Pepper lessons, basil confusion, and a landscape raspberry.

I spent a four-day weekend on a business trip and arrived home just in time to do some more work before ordering some take-out and hitting the gardens. The light was fading fast, and the insects were emerging with even greater speed. The fire ants had once again relocated, and I had once again been too stubborn to don real shoes and received two more bites for my troubles. I had remembered to leave the bug spray in the car though, and escaped with nary a mosquito bite. DH managed only one fire ant bite, no mosquito bites, but took the cake with a mean mystery bite on his back.

We were once again rewarded with pound after pound of fresh heirloom tomatoes! DH struck up an easy conversation with a neighboring gardener, and we managed to send her home with a few of his heaping double handfuls of the smaller varieties. She’s raking in buckets of apple-sized tomatoes herself (we politely declined any.)

What about non-tomato news?

Things I’ve learned about peppers this year:

  • Two cayenne plants is more than enough to make an attempt at a ristra for the first time
  • Two jalapeno plants is not enough for DH’s appetite.
  • One fish pepper plant will make more fish peppers than you know what to do with (assuming you know what to do with a fish pepper, which…I don’t yet.)
  • Two Anaheim pepper plants is perfect.
  • Two poblano plants is half as much as necessary for prepping portions to make chili with in the winter.
  • One Chinese Five Pepper is one too many (apparently something likes to devour every last bit of leaf on the poor thing as soon as the peppers are close to ripe! That, and I’m not sure if they’re ripe when they’re purple (their first color), white (their second color), or if I’m supposed to wait until they’re dried and shriveled and orange…)
  • We both miss the magic of the Czechoslovakian Black Pepper.
  • Purple and orange bell peppers are magical when combined in a dish. One of each is not nearly enough!

Things I still don’t know enough about to help thrive? Basil tops the list. I can get it to germinate. I can get it about two inches tall. I can keep it alive if I buy it…until it gets mealy bugs, gets woody, keeps over, or bolts immediately.

In the “bolts immediately” category is this lovely African Blue Basil. Not a week after planting it in the backyard bed (under a shade cloth!) it flowers. It’s lovely to look at, and perhaps I should reconsider basil as a landscape plant for the bees instead of a seasoning for us.

Speaking of landscape-plants-that-I-would-like-to-some-day-eat-from, my raspberry is happier this year (it’s third year) than last!

What looks like a squash bug, but maybe isn’t?

Imagine a squash bug. Or a giant stink bug. Or a huge box elder.

Paint it mostly brown.

Give its rear legs some leaf-shaped bits.

Stretch its antennae really long and make them light yellowish for the ends, with two thin dark bands further back along the brown lengths.

And a light stripe short-ways across its shoulders.

Any ideas?

(I wish I’d had my camera!)

A leaf-footed bug (leave it to me to complicate things by thinking it would have a less-obvious name!) I really don’t have the stomach for crunching bugs still. I wonder if I should just start carrying soapy water in a jar every time I visit the garden? Like Bob’s goldfish Gill, in a jar around my neck? But then I’d end up with dead bugs in a jar around my neck…and that’s a little weirder than even I need to get.

I’ve lately found the perfect time of day to go snail-hunting in the garden. It’s about two hours after that side of the house goes into the shade that the snails move out for their dinner, but it’s not yet too dark to see them. I have a giant old honey jar full of soapy water and pick them up and drop them in. They particularly like the section of garden with my beets and carrots. This last trip out snail-hunting, I noticed something new – on the far side of the bed the snails had forgone a tasty meal of carrot tops and beet bottoms in favor of an old dried up squash vine. Those snails, I left alone. Sure, they may move over to my carrots and beets tomorrow, and if they do, into the soap they’ll go, but until then I’m happy to let them turn dried up vine into snail poop.

What else I learned? Be sure to empty the snail soapy water when you’re done. Rotting snails smell something awful after boiling in the afternoon heat the next day!

Another battle I’ve decided not to wage? The caterpillars on the broccoli.

I sowed some Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli late last September. It’s been about four feet tall since January. It didn’t beat the cauliflower in the race to make heads to eat. Even though it was called “Early” I gave it the benefit of the doubt and waited. And waited. And here we are nearly in July and still – no broccoli. (I did notice the seed catalog I purchased it from has since renamed it “Purple Sprouting Broccoli.”) So I figured that if I wasn’t going to get to eat any broccoli, the least I could do was let the moths have at it.

There are probably a hundred caterpillars on it at the moment, and while it may make more sense to pull the whole thing and throw it in the compost bin that’s baking away, it’s made a miraculous improvement in my chard leaving it there as fodder for their hungry little mouths. So I thought I planted broccoli. Early broccoli at that. What I actually planted was some architecturally interesting, purple stemmed caterpillar food. I’m at peace with that.

Just like I’m at peace with the fact that each year a monarch caterpillar (or three) feast upon my potted parsley. It grows back, and I’m not eating it right now, so why shouldn’t they? And isn’t it just amazing how of all the plants in the yard, in the neighborhood, in the world, that there are some insects that only eat one plant – and that they find enough of that one plant to survive? It’s impressive and fascinating.

Beginnings and ends.

I think I’m still getting used to cycles in this part of the globe. As a child, the pensive hours, the long days indoors, and the ends came in the winter months before the beginnings of spring. The holidays were there to keep you company. With family, with baking, with decorating, with giggling cousins or parents’ friends’ stories, the long grey days seemed warm (and the wood stove helped!) There was candlelight and cookie icing to brighten the end of the year and hold everyone over until the daffodils broke ground. Until the green shone through the drizzle. Until the beginnings began again.

This part of the world, you get your cabin fever in the summer. You get addicted to the AC. You avoid the UV. You make your alphabet soup with different letters, but it’s still alphabet soup. It occurred to me today, that as I finish harvesting the carrots, the beets, the chard, the beans. As I finish harvesting the more sensitive families of food, it’s time to sow the seeds for the fall. Minus the heat-lovers and the cool-friendly, the rotation is about the same – what grows in the spring grows again in the fall, except here the die-out is over the summer.

So the onions, beets, and carrots will begin again in October, even though they’re also ending now.

The peppers and tomatoes are still going strong. They are loving the heat, but will soon lose their taste for it when it averages another 10 degrees higher each day. As they end, their seeds are dried, labeled, and stored for sowing just after Christmas.

It’s an adjustment, to find new-growth withdrawals as summer officially begins with the solstice tomorrow, but I make do.

It’s simply odd. When the winter doldrums are setting in for most gardens I hear about, read about, or dream about, they are ever-surprised at the winter growth going on in my beds. It only makes sense that when other gardens I hear about, read about, and dream about are in full growth swing with their flowers blossoming, their growth beginning in the summer: I have the same surprise, the same envy.

And so, I help new life into the world. I bring the sunshine in. I sow the seeds of the next cooler season and watch hope grow. Hope for evening breezes, for light sunshine kisses, for days so glorious you beg them not to end.

This time, hope takes the form of Lemon Basil, Cumin, Dark curly leaf parsley, and always – always – a volunteer squash.

It’s hot around the yard these days.

I thought I’d picked some sun-loving, drought-tolerant, and generally tough-skinned plants for the new front bed.

They’re looking a little wimpy, but so far only one has died and it was dying before it ever made it in the ground. It is so nice to have this bed done! Even if it will be a battle, that I may only win with agave varieties, it’s nice to have the dead grass and unruly invasive weeds looking a little more friendly.

Things I learned on this project:

  • Sun-loving, drought-tolerant still doesn’t mean put the baby plant in direct sun and water every other day until established. It means see if you can find the plant in October and put it out about Halloween to get established before it needs to be sun-loving and drought tolerant, you’ll have a better shot.
  • When buying rock, don’t shop at the big box stores. We found Whittlesey’s, and there’s likely a similar landscape supply company near you where instead of $4 per rock, the same rocks or nicer are $0.07 per pound.
  • If the rocks are too big, and of the right make-up, leaning them against a stump and tapping with a hammer will break them into smaller lengths (much easier for small circles!)

Another rock project? The new pomegranate for DH. Our grass is made of at least three varieties – all of which like to invade any place they aren’t already growing.

That impossible to miss, super tall and lush grass behind it? I have a soft spot for that grass. When DH mows, it gets hacked to the ground. By the time the rest of the lawn is ready for me to mow it, this stuff is back up to Bug Jungle Size. Same amount of light, water, and soil as the other grasses around it and it just throws caution to the wind and shoots for the sky. As much as I can’t bring myself to mow over it, I’m glad DH does so it doesn’t take over the entire yard.

The seeds are just about ready to save, though, and I’ll be stowing some away for a rainy day when we’ve moved someplace without it and I find myself in need of a resilience reminder.

 

 

The year of the tomato.

I thought I got a huge harvest on June 8th. Look at all those bigger guys out of focus in the background!

And then, on June 14th, I put the 8th to shame. Nearly twice the harvest as before!

Sunday, for Father’s Day Birthday, DH’s family came over for dinner and afterward wanted to head to the garden. It was really neat walking around the gardens with them. Oooh and Aaaahing over the giant gourd squash, the comically huge sunflowers, the beautiful squash flowers, and the mystery corn-grass in others’ plots. It was also fun to hear them get excited over all of the ripe tomatoes in my plot like I do. Once again, the harvest left the previous harvest in the dust. Once again, the latest harvest was double the previous.

Want to see what (at least) 10 pounds looks like?

Why only “at least”? Well, the scale broke. I thought it took regular batteries, and knew it had been dying slowly. It finally died, and I go to replace the batteries…giant watch-style batteries. Crap. So we’re guessing on the weight this time.

That morning I snapped a shot or two  of two of the large varieties in the early light. The Black Prince (so named for the dusting of darker green/purple shoulders) and the Zapotec (the pink wrinkly one.)

Succession sowing.

There are plenty of things I could stand to do better, the top of that list for what I want to do better is planning my succession sowing. Each year I have the best of intentions, and each year I forget.

I just came across this super-helpful post from A Way To Garden about doing just that!

I’m linking here for reference for myself as much as for helping any of you that may need a little reminder, inspiration, or information on the topic.

If you’re an expert succession sower, how do you remember to do so? Do you add a calendar reminder to your phone? Write it on your kitchen calendar? Just have that impressive of a memory or that much experience that it has merely become habit? Any tips or tricks you have would be greatly appreciated!

For instance this year, I learned that I should have started more melon and squash plants to put in after the beans were done, and more peppers to add after the squash had called it quits.

Flower beds and herb attempts.

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This bed has had me in a pickle. It gets sun from mid-morning to late afternoon, stays moist in the back corner nearly constantly due to the AC drip, receives the brunt of the roof run off in a down pour, but dries out quickly…and is maybe a total twelve inches deep. I sowed a red clover over the winter to drown out the weeds and enliven the soil. I turned it under just two weeks ago and the soil is so much happier! DH wanted to go in search of some more pepper plants now that the backyard bed is mostly done. I thought we may have some slim pickings, seeing as it’s already into June, but I don’t say no when he’s the one asking to go plant shopping! So off we went to Green and Growing, and while the ” slim pickings” worry turned out to be too optimistic (they were done with veggie transplants all together for the summer) we did pick up some flowers and herbs. In the bed above, I’m trying a Bat-faced Cuphea, two Cinderella purslane, and three little color splash purslanes only named ”scarlet” and ”fuchsia.” Immediately to the right of this square is a small strip that lays below the guest room/office window. DH thought if they were out of edibles he would still get peppers and selected these playful ”chilly chili” ornamental peppers. They have to share space with the not-flowering-in-this-heat violas and zinnias to the right, but hopefully won’t mind.

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The front bed by the street has more space than I wanted to leave as a blank mulch canvas, and I’ve seen these growing wild along the highways so can trust that they’re low maintenance and drought tolerant. Plus, they’re so cheerful looking!

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DH’s mother has been having a blessed Basil year and after we tasted some of her homemade pesto, he has been missing having fresh basil out the backdoor. He picked up the two sweet basil below, and because the overwintered Thai basil isn’t producing enough to eat any, he picked up two of those as well.

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And to dip my toes back in the seed starting waters, I thought to try once again to grow herbs from seed (I’m not very good at it yet.)

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Colors!

I braved the heat today. Even now, at 9:15 with the sun completely gone and the night black – it’s 92 degrees. But I added taller trellis lines to the tomato posts. I watered. I found another melon baby. (That makes three!) And I witnessed my first sunflower’s first bloom.

That 92 degrees has been busy though. Busy baking my harvested bean plants to the ground, busy stressing out my melon vines (sorry, guys! I’ll water you more often I promise…), busy making even the sweet potatoes wilt.

You know who wasn’t wilting in this heat? The tomatoes.

Do you know what they were doing?

The first tomato harvest of the year wasn’t just one or three lonely little Chadwick Cherries like it usually is. I suppose it would have been had I ventured out to check on it days ago.

It’s hard to photograph tomatoes properly, I find. The oranges in the photo aren’t nearly the day-glow orange the tomatoes are in real life. The pinks look less pink and the purples look more purple.

Surely the internet has lessons in how to properly capture such colorful globes of flavor? Time to investigate!

In the background, we have more Anaheim peppers, more Jalapeno peppers, and the first ever (for us) Cayenne peppers! I don’t have the names of the yellow pear shaped ones, the day-glow orange, the small purple, or the small red – those were saved seeds from a colorful pint at the Farmer’s Market last year. Oddly, in the pint last year, they were all much smaller. The larger red cherries are the Chadwicks. The pinkish one taking center stage is an Oxheart or a Zapotec, I’d have to reference either my planting chart or last year’s harvest photos. The bigger guys in the background? Those are the Black Princes.

Sadly, the monster heirloom from saved seed from a Newport, Oregon Farmer’s Market went missing. It didn’t lose half its flesh to birds. It wasn’t infested with crawlies. It wasn’t even on a snapped branch on the ground due to too much weight and too little support. I’m trying my hardest not to think someone walked away with it. Perhaps those in the community gardens with fences have the for a reason after all…

Big dreams…

As the spring wandered off to make way for summer, the garden was still going strong. Now that summer’s tight grip has taken full hold of our air, I find the cabin fever setting in. Last year it took until August for the fever to hit. Today, it hit hard. I knew I needed to go out, and despite the blanket of steaming humidity, the imposing sun, and the absent breeze, I went out.

I stuck to the shade as best I could. Spraying the strawberries with some compost tea. As the shade traveled across the land, I started work in my backyard garden. Clearing out the blossoming arugula (that we never eat, but that keeps coming back). The long-since-bolted, seeds collected, and re-bolted lettuce made their way to the compost bin.

Just like that, I was out of shaded tasks. Having spent the entire day yesterday on the river (coated in SPF 70) I didn’t wish to subject my skin to another day drowning in sunscreen, and dare not go without it. So the tomatoes still need higher trellising on their posts. The peppers still need their caging. The melons still need netting and the last squash have likely lost to the borers and the bugs.

I headed indoors. I pulled out my graph paper pad. I pulled out my pencil and eraser. I set to work drafting my winter garden.

That’s right.

In a week or three, I’ll sow my brassica family veggies, my kales and my chards, and other winter garden varieties into seed trays indoors. Last year I direct sowed seeds October 1st and found my beds lagging behind those of the Farmer’s Market Farmers. This year, I’ll do my sowing in the comfortable 75 degree housing we occupy and let those cooler weather crops get a head start before dropping them out into the 90s it will have cooled down to by October 1st (I hope.)

And with that, I sigh. Sure. I have a long growing season – October through June – which is the inverse of most vegetable gardens I know about who have their three month “can’t grow” season during the winter months. It doesn’t change the fact that I miss the summers that mean playing outside all day. In my sighing. I start to dream. DH may be done with school as soon as two calendar years from now. It feels so far away sometimes, but I’m learning all too well how quickly time moves as you age. What used to take forever to pass (summer vacation as a child, anyone?) is now gone with the exhale of the wildflowers. Over. Spent.

A dream of ours, when he finishes school, is to see about moving. Last summer, we fell in love with Boulder. Sometimes, when I get frustrated with various frustrations, I take a peek at Boulder. It has yet to fail to make me yearn.

Case in point? 20 acres are for sale. That we could afford. That looks as picturesque as I only dreamed we would find.

 

Sometimes, the beauty of the world just makes my heart ache.

There are so many decisions to make in one’s life. So very many.