Really quick garden update

Cucumbers - taking over the garden. Should have given them more space. Had a cucumber salad the other day with our first one - delicious!

Peppers - Really producing, 95% of them doing fantastic, a few that I still can't tell if they're going to pull through.

Zucchini - the yellow squash really faltered and still hasn't really recovered. The light green variety I planted from seed died, but I replanted it about a week ago and now I've got three little sprouts. I'm hoping with these temps they catch up soon!

Tomatoes - first Juliet is almost ripe! Hopefully more will follow soon.

Green beans - producing like crazy. We have 2.5 pounds just from the last few days. Will need to look into canning them.

Eggplant - getting established. Not expecting big things any time soon.

Melon - Really taking off, but no little melons yet.

Winter squash - not doing much, I'm hoping with the heat it'll perk up soon.

Onions - almost entirely harvested - only about 10 left, but we have at least 15-25 at home still.

Carrots and beets - still quite a few left, will need to pick soon (but we still have carrots in the fridge!).

Garden update - shallots, bermuda grass, new plants

I picked the shallots on Saturday, May 30. While a few were mushy, most of them were nice and firm. I feel really lucky about that ... whew! I'm either going to braid them (which doesn't seem as straightforward as braiding garlic), or I'll just do what I did last year and let them dry in some mesh bags hanging in the closet.

I finally had it with the bermuda grass (which I lamented last week). I spent hours on Monday and Tuesday after work digging the stuff out, even around the tomato plants as carefully as I could. It was back-breaking work, but I think I got about 90-95% of it, and I'm determined to start catching it again as soon as I see it. I might even pull out my parsley so I can get rid of what's hiding in there, and then start over.

The only problem is my neighbor, who has tons of bermuda grass in the corner right by the common border we share. I can't do anything about that, but I'm considering buying a big piece of plywood or something similar (and cheap), digging a trench (oh my poor back), and planting that thing in there. I figure one foot below ground and one foot above should stop that grass from coming over. It might come around, but at least I'll limit my vulnerability.

And last - I've planted some more stuff! New plants include two types of melon (ambrosia melon and a variety of Israeli melon - maybe Ogen?), butternut squash, yellow patty pan squash, my zucchini genovese that I grew from seed (2), two black beauty eggplants, and two rosa bianca eggplants. I'm pretty much done with my summer planting, yay!

Oh yeah, and after all that digging and weeding and planting, I did some mulching. I'm essentially mulching only the area around and between the winter squash and melons, since it won't be watered, will supress weeds (I hope) and provide a nice place for the melons and squash to hang out while they grow on their vines.

Here's my garden diagram:

Overrun by weeds

I'm struggling with the weeds this year, more than ever before, it seems. Bermuda grass, in particular, is a scourge I wish I could eliminate entirely from the garden. It's driving me nuts, and I don't think I'll be able to dig it out this summer for fear of damaging the roots of my tomatoes. I might settle with getting out as much as possible, then putting down a nice layer of mulch. If only I can figure out what kind of mulch to use.

I still have to plant zucchini, eggplant, winter squash, and melon. I'm hoping to do it tomorrow, after a big session of weeding and mulching.

I finally built my little tomato watering system, although I'm not sure how great it works. I did get a T-joint, found my old tubing and cut it in half, and ran a line into each channel. It seems to water a little slowly - to get a good deep watering, I think I'll have to let it run several hours, which isn't always possible. The tomato plants are looking fantastic, though - some already have some small green tomatoes! I'm busy pruning and staking and tying the vines, and Loris even said that they don't look completely out of control yet, which is always a good thing =)

Everything else is doing great:

1.We've picked most of the lettuce because of the hot temps.
2. The peas didn't produce because I planted them too late.
3. The peppers are mostly doing extremely well, except one or two that didn't pull through the heat.
4. The green beans look fantastic.
5. Radishes are almost done, and the flavor is getting too strong because of the heat.
6. Carrots are coming along well, and I'm harvesting regularly, although a few have developed hard, woody centers.
7. The leeks mostly went to seed, so I pulled them and will make do with the edible parts.
8. Spinach bolted - I have no luck with spinach.
9. The basil suffered from the heat, but is now rallying well.
10. Ditto for the cukes - I might replace one of them.
11. Onions - yum! They're still not really drying out, and a few have put up seed stalks, but we picked one and are slowly eating it fresh in salads.
12. Garlic - looks good, but I haven't dug it up yet to see. It's probably ready any day now.

One exception - shallots. I pulled a few, and the bulbs were all mushy. Not sure what's wrong, but it makes me very sad. =(

Next time: Decisions on mulch, garden update, and hopefully some pics

Zucchini

I have been wanting to plant a certain light green variety of zucchini that my father-in-law grows, and I while I haven't been able to find it anywhere, I finally found the seeds two weeks ago at the Ferry Building Marketplace in San Francisco. Actually, I'm still not sure it's the right variety, but I guess we'll see when the little guys start producing!

The variety is called zucchini genovese. I planted 6 seeds in a little starter container around May 3, and I think I saw them come up around May 9 or so. I'm about ready to transplant them into their own containers for another week or two to see how they do, and I'm guessing they'll be ready for the garden by June.

I'm not keeping them all for myself. My sister's getting one, and my friends with a garden are getting a couple, too. I think I'm going to plant 1-3, but I'm not sure yet - we'll see!

Zucchini

As usual, we are starting to have more zucchini than we can handle. Here, Loris is sauteeing some zucchini with onion before he adds the eggs to make a frittata.

Monday night

I stopped by the garden today on my way home from work. It's looking great. I accidentally picked our first tomato, which isn't quite ripe yet, but will be shortly. I also picked another zucchini, a few handfuls of green beans, basil, and parsley.

The lima beans are already up, they started poking out of the ground and uncurling their first sets of leaves on Friday. More are still coming, as I can see from where the dirt is cracking open. The two melons are getting bigger almost daily, but I still don't think we'll be eating them before we leave for Europe.

Tonight for dinner we had green beans cooked with onions, tomato sauce, and parsley, and store-bought gnocchi with freshly made pesto. And homemade bread, which is getting a bit old. And the last bits of cheese from our rafting trip yesterday. We just took a walk to our "neighborhood store" (Rite Aid) to buy milk to eat with our leftover chocolate chip cookies. It's going to be a good evening =)

Canned dill zucchini

Dilled Zucchini Sticks

Ingredients

(4 servings)

4 1/2 lb Zucchini
3 tb Pickling salt
2 1/2 c White vinegar
1 1/4 c Sugar
1 ts Celery seed
1 ts Dill seed
1 md Cooking onion, thinly sliced
4 Cloves garlic
4 Sprigs dill weed

Instructions

Wash zucchini, retaining peel and removing ends; quarter lengthwise; cut quarters in half. Layer zucchini and salt in a large glass, stainless steel or enamel bowl; let stand 1 hour.
Fill boiling water canner with water. Place 4 clean pint mason jars in canner over high heat.
Place snap lids in boiling water; boil 5 min to soften sealing compound.
In stainless steel or enamel saucepan, combine vinegar, sugar, celery and dill seeds; bring to a boil.
Rinse zucchini in cold water; drain thoroughly, pat dry. Add zucchini and onion to pickling liquid; bring to a boil; boil 5 min.
Place 1 clove garlic and 1 large sprig of dill weed in a hot jar; pack zucchini and onion slices snugly in jar to within 3/4 inch of top rim. Add boiling pickling liquid to cover vegetables to within 1/2 inch of top rim. Remove air bubbles by sliding rubber spatula between glass and food; readjust head space to 1/2 inch. Wipe jar rim removing any stickiness. Center Snap Lid on jar; apply screw band just until fingertip tight. Place jar in canner. Repeat for remaining vegetable and pickling liquid.
Cover canner; return water to a boil; process 10 min for pint jars at altitudes up to 1000 ft. Remove jars. Cool 24 hours. Check jar seals. (Sealed lids curve downward.) Remove screw bands. Wipe jars, label and store in a cool, dark place.

Garden update - end of June

It's the last week of June, and things are looking pretty good. Here’s a rundown on the garden:

1. Cucumber – really great, we’ve had 4 cukes so far and they’re all delicious. These are pickling cukes, so I could pickle some, but I have to check and see how many jars we still have from last year. We don’t eat a whole lot of pickles normally.

2. Melon – doing fantastic for now! We have two melons about the size of a baseball. Unfortunately, they’re starting to climb the leeks that I haven’t gotten out of the ground yet. I’ll have to take care of that this weekend.

3. Basil – growing quickly. We still have frozen pesto from last year, so I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with it yet (except make liquor!).

4. Sauce tomatoes – the roma tomatoes are doing very well, we have a lot of green tomatoes so far and they’re growing nicely. I’m doing my best to keep them trained to the stakes, and it’s going decently well. I think these varieties are a bushier variety and training them to stakes may not be the way to go. Some of them are climbing the stakes pretty well, but others aren’t. I can’t help wondering if I’m accidentally limiting the harvest by pruning them or not. I have to learn more about it.

5. Heirloom tomatoes – 5 plants now have little green tomatoes! Woohoo! The last one doesn’t – it’s a beefsteak, which I’ve read don’t do that well in Sacramento because it’s slightly too hot here. We’re having a spate of slightly cooler days now, so I’m hoping it will set fruit. I’m so excited about slicing into our first heirloom tomatoes.

6. Peppers – I can’t remember if I posted that I planted 6 MORE pepper plants. I believe I now have 36 plants (plus one spicy pepper for Loris). A bunch of them have pretty good-sized peppers on them now – I’m quite happy with how it’s going.

7. Zucchini – We’ve had 5-6 good-sized zucchini so far and they keep coming. Yum!

8. Shallots – I dug up one bunch and they were delicious. It seemed like they’re still dividing. I don’t know how/if I should store them, so the others are still in the ground.

9. Beets – doing well – see previous post(s)

10. Lima beans – Just planted, June 22. Total experiment – let’s see how it goes!

11. Green beans – are doing extremely well. Most of them have grown big and bushy, and we’ve had enough to make a big green bean and potato salad, with another big batch in the fridge.

12. Yellow summer squash – this seemed to suffer after I planted it, but now it’s picked up and doing pretty well. I expect it to start producing any day now.

13. Carrots – Doing well, but they’re also sort of “unwrapping” the outside layer from the core. They’re still edible, but they look awfully funny. I didn’t do the best job of thinning them, so I’m not sure if that’s part of it or not. They do seem to be too close together.

14. Eggplant – The four original ones I planted are getting big and starting to flower. I think we’ll have some eggplant when we get back from Italy, if not before. The last one, which I just planted within the last month, had a hard time after transplanting, but seems to finally be perking up. Whew.

15. Parsley – Growing quickly into bushes. Hopefully I didn’t plant too much! We’ll be making a lot of bagnet this year, I hope.

16. Leeks – are flowering. Not good. They’re forming a woody center stalk, which makes them difficult if not impossible to eat. I have to get them out of the ground to salvage what I can. They do have beautiful flowers at least. They never got big like the ones you buy at the store. Loris says it’s because they’re too close together. Honestly, I’m not sure they’re worth the trouble. I can see lining the border of a bed with them, but dedicating a whole space to them is probably not the way to go. We just don’t need that many.

Harvest day

Just a quick note about the garden today. I picked several handfuls of green beans, two cukes, two zucchini, five beets, and a small bunch of carrots (to add to the carrots already in the fridge). And the only thing in the harvest we ate for dinner was a cucumber. I guess we better get busy.

On a side note, the current spate of wildfires (over 800 at last count!) is putting a crimp in my biking to work plans. Luckily I still have the parking pass until Monday.

Zucchini!

The zucchini season has started, and it has started with a bang. Last week, Loris cooked up a delicious zucchini frittata with our first small zucchini from the garden. Before I knew it, we had another one, which I picked before it grew too big to really be good anymore. It’s still sitting in the fridge.

After a weekend spent climbing Mt. Shasta for our first anniversary, we returned home to find two BIG zucchini and a few little ones. I need some recipe ideas! We’re still eating soup and risotto made with frozen zucchini from last year, and we have several jars of pickled zucchini. I unfroze the last mini-loaf of zucchini bread for our backpacking trip, so it's probably time to start replenishing that, as well. Last year I even tried zucchini-chocolate-chip cookies, which worked out ok. I wonder what else I can sneak it into this year?

Luckily, the other summer squash in the garden was planted later, and hasn't started producing yet. My friends and co-workers are going to start getting little edible gifts pretty soon.

Summer garden shaping up

The weather is officially warming up, and the garden is slowly transforming from spring into summer. It's amazing how quickly everything takes off as soon as the warm weather arrives.

Here's a brief diagram of what things look like right now:

The tomatoes are growing like crazy, and I can't always catch the suckers before they get too big. Luckily, I've still got things mostly under control, and I've starting tying up the vines to their stakes. I'll write more about the tomatoes soon. Suffice to say we've got quite a few green ones.

The zucchini is also growing amazingly quickly. We have one small green one, which will probably be ready today or tomorrow. Now THAT was fast!

The green beans already have tiny, little fruits, I'm really looking forward to eating my first green beans of the season. I have at least two or three varieties planted. Green beans seem to go through a shock when they're transplanted. They always seem to wither a bit and take a few days to recover. The most recent transplants are still suffering, but the older plants are quickly turning into bushes.

The carrots are coming up just beautifully. (Reminder to self - post a picture!) Despite my thinning, they are still to close together, but I'm trying to pick the bigger ones in each group and leave some space for the smaller ones to grow some more.

The eggplants aren't doing much. I'm hoping they wake up soon, and realize that summer is almost here!

I may have planted the beets a little late, I was just trying to get something into the ground in a small patch I have available. I'm actually having weed issues in that corner of the garden. The peas are drying out, and almost not producing at all anymore, so they're coming out soon, possibly this weekend. After I harvest the beets (and carrots), I may do a serious weeding session and try to conquer them. The real issue is my garden neighbor, who lets his lot go pretty badly in the winter. The weeds just keep spreading over to my side from there.

The garlic and shallots are drying out! I turned off their sprinklers a couple weeks ago, and they're starting to turn brown. Good timing, since our garlic from last year is going bad pretty quickly. Lukcily we only have a couple heads left. I'm really looking forward to braiding the garlic this year, and also to trying our first home-grown shallots!

Everything else is doing really well. The basil plants are quickly becoming bushes, the cucumber is starting to climb it's cage, the ambrosia melon is spreading in all directions, and the leeks are ... still there. They don't seem to be getting much bigger, but they're just as delicious at the size they are now.

And that's everything! I guess my updates aren't ever really that quick!

Getting ready for vacation ... poor garden

My garden is not in such great shape these days. It's really overrun by weeds, and some of the plants desperately need to be cut back or removed.

I picked a bunch more peppers today, and an eggplant, some zucchini (it never stops), and tomatoes. There are actually still a few green beans, but I don't know if it's worth it to pick them.

The last two days we've done a great job of eating veggies, since we're trying to get rid of stuff before we leave for Italia. Two days ago we had another peperonata and a zucchini frittata. Last night we had an heirloom tomato appetizer with gorgonzola, onions, oil and vinegar, and ratatouille made with tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, green beans, garlic, and parsley from the garden (and onions and potatoes not from the garden). It was really delish.

I think I might make roasted peppers for dinner tonight. I have to get started on bread for dinner, too, but we are actually having a hot day today (which I can't complain about considering the mild summer we've had), and I don't feel like turning on the oven. But as long as I'm turning it on for bread, I might as well roast me some peppers.

I also have to make and can some tomato juice, but as I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm a bit tired of canning. There's always tomorrow ...

More of everything and zucchini soup

I spent a good part of my morning in the garden, picking veggies, weeding, and generally checking on things. I picked green beans, sauce tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, only one zucchini (woohoo!), an eggplant, a bunch of peppers (with burned spots), and parsley. And a ton of weeds. I have bermuda grass in the garden. That really sucks, especially because it's underneath a lot of my plants I don't want to disturb too much, and getting rid of it requires disturbing things, so I'd rather wait until I pull the plants out altogether. Which means I have to hope the grass doesn't take over the garden by then.

Bermuda grass is really evil stuff. It spreads everywhere. It's incredibly invasive, and difficult to get rid of without completely turning over the soil and digging out all the roots. I'm not looking forward to it.

I'm learning more and more about growing peppers. Since my plants aren't standing up, they are (of course) falling over. Which means sometimes a pepper or two is sitting in the water when the sprinklers have been on. Which means that sometimes they rot. Sorta the way some of the tomatoes do. So having a plan for next years' peppers is going to be crucial. Especially since buying peppers costs more than a mortgage for a house. Anywhere but Davis, that is.

So anyway, after spending a good part of the day making and canning more ketchup, for dinner tonight we had zucchini soup, based on Loris' family recipe (which, as all Degioanni family recipes, is rather loosely passed on). So here goes:

A bunch of zucchini (two large ones made a good pot of soup)
Some onion
Broth
2-3 potatoes
Parsley
Salt
Olive oil

Chop up the zucchini into smallish chunks. Chop up the potato as well.

Chop the onion pretty finely. Put some olive oil into a decent sized pot and set it over medium heat. Add the onion, and stir-fry for several minutes until the onion starts browning and getting fragrant. Add the zucchini, potatoes, and enough broth to cover the veggies. Cover and let cook until the veggies are soft. Add the parsley (to taste) and salt (to taste). Blend. If you prefer a thinner soup than what you've got, add more broth. Adjust the seasonings (parsley and salt), and serve. That's it!

First recipe!

I made up this recipe tonight, and it was delish! Loris thought so too. A great way to use up a decent amount of zucchini. I didn't really measure stuff, so you'll have to play it by ear:

Risotto agli zucchini (con zucchini)

One largish zucchini and 1 or 2 smaller ones
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil
Some onion
Veggie broth
1.5 cups of arborio rice
Some wine (.5 to 1 cup?)
Basil
Parmesan cheese

Chop up the large zucchini and bring to a boil in a pot with just enough broth to cover it. Boil until soft, then puree with a blender or food processor. Set aside.

Chop up the smaller zucchini and saute for about 3-4 minutes in olive oil, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

Finely chop some basil to garnish, and set aside.

Bring some veggie broth to a boil (I think I used about 4 cups), then lower the heat to low.

Chop up the onion and saute for about 4 minutes in olive oil in a medium to large saucepan. Add the rice and stir until it starts making clicking sounds, about 4 minutes. Add the wine and stir until it is absorbed.

Start adding a couple spoonfulls of the zucchini puree and about 1/4 cup of broth at a time, slowly stirring the rice with a wooden spoon while it absorbs the liquid. Each time you can see the bottom of the pot when you stir, add some more liquid and puree. It will take anywhere from 25-45 minutes for the rice to cook and absorb all or most of the liquid. After 25-30 minutes, start tasting for doneness.

When it tastes done, add the fried zucchini and chopped basil. Pass the parmesan cheese at the table to add on top.

Enjoy!!

My first lessons

My first lesson has been to remember to dig in a lot of compost before I get started. I have a feeling I should have done this at the beginning, because now I'm not sure that I will ever have the entire garden empty again, so it's going to have to be piecemeal now. A much bigger lesson would be to learn how to compost myself, but it always seems like such a big job, and I don't know where to do it - out at my garden or in my backyard? In my backyard would be handy, except that I'm a renter and I don't know when I'll move, and also it would be hard to transport to the garden. And my rented community garden isn't really big enough that I want to use my planting space for composting. So that's a lesson I have yet to learn.

Here are some brief notes of what I've learned so far with this summer garden ...

Peppers - plant them close together! This way, they support each other physically, and the leaves protect the pepper fruits from getting burned. I'm pretty sad about my burning pepper fruits, but too lazy to find something to block them from the sun. They're getting these awful brown spots, which sometimes eventually burn all the way through to the inside of the pepper. And they have so many peppers that they're all falling on their sides, which I'm hoping isn't a huge problem. Their buddies aren't close enough to hold them up.

Green beans - plant them closer to the edge of the garden, not in one big block. It's really hard to pick the beans on the plants that are farther from the path, so I find myself constantly stepping into my garden and compacting the soil. I think the smart thing would be to put the peppers in the middle of the block, maybe in two close rows with stakes the way I've staked my tomatoes, and the green beans around the edge.

Zucchini - one is probably enough. And buy plants, don't grow them from seed. Because really, what's the point if you only have one or two plants? And then you end up with something like what my yellow squash is - some weird hybrid that looks more like a winter squash and I have no idea what to do with it. That will probably be the first space available for my winter garden (so the first I'll have to compost!).

Cukes - maybe don't plant pickling cukes and slicing cukes right next to each other. I haven't accidentally pickled slicing cukes, because I planted the pickling cukes first and got sick of pickling before I even had any slicing cukes. So I don't know if it would be a big problem in future years. Also, I need to try to be more diligent about training them.

Tomatoes - pick the darn suckers off early and constantly! Actually, I did a decent job with my two rows of romas, and they're doing really well, although I must have left at least a couple too many suckers on one or two plants, because I faithfully tied everything up, but they're so dense I can barely get in to find the ripe tomatoes. And the heirlooms are out of control, all over the place, and producing far more tomatoes than we can eat. I am trying to decide if it's worth trying to can some of them for a fancier tomato sauce ...

Squash (winter) - cut the vines before they get out of control! I didn't know you could do that. I think I've got at least 10 butternut squashes growing, I have no idea what I'll do with so many except give them away. And they've more or less taken over my garden.

As for everything else, it seems to be doing ok - the eggplant, melon, basil, and parsley. I'll write more about those in future posts.