My Quads are Burning

Yes, that is a play on words which include both my aching legs and the re-energized garden quads. So, it should be no big surprise that I didn't accomplish everything on my list from last week, though I did get some of it done. It turns out that last week was even busier than I thought it would be, because of extra work and no babysitter.

However, we did make progress. First of all, Quad 2 is finally planted out. This what it looks like on paper:

I updated the spreadsheet with the fact that there is a potato wasteland at the end of one of the rows because the trench got flooded out and the taters died. We have since filled it in and I'm debating what will fill the space. This is what the quad actually looks like now:

Right to Left: Row 1: Broccoli/Onions/Radish/Swiss Chard. Row 2: Cauliflower/Radish/Potatoes/Beans. Row 3: Potatoes/Beans. Row 4: Corn.

I'll have to replant cauliflower in the fall because several of my seedlings have been eaten. We planted corn this weekend, and I'm not getting my hopes up because Oklahoma is tough on corn. If we harvest enough for 1 late summer meal, I'll be happy, even though I planted 16 rows of 5-6 seeds each.

Bill did the hard work of filling dirt in the potato trenches, and I planted green beans in a single row down the middle:

I actually found one sprouting just 24 hours after planting. I take that as a positive omen. I'm also please that some of the taters are blooming, which means we're getting ever closer to eating potatoes:

We're already enjoying the Swiss Chard, which was an experiment this year as I'd never cooked with it before. So far we've eaten it in salads, roasted with pork chops, and sauteed with spinach and garlic.

Quad 3 is a little over halfway planted, but it needs some work.

As you can see, there are a few rows in the middle that need to be planted. From left to right are 2 rows of peppers, nothing, a row of garlic, and 2 rows of tomatoes. There are herbs growing throughout and 4 eggplants in with the peppers.

The peppers seem to be doing well, but I can't say the same for the tomatoes. I did a poor job of hardening off the seedlings, and some of them succumbed to weather/pests. I'm going to pick up some replacement plants this week to fill empty spots. In the middle of Quad 3 will go okra, zucchini, yellow squash, and if there is room, purple hull peas. All of these things are normally planted later, which is why I've been lazy about getting them in.

Quad 4 presented a design challenge that I have finally worked out. This is where my winter squashes and remaining legumes are supposed to go, but I wasn't sure how I could lay out the space with enough room for the vining squashes to spread out while keeping them somewhat separated from each other in case we have another squash bug attack this year. What I came up with was alternating squash hills with bean sections.

It's kind of hard to see the mounds in this picture, but the beans are in the darker blocks and the squash mounds are in between. Each row will alternate so that the mounds will be little islands in the beans, and hopefully the beans will act as a barrier for squashbugs. Time will tell. I haven't finished prepping this quad because I ran out of bagged compost, but the blocks above are planted with beans.

Quad 1 is doing really well, and its success is keeping me sustained as I work through the other quads. Look how lush:

Okay, admittedly this picture is a little misleading because a lot of the green is weeds and grass. But the lettuces and spinach are doing very well, and I may be able to start freezing some spinach for later in the summer soon.

Carrots are coming up all over the place, and we probably could start digging up some to see if they are ready. The peas and snow peas blossomed late last week, so there are pods shooting out here and there. Tomorrow we will eat our first harvest of snow peas for dinner.

So there you have it. There is still a lot of work and planting left to be done, and I hope that I'm not too late.

Surprise Harvest

What do you get when you plant something during the wrong season, wait six months, and forget about them completely? You get this:

Yep, that is an actual cauliflower head peeking through. This cold-weather veg is meant to be planted in late winter or early fall in these parts, but we planted 3 of them in mid-spring. They didn't die during the summer heat, but they didn't do anything else, either. In the last month, they've taken off and when I went to visit them this morning, they were ready to harvest.

Aren't they pretty? I had no clue what to expect from these lovelies, but to give you a sense of scale, here they are next to a full-sized apple:

Pretty big. I broke them apart, blanched them and filled up a 1 gallon-sized+1 quart-sized freezer bags with them. I think I'll save the gallon for Christmas dinner (nothing like bragging about serving homegrown veggies in the dead of winter, right?). This surprise harvest has really encouraged me to try more cauliflower and broccoli in the spring (ahem, EARLY spring) and again next fall.

I am also fairly amazed by my die-hard pepper plants. They just won't quit. This is only part of what was growing out there today; I left several peppers on the plants to get bigger.

These will get chopped and tossed into the freezer.

My cherry tomatoes have also made a bit of a comeback as well. I think the Indian summer we're experiencing is to blame for the extra long tomato season:

I'm growing these in a large Tomato Tree (the kind where the plants grow out the side, not the bottom) but they're going in the ground next year. The tomato plants were more leggy and tall than they were productive, and these are actually the most fruits I've seen on this plant at one time the whole season.

Live and learn, and then harvest.

2009 Harvest

Some pictures from this year's harvest, however tiny.

We ended up not eating these 2 eggplants, the first of about 5 that we harvested, because they went past their prime while we were on vacation. The plant was fairly hardy, and I think if we pay closer attention next year, we can expect a better eggplant production.

We tried planting potatoes in "potato bags" that I bought from Gardeners.com. The theory behind these bags is to fill them halfway with dirt and seed potatoes, then fill in dirt as the plants grow upwards. We ended up with pretty small taters and VERY leggy plants. We're going to go ahead and stick these guys in the ground next time.
One happy success this year was our peppers. We planted green, red, and yellows, and they didn't really take off until the end of September. Every time we harvest some of these little guys, the next group gets bigger. I've been chopping them up and freezing them to throw onto pizzas and into sautes.

Ah, the zucchinis. Has anyone ever NOT had success with zucchinis? We ate these guys in several different forms--pastas, breads, baked, soups--pretty consistently for 3 weeks or so in August. They went from tiny baby squashies to mammouth monsters seemingly overnight (documented by our lovely neighbor, One Acre Homestead here). Then, due to negligence on our part to nip them in the bud, we waged an epic war with squash bugs.

The cantaloupe vines we planted from seed had great potential and pretty much took over an entire bed by themselves. We might try trellising them next year. Something was wrong with the timing of these, though, because although the vines set out several good-sized fruits, we only managed to harvest 2 of them at the right time. The rest quickly rotted on the vine, even though they didn't look fully ripe yet.

The carrots were pretty disappointing all around. Most were woody and/or too small to do anything other than be thrown into the compost pile. A wise neighbor suggested that she planted her carrots according to the lunar cycle and had success, so we will be doing this next year.
I like to call these pole beans "tease beans." In late June we harvested a small handful of what seemed to be a promising crop. For the next 4 months, however.....nothing. These plants were setting several blooms, but no beans. Something about the coolers temps in September got the plants moving again, and now there are big beans all over the place. We decided not to harvest these, though, and will instead till them back into the soil as green manure. Bush beans next year.