Today's Harvest

Yay - the first cucumber! Last year cucumbers were started in the basement around May 1st, and they produced like crazy beginning in early July. We had such a bumper crop I ended up making several jars of bread and butter pickles with the extras we didn't consume or give away. We've been enjoying the delicious (if I do say so myself) pickles since, and the last jar is almost empty.

This year I started cukes from seed in the west veggie bed in mid-May. Unfortunately cutworms destroyed all the seedlings within days of their emergence. So about a week later I started more seeds in the basement, and let the plants grow there until they started vining. They started producing male blooms weeks ago, and finally, finally the female blooms are coming. It will be a late harvest, but I'm thrilled finding the first ripe cucumber of the season this morning. Needless to say, I'll be keeping the cucumber seedlings in the basement in the future until they're sturdy enough to foil the cutworms.

It's been a great year for tomatoes. Every couple of days I gather the ripe ones. The photo is representative of what I harvest several times a week. We really don't need thirteen tomato plants, but I've been enjoying experimenting with several heirlooms I've never grown, along with the usual staples I've loved for years. We've been enjoying them all for weeks. The yellow pears came from a volunteer plant that I left in the east veggie bed. They're not my favorite cherry-type tomato, but they're not bad and they're kind of cute.

Except for a few tomatoes that have fallen to the ground and gotten yucky, not a single one has gone to waste. Several batches of salsa have been made, some have been eaten out-of-hand, especially the cherries, others have made wonderful pasta sauces, and many have been shared with friends and clients. For sauce, after cooking the tomatoes and running them through a sieve, I add a small can of tomato paste to thicken them up instead of boiling them down forever. Adding the paste minimizes cooking time and heating up the house during what has already been a hot enough summer.

There are beets out there ready to harvest, and I even picked a few beans I missed yesterday. The peppers picked yesterday ended up in a delicious Thai curry dinner, made with leftover jerk chicken, organic coconut milk, peanut butter, garlic, onions, herbs, spices, and peas, and served with organic brown Basmati rice. Guess what's for lunch today!

gratuitous dragonfly photo

Speaking of bumper crops, we've had a bumper crop of dragonflies this year. I've had several up-close and personal encounters with them, having them land on me and land nearby. A couple of weeks ago one landed on a daylily in a client's garden, and seemed to be checking me out quite intensely, for a really long time. As I moved around the garden, he followed, and was my companion for at least 20 minutes. I've wished the camera was with me to capture images of the dragonflies encountered this season.

This one was resting here for a nice long time, and was accommodating enough to wait for me to grab the camera. I believe it's a female Green Darner.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

A New Veggie Bed

This long, narrow space in our east side yard was, for many years, home to an arborvitae hedge. In decline the last three years, the ice storms of winter 2008-2009 weren't kind to the ex-hedge. All but three of them were removed last fall.

The neighbor's ivy, which had previously been allowed to roam freely here, was cut back and dug out. A barrier was sunk into the soil to keep it at bay. Regular maintenance will probably be needed to keep it out of the new bed. The clump of daffodils was removed to make more space for veggies. The arborvitae stumps are ugly and take up space, but rotator cuff and biceps tendinitis will keep me from removing them. Leaving them isn't optimal, but since neither the Lawn Man or I are in optimal condition to remove them and since my budget for this bed doesn't allow professional removal, the stumps will remain for now.

The little arborvitae in the foreground was layered from a low branch of it's now-defunct parent a couple of years ago. It's now growing on its own roots after being severed from the parent plant when it was removed last fall. The baby will be moved in the next couple of weeks.

The soil will be loosened and amended, and this new space will be used for growing a few more veggies, and giving a little more flexibility for rotating our 'crops,' a challenge with limited veggie-growing space. Although this space doesn't receive optimal sunlight for a veggie garden, successfully experimenting with a few tomatoes and peppers amidst the ivy last year makes me confident this space will provide more fresh, delicious, organic veggies for our table.

The original veggie bed in our west side yard is ready to go! In honor of St. Patrick's Day last week, the trellis was put in, along with seeds for peas, radishes, lettuce, beets, and bunching onions. After many years without a veggie garden, we're looking forward to our second year successfully growing veggies in part sun with our new veggie space.

Apologies to Balisha for losing your comment - Blogger did something weird shortly after I published the original version of this post. The post disappeared and I had to start from scratch.

This Tiny Vegetable Garden

Now sleeping with a thick layer of leaves and grass clippings that should make a nice mulch in the spring, the veggie bed is a good spot for overwintering a few plants that didn't quite make it into the shade garden or front foundation beds this fall. We had walks and the patio replaced this fall, and I lost a small border on one side of the house in the process. Plants grown for Native Seed Gardeners were in that border. They were transplanted for safekeeping into the veggie bed back in September, and will be moved to new homes early next spring.

Also overwintering in the veggie bed are several Baptisia australis plants started from seeds back in July or August. They're so small, I hope a few will make it through the winter. Tall bellflowers from my trip to Mom's back in September were given a temporary home in the veggie bed too. Since so much of the shade garden was chewed to ground (probably by rabbits,) while I was away, I couldn't really tell where it was safe to plant. That's also my excuse reason for once again not planting bulbs this fall.

Our veggie bed is only about 4' x 10,' and gets less than 5 hours a day of direct sun. Still, it produced an amazing abundance of produce all spring, summer, and fall. We grew lots of lettuce and greens, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, peas, garlic, beets, radishes, squash, and several varieties of peppers. The bed was planted intensively using square-foot, interplanting, and succession-planting methods. We enjoyed beautiful, fresh, delicious, healthful organic produce every day, all through the gardening season, and had more peppers, green beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes than we could eat.

I shared some veggies with family and friends, and made tomato juice, blanched and froze extra green beans, diced and froze extra peppers, and made pickled jalapenos, pickled green tomatoes, and bread-and-butter cucumber pickles. . . all from our new little raised veggie bed in a part-sun side yard, built late last fall using retaining wall pavers with a thick layer of newspaper at the bottom to kill the grass, and alternating 'lasagna' layers of compost, fallen leaves, and grass clippings. Over the winter the layers aged. By spring we had the most beautiful garden soil, rich, crumbly, and full of earthworms.

Newspaper-lined, lasagna-style, raised, mulched beds have made a believer out of me. I don't think I pulled more than ten weed seedlings from the veggie bed all season. Watering was minimal, limited to about six weeks midsummer when we had no rain. The soil held moisture very well, and the mulch helped prevent evaporation. I've never had such a small vegetable garden before. I'm still amazed how little work, and how productive our little bed was. I can hardly wait for next year!

Yes We Can. . .

. . .grow vegetables in less than 8 hours of sun per day. This isn't the first time I've had a veggie bed in less than full sun.

Cukes are happy.

Tomatoes are blossoming (sorry about the blurry photo.)

It might not be quite as productive as veggies grown in 6-8 hours or more of direct sun.
But I have no complaints.

. . . No baby squash yet, but the vines are growing and blooming beautifully.

The peas are still growing, blooming, and producing in spite of the heat. With the arrival of 90-degree temps, some vines are beginning to dry out. I remove them, leaving those that are still producing. Peas are interplanted with squash, pole beans, and cucumbers on the trellis in my small garden.


Garlic scapes have been removed. (Aren't they cute?) I've never grown garlic before, and learned about removing the scapes from Gina. They are delicious! Last week I sauteed some with fresh asparagus. Yum!


My small veggie bed gets about five hours of late morning through afternoon sun, and everything is growing and producing well. I'm growing lots of lettuces and other greens, peas, several varieties of tomatoes and peppers, garlic, beets, pole and bush beans, and squash.

On the other side of the house, which gets only morning sun, I threw in a few extra peppers, and they're producing as well.

My first veggie garden was already growing when I moved into my first house over 30 years ago. It too was in part sun, morning sun at that, and was very productive. The following year I dug a new veggie plot on the southwest side of that house. It got afternoon sun, about five hours, same as here. I had no complaints about the productiveness of that garden. So late last summer and early fall as I was looking for a place to grow veggies, I was confident our semi-sunny side yard would be perfect.

Supposedly tomatoes grown in less than eight hours of direct sun per day aren't as tasty as those grown in the prescribed amount of sun. I've never had any complaints about my tomatoes - they've always been productive and delicious.

So for those who long to grow a few veggies but who, like me, don't have anywhere in their yard that gets the recommended 6-8 hours or more of direct sun, don't be afraid to experiment. Please know that even in zone 5, 4-5 hours of afternoon sun, or even late morning and early afternoon sun is enough to grow a respectable, productive vegetable garden.