Friday, August 01, 2008

It has grown a bit since May.

Remember back in May, when things were just starting in ye olde veggie patch?



Things have grown just a smidge since then....


Look! A wee little teeny pumpkin, with a #@$@#&*%^ striped cucumber beetle on the blossom end. This pumpkin is about the size of an overgrown golf ball. I found a few more yesterday. I had forgotten how monstrously huge pumpkin plants get, but fortunately I left plenty of space around them. I could carve the world's tiniest jack-o-lantern right NOW.



What do we have here? Various pepper plants! So far I am just picking yellow Hungarian wax peppers, garden salsa peppers,and jalapenos. Olé!



It's a jungle out there. Really. Tomatoes on stakes at the back, a row of really tall sunflowers, and in the front, many, many potato plants.



Mostly pumpkin plants.



Rosa bianca eggplants. Whether I get any actual EGGPLANTS off them remains to be seen!



Scallions, spring onions, whatever you want to call them. I have purple ones (Red Beard) and regular. I love being able to walk down and pick scallions of my own.



Some mutant hybrid Sunburst summer squash.They are supposed to be all yellow but I think they are reverting to type. They still taste good, though. Tristan is always trying to steal these things right out of my hand. This could have something to do with why he's farting up a storm in my office this morning!



Cute little mutants...


Some of my onions. I'll pick the majority of them later, when the stems have died back and they can be stored, but they're plenty tasty right now.



This is what happens when you don't pick your mesclun mix frequently enough, and it gets really hot outside...


Pak choi, not unlike bok choy. For all I know it IS a form of bok choy.



On the right, garlic and onions. On the left, spinach that has bolted, and the very tall sunflowers (taller than me!)



Scallions, mutant and non-mutant Sunburst summer squash, and a misshapen Italian largo zucchini.



Kale, kale, kale...


"Lime salad" tomatoes. There are a zillion blossoms.



Unknown tomatoes. I planted many types, and all the tags seem to have blown away!



Garlic,and Royal Burgundy string beans, which turn green when cooked.



Broccoli, a little bug-eaten. They had these revolting green worms on them, but then the assassin bugs move in and seem to have eaten every last worm, bless their little cotton socks! My garden is organic, well, as organic as it can be when the farmer renting 50 acres of our land is growing GM Monsanto soybeans that get sprayed with Round-up. Anyway, I let things be in the veggie patch and have been doing just fine. A little superficial bug damage here and there, but nothing worth getting my knickers in a twist about. I just squash the cucumber beetles when they piss me off. It's cathartic.



Carrots (left) and beets.


A pumpkin blossom with the aforementioned eeeeevil striped cucumber beetle. Actually, most of the squash plants have survived the infestation and are doing fine. Next year, floating row covers!

Jungle, with tomatoes and whatever else is in there.



Hope you enjoyed the garden tour and didn't fall asleep. I have to go. CBC radio is about to play a segment called "The Joy of Sex, Evangelical Style" Hmmm.....

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:20 am

    Ok what the hell was that radio program about??! ;)

    the garden is indeed a jungle...how great. You shouldn't have to go to the grocery store for MONTHS!

    Here they use those squash/pumpkin flowers in quesadillas. They are GREAT! cheese, mushrooms, and "flor de calabaza". yum.

    It must be very exciting to see what's coming up and very rewarding :)

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  2. Pnat!! That is a beautiful garden. Are you fertilizing organically to get all that green jungle look? What did you do to your soil. Help. My garden never looked that lush. You can hardly tell your rows or see dirt. I'm in awe.

    Thanks for sharing all that. Beautiful stuff.

    Blog about the radio show. Do tell.

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  3. I heard about ten minutes of that show (I was driving and I usually have CBC on). The bit I heard scared the hell out of me.

    And according to (the ever-reliable) Wikipedia, "pak choi" is an alternate spelling of "bok choy".

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  4. gorgeous garden! Like Robin, I'm amazed. That's AWESOME! You should have enough produce there for months! Do you can things?

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  5. My garden is doing well because of luck, decent weather, and the fact that the former owner kept cows down there for years, so everything is growing on a decade's worth of cow manure! :)

    My garden in BC was awful, because the weather and soil were awful. I do have a composter and am a firm believer in adding compost to the garden. I compost all my kitchen waste, apart from meat stuff. My garden in NS did really well with compost, and I also mulched some things with seaweed because we were right on the ocean.

    I think I have been really lucky with bugs; the only infestation was the striped cucumber beetles, and they didn't do a huge amount of damage. I didn't get any bugs on my potatoes at all!

    Do you compost, Robin? Have you done much to amend your soil? Or maybe it's just that the weather hsa been too hot? I'm just guessing here. Last summer here was extremely hot and dry, and the few things I planted at the place we were renting didn't do as well, but I had really crappy soil there as well.

    And Angela, I do can things! I plan to pickle beets, make chili sauce and salsa, and who knows what else? :)

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  6. For those who want to hear the joys of evangelical sex, right click and hit "save link as", or whatever the equivalent for your browser is.

    The Current.

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  7. I do add a lot of bags of manure & fertilized soil to my sandy soil because otherwise sand has no nutrients.

    This Aug/Sept, I'll add another dozen bags just to keep it going. In the late fall, I get LOTS of oak leaves to help with mulching & keeping soil moist.

    I have yet to make a compost pile but I need to. I have chicken litter that would be great fertilizer.

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Thank you for all your comments, which I love to read!