “Carbon,” “Yellow Pear” (types of tomatoes), and “White Sugar Lump” (a type of watermelon).

Item Ref.      Qty.  Description

BN102           1      - Contender (Buff Valentine)
HB103           1      - Lime Basil
HB126           1      - Dill - Bouquet
HB135           1      - Chives - Common
SQ167           1      - Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkin
SSQ107          1      - White Scallop
TG103           1      - Green Zebra
TM128           1      - German Red Strawberry
TP112           1      - Carbon
TY122           1      - Yellow Pear
WM166           1      - White Sugar Lump

so there you have it.  our little garden.

the real work will actually begin around the beginning of march when we’ll plant the tomato seeds and grow them under plant lights.  then there will be either something to plant or transplant every week until roughly mid-may, when the danger of frost is over and things can start being transplanted or directly planted into the garden.  sounds fun, right?