Garden Tour on June 18, 2010

A lot has changed in the garden since the last tour. Most of the spring vegetables are finished and the summer ones are in various stages of growth.

Let's start with the best looking bed, tomatoes and peppers. Most of the tomato plants are reaching for the tops of their cages. The plant here at the end of the row is Katja, a cool weather adapted variety originally from Sludjanka on the shores of lake Bajkal in Siberia.

Katja has been setting a lot of tomatoes, she started setting fruit just a little bit later than than the other cool weather tomato that I'm growing...

Gigantesque is originally from Ukraine. The tomato shown below was the very first one that I saw this year and it's easily at least 4 inches across already.

There's more to be seen on the other side of the plant. I grew this variety last year and it was the best of the bunch. It wasn't the earliest, Black Sea Man was the earliest but its flavor couldn't hold a candle to the flavor of Gigantesque.

Here's another new tomato in the garden this year, Aunt Ruby's German Cherry, a green cherry tomato that was selected from Aunt Ruby's German Green beefsteak tomatoes. I hope this turns out to be green, the variety is not fully stabilized yet and some turn out to be red.

Here's a glimpse of a few pepper plants. These are the Pimento de Padrons and Poblanos.

In the next bed is the remaining Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage, about half the size of the first cabbage that I harvested (you can see the stump of that plant to the right).

The new Golden Chard plants are doing well and could produce from now until next spring. To the rear and right of the chard is the piracicaba broccoli looking a bit scraggly but still producing a few shoots. I may start a few more plants to produce a harvest this fall and perhaps next winter.

Next to the chard are a few Diamante celery root plants. This year's plants are already doing better than last year's. I was more diligent about thinning the plants early on and have made sure that they are getting enough water. They look like they are already starting to get some plump but still small roots. In the rear you can see the one and only Gigante kohlrabi that I've allowed to grow, it's the brassica with the pale green leaves. And there still a few Pimento de Padron plants back there from last year that I'm giving a chance to produce something, maybe . . .

Next are the remaining beets from my winter sowing, these are Devoy. These took a long time to mature and are now finally ready to harvest, I shouldn't wait much longer. There's a volunteer orach plant to the left. In the back are some new lettuce plants that I'm keeping shaded.

There they are, more Butterhead, and Noga and Cimarron romaines.

The poppies are just about done blooming and the seed pods are getting fat.

The beans are finally growing! There's one trellis with Garafal Oro romano beans, that's the one in front. Then there's three trellises with Petaluma Gold Rush beans, an dry bean from California. And at the far end is one trellis with Turkey Craw beans. I got the Turkey Craw beans in a trade, they are an heirloom from Appalachia and are supposed to be good as both a snap and a shelly bean. Turkey Craw beans are also used to make "leather britches", an old way of preserving the bean harvest where the mature but still green beans are threaded on strings to dry until they are leathery. The dried beans are cooked by simmering them in water with a smoked ham hock or piece of bacon until they are tender.

This bed also has Suyo Long Chinese cucumbers starting at the base of the black tower. Beyond the cucumbers are Da Fiori Zucchini, a variety that is supposed to produce more male blossoms, the best for stuffing.


The final bed is looking like a full on disaster area now.  Most of the garlic has been harvested. There's a few Sicilian Silver plants left that I'm not sure I'm going to have the patience to leave there much longer, the dang things just don't want to make a decent size head of garlic. The Portuguese Dairyman's Kale is sprawling all over the place and is slow slow slow to produce dry seed pods. And off to the far left you can see the powdery mildew blasted foliage of the purple snap peas which I hope will hang in there long enough to produce some viable seeds.

Some kale seed pods are finally starting to dry . . .

I made room in this bed to plant the eggplant.

I'm growing 2 varieties of eggplant this year. One that did really well for me last year was Diamante.  It was productive, tender, tasty and slow to be infested by spider mites or affected by powdery mildew.

The other eggplant is a new variety for me, Malaysian Dark Red, a long actually purplish Asian type.

Outside the gate, remember the mutant squash? The poor thing isn't doing all that well and it's not because the deer got to it.

Here's the culprit caught in a cinch trap.

Dang it, the plant had finally set one squash and now it has hardly any roots left. I can't tell what it might have turned out to be. Danged gophers . . .

And one last stop at the Strawberry bed. The Seascape plants seem to be happy. The 12 plants have been producing about a pound or so of berries a week.

The Mara des Bois plants that started in this bed are setting berries and the first one is ready to pick.

The Mara des Bois plants that were moved from the Rat Depredation Area are still on life support.

That's it for the latest tour. See ya next time!