Viggies Veggies

Around the Urban Homestead

I got to pick the first couple Golden Jenny melons this week. Actually, I could have picked one earlier but I forgot what a small variety of melons I had picked and never thought to check if they were ripe. I lost one like that but caught the next 2. This one was 6 inches across, 1.5 pounds, and oh so cute.

As far as preserving, I got the last of the zucchini dried and another batch of basil done. I made an attempt at tomato sauce that failed miserably. Some great feedback from my Facebook friends showed me the recipe was a little odd and I know to spend as much time as I need with the reduction next time around.

My harvests of melon, corn, crookneck squash, cucumber, and tomatoes this week brought my total to over 100 pounds from the garden. I’m actually a bit disappointed as I know I could be doing so much better if I would have had more time to devote to the garden and had gotten my fall starts going in time. Well, now I’ll have a baseline to try to beat next year.

Around the Urban Homestead

Life is still very very busy and the lack of attention is starting to take it’s toll on the garden. We’ve been having outrageous amounts of rainfall here, which has set off a white covering of powdery mildew on all the varieties of squash. I wasn’t able to treat until the weekend, but by then it was too little to late. To be fair, I’m not sure I would have been able to fight this one back even if I had more time though.

I’m still getting some squash, but production has definitely slowed down and the plants have seen better days. What was a lush jungle of squash I had to fight to check for fruit is now frumpy clumps of vine I can easily trapse through. Thankfully they are the only casualties. Otherwise, the garden is continuing to impress me.

I picked 25.5 pounds of produce this week, including the first spaghetti squash and sugar baby watermelon. Harvests also included basil, zucchini, crookneck squash, patty pan squash, tomatoes, and cucumber. After noticing some of the pinto beans were already dry, I pulled a handful to admire my first harvest of dry beans.

Around the Urban Homestead

All 3 varieties of tomatoes started coming in this week: siberian, roma, and tigerella. The tigerella is pretty but I’m rather disappointed in it as it’s the only one showing blemishes and cracking. I went with all smaller varieties this year, but next year I’ll only keep the best producer (looking like siberian) and I’m going to add a slicing tomato and some amish paste.

Also brought in green beans, 3 broccoli heads, 4 cucumbers, 4 zucchini, 1 freakish 3.5 pound zucchini which I shredded and dehydrated, and 6 croockneck squash. I’m tracking my harvest total and just passed 60 pounds with this latest haul.

The zucchini and croockneck started showing some mildew this week, but work and school hogging all my weekday hours, I wasn’t able to treat until yesterday. Now sure how well they’ll do

Around the Urban Homestead

The garden is lush enough that it’s pretty maintenance free at this point. You can see a couple weeds in the pictures, but for the most part the veggies are more than big enough to choke out any competition. And with the rains we’ve been getting, I haven’t had to water either.

I’ve harvested the broccoli and the zucchini have started producing.  I’ve gotten 3 so far, and the 3 plants I have look like they’ll be pumping out at steady stream.  At least they are taking turns rather than drowning me in squash.

Baby sugar baby watermelon, this little guy is about 4 inches across now.

I am going to have SOOOOO many spaghetti squash.  This is the largest at 6 inches.

I have a few cucumbers now that are about 7 inches long like this one.

Garden walk pictures

Here’s what caught my attention during my garden walk last evening. The raspberries are the most exciting. I tried starting 5 bushes last year but none of them did well and only a few are slowly growing this year.  So I filled in with another 3 this spring and only one made it, but the little survivor surprised me with a handful of berries.

My little garden protectors.  There’s an open celled nest of maybe a half dozen of these paper wasps under my gutters. I read that they eat buggies and are loved my gardeners.  More importantly they are docile and don’t mind me walking under their nest each day, so I’m happy to let them hang out up there.

I’ll be eating zucchini very soon! This is the largest at almost 6 inches.

Adorable little baby veggies are popping up everywhere. Here’s a cute little cucumber.

The first of the early tomatoes, these are the Siberians.

New Zealand Spinach. These have been quietly taking over their section of the garden. They branch and spread more than I would have expected, although they are still at kind of a ground cover height.

And finally, one broccoli plant is braving the summer heat. The rest of the broccoli and cauliflower look like they are content to sit back and wait until fall like my batch last year did.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend My family celebrated simply this year by getting together yesterday for a BBQ and spending the afternoon walking through the zoo.  I’m not due back  to work until Wednesday, so I’ll be busy working around the little urban homestead and doing plenty of relaxing!

Around the Urban Homestead

The rains have finally slowed and I got a chance to mow the lawn this week.  The clippings piled up so thickly after each row that I had to stop and scooped it up by hand so the mower wouldn’t choke on the wet lumps.  But that wasn’t bad because I was able to use it to mulch the garden.   My tiny front lawn produced enough to cover the 6×15 cucumber and squash garden pictured below.

Speaking of, the  zucchini, cucumber, and spaghetti squash joined the ranks of blooming plants this week and the rest of the squash isn’t far behind.  I solved my space issue with the spaghetti squash by moving two of the plants to grow around the borders of the garden. I wish I had known how big those things get, I would have planted one in the area I shoved four!

There are now little fruits starting to pop up all over the place and it’s lured me back out in the garden to check for them and weed more often.  The tomatoes are ahead of schedule after all this hot weather and ample watering.  The corn is also well ahead of the “knee high by forth of july” measure, and is waist high on me.  Even one of the broccoli decided to start to brocc, when I had expected them to wait until fall now that it’s so hot.  The lettuce is starting to bolt and I should be able to collect seeds from the radish soon. Since the quinoa failed to germinate at all after several attempt, I spent some time this week raking out the area and planting it with bush beans and kale.