I'm Back!

I can't believe it's been 5 weeks since I last posted something.  July and August have been just crazy for us.  What has been going on since I last wrote?  Let me get you up to date...

The 'Mammoth' sunflower - not quite as tall as I'd hoped, but it still met Kate's requirement of "taller than Daddy".

Volunteer sunflowers that sprouted from the birdseed - I love the branching one.

I have harvested all the white onions.  The green onions are still going strong and the leeks are about ready to be pulled sometime in the next week or two.  

'Pandora' leek

Today I harvested my first eggplant - an Ichiban.  There are 3 more that will be ready in the next week or so.  The Black Beauty in the garden I have been having trouble with the flowers not setting into fruit, but the one at the street has two TINY green eggplants on it now.  I think the one in the garden finally has an eggplant also.  Next year, I think I am going to go back to the Black Magic, as it seemed to do better than the Black Beauties this year.

Ichiban eggplant, just before I picked it

Carrots are still growing along - I'll harvest them once the first frost comes, so they have a ways to go.

Peppers - the jalapenos are producing a bunch, they'll probably kick into "high gear" in the next couple of weeks.  The Lady Bells are much slower - I have one big green fruit on one plant, and lots of flowers on the rest.  Hoping it turns red before the end of the month.  Bell peppers never seem to do real well for me - it's always a race to frost time before they really start ripening and turning red (I do NOT care for green bells peppers, try as I might.  They have to be red, yellow or orange so they get sweet).

Tomatoes - where to start.  I made my first (small) batch of tomato sauce on Thursday.  The Amish Pastes are really starting to produce, as are the San Marzanos.  I've gotten 3-4 Purple Cherokees, and have 2 more that will be ripe in the next few days.  Mr. Stripey I am still waiting on - there are 3-4 green fruits on the plant.  Then there are the unidentified volunteer plants, which turned out to be... 2 Romas, 3 Celebrities (I think?) and 1 yellow pear cherry (I forget what this one was called - I planted it last year).  I really, really love the Amish Pastes.  I have not had any blossom end rot issues with them like I did with the Romas the past two years.  I have some cracking, but since they're pastes and I use them for sauce, it doesn't really bother me.

Amish Pastes

San Marzanos up close

Purple Cherokee up close

Potatoes - all of them have been harvested, and I started a second pot that I plan on pulling in the garage for the first few frosts.  I thought I'd see how a 2nd crop does.  I'm not out anything, because I used potatoes from the first harvest.  As far as the laundry basket experiment - I don't think I'll do it again.  Hilling them in the basket was a royal pain, and they didn't grow through the sides all that much.  Next time I will just stick to large pots.

Fall crops - I just planted the following recently for fall harvest - lettuce (rouge d'hiver, iceberg and little gem romaine) and peas (both shell and snow).  Hopefully the peas germinate better than they did in the spring.  We'll see.  I've not grown fall peas before.

I also have a head of garlic I got at the farmer's market that I am saving because I WILL be planting garlic this fall, I swear.  I have intended to plant garlic the past 2 or 3 falls and it hasn't happened.  This year, it will.

I also got a promise of some "Eight Ball" zucchini seeds for next year from a wonderful vendor at our local farmer's market.  He buys them by the ounce, but since I have such limited space he said he'd be happy to give me enough seeds for 2 or 3 hills.  They're a bush style zucchini, and are really cool because they're round.  I think they'll be very fun to grow next year.

Day lilies and Death Day...

The past week or so sure slipped away from me fast!  I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted.  This is a tough time of year for me in the garden, it's so darn hot and there's not a lot going on at this point.  The peas are all done and pulled, the lettuce is all pulled, I've picked one little tomato (though there are a lot of green ones right now), I've picked and pulled 2 of the 4 cauliflower, and the onions are getting large enough I could probably pull them any time now.

The big highlight of the past week has come not in the vegetables but in the ornamental garden - day lilies are blooming!  The Stella d'Oros have come and gone a while ago, but the rest of them started blooming in the last week.  I have lots of 'My Sweet Rose' blooming, and my favorite day lily of all, 'Golden Illusions'.  It's a beautiful golden yellow color with a large flower with ruffled edges.  Of course it is the slowest at multiplying, but the clump will get big enough to divide eventually - maybe in the next couple of years.  What's your favorite day lily?  Is there a "must-have" I should look at getting down the road?  There is a master gardener in Cincinnati that is know for his day lilies - he has probably pushing 200 varieties in his yard, and he hosts an open house every year.  My mom and I went back when Kate was about 18 months - he had a little play house for kids and a large electric train set.  It's perfect.  I don't forsee my yard becoming a regional draw for day lilies, but I do love them!

My Sweet Rose

Golden Illusions

I also was super excited yesterday (the first day of weather in the low 80s in over a week) to go out to the garden and find a bloom on one of the eggplants!  It's a standard Black Beauty, which I love because they're so reliable and usually are the first to produce.  I also have an Ichiban, which has a bud but no flower yet.  And the random tomato that sprouted out the drain hole of a pot that I put compost in has a tiny tomato on it.  I left the plant go, mostly to see what would happen.  It's growing out of the drainage hole of a cheap 1 gallon pot I got with some perennial I bought long ago.  With nothing but water when I remember, it's produced a tomato.  And people say they can't grow things!

Black Beauty Eggplant

The tiny tomato on the plant growing out of the drainhole...

Finally, there are two things I want to share - first is in honor of "Garden Blogger's Death Day" over at Gardening without Skills - my pathetic blueberry has finally kicked the bucket entirely.  It's all brown and shriveled and very much dead.  I attempted to amend the soil in it's pot to make it more acidic, and I thought I followed the directions on the elemental sulfur VERY closely, but the blueberry definitely did not appreciate it.  I am really sad about it, as I don't want to start over from scratch and wait another 2 years for blueberries!  :(  I don't have a picture and it's already dark out so I'm not sure one I took now would do the dreadful looking thing justice.

Lastly, our crazy neighbors.  When we bought our house 4+ years ago, it was our first house and therefore we didn't think much about neighbors.  Well, we got the crazies.  I take that back - they're very nice for the most part, they just have no business living in a suburban housing development.  The siding blew off a large part of their house in a big windstorm we had in February and they are just now getting it fixed.  And they are using vinyl siding that looks like fake cedar shakes.  But I suppose it is better than the half-missing siding they had before.  And their 4 ft deep temporary-type backyard pool sprung a leak, which drained entirely into our yard, and then the empty pool blew over against our fence in another strong wind we had last week.  Plus in the winter they have 4 golf carts and a 4-wheeler living on their back patio - and no, they don't golf.  We had new friends over one night last month and someone asked if there was a golf course near us.  Mark and I burst out laughing.  Again, they are very nice, but they need to move somewhere with some acreage so that this is not right in the middle of regular suburbia.  Though the neighborhood would have much less to talk about if they left!

Our neighbors backyard - down to 2 golf carts, the 4 wheeler, and the half-missing siding.  Also not the dying/dead spot of grass where the pool was blown over for a week.  Good times. :)

2009 Seeds/Plants

A list of things I have planted so far this season:

• Peas: Dark Seeded Early Perfection
• Spinach: Avon Hybrid
• Lettuce: Black Seeded Simpson, Baby Red Mix, "Little Gem" Romaine
• Onions: Texas Sweet (from sets), Evergreen Bunching
• Cilantro (seedlings still - not outside yet)
• Eggplant: Black Beauty (also have Ichiban - not in the ground yet)
• Potatoes: Kennebec, Red Pontiac, unknown "red seed potato"

Of the lettuces, the Baby Red Mix (from Burpee) seems to be the farthest along, and all were planted at the same time.  The peas did not germinate well at all, I'm not sure if it's the variety or just peas in general, as I did read several things about how to encourage peas to germinate this spring, and I tried none of the methods.  Go figure. 

I'll be planting cilantro throughout the year, as it bolts (goes to seed) so quickly and there's really no way to prevent it.  I plant a few seeds every few weeks through about August so that I have some all summer long.

Last night I planted the first of the 3 eggplant plants I bought yesterday at Jungle Jims (they were only $.99 a plant - half the price of Home Depot and a quarter of the price of Varnau's), at the flower bed right by the mailbox (photo below - it's the little plant on the left side of the mailbox closest to the street).  I often plant vegetables among my flowers, and I think eggplants have quite interesting leaves, and the thick stems and spines on eggplants mean that it would be difficult for someone to walk by and pick one like they might a tomato.  I think it will add some nice interest to the front bed.  I'm really excited to plant the Ichiban eggplant this year, which is a Japanese variety that makes a longer, skinnier eggplant.  That will go in the actual garden in a week or so.

Eggplant

So I planted a "Black Magic" eggplant that I bought as a seedling from my local garden center. I've never grow eggplant before, neither as an adult or as a child, so I thought it would be an interesting experiment, seeing as how I adore eggplant parmigiana. I learned a few things this year in doing so (eggplants are like peppers, wait to plant them until it's warmer - I planted mine too early and it did almost nothing for an entire month before finally taking off and growing). However, I now have a dilemma trying to figure out when to pick them. Since I don't have a seed packet, I don't know how big they'll get. I tried Googling it, but mostly just get a list of cultivars and general eggplant knowledge. One helpful thing was that a ripe eggplant should have some "give" when pressed but no indentation should remain. However, something else I found from a seed website says harvest when the size of your fist, which seems like a darn small eggplant. So I think we're going to harvest one on Friday morning before we leave town and see how it goes. As far as growing eggplant, once I figure out when to pick them, it's been great. I think I'll get at least 8 off this one plant, and it's been very easy to grow - no disease or pest problems.