Garden Gifts

~ McArtor ~ 1 Comment

We are overflowing with peppers (bells and cubanelles), eggplants (neon, Italian, Chinese and globe varieties) and another 40 pounds of tomatoes.  We can not keep up with the processing of all these veggies.   We  shared with friends, family and the food bank.   I spend my free time searching for recipes, chopping, freezing or canning.    We canned 30 quarts of tomatoes and 11 pints of salsa.  We have several gallon freezer bags filled with chopped peppers and roasted eggplant slices (some plain or coated with bread crumbs).  The eggplant slices can replace the noodles in lasagna.

We are grateful for this wonderful veggie bounty, but the best gift from the garden came today.  It was not the 45 more pounds of veggies we picked (not in the photo).  It was when my son eagerly helped me plant the fall crops of broccoli, cauliflower, romaine lettuce, kale and fennel.  He put on gloves, tucked in each newly planted seedling with a handful of fertilizer and a smile!

Tomato Harvest

~ McArtor ~ 4 Comments
“Want a date night canning tomatoes, honey?!”
50 pounds of tomatoes first

then another 50 pounds!

We harvested 100 pounds of tomatoes in one week! Our 15 Olivade tomato plants look quite weary now. We did not expect such a big harvest this year. So far, my husband and I canned 13.5 quarts of tomatoes from a little less than half of the tomatoes.

Check out Daphne’s Dandelions to see harvests from other gardens around the world!

Plenty of Peppers

~ McArtor ~ 1 Comment
“May I have a pepper?” I slice the top off one of our homegrown cubanelle peppers, take out the seeds and give it to my son for a snack. I hear him crunch and mumble, “mmmmmm, this is good!” My gardening heart fills with joy. All his complaints about the plot – “I do not want to go there! It is dirty, stinky, hot, and boring!” – are quieted for the moment. I can give up the idealistic dream of my son working beside me, picking, watering and weeding (he would rather pound dirt and find bugs). He is eating fresh vegetables and learning how good food is produced, that is what is important. We will keep our garden plot growing!

This is our best year for peppers! They are large and prolific. We are amazed. What did we do right? Maybe it was the hot and stormy summer? Could it be the organic fertilizer – fish emulsion and Garden Tone? My husband threw handfuls of organic fertilizer (10-2-8) into the soil when he turned it over in April. I gave the pepper plants a quarter cup of Garden Tone (4-4-3) in June, when I planted them and again at the beginning of July. We also put organic black plastic down around each plant after we planted them. Once the peppers are picked, it is best to store them in the refrigerator if they are not going to be eaten or preserved immediately.

Harvest totals last week:
Bell Peppers: 0.65 lb,
Purple Peppers: 1 lb,
Cubanelle Peppers: 9.75 lb,
Tomato: 8.0 lb,
Eggplant: 5.0 lb,
Red Onion: .75 lb.

Overall produce: 47.25 lb (mixed veggies)

Preserving harvest: Cubanelle peppers: canned 8 pints marinated and 5 quart bags frozen.

Harvest Monday – July 23, 2012

~ McArtor ~ 1 Comment


Eggplants and peppers are abundant in our garden plot. We have plans for all these veggies. The eggplants: stuff and roll up – slice, dip in egg and bread crumbs, broil, spread with mixture of egg, ricotta and parmesan cheese, roll up, place in baking dish, cover with tomato sauce and bake; transform into spaghetti – slice and sprinkle with olive oil, broil, cool and cut into strips, top with sauce; pickle and spread onto bread or crackers, roast, grill and saute . The peppers: chop and freeze, pickle and preserve in jars, stuff and bake and slice in salads. Some of the peppers and eggplants will be donated to our local Food Bank. But I must admit my favorite plan for the peppers is … slice and give to my son. He eats the sweet crispy cubanelle and bell peppers like a sliced apple. I am thrilled! They are loaded with vitamin C.

Harvest totals for this week:
Cubanelle Peppers 4.5 pounds
Bell Peppers 2.25 pounds
Eggplant 7.0 pounds
Zucchini 8.5 pounds

To see amazing harvests from gardens around the world, stop by Daphne’s Dandelions, the host of Harvest Monday.

Good Bug – The Assassin Bug

~ McArtor ~ 1 Comment
Assassin Bug Nymph
Mature Assassin Bug

The pest bugs in our garden – squash bugs, flea beetles, Colorado potato beetles and others kept this Assassin Nymph well fed! I found the nymph about 4 weeks ago on an eggplant leaf. Yesterday, I found two mature Assassin bugs. I recognized them by their long hooked beaks and agile legs.  Last year, my son found an Assassin bug nymph. I wrote a post describing how we identified it. This year is the first time we found a mature Assassin bug. It is hard to miss these fierce bugs. They resemble a prehistoric animal with its spiky hump and bronze oval mark on its back.  The Assassin bug waits for insects then stabs them with its proboscis (the beak) and injects them with a toxin.  Its bite is very painful to humans. I am glad for organic help to remove the bad bugs from our garden plot, but I will keep my distance!

Harvest Monday – July 9th

~ McArtor ~ 2 Comments

I found a way to get my son more interested in our garden plot – have him help me cook up the veggies we harvest.  He is thrilled to shred cabbage and zucchini in my food processor.  He likes operating a machine that is loud, powerful and destructive.  This week he helped me make zucchini crusted pizza, zucchini pancakes and zucchini bread and coleslaw.  He named our kitchen restaurant, The Tomato Garden (his favorite restaurant is The Olive Garden).

The Tomato Garden has been busy cooking up the harvest of…..Zucchini  (25 pounds), Beets (8 pounds), Red Onions (1 pound) and Cabbage (one head).

To see amazing harvests from gardens around the world, stop by Daphne’s Dandelions, the host of Harvest Monday.

Visitors in Our Plot

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The garden grew dramatically while we were on vacation.  In less than two weeks we found new veggies and critters in our garden.  There were many overgrown zucchini logs waiting to be picked; about a dozen small butternut squashes growing on traveling vines; thick tomato vines dangling with yellow flowers and green tomatoes; yellow and red beets bursting through the ground; four large healthy cabbage heads stuck in the ground; and several small purple eggplants hanging on leaning stalks. Unfortunately, we found wilted yellow leaves on the spaghetti squash vines. Vine borer larvae were in its stalk. We picked the two medium-sized squashes then pulled out the entire plant. I will wrap the stalks of the zucchini and butternut with aluminum foil to try and prevent the vine borer from laying eggs on their stalks.

I found more critter visitors, too. Squash bugs and their egg clusters, crickets, ladybugs and a large (half-dollar size) black furry spider. When I first walked up to the plot I saw something brown dash out of the pepper patch, then another trembling furry animal under a pepper leaf. I hoped it was not a vole (others have found voles in their community garden plots). I was relieved it was only a baby bunny. At least it was a cute pest!
After it scurried away, I found its lunch – our golden and red beets! We pulled out several nibbled on beets. I wanted to leave the partially eaten beets for the bunnies. But, my husband protested, “we don’t want to attract more bunnies!”  We placed the nibbled beets in the community garden compost bin. I hope the baby bunnies look for their meals in the compost bin, on the other side of the garden fence!

Sugar Snap Pea Harvest

~ McArtor ~ 2 Comments

Most days at the plot, my son would rather hike in the nearby woods, talk to garden neighbors or play in the water from the garden hose and water pumps.  But even my hot and bored son helped us pick the sugar snap peas.  He munched on the crisp, sweet pods and remarked, “mmmm, they are soooo sweet!”  He may not enjoy gardening as much as my husband and I, but he does enjoy tasting what we grow.  He even tasted a Nasturium flower!

We harvested over 4 pounds of sugar snap peas last Saturday! It is best to pick the sugar snaps when the peas inside start to turn round and before the green pod starts to turn white.  The strings on the “seams” of the pod need to be pulled off before eating.  We like to eat them raw.

Anyone have a good sugar snap pea recipe?

Poppies

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The Poppies are blooming  in our garden plot.  They seem to laugh and embrace the sun.  My son said, “they look like they are talking to the sun.”

They are hospitable to the bees, too. We are glad they are attracting pollinators to our garden plot!

Do you see the moving bee above the Poppy flower on the left?

Saturday Garden Work

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We worked hard in our garden plot today, installing drip system, fertilizing plants, saving the eggplants, laying down microperforated mulch (looks like black plastic), planting cucumber seeds and picking sugar snap peas.

  • My husband installed the drip system.  He only had to purchase new drip tape and caps. All the other parts we reused from last year’s system.
  • The eggplants needed to be saved because when we arrived at the plot, the row covers were blown off  and the eggplants were freckled with flea beetle bites.  We sprayed them with Pyrethin and gave them a boast with fish emulsion fertilizer.  We only covered half of them with the row covers, since some were already flowering.
  • I fertilized the peppers and tomatoes with Garden Tone.
  • We put down BioTelo (since our community garden does not permit black plastic to be used) around some of the tomato plants and all of the pepper plants.  BioTelo is biodegradable and compostable.  It stops weeds, warms the soil and reduces water evaporation.  Ideally, it should be place on the ground before planting.

The main garden lesson we learned today –  in March, work soybean meal fertilizer into the soil, put down the drip tape and cover it with black plastic or BioTelo.  That allows two months for the soil to warm up and kill off the flea beetles that over winter in the ground.  The ground will be ready in May and June for planting summer crops.