Showing posts with label Cucumber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cucumber. Show all posts

01 August 2021

from garden to table

No cowpeas yet, but I'm still impressed at how healthy these plants look. Barely touched by the insects, while I'm picking leaf hoppers, stinkbugs and cucumber beetles off the green beans right next to them. Still no sign of little beans yet, but they've begun to send out thick runners. I put up a few poles but will need more- and taller!
One huge cucumber, and a short but very fat zucchini. 
Baked it with tomatoes from the garden! 
 Also made this lentil dish, finally cracking open one of my cookbooks. (The cucumber slices were added as an afterthought, not part of the recipe). Lentils cooked with (among many other things) peppers, bay leaf and ginger mint from the garden. Fresh basil garnish. So the meal had seven things I grew.
My kids were not too keen on the zucchini boats, but they liked the lentils! It was work to prepare but definitely worth repeating.

28 July 2021

garden food

Cucumbers and tomatoes. The cukes are good again this year- nice and fresh, no bitterness at all.
Getting a nice amount of cherry tomatoes! and darker cherokee purples.
My basils are all thriving on the deck
Fresh caprese one of my favorite summer snacks
First decent picking of green beans
The cowpeas- on the right here- grow taller, stand upright without support (so far) and don't seem as bothered by the bugs. But they haven't flowered yet, much less grown any beans. If they do so later in the season, might be worth growing both every year after all (I was leaning towards just cowpeas in the future) to have continual crop.
I have a few new zucchini forming, Hope these don't turn to yellow mush like the last one did, before I can pick 'em.

27 July 2021

july flowers

Some just beginning, others are near their end. My purple clematis bloomed a third round- though the flowers are very few. I had to prop up this last one for a picture, as the rain beat it down last night.
A yellow counterpart- at least, its shape seems similar to me: zucchini flower. If my zucchinis continue to rot (cucumbers right next to them are prefectly fine!) maybe I'll start eating the flowers instead.

Rue, yellow floating above the blue, also a bit crinkled from the rain.
Small yellow on the ground: cucumber flower.
Even smaller: tiny white flowers on my winter savory.
Also quite small- tiny purple trumpet-shaped flowers on the dark glossy plant I bought on a whim. Never found the tag again and I can't remember its name!
Up on the deck, a volunteer nicotiana. It grew out of the drain hole in a pot, that had trellis for my sweet peas. So I left the pot there, because it was so amusing (and pretty).
Pink trio of geraniums are flowering again, though they keep loosing leaves. Turn yellow, then brown, then drop. Am I watering too much? or not enough- are they drying out between rain spells.
Cardinal climber has crawled all over the planter boxes on that end of the deck railing. Swarming my parsley!
Most of the flowers are up top, here. I've trimmed some of the trailing vine ends- they are still looking for height- hoping the plant will branch more further down and fill in the trellis. I love how it's grown all through the balusters:
Tithonias are all flowering on the second sunny slope. Doing much better in this new spot!
Beautiful from the sideyard: gladiolas. The one salmon pink spray is from the new group.
Arranged in the house.

11 July 2021

grey

The garden is withering. I was going to take photos and post happily about how the cardinal climber has grown up to deck height and wound through the trellis my sweet peas vacated, and the zucchini leaves are bigger than my head now with bold yellow flowers- but yesterday I saw to my dismay that half the beds are unwell. All the leaves turned a sickly greyish color and severely wilted. Carrots, beets, tomatoes, cucumbers, lovage, cantaloupe and zucchini affected. So many nice tomatoes in there, but all still too green to pick! It's spread to the cardinal climber vine too so I'm doing work to cut things out.

We had three days of very heavy afternoon downpours- I wonder if the plants simply drowned. Also I caught a half dozen harlequin bugs among the collard greens- they could very well be the culprits. It's time to go out with gloves and a trash bag. I'm acutely reminded of the time years ago, on another property, when I had to rip out most of my garden plants- especially the green beans- due to similar symptoms. Harlequin bugs showed up in that garden, too.

30 June 2021

tomatoes and more-

First pick of cherry tomatoes- just a few- and I ate some straight off the vine before taking this photo.
Big ones are forming fruit now, too- 
and they've all filled the bed splendidly
Zucchini have wowed me. I gave them (and the beets) a compost feed a few days ago, plus several gallons of aquarium wastewater, and they got huge fast. Having the tree gone that used to shade part of the garden helped a lot too, I'm sure.
Opposite end of that bed, the lovage is well over five feet now!
Green beans are filling in around the leaf beet chard- front bed- and behind them is the bed of collards. I pulled the three tatsoi gone to seed a few days ago, some of the pods were ready- drying and beginning to split open.
My green beans to fill in gaps. Going to plant them tomorrow when there's rain due.

19 June 2021

end of june garden

Lots of things are thriving now- and the scented plants, rue on one end of the garden, marigolds, hyssop
and wormwood on the other- seem to be keeping the rabbit away so far.
I recently planted out my zucchinis,
cucumbers
and cantaloupe
Peppers growing great
And all the basils- the ruffly one, lemon basil, regular sweet basil, purple amaratto basil
I haven't used the variations on tarragon yet- just noticed the one in a pot has finely serrated edges-
We're eating leeks regularly now, and had first tomato last night. Chard almost big enough to cut now too.
Have too many chamomile plants!
Need to figure out what this plant is! the one I thought a reverted wild coleus? it's getting huge leaves.