Backyard December 3, 2011 {What's Growing}

Who says a late autumn garden is dull and brown?

Ours is hanging on to some color with rainbow swiss chard and greens, some of which self seeded when I neglected to pull the flowering mustard green plants. Austra the Australorp chicken regrew her jet-black feathers after molting and her comb is starting to redden up. On yesterday's unseasonably warm evening, the sunset was full of bright hues too.

Surely the color will fade or be covered with white snow soon. In the meantime, I am enjoying every bit of intensity.

What's growing in your neck of the woods?

What's Growing: October 10, 2009

It has been a long time since I entered a What's Growing post.  The end of the summer was so busy that I ran out of time to photograph and post on a weekly basis.  I hope to be more disciplined next year not only to share with other Columbus gardeners, but to keep records for myself.

The garden is in a bit of transition now.  Most summer crops were pulled last weekend.  Herbs are still producing.  All the herbs for last week's Kids Cook class came from our garden.

Fall produce is just getting started.  Our lettuces are delayed because birds ate the tops two weeks ago.  I put bird netting on and they are recovering nicely.

Spinach is almost ready to eat.

The second planting of squash is trying to hang in.  There are lots of blossoms but not any fruit yet.  We planted a bit late, so the squash might not end up producing this year.

We could harvest the beet tops now but we will leave them on the plants to produce strong roots.

We are still eating the spring planted kale and new kale seeds are sprouting.

What's growing in your garden?

What's Growing: July 10, 2009

What's growing?  Everything!  Well, almost everything. Peppers are starting to mature and we are eating them as we need.  If we keep them on the vine, they will ripen to red, which is fine by me.

We have tons of green tomatos on the vine.  A very few have started blushing red.  One cherry tomato plant (a volunteer) has given us our first two ripe tomatos!

Speaking of volunteers, the sunflowers are a delight!  I might actually plant them on purpose next year.  The big blooms provide the perfect playground for us to observe goldfinches, cardinals, and bees.

Every day or so I pick a handful of green beans.  Beans are one of my very favorite veggies and I can't help but eat a lot of them raw.  We are leaving the rest of the dragon tongue on the vine to dry out for dry beans.  I've never done this before and hope it works out!

Only one broccoli plant has a broccoli head.

And one has this:

Not a broccoli. Maybe cauliflower?  Except we started these all from a single seed packet and I didn't intend to plant any cauliflower.  Hmmm...

We have eaten a few servings of kale from the forest that is happy along the fence.  Swiss chard is almost ready for picking too.

Blueberries didn't like the cool weather and dropped most of their berries.  We were able to eat a few ripe ones, but only maybe 10 in all.  Boo.

Then there's the squash.  We started with just four mounds and they have now taken over a huge chunk of the garden.  The golden nugget variety has lots of fruit, some of which is almost ripe, I think.  (Never grown it so I'm not sure.)

We were calling the hokkaido blue variety a bust until today when I saw these squashlings.

I thought I could illustrate the size of the squash monster by placing our little squash princess in the picture.

We tapped the rain barrel as we watered this evening.  I am hoping for a storm tomorrow to soak the plants and refill our barrel.

What's growing in your garden?

What's Growing: June 26, 2009

Oh goodness.  We went on vacation for a week and a half and the garden GREW! It was green stuff everywhere, and most of it didn't belong.  The grass was almost a foot high!

We threw out the peas (they were past the sweet stage by the time we came home) and transplanted some tomatoes in their place.

The strawberry bed needed major work.  Can you even see the strawberries in this picture?

An hour later, and it looks much better.  We have a late bearing variety that will hopefully fruit in September.

The squash are crazy big.  We spotted a few squash babies and some bees doing a little pollinating.

Raspberries are ripe and delicious.  The plants are only a year old and not producing much yet.

The garlic sent up scapes which we harvested.  Our reading indicates that if you cut off the scapes the plant puts more energy into the bulb which is the more useful part.  We have been using the scapes in meals.

Our dragon tongue beans are producing too.  We are picking the young ones to eat as fresh beans, though they sadly lose their color when cooked.  Some are left on the vine to dry for dry beans.

The pole beans are just starting to send out beans.  We planted another row where some of the peas were hoping to extend the harvest.

After a nice thunderstorm wet the ground, I was able to thin the carrots tonight.  We had a lot of thinnings!  When you wait this long to thin, the babies are tasty and can be eaten too.  Don't thin (like we did last year) and you'll have lots of nifty looking entertwined legs that are impossible to clean, i.e. very gritty.

I love the growing season and learned an important lesson this year: I will never take a vacation for more than 3 or 4 days in June.

What's Growing: April 27, 2009

This week marks the start of a new series, What's Growing. We hope to post once a week a list and pictures of what's growing in our backyard garden and around the neighborhood. So, this week, here's What's Growing:

Tomato, pepper, foxglove, and broccoli seedlings, being hardened off for a growing number of hours a day Broccoli raab and broccoli in their beds Pea shoots about 3 inches tall Spinach and lettuce with second and third leaf sets Garlic and onions

Peach trees blossoming Dwarf cherries with one tiny dwarf cherry blossom Blueberries with blossoms Wicked crop of mint

Strawberries with buds Carrot and Kale seeds just sown One tiny pole bean sprout

What's Growing in your world? Please join in and let us know your URL if you make a What's Growing series.