Garden at 13 Weeks

UPDATE

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When I went outside to pick the ripe tomatoes for my salad tonight they were ALL GONE.  And next to my garden sits a bowl from my kitchen and the remnants of ranch dressing.  This could only mean one thing: Lila strikes again.

I am starting to see some real progress in places that there wasn't much this week.  Everyone (even Jay) seems excited to see the baby watermelon plumping up and turning into juicy little fruit!  Also, my pumpkin are sprawling and got their very first flower.  

But first, let me talk about my very first plant to produce a vegetable.  My crookneck squash plant.  How big are crookneck squash supposed to grow?  The plant itself is giant, not growing in vines like my other squash, but it's the size of a bush with huge branches that are growing up and out and are producing gigantic squash.  

Yesterday I picked and cooked this monster squash that is much larger than my HEAD!!!!!!!  

 Here are a few little squash that are growing from one of the limbs that sprouted outside of the garden plot.  And this is only a few!  I will bet the farm that there are at least 20 squash in there that will be read to eat within the next few days.

 This plant is over 3 feet tall now.

I couldn't bear to look at my yellow, wilted watermelon and cuke's any longer.  Yesterday I picked them out of this garden bed and pulled up the plastic from under the compost bags.  The problem was pretty obviously that the roots weren't able to break through the bottom of the bags.  The green that you see popping up around this garden is rogue peppermint.  I think that I'll pick it all out and make a bit of tea this afternoon!

While Dancer was staying with us he jumped into my whisky barrel and dug up all of my pepper plants.  I replanted them, but was concerned that they wouldn't make it because their roots were ripped apart by a little Chihuahua.  Luckily, they seem to be doing okay.  

These Cardinal Climbers are probably my favorite (or close to it) thing in my garden.  I just think that they are so beautiful and I can't wait until they reach the top of my pergola.  Does anyone know if I should be repotting them into something larger?

Acorn Squash!  They are around the size of my fist now!

 Okay, so my round zucchini had hit a lull in production for a week or so... which was good because I was running out of things to do with it.  I have both eaten a lot of zucchini and I have also given a lot away.  Something happened when we left for our camping trip.  When we came home we had an insane amount of round zucchini that had somehow quadrupled in size.  Here is a shot of a patch on a vine.  There are three huge round zucchini there.  I mean, I have so much zucchini that I will need to begin chopping and freezing it.  It's just... too much.  It's only 9 am here and I've already made a zucchini quiche and put a pot of pasta sauce on and have zucchini simmering in it for a vegetable lasagna.

And do you know what else I think I'll do, bread and pan fry some thinly sliced zucchini and make a little tray of zucchini Parmesan using daiya mozzarella (which I bought for the lasagna).

I think that all of this cooking means that I'm ready for Fall.  But does fall really happen in Concord, California?  That is yet to be seen.

 The zucchini vines are stretching out to the street.

 I give it 14 days before it hits the pavement.

I've been using my jalapenos here and there.  They are getting pretty big on both plants!  Does anyone have a good recipe for them?  I already have a great popper recipe, anything else?

I am so in love with my corn plants!  You know, I feel the same way about them as I do about the cardinal climbers and my pumpkins and zucchini.  There is a certain pride that is great when you grow something successfully from a seed.  A few of my plants come from seeds and a few come from seedlings (like my tomato, watermelon and peppers).  I am always excited to see growth and production, no matter how I started the plant.  But growing from seeds is sort of an ultimate accomplishment for me.  

My cucumbers have their first flowers!

You are looking at ripe tomatoes for my salad tonight!  There are SO MANY tomatoes in there and they are DELICIOUS.  When I say "so many," I mean, at least 100.  Most of them are still green... but can you imagine all of the delicious things that I can make when they are ripe?  Or, even just giving them to my girls to snack on with a little bit of dip (one of their favorite things).  

 This is another one of my tomato plants.  It was the last plant to get flowers and baby tomatoes, but it's looking good to me!  Does anyone know what fried green tomatoes are?  I think I need to google it!  I am in a cooking mood.

 This beefsteak tomato is the first to start ripening!

I am looking forward to pumpkins!  I have two pumpkin plants here.  This is my first flower but I have high hopes.  I want each of the girls to be able to pick a pumpkin for Halloween and I'd really like to make pumpkin pie from scratch with my own pumpkins for Thanksgiving.  

I've saved the best for last.  Here are two maturing watermelon.  They are the cutest things in my garden and we all love them.  I saw another baby that is smaller than a grape, but I have a lot of flowers and imagine that there will be more to come.  I am SO glad that I planted this.  I considered giving it away or tossing it out.  I didn't have room in the bed in my backyard where I planted the other watermelon (the watermelon that didn't grow and that I plucked out and provided "the true death" to.)  I stuck these in my front yard near a strip of rose bushes.  This plant is now a huge vine and is wrapping around the rose bushes.  

New Garden Babies and Lots of Growing Going On!

I planted a few new things today.  I gave up on my watermelon bumps and the cucumbers that I was trying to grow from seeds and planted acorn squash and zucchini in their place.  I left the garlic because I still hold hope that despite it's unchanged appearance, it will eventually sprout.

Instead of planting in the terrible garden soil that I used to not-grow my failed watermelons, I used compost.  

When I look back on previous posts about my garden, I can't believe how big everything has gotten!  I am so glad that I've been blogging about this journey because it's fun to be able to look back on pictures of how tiny everything was a month ago.  It's especially awesome to see the pictures of my seed baby summer squash because it has become gigantic!

Okay, so far here's what we've got:

Four summer squash plants
One zucchini plant
Two jalapeno pepper plants
Two green pepper plants
Two yellow pepper plants
Two cucumber plants
Six garlic plants
Three watermelon plants
Three beef steak tomato plants
One row of corn
Three cabbage plants (though, no sooner did we put the cabbage in Bunny's window that Sherbert knocked it over.  The seeds were so small that we couldn't tell if they'd been disrupted.  I'll give it three weeks and then it becomes a lettuce bowl.)

When you factor in these veggies and all of our fruit trees, I feel like we could probably survive 2012 (but only if the world in ends in, like, September).  We could DEFINITELY survive a gas drought (Also, only if it happens in September).

Check out my summer squash.  One of my plants already has three nicely sized squash babies on it.  I had to trim it back yesterday because it was overpowering my pepper plants.  They are tiny in comparison. These are in my left, front garden bed.

These are an assortment of peppers.  I honestly can't remember who is who here!  See how tiny they are when compared to my gigantic squash plant!  Though the do seem small, they've grown so much since the day I brought them home.  They are also in my left, front garden bed.

Look, I got tomato cages!

Now that I have staked the tomatoes and caged them, am I supposed to retie them to the stake at some point?  Does it ever need an adjustment?  These are also in my left, front garden bed.

My peppers are doing really well.  They are green and yellow.  There is also something that I am not responsible for planting sprouting up in the middle.  I left some soil that already existed in this whisky barrel underneath the soil that I used to plant these peppers.  And it appears that something has come to life.  It looks a lot like the tiger lilies that sprout up and around my house.
It doesn't seem to be adversely affecting my peppers, so I don't think I need to pull it.  I'm sort of curious to see what happens!

This is a close up of my pepper plant.  So many flowers!



These are located in a whisky barrel in my backyard.

These are my cardinal climbers!  Not a vegetable, but I've grown them from seeds.  Bunny crashed her scooter into their original pot and broke it.  Since re-potting them, they've grown so much.  It's a smaller pot so it doesn't make much sense to me.  Someday they'll be long vines with red flowers that climb up my pergola!  They are located in my backyard, placed next to the pergola and at the front of my watermelon patch.

The very poisonous mimosa plant.  I can't wait to see how it responds to touch!  It's also not a vegetable, but I've grown them from seeds.  You can't really see them in this picture, but I assure you, they're there.  They are still pretty small though.  I don't have a place for this basket either.  I move it all the time, though it's generally kept up high and out of reach of the kids and the pets.

These are three acorn squash and a zucchini plant.  Does anyone know if I need to stake my acorn squash plants?

I have this really delicious acorn squash recipe that I used to make when I  did a small stint on a vegan diet.  It was acorn squash, halved and stuffed with wild rice and mushrooms, soaked in curried coconut milk.  It was SO GOOD.

Another acorn squash plant!

All of my acorn squash is located in my front, right garden area.

And last, but certainly not least, my last little watermelon baby.  They did not grow in my first location.  They may not grow in my second location, but here is a small spot that gets a lot of sun and hopefully, my watermelon will grow!  Keep your fingers crossed!
This is located in the front of my house, near our front door.













I'm not taking pictures of my corn.  I planted them yesterday so nothing has happened.  I'll let you know if they make an appearance at some point!

The Peppermint Patch Experiment

My failure to grow watermelon in the front garden has been like a terrible itch between my shoulder blades that I can not reach to scratch.  I sat on my hands for about 24 hours, trying to think of reasons why my watermelon refuse to grow.  In my heart of hearts, I know that no amount of waiting will see plump, round, summer fruit.  The trouble of soil and space preoccupied my thoughts.  And late last night I had what I mistakenly believed was a brilliant idea!

We have a crazy, overgrown, peppermint patch in our backyard. It's quite large.  I don't use the peppermint in it  because it skeeves me out.  Frankly, I have SEEN Groovy James wading through it.  Pandora curls up in it.  And Sherbert once hid a dead baby bird in it (found thanks to only the flies).  I just can't eat something that has probably been peed on and has likely seen animals in varied states of decomposition.   

So... I mistakenly thought... I'll pluck the peppermint out and plant my watermelon in the nutrient rich soil beneath!  

Here's what I had to work with.

But after I picked the peppermint out, I was left with anything but soft, nutrient rich soil.  Instead, the ground was full of crusty, broken roots.  I tried to pull them all out, but I couldn't get them.  Then, I tried to dig them out, but I couldn't seem to get deep enough to find their end.

And that is when I made two emergency watermelon patch calls.  I first called my friend Mathew and then called my friend Siet.  They both returned my call within the hour, but Siet got to me first so I ran with her advice.  

Both Mathew and Siet said pretty much the same thing. 

There's no fighting peppermint. Unless you can get every single root up, and trust me, you can't, just accept that you have a peppermint patch and embrace it.

But I can't do that because I want to turn my peppermint patch into a watermelon patch.  I do not like peppermint and I do like watermelon.

Siet gave me some sound advice and it may work, but it may not.

Remove all the tape from a bunch of cardboard boxes and cover the peppermint patch with several layers of cardboard.

Then, buy large bags of compost.  Cut holes in the top of the bags and plant the watermelon in the bag itself.  Place it on top of the cardboard.  In time, the bag will begin to degrade, as will the cardboard.  The cardboard will deprive the peppermint patch of light and water and will starve it out.  By the time the watermelon is strong enough for its roots to push through the bag and the cardboard, the peppermint will be dead.  

After planting my peppermint, and giving it a lot of room to stretch and grow, I also planted cucumber and covered the area and the bags with mulch.

This is the final result!   

Here's another view.

I am going to get a little trellis to lean against the bench for the cucumbers.  I think that this should be enough space for the watermelon to stretch their legs.  

But just in case, I planted two other watermelon in different places.  

But that's something to talk about in my next post!  

ps.  I'd quickly like to add that the person who I initially talked to at Lowes told me that they don't carry compost when I asked her where they keep it.  When I told her that I had seen a bag of it alone and wondered if they had more, she assured me (and prefaced it with  the word "honey") that they don't carry any compost.  And she laughed as if I were absurd.  

To that woman, I say, "It's in the same aisle as the mulch and you  have three different kinds that come in two different sizes."  Suck it.  

Homemade Fruit Roll-Ups

Hey, check it out!  Last night at around 8 I was feeling inspired, staring out at my orange tree, thinking about what I could do with all...that... fruit!  And then it hit me!  Why not make my own fruit leather?  After a little bit of research I found that there's no real recipe to follow and it's crazily easy to do.  The downside is that it uses plastic wrap and the only non-plastic recipe that I was able to find used a silicon liner, which I do not have.  With cancer rates on the rise and all, I don't feel entirely comfortable using plastics (never mind HEATING them) but, I'm a gambler, I guess, because I made these treats.

I started with a bowl of fruit.

I used about five oranges, one lemon, a dozen or so cherries (all picked from trees in my yard), a quarter of a cantaloupe, a handful of blackberries and two small peeled, chopped apples.

I generously sprinkled this fruit with sugar.  You can use anything. Agave nectar, honey... whatever.  But I had sugar, so I used it.  Though I felt like I had added enough because the oranges are so sweet, I'm hearing reports that the final product is sour, so don't skimp on the sugar.

Next, you make a puree of this fruit.  Believe it or not, I am the only one in the world without a food processor.  So, I was reliant on a hand mixer and whisk.  I wasn't able to get my puree totally smooth and worried that this would effect the final roll up, but it really didn't.

Now you want to line your cookie sheet with plastic wrap and pour your mixture on top.

Don't worry about the wrap melting in the oven.  Because your heat setting will be so low, the plastic will not melt.  It will shrink just slightly, so you want to leave a tiny overhang.

Preheat your oven to 170.  If your oven will go down to 150, I'd say to even do that.  Mine will not.  170 is the lowest heat setting, so I used it.

I put this in the oven at roughly 9 pm and took it out of the oven at 6:30 am.  So, cooking time was around 9 1/2 hours.  You're not really cooking this, of course.

You are using the heat of the oven to dry the fruit.

Then you will remove the sheet of leather from the pan and turn it leather side down onto a sheet of parchment paper.

Remove the plastic wrap and cut it up into strips using a pizza roller or scissors.

And there you have it!

Here for the enjoying!

I am really looking forward to the day when I have an abundance of peaches!  I see many roll-ups, cobblers and preserves in my family's future!