Grasshopper’s Lunch

We assumed it was the hornworms and the birds getting to our cherry tomatoes, but just yesterday we found another culprit: the grasshopper. Perhaps a locust?

We sprayed the whole garden with bt spray this evening which should take care of any hornworms, although I’m not sure if this will keep the grasshoppers away…

Growth of Yard Long Bean and Edamame Plants

Just wanted to show a couple of photos that show how quickly these plants have grown in just a few weeks (we planted seed at the end of July). They both are getting flowers and it shouldn’t be too long now before they produce some fruit…

Yard long bean plants

Edamame plants

June was the Month of Cucumbers

The cucumber plants in the community garden are doing very well.

cucumber plants in community garden

In our garden, not so much – we had one cucumber plant that produced just a single cucumber and never got very big. I think it may have been due to it’s location in the garden – it was near the corner at got the least amount of sun. We gave up on it a few days ago and composted it.

The plants in the community garden, however, have been producing lots of great big cucumbers.

cucumber growing

What to do with all the cucumbers? Well, we’ve just been eating them in salads and on sandwiches. They are also good just on their own with a bit of salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper.

I love the curved cucumbers – you can’t find those in the store!

Some of the cucumbers we left too long before harvesting and they turned yellow… we did actually eat one and it was ok in the middle although the edges were bitter.

Cucumber gone yellow

With so many cucumbers, pickling was in order. While I was out of town, the neighbors got together and had a pickling party! They pickled the cucumbers along with some of the mild and hot peppers from the garden. They included fresh garlic and fresh dill (you may remember our dill plant – it’s gone now but the dill it produced was dried and perfect for pickling). Since I wasn’t there,  I can’t tell you the exact steps they took – but next time I will be there and will keep track of the steps.

A mountain of pickles

We now just have to leave the jars in the fridge for 3 weeks before eating. Can’t wait!

First Cantaloupe

The cantaloupe plant in the community garden has been growing fast and large over the last few weeks, and we spotted a few small melons growing about two weeks ago. (Sorry the photos turned out a little fuzzy).

cantaloupe plant taking over the fence around the community garden

cantaloupe growing a couple weeks ago

Then while I was out of town over the weekend, the neighbors discovered there were two large cantaloupes hidden near the bottom of the plant in the corner of the garden. So they picked them for the eating!

The first cantaloupe we picked

Then sliced in two

We ate some yesterday and it was good. The texture was still pretty crunchy, almost like a cucumber, which I actually liked. Although it could have had a bit more flavor and been sweeter, which makes me think it wasn’t quite ripe enough. Next time we’ll wait a few more days before cutting into it.

Sliced up the rest for snacking

First Corn

The corn (from the three sisters in the community garden) is ready to harvest!

Corn nearly ready to be harvested

We picked two of them – ones where the silk is starting to turn brown and the juice inside the kernels is milky.

husked corn ready to be cooked

We put them in boiling water, took off the heat and covered for 5 minutes. They are delicious!

Corn ready to eat

 

First Zucchini

Our zucchini plant has been doing very well these past couple of weeks. We now have 5 fruits growing! Today we picked our first one – this one grew dramatically in the past couple of days and was definitely ready to be picked!

We already ate half of it just sliced raw with some pine nut hummus for dipping. It has a nice mild flavor. I noticed it’s actually juicier than what you get in the store.

Community Garden Progress in May

Everything has really come alive this month. (Compare to what it looked like in April). Take a look at the three sisters. It’s like a jungle!

View of our two three sisters beds

The squash plants keep growing out beyond their bed

They are truly working together now. With a bit of training, the beans are now climbing up the corn stalks (which are already as tall as me!).

The cucumber plants are also doing really well. We installed a trellis so they will grow up, rather than out, leaving the other plants enough space. Cucumber plants can get really big.

Cucumber plant crawling up trellis

We also have our first fruit.

This is one of several squash fruits growing.

First pepper growing

First jalapeno growing

Our Garden’s Progress in May

I was overseas for the last two weeks with some family, and the garden has changed quite a bit since then! My partner did a fantastic job of keeping things going, watering usually 3 times a day (we have reached highs in the 100s several days).

First, and most unfortunate, we lost two pepper plants – the hot red cherry pepper and the banana pepper. He went outside one morning and the leaves were all on the ground. It was possibly birds or other animals that got in there.

To replace them, he bought and planted some new peppers – another hot red cherry and a  sweet red cherry (there were no banana pepper plants left).

hot red cherry pepper plant

sweet red cherry pepper plant

While there, he also bought a couple more herbs since we had extra space – spicy oregano and chives. Chives can apparently help keep away pests so that might be useful, as well.

peppermint (top left), spicy oregano (front left), and chives (front right)

You may have noticed from these photos that we now have a localized irrigation system! This was a pleasant surprise to come home to. The tubing goes to our hose about 50 feet away, fits down the crack in our patio, and is then buried under the dirt across our yard. The system includes 2 gallon emitters near each of the plants as well as a couple of soaker hoses in the areas we need more soil covered.

a view of our localized irrigation system

You can also see some of the latest growth in this photo. The zucchini is coming along nicely and no longer has yellow leaves, which was a concern a couple of weeks ago. It also has had some nice yellow flowers blooming which you can see a glimpse of under the leaves.

our zucchini plant

The tomato plants are coming along really nicely, and actually in the next few days we need to create a support for them – probably a cage. This will also be useful for keeping out the birds, which we have already seen eying the plants which makes me nervous.

our roma and cherry tomato plants

our first roma tomato has begun to grow!

 

Community Garden Progress

I wasn’t good about tracking progress and taking photos of our community garden, but in a nutshell:

We picked the spot in our neighbor’s front yard – by the north-facing wall – and built the beds. We had soil delivered from Acme and mixed in some compost and gypsum (fertilizer & soil conditioner). It sat for a couple of weeks and the plan was to have a planting party on March 18th, but due to a very unusually day-long rain storm that day we postponed and planted on March 24th. This was a little bit later than we hoped (early-mid March is best) but things have been going well.

Community garden, early April

After everything was planted, we added an irrigation system which was actually fairly straightforward. We alternated half-gallon and full-gallon per hour emitters. It took a little bit of testing and moving around, and even last week we added a couple new emitters because we managed to miss some of the seed locations.

Seeds we planted: squash, beans, corn (three sisters); red bell pepper; cucumber.

one of our three sisters planters

Plants we planted: lavender, cilantro, basil, dill; cucumber (which was good since the seeds never sprouted); habanero and fresno hot peppers; cantaloupe.

the herb garden - clockwise from top lavender, basil, cilantro, dill

We put up a wooden fence and stapled on chicken wire to prevent rabbits & cats from coming in and messing things up.

Final touches on the fence

The watering schedule now is twice a day – once in the morning and once in the afternoon. It has been close to 100 degrees this past week so we are keeping a very close eye on things. Everything so far is healthy and has been growing rapidly, especially the three sisters. The next step may be to get a shade cloth for those very hot hours of the day.