It’s been a relatively cool week or so and I should have been working in the garden, but time has been getting away from me a lot lately. There never seems to be enough of it, and at the end of the night I find my day has been filled with a massive amount of small tasks and my day has bled away. But the last two or three days I have managed to keep an eye on the garden, because a day can make a real difference to squash and cucumbers, and my broccoli is ripening. The latter you have to harvest before the flowers bloom or it is inedible.
So here’s a few shots.
As you can see the broccoli florets start small and get larger. Then the green buds start to spread and turn yellow and open. These are actually the flowers. You have to get them before they start to open because after the taste is woody. This is actually the plant I though I’d lost because it was knocked over in a storm. How awesome is that?
My tomatoes are huge, and everywhere and still green. They fell over the other day, due to sheer weight. I used bamboo stakes this year because my cages were pretty much trashed. The leaf curling you see is from the damage (where the water can’t get to the leaves because of the stem damage or shifting), but if you see it in your plants when there’s been no change it’s a sign that they need more frequent watering or have some kind of disease.
My cucumbers are doing just fantastic. Cucumbers are a sub tropical plant, so they love heat as long as you keep them well watered (because the fruit is mostly water). The fruit you see in this picture will actually be the four I’ll collect from this plant. Cucumbers picked fresh have spikes that need to be removed (just with a good rub) but you might want to use gloves to harvest them.
Here’s the three sisters planting. Look at all that squash! It’s monstrous. Seriously it’s trailed a good five feet out into the yard. Today I re-directed it though there is no keeping it in the garden. It’s actually climbing the fence, and the corn in the back.
By the way, cucumbers are a semi-tropical squash so these squash all have thick hair-like spikes on the fruits, the stems and the leaves as well. The corn leaves are sort of serrated as well, so when working this garden I wear long sleeves and long pants, preferable jeans down bottom. I hope to make Jason take a picture of me with the squash so you ca get a bit of perspective. They’re simply gigantic.
This is one of the ornamental varieties I planted. This is a Turk’s Turban. I think I pulled this one too soon, but it’s bigger than I let any of the other squash get and I thought at first that it was rotted on the bottom. (It’s not.)
The upside down planters (no pictures) are dripping with peppers (the black one still has tiny fruits and the other’s first fruit ripened to red). But even the red plant’s fruits are smaller than the ones you see in the store. At this point I’m not sure if that’s normal or not. Store vegetables aren’t the same as garden veggies, but having never grown peppers before I don’t quite know how different home growns should be. I need to get to a farmer’s market (which by the way, if you are a beginning gardener is a great place to learn more about gardening and what is typical and what is not.)
Here’s what I’ve pulled out of the garden the last three days.
