new SIPs

I wasn't hoping much of it, but the Mock Strawberry plant I uprooted as a weed and stuck in a pot recovered marvelously. It initially got potted about two months ago and looked so bad at first I didn't even take a picture of it, expecting it would die. I cut it back hard and then forgot about it, but now it's starting to look attractive!

I brought it inside a few weeks ago and it continued to do well. So this morning took it out (lots of nice roots!)

and repotted it. It had lots of holes from slug or some other pest. I trimmed all those leaves off to make it look nicer, and so that if more holes show up I know I've brought a pest inside...

I put it into a sub-irrigated planter made out of a recycled soda bottle. It looks a lot thinnner now with the damaged leaves and dead material removed, but I think it will fill in again soon.

You can see in this photo how long the runners have grown!

My little Creeping Charlie cutting doesn't seem too happy, in contrast. I think it's because I potted it up before it had very many roots. It hasn't been growing any new leaves.

I put that one in an SIP too, made from a smaller bottle.

 

I think part of the problem was I kept forgetting to water it often enough; when I took it out of the little pot it was quite dry. I think being in the SIP will help it retain more moisture and with the stunted root system that might help it.

boats

My staple use for Zucchini has always been bread or cookies; the other day I finally made stuffed zucchini. It was pretty good! Even better the next day reheated with a bit of tomato sauce on top. My kid calls them "zucchini boats". I used this recipe.

okra wow

I'm continually amazed at how huge the patch of Okra plants is getting. And yet I'm still just filling a freezer bag, not yet picked recipes to try...

orange!

The Pumpkins are all turning orange, even the oblong one, so I guess it didn't really cross with a zucchini! There's a fourth small one now, too, but I don't know if that one will mature although they are all growing very quickly.

okra!

The Okra is really growing by leaps and bounds now. It's the healthiest-looking plant in my garden, happy in the heat and not much bothered by bugs it seems (or at least, the bugs that would like to bother it haven't found it yet!) Lots of new pods are forming although I'm still just tossing them into the freezer...

And everyone's right, the flowers are beautiful!

new visitors

I read quite a few garden blogs that are all about establishing native plants to encourage wildlife, particularly birds. I always thought this would take a lot of work but to my surprise this year I've seen two new birds. Several times now walking out of the house a bright yellow-and-black bird has darted away from my echinacea with quick, dipping flight. I'm certain this is an american goldfinch- and the info I read says they do love purple coneflower seeds! All it took was one plant, and this vivid bird is visiting my yard regularly.

The other new bird I've seen is a rosy colored one; there was a pair on the driveway for some time one day; I watched them through a window. I think they were house finches?

I haven't seen any hummingbirds this year, but the tithonias are planted against the fence on the other side of the yard, whereas before I could just glance out the window and see them. I wonder if they're around but I just haven't seen them yet?

of course I haven't got any photos- birds are so hard to catch an image of

squarshes

Cut a monster Zucchini today

I'm suspicious this largest Pumpkin adjacent to the zucchinis has crossed with them- it looks too dark green and oblong to me.

The other big pumpkin shows hints of turning orange already

There's a third small pumpkin growing now, too- quickly gaining size.

mock strawberry pot

I've continually had the idea in the back of my mind that mock strawberry could make a decent potted or even hanging plant. I tried once before and it didn't work. But a few months ago yanking weeds pulled a large clump with good root mass on it so I stuck it in a pot. For the longest time it was just dried up sad-looking. But I cut it back and watered it plenty and now it's actually growing again. So maybe it will make a nice plant to look at.

There are quite a few of these growing in the lawn on edges and my little one thinks the red berries which look remarkable like real strawberries, are edible. I caught her putting one in her mouth a few times. Freaked out at first, but then I learned they're harmless. Not much taste, but won't hurt you.

hosta bed

One thing that has finally begun to take shape in my yard is the front beds against the house. They're both planted with a row of Hosta, which are large enough now in their second and third year to start being prominent. Of course I haven't yet planted anything else around them, so it still looks pretty empty and gets full of crabgrass too easy. But when I drive up to the house and just glance at the yard, the hostas are a feature now, so I'm happy with the result so far.

Now I need to figure out what plants will compliment their looks, or some annuals that will fill in the gaps until the hostas get big enough to fill the bed...

Oh, and you can just see in the front left corner of this picture the fat seed pods on the Peony. I'm getting excited for some good seed!

small harvest

This morning picked fresh a few big Tomatoes, some green Bell Peppers for pizza tonight, and a nice stem of Green Onions. Also my first two Orka! Tossed in the freezer, as Chris advised, until I have more. Still don't know what I'm going to do with it, but maybe I better get used to plants that love hot weather and figure out how to eat them.

Because the rest are succumbing. I had to pull most of my large tomato plants and the two cherries, all sick and nasty. Had to cut down those tall bean poles and trash it all- diseased and bug-ridden. I cut up the broccoli plants into compost as well- what with the weather they just taste bitter. Crawling with harlequin beetles too. Ugh.

Well, the Okra looks lovely and the carrots and beets seem to be holding on, but the garden looks much diminished now. Only the Zucchini and Pumpkins look really lush and stunning, and those Pumpkins are growing sooooo fast! But the cucumber beetles are back; I spend every morning picking them out of blossoms to squish. Don't know if I'll be able to keep ahead of them and keep the plants healthy...

sub-irrigated update

I was just noticing how beautifully my sub-irrigated houseplants are growing. The African Violets look wonderfully healthy, even though they haven't started blooming again yet.

I have one new Spider Plant baby in a SIP,

and the hanging one continues to do well (oops bad photo).

I'm amazed at how the Poinsettia is thriving.

It's twice as big as last time I took a photo!

The roots have found their way down through the wicking cloth into the reservoir.

And the Cyclamen lives in my bathroom (on the windowsill).

I'm not sure if this one is doing as well as it should. The leaves are paler than when I bought it, perhaps because it doesn't get as much light? It has a more open growing habit, the stems aren't as straight, and it's lost a lot of leaves, but also continues to grow new ones.

I guess it's a good sign it hasn't completely died back, in spite of the heat we've had? I'm hoping when it gets cold again it might perk up more and flower once more.

The only plants that didn't do well in SIPs were my jades. They're happier now back in sandy draining pots. I do want to convert more of my houseplant containers to SIPs but have to get ahold of the right kind of plastic bottles first...

hot

My Nasturtiums are not doing well with the heat. I always find it hard to keep plants in pots happy when it gets so hot they dry out quickly.

I've been gathering some seed off them as the flowers fade, and I know they're viable because a few that fell in the soil of the pot unnoticed grew new little plants already.

in the kitchen

Gardening continues to inspire and stretch my cooking. Well, at least I'm trying lots of new recipes. Over the past few weeks I've continued to search for a dish that we like made of Turnips, but it just doesn't seem to be happening. I've learned that there are two keys to cooking turnips: peeling them well and using bacon. Every turnip recipe I find uses bacon.

So we've tried turnips pan-roasted with brussel sprouts, turnip greens cooked w/bacon and onions, a turnip souffle which failed (I didn't cook the turnips in water long enough- one of the first steps- so they weren't tender enough and remained a bit bitter)

and my favorite, a dish of turnips and peas. I actually liked this last one but my family didn't so I'm still trying to find new recipes!

I've also been finding lots of uses for Tomatoes, now that they're ripening faster than we can eat them. We have the usual caprese salad, and thick slices on sandwiches and burgers. The other day I made a pizza from scratch and discovered at last minute I had no pasta sauce in the cupboard. I didn't even look at a recipe but just ran some fresh Tomatoes through the food processor with a bit of garlic and tons of oregano, plus some thyme and parsley, simmered it on the stove. It made a very tasty pizza sauce! Not as thick as I'd like, but I did it so quick.

My daughter made this little pizza for herself, with different ingredients on each quarter. We also put the first diced green bell pepper out of the garden on the pizza.

This week I also ran out of sugar for a few days, and surprisingly it wasn't much of an issue. We substituted dried, powdered (in the coffee grinder) Stevia from the garden for sugar: a pinch or two in the pancake batter and homemade pizza dough, a pinch in my coffee.

Also been trying a few new things with Swiss Chard. The frittata has worn off its novelty and nobody seems thrilled about it anymore. I put some on a pizza in lieu of spinach and that was okay, but not great. I made a chard quiche which I liked a lot, but no one else really did. Then tonight I made a chard lasagna, from scratch (well, put together from scratch. The recipe has you make the pasta yourself and the tomato-basil sauce yourself, but I bought those). And it was scrumptious! Everyone liked it. The best chard dish so far.

(I added a ground beef layer to the recipe because my husb hates dishes without meat)

lovely

So a few days ago it was cool enough to put the kids in the wading pool and catch up on some serious weeding in the garden. I made a few happy discoveries.

The Tithonias are starting to bloom!

I have baby Pumpkins! And these are the eating kind, for pie (excited).

The Okra is really starting to grow.

There's a few pods on the plants! But only two or three so far- how long do they keep after you pick 'em? I think I'll have to save some up to have enough for a dish.

bamboo mulch

It's been very hot. We had a few days of mid-eighties weather that felt wonderful, and then today it was 99 degrees again. Igh. The plants wilt, and so do I.

So I've been shredding my neighbor's bamboo forest into mulch for my garden. It's quite a project. First I have to cut down the bamboo (she doesn't want it in her yard so I have access to as much as I can use) and haul it over to my yard. Then trim off all the stems with foliage, setting aside the poles (most are over ten feet long). Then the tedious work begins- by the handfuls, I snip the bamboo leaves and small stems into inch or half-inch sized pieces with my hand clippers, over a bucket. It takes two or three days' work to shred about two dozen poles of bamboo down into a few buckets' worth of mulch. (Alas, I don't have a chipper/shredder machine). Here's my older daughter resting on the pile of foliage waiting to be shredded. She says it makes a very nice cushion!

It's great for mulch. In the areas of the garden where I put down two or three inches I've hardly had any weeds at all, and not worried much about watering either as it keeps the moisture in well. It doesn't break down as fast as grass so I haven't had to replenish it under the peppers, broccoli or chard, even though the cut-grass mulch under the tomatoes has already disintegrated to nearly nothing twice now. The water seems to flow through it easier, too; it doesn't mat up like grass mulch can. I haven't had any problems with the bamboo resprouting, as several people warned me against. I think partly because I let the stuff dry out well before it went on the beds, so it was good and dead.

I thought of keeping all the poles and using them to build something, raised beds maybe? or a playhouse for my kids? but then ended up trading them to some lady on craigslist who was building a fence. She gave me a dozen brown farm-fresh organic eggs in return. They were fabulous!

I think it was a good trade.

and the plant seem relatively happy-
marigolds:

cantaloupe:

beets - very few, but they're holding on

brussel sprouts- still no sign of sprouts!

swiss chard, flanked by broccoli:

my one surviving Rhubarb plant is holding up against the heat with thick mulch

the others died early on before I mulched; you can see the bare area here in front of the bed:

Peppers are the only plants that seem completely happy right now. Lots of tasty peppers, very few bug holes, don't mind going a few days without water. I just planted them a bit too close together but they look wonderful.