What a Difference a Month Makes

You all remember that dreadful morning when I woke up to a frozen garden and lost most of my tomatoes which had been planted out less than a week?

Here is how the White Beauty tomato looked that day. I left it in the ground, because it had one leaf that was not dead.


Can you believe that this is the same plant 4 weeks later. No sign of flower buds yet, but I'm not complaining.

Same with this Bolivian Rainbow pepper, it was the only seedling of this type I had, turned to total goo.

It looked very dead for quite awhile, but it is now leafing out! It's only 3 inches tall but I am overjoyed. Peppers are tropical perennials, you know. Come October, this plant will be overwintering in my finest pot, front and center in the dining room window.

Mr. Casper with frozen bud...

...now looks lush and healthy.

New developments in the garden:

Little Wonder peas planted way too late are slowly coming along.

These below are an unnamed blue-podded variety with brown-skinned peas:

And these below were planted from a bag of yellow split peas from the supermarket. I separated out a handful of pea halves that seemed to have enough of the germ still attached, and planted out the ones that germinated. Cool, free seeds. Compared to the two garden varieties above, the leaves on these are much smaller.

Also, get a load of those wacky tendrils! They should market this and call it "Medusa".

Love the diversity in garden peas. While we're at it, note the diversity in tomato blossoms:

Matt's Wild Cherry tomato above, and a Black Sea Man below.

By the way, we ate the first tomato yesterday for dinner. Boy it was good.

My Graduate

I remember when I was seventeen, and thought I had it all figured out. And I considered my parents two well-meaning but fairly clueless dolts. My how the tables have turned.

Congratulations to my oldest, aka "Weatherboy" in my blog stories. You did it. And did it well. I didn't cry at his high school commencement on Sunday, but for a brief moment tears did well up in my eyes. After all, this means I am now officially old. Now that you're a college man, I hope you show more patience and compassion for your two clueless dolts than I did. Because they just love you so darn much that they can't see straight.

Maybe that's their problem.

Garden Photos w/Commentary

Remember that Stupice tomato seedling that bloomed indoors on April 10? Well, it is NOT one of the plants that perished in the frost, thank you. Here it is 2 months after that first flower. We'll probably eat it later this week.

Potatoes were planted a bit late, but are beginning to pick up. Here is the row of Wagner's potato sampler.

I never knew that potatoes held such diversity. Shown are two of the 9 varieties in the sampler. The Skagit Valley Gold variety (top) has a very fine growth habit, with many thin stalks topped in bright green and nearly round leaves; contrasted with the Paint Jar variety, is probably the most vigorous of the selections, which has few but thick dark purple stems topped with almond-shaped leaves shaded with purple. The Paint Jar looks ready to mound up for the second time, while the other varieties have not yet had their first. Can't wait to see the diversity in the blossoms.

Chard is going strong, and lettuce is doing well, except I think a rabbit has been sneaking some. Time to put up that fence. I did not expect that homegrown chard would taste so salty.

Celeriac that has been kept trimmed by a suspected rabbit is being overtaken by some weeds that I thought to just let grow. Lambsquarter or goosefoot is supposed to be a good and very mild cooked green. In fact I will testify that raw, it tastes better than arugula. But then again so does just about everything. Its already about 8 inches tall, looks like it will be a good harvest, with plenty to share with my numerous neighbors who hail from the subcontinent, who call this weed "buthwa" and cook it as an ingredient in "saag". Apparently the "Eat the Weeds" guy has a similar idea.

And why do onions grown from sets always bolt on me? Why?

Looks pretty good if I do say so myself. That trash can is my homemade compost tumbler. It is now almost full of equal amounts of kitchen scraps and fruit flies. It is now banished from the patio. Pakman has forbidden any further composting activities effective immediately, and has promised to buy me as much bagged compost from the garden center as my heart desires. I think he has a fruit fly phobia.

First Harvest of the Season

Yay! Love the sound of those words. It's not much but I grew it all myself without pesticides and just a little bit of miracle gro. Added to last night's iceberg salad were: Some small leaves of swiss chard (Lucillus) which added a juicy /salty crunch, edible chrysanthemum (shungiku) which was pleasantly tangy, one Borage leaf which tasted ok but was a little too hairy for inexperienced palates, and some arugula. I have never tasted arugula before but I read alot about it on the foodie blogs. Trendy Italians eat it so it hast to be good , right? Arugula is probably the most disgusting salad ingredient I ever had the displeasure of tasting. I dont know why people eat it when there are so many other leafy green things you can put in a salad. It gives a stange and strong off-flavor to everything it touches and even after you swallow it it's not really gone. Oh well. Now I know.

The Goose Whisperer

A small flock of rather fat geese had made themselves quite at home under the shade of our street tree this morning; they didn't even rise from their siesta when our minivan arrived back from a morning's worth of grocery shopping. While fish sticks and melting popsicles amalgamated in the hot van, my oldest girl just had to see just how tame those birds are. It was a mutually beneficial exchange, because you have no idea how many bags of moldy bread heels I have been hoarding in the back of the breadbox for just such an occasion. I wonder how foie gras fattened on moldy bagels and stale tostitos tastes? It would be so easy....

Garden update

Today I planted the last 3 bags from Tom Wagner's potato sampler, a little late I know, but I had to find space. Also got 10 stalks of Maize Morado into the ground which were started in cells about a month ago, and I transplanted 8 varieties of lettuce, among them were several red leaf types, a red romaine, Australian yellow leaf and Forellenschluss. Also got a 6 pack of sunberries I started from seed into the ground. These past few days have been a gardener's dream weatherwise. Tomorrow I hope to turn over the rest of the corn beds and get those cucurbits into the ground.

Busy Outside

It got up to 82 degrees today! and only 4 days ago things were freezing outside. That's Michigan for ya. Today after the older 4 kids left for school, my youngest and I got busy in the garden. We planted seven kinds of beans: Dragon's tongue, purple queen, golden wax (all bush varieties), and purple podded pole, roma pole, kentucky wonder pole, and a special one called Soisson pole beans, which came from a Canadian seed trader. Soissons are a dry bean that is hard to come by (I only obtained seven seeds) and are supposed to have exceptional flavor and and are exclusive to a particular region of France. Can't wait to see how these do. My little helper kept dumping whole buckets of water onto the newly sown seeds, washing them out of their carefully laid out pattern and driving me a little cuckoo. I also planted some silver queen and burgundy okra. In the cool of the evening, I replanted some of the tomato plants. I still had some green zebras, one brandywine (yay!), one hilbilly, two fantom du laos, a kelloggs breakfast with regular leaves and a kelloggs breakfast with potato leaves, both from the same seed pack (c/o wintersown.org), so we'll see what kind of crosses we ended up with. It got dark before I could plant out the rest but since tomorrow is supposed to be clear and in the 80's, I probably won't get to them until the cool of the evening. Oh- and I also put down clear plastic on some of the beds, to heat them up in preparation for corn and cucurbits. Gardening is fun!

Cucurbits on Standby

Now that the last of the tomato plants that weren't killed last Monday are looking completely dead from the past two nights of major frost, it is time to move on to see what else I can kill. I did learn some valuable lessons from these late frosts, don't get me wrong. First, that I should always subtract 5 degrees from any AccuWeather overnight low forecast for my zip code, to get the *actual* overnight low air temperature for my backyard (or maybe I should just follow their Ann Arbor forcast). Secondly, using upside-down plastic flower pots as a frost protection does NOT work in the least, but using old plastic sheeting that new mattresses are packaged in propped up by old lilac branches and held in place by any available weighted object, I was surprised to find actually does keep eggplant seedlings from freezing solid on a May 17 Michigan frost. Thirdly, that I am now more determined than ever to find a way to rip out those stupid bushes along the south wall of the house and use that sheltered yet sunny area for tomatoes and tender veggies next year.

I have a healthy flat and a half of various cucumbers, squashes and melons nicely sprouted in their peat pots, ready for transplanting. I want to do it this week, but looking at the 15 day forecast, about every 4th day there are forcasted overnight temperatures in the low 4o's. What to do...I think I'll put down clear plastic to warm the soil for a few days, hold my breath, and then plant them out. Looking at the roots growing through the pots, I'd think that they are more ready for planting out than I am. Just a few more days, guys!

What stupid looks like

No Bolivian Rainbow peppers this year, likewise for the Danubiana eggplant we are 0 for 3 ---both varieties are in the seed trials...Sory Dave!

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This Casper eggplant was getting ready to flower...see the bud? I planted its seed in February.

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9 out of 10 tomatoes in this bed bit the dust, except for this lone Green Giant, which was oddly unscathed.

A glimmer of hope: Instead of pulling these up right away, I think I'll leave this White Beauty and Green Zebra in the ground... maybe they will regenerate from that last sucker branch near the ground that is without damage. Maybe they might even set fruit???

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And this Sweet Cream pepper, another of Dave's trial varieties appeared to have almost no damage. Surprisingly, the peppers fared much better than the tom's and eggplants.

Well, let's try to turn this into something positive for the future. The obvious new rule of thumb: "Cover the plants whenever the forcast overnight low is 40 degrees or less, no matter what." Aside from that, hopefully the seed saved from the plants that didn't die will inherit the hardiness of the parent, and I will be on my way to developing my own frost-resistant tomato strains. There. I feel better already.