Plot still emptier

We took away the last of the tomatoes and the (beautiful!) lettuce plants yesterday. There were a good few tomatoes rotting where they'd fallen, so hopefully next year we'll have some "volunteers".

The sweary one put in our plot number (it's 5) in the mandated corner. It's the corner least likely to be seen by anyone, but hey, who cares?

We also thinned out the onions. I'm really quite excited about them, actually. We have some bulbs already (which we plonked back into the ground) and I am hoping that next year we'll have full-grown actual onions to enjoy. Many red onions were flourishing, despite the cramped conditions. I'm not sure what the white ones will turn into, but we'll find out some time next year, I guess.

The plot is pretty much ready for the winter now. We keep meaning to learn the lesson of our plot-neighbour and put some seaweed (readily available around here) in a foot or so down, but we have yet to manage it. Some year, I guess.

The Dirt on the Plot

We went to the plot this afternoon to work in all that soil we got at the seed store yesterday.  The nice can-do woman (whose name might be Heather or Susan or neither and I can't remember for the life of me) was there with a couple of companions.  They were digging down about a foot of soil from their plot and piling it onto a big tarpaulin.  Once they'd dug it all out, they produced 7 or so garbage bags filled with kelp, dumped them into the plot and spread it all out as evenly as possible.  Then they shovelled all of the removed soil back on top.  They raked the top layer even and they were done.  Amazing.  The whole operation was done smoothly and quickly.  

In the meantime, the sweary one and I used the local flat-bottomed spade (like a trenching shovel) and our own pitchfork walked from home (not as bad as I thought it would be) to turn over the soil in the top foot of our plot, working in the new black earth and seaweed mulch we picked up yesterday.  The sweary one finished off with the local rake (much more effective than it looked like it would be) and now our plot looks (and probably is) ready to take seeds.

We planted a couple of short rows of lettuce (having turned over the patch where we planted seeds on Monday) and three short rows of spring onions.  I am not at all certain about the age of these seeds, so I think I'll do the viability test with them.  If they're duff, I'll get new packages some time this week.

Plot Emptier

We did (almost as soon as I stopped mucking about on the internet, actually) make it to the plot yesterday.  I ruthlessly pulled out the still blooming and productive zucchini.  I think, given the ratio of tiny babies to largish fruit, that they had started a new bloom when the sunshine reappeared last week.  At any rate, they're all gone now.  We pulled up the egyptian walking onions, which we've been told are mostly for use like chives (i.e. the fruit isn't very good) and is not good use of our limited space.  We swore that next year we wouldn't plant anything that took over wholesale like the zukes and then immediately agreed that what we should really grow is pie pumpkins.  We harvested about 10 lbs of potatoes, including those from the two plants which were completely subsumed by the monster zucchini.  

What remains is one sad tomato plant, mostly destroyed by zukes; one happy tomato plant, still producing pretty little yellow plums; a few increasingly mis-named spring onions; and a row of newly-sprouting beets.  I thinned the new beets a bit yesterday, but given that we're already into frost warnings, I don't think I'll hold much hope for this second harvest.  Too big for my breeches, I guess.

MORE zucchinis

Actually, I am not complaining all that much about the proliferation of zukes.  They're very good.  We picked 3 more today.  I don't think I mentioned that last week the sweary one took some hungry-looking students down to the plot to gather some healthy harvest for themselves.  

The beans are done now.  After the enormous picking last week, nothing much was left.  We pulled up some of the plants this afternoon.  I stopped pulling up plants when I pulled out one that still had some baby beans on it.  Next year, we need to follow the excellent lead of our co-plotters and put in some proper bean infrastructure.  There are a number of very nice bean screens around.  

We also pulled up a whole potato plant.  It had been knocked over by the zukes, beans, and incessant rains.  There were about a dozen potatoes underneath.  After our first taste the other night, I can't wait to eat these.  Nothing is like a fresh potato.  We really don't get them in any way other than eating them, either.  It's unfair; why can't we get such delicious beasts at the farmers' market?  We can get nice peas.  Why not nice potatoes?  

Our haul included some (increasingly mis-named) spring onions and some herbs from the communal garden.  I brought home some egyptian walking onion babies to plant in the backyard.  

I think next year we'll get rid of the walking onions.  I like using the space we have for things we can eat.  

Greens (mostly), also first potatoes

Yesterday afternoon we went to the plot and picked what there was to pick.  We picked lots and lots of beans.  

We picked some green onions. 

We picked about several zucchinis.

I scrabbled around in the dirt underneath some of the potato plants and got a few potatoes out.  They're bigger than I would expect.  I was hoping for little baby new potatoes, but already they are big.  Oh well.  They were scrumptious.

We didn't pick any tomatoes, but I continue to hold out hope that eventually they will turn into edible fruits.  

I keep showing pictures of the produce and little pictures of the fruit on the vine.  In the interests of full disclosure, this is what it really looks like:

It's marvelously overgrown.  It's mostly the zucchini's fault.  Here we see a few leaves from the zukes coming through where the potatoes are, but between the zucchini and the potato is a whole row of struggling beans!  AND the garlic was originally in that bit, too.  It's wonderful, delicious chaos.  

Vegetables

I often think of the word "vegetables" as being pronounced veg-i-TAYB-les, like it's sung in the Gilbert & Sullivan song " ... it's a scheme of devices to get at low prices all goods from cough mixtures to cables, which tickled the sailors by treating retailers as though they were all vegetables" (want to guess what the rest of the song was about?  Those gentleman knew a thing or two about stringing words together, didn't they!).  

It's been VERY RAINY in this part of the world.  Very.  Yesterday I was in the back yard cleaning something with the garden hose and you couldn't tell where I had sprayed and where I hadn't.  It's been that kind of very rainy.  

As a result of the very rainy, there have not been any trips to the plot over the long weekend.  As a result of the long weekend, well, there are 7 fresh new zukes in our fridge.  We're not doing too badly using them up, but I think this will break the camel's back.  Time to start freezing grated zucchini.  

There are also a good bunch of beets (the end of them) and a few scallions.  

The scallions worked out very well.  I'd plant 'em again exactly the same way: Just dump every darn scallion seed you have into the row and thin them out as they emerge.  They don't have to be very big to be edible and the thinning later didn't seem to have a negative effect on the growth of the un-thinned.  Plus, the little tiny ones were wonderfully potent.  

We also pulled up the end of the garlic.  The garlic has been such a joy.  I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I could grow my own garlic.  So fabulous.  

Bean there.

The first beans came off our bushes this afternoon!  This calls for a celebration.  Involving a steamer and a dollop of butter.  I like 'em cooked just past squeakiness, but I know there are lots of people who think that the squeak is proof that they're cooked just right.  However they're cooked, beans from our own plants are the best beans there are.  

It's a modest haul, but we weren't trying to clear the plant, just to grab enough for dinner.  When we went to the market on Saturday morning, I didn't think we'd have beans this week, so I got a healthy amount of beans then.  Not all of them have been eaten.  To be honest, I am not at all sure that all of the beans we picked (and then blanched and froze) last year have been consumed.  

We'd both been under the weather for the past few days.  As a result, we hadn't even seen the plot since Friday.  We knew to expect some zucchinis to be ready.  Actually, it's not as bad as I thought.  Only 6 were ready for picking and only one of those 6 is really big.  I think we should have a stuffed zuke for dinner tonight, just to get the biggie out of the way.  Or else we can save the stuffing recipes for later and make a cake or some bread with the large fellow.  Decisions, decisions.

The weather has turned into almost perfect growing conditions.  We get huge amounts of rain followed by a day or two of hot sunshine.  The rainy days are not mediterranean-ly outnumbered by the sunny days, but I hold out every hope of successful tomatoes.  There are fruit coming along and they still have at least a month to get red.  

The beets are not done yet, but we picked two more today and sooner rather than later all of the others will come out, too.  We had some lacklustre beet greens (from the market) over the weekend and it cast a pall over our plans to chomp them all down in a hurry.  I guess they're all getting older now.  

The spring onions have worked out very well.  It turns out that thinning can happen whenever.  I generally pick big fat ones from bunches of thinner ones and then when I come back, the thinner ones are growing into bigger fatter ones.  The little tiny ones were also good to eat; great in salad dressings and on potatoes as though there were very potent chives.  I'll have to remember that trick for next year:  Just plant the whole packet and deal with what comes up.  Some thinning will be required, but not as much as they say on the packet.  

The egyptian walking onions, on the other hand, are making babies all over the place and need some abortions.  I think we'll just do away with them completely.  They're not good for eating and we really want to devote our space to things we can eat.  

The potatoes are finished flowering.  Does that mean we can start having new potatoes soon?  There are few things better than a potato fresh from the ground.  Who knew that the floury, starchy vegetable that we eat (and I enjoy) all winter long starts its life as a wonderful creamy confection?  That's the joy of gardening, I guess.

Fine Dining

This evening we dined on plotfood.  

We had omelettes made with potent little spring onions accompanied by beet greens sauteed with zucchini and garlic.  Thrills.  

Back to Bounty

It's great to be home, and not just because the veggie garden is bearing fruit!  Nonetheless, it was very, very nice to go down to the plot and survey the miracles.

There are tomatoes on the way.

The plants were donations from the public gardens greenhouses, so we don't know what varieties to expect.  I deliberately chose plants with different leaves, though.  

Zucchinis galore.

Beans being babies.

We even dug up some garlic!  I'm very excited about that.

The radishes had bolted! It's amazing.  We pulled up the enormous, woody-stemmed plants.  There were radish-looking things at the base of many of them.  We'll see what they taste like later.

I also picked some more green onions.  They're not obviously minding being very close-packed.  I think I'll enjoy eating lots of little tender baby spring onions instead of proper-sized bunching onions.  

The potatoes are flowering and looking very promising.  After the success of last year's potatoes, I can't wait for the first creamy bite of fresh potato this summer.  

I pulled up a few of the beets to make room for their neighbours.  I'll make beet greens out of their leaves; there isn't really enough beet on most of them to be worth cooking.  

A few years ago, I had edible beet greens for the first time.  I had previously always treated beet greens like spinach and as a result hated them and stopped trying to eat them.  Then my own dear and wise mother showed me the way and I've been an enormous beet green fan ever since. Remember that this is a recipe for people who like to eat food because it tastes good.  This isn't for a purist who wants to extract the maximum amount of vitamins from their vegetables.  

Beet Greens:

Wash the greens thoroughly (rinse at least 3 times, more if the water is still sandy).  Toss the undried greens into a pot with a heavy bottom and a lid.  Let them cook down in the water that was clinging to them.  Cover them and stir frequently, making sure that the leaves don't stick.  Boil the heck out of them.  Boil them until the stems are starting to be properly limp (more limp than you'd want your asparagus, but less limp than spaghetti) and then take the lid off.  Add butter (let's guess about a teaspoon per 1/2 lb of greens) and minced garlic and let the water boil off, stirring all the while.  You should be left with a lovely buttery red sauce and delicious beet greens.  I sometimes add the garlic while there is quite a lot of water remaining in the pot, which basically allows me to add several cloves without anyone noticing much because the boiling makes the garlic a little more mild, but it infuses the sauce more, too.  

Onion grass

We stopped by the plot on our way home this afternoon.  No camera; no pictures. 

The walking onions are looking pretty good.  We should figure out something to do with them.  Pasta maybe?

We thinned the beets and radishes and got rid of a weed or two.  We need to address the problem of the enthusiastically-planted scallions.  This is entirely my doing.  I planted all the seeds in the package and I didn't worry about the separation.  I reckoned that we could do the thinning later, and besides the package was over a year old so I could assume that the germination rate wouldn't be high.  Oops.  The overall effect is very like grass.  Thinning is the wrong word.  I need some way of getting rid of huge clumps of scallion sprouts. 

Maybe I can combine the sprouts with the walking onion flowers for a pungent addition to potato salad?  

First Fruit!

Exciting news, everyone!  There are PEAS growing from the pea plants in our garden plot!  Yey!

All in all, the plot is going very well.  There are lots and lots of scallions coming up on the far left of the picture below.  There are so many scallion shoots that it just looks like grass in some places.  It needs thinning.  There are egyptian walking onions in the back, flourishing.  There are beets and radishes doing very very well.  The beets need thinning and so do the radishes, but not quite as desperately as the beets.There are new peas (the indoor peas that survived being put out before the snow are the ones that are producing pods right now) sprouting in the back of the picture below, and there are zucchini to the left and beans in the middle and at the far right is some flourishing garlic.  The egyptian walking onions might be said to be bearing fruit, too.  I think the flowers are the edible bits.The new peas are doing just fine.The radishes are going gangbusters.  Are they ever fun to grow!  I remember the very first year we tried to grow things in a barrel in our back yard and the radishes at least sprouted.  So eager.The garlic really does look good.  We're all very pleased at the thought of home-grown garlic.  
As yet unsprouting are 5 potatoes.  Our plan is to eat the beets, radishes, and scallions and put cucumbers in their place.  That's what we did last year and it worked a treat.  Maybe this year, I'll start a plant or two indoors so we can have production going quickly (like those FABULOUS peas!!!).   I'd like to have some more veggies on the go at the house.  It was fun to watch them come up.  

Longish Quickie

I popped by the plot on my way in this morning.  (No camera, but if the rain keeps away, perhaps I'll pull by at lunch.)

The peas look OK, but sort of haggard.  Right now, they only have bamboo poles to grab on to and I think that the poles are too fat for the peas to grip.  I think they need string.  

The beans look dreadful.  I don't know if they'll make it.  Of the three plants I put in, only one has any leaves at all, and those seem to be in imminent danger of getting knocked off somehow. 

The beets look almost exactly the same.  REALLY not sure what to expect from them.  I hope I get a chance to put the seeds in before we go away.  I would hate to miss the season altogether.  

I had a longish chat with another plot gardener, Mary.  She gave us the onions.  They're Egyptian walking onions.  Her plot has many bunches of them.  She also has some really good-looking garlic coming up.  It puts ours to shame.  

She asked about our plants; not surprisingly, she wanted to know how we came to have things popping up so suddenly.  She said that sometimes the things grown on windowsills are too leggy and they don't flourish in the garden.  This, I didn't know.  She also said that hardening off is an art unto itself.  I know so little about hardening off, and I am doing such a crap job of it, that I am willing to believe that there are subtleties, but on the other hand, I think for now I am happy to be the inconsistent gardener and do what works for me.  To hell with what works for the plants.  

Sure, I'll be sad if there are no beans this year.  I'll be CRUSHED if there are no beets or peas.  However, this is a hobby.  I have a tendency to try to become a whole-hog expert in what I  do.  This isn't entirely a negative thing.  Being good at things is something to strive for.  On the other hand, being not good at things is something to deal with.  Enjoying things that you're not good at is an art unto itself.  (I learned that from 3-pitch softball.)

So, all in all, I'm glad I had that educational chat with Mary. I'm not sure that I learned what I was supposed to, but these little reflective moments are what the blog is all about.

 

Gone to Ground

The first batch of peas have officially kicked off the plot season.  This morning, I put four of the pea plants (including the two who intertwined yesterday) into a bag and brought it to work.  The bag and the pea plants sat in a sunless and grim spot in the corner of my office for several long hours, but when the day was done their imprisonment was over!  Hooray!

We dug up the soil and raked it around a bit.

We checked on the onions and garlic.  The garlic bears no resemblance to the stuff we put into the ground last spring.  They are rather like spring onions which are buried too deep.  Hopefully, this fall the garlic will bear some resemblance to the stuff we want to eat.  The onions are still crazy and marginal.

We dug little pits and tapped the peas out of their pots.  

We then put the peas into the ground, staking them as we did so.  

I think maybe we'll put some more in tomorrow.  

Plotting

This lunch hour we visited our plot to see what our starting point will be.  The gardening association had its AGM last night (to the tune of 1.5h) and that inspired us to check out the state of affairs.

The plot is looking fairly rough, as one might expect for springtime.  However, it's not dreadfully rough.  Most of the mess is our leftover beanstalks from last year.  There is some blown-in rubbish that we'll have to clear when the time comes.

There is also a fair number of stones and bits of flotsam.  Last winter was warm and then cold and then warm and then cold again, which I think brings the rocks to the surface.  The heaving plucked some bulbs out of the earth, for sure.  In the garden at home some of the bulbs have been forced out and the potato I put in made its way, nastily, to the surface.

The bulbs in the earth at the plot are of course not daffodils, but onions and garlic.  The garlic is looking well.  Mike tried to pull one out but it would seem that only the surface of the soil has thawed so far.  The garlic wasn't budging.  

The onions had a bad run of it.  They were planted in the late fall and so therefore presumably didn't get a chance to root in before the freeze/thaw cycle started.  They're still very much alive, though.  It's amazing how well they are thriving.  

The onion below is still very much alive with roots digging into the ground, despite being completely uprooted by the frost heave.