The Sun Is Out!!!!

I managed to get out with the camera yesterday. Here's a summary of the general state of things.

The broccoli plants are just gigantic. I can barely make my way through them. I'm still harvesting heads, and every plant is putting off numerous side shoots.


The collards aren't looking too good.

I'm still battling cabbage worms. YUCK. It looks like of the 6 cabbages that I planted, I'll end up with two good ones. Better than last year, when I got 0 of 6....

Turns out I can grow a carrot!!!! And a weed, but let that pass....

Brussels sprouts are forming!!!

Here's yesterday's bountiful harvest.

What's going on here with the technicolor collard green leaf?

Oh, and here's something interesting. Those broccoli plants that some creature ate? They're growing back!!!!

Checking in...

Well, it has rained almost constantly since I posted last Friday, and I've been out to the garden once, last night, to pull out a small head of romaine for dinner (in the rain). Finally, today, there's nothing coming down out of the sky, so I plan to get outside and check things out.

On the indoor front - all my pepper plants are dormant, and/or have developed aphids - they are so not going to make it through the winter. My eggplant is finally dying too, and no, I never did get to eat an eggplant this year. Sigh. After all of that. Oh well. There's always next year. I'm not sure if I will grow the Hansel again. They were much smaller than I thought they would be, or maybe they shouldn't have been so small, and I could never tell when they were ripe. I'll be working on my plan for next year soon. I've been collecting my thoughts on this.

The fig tree we bought a month or so ago and have indoors is still doing fine. We have a few herbs and an aloe inside the vestibule with a grow light. I'm thinking of trying spinach in there in a shallow pot. We'll see. I've been eating kohlrabi, and rutabega, and lots and lots of broccoli. I know I need to get out there and harvest broccoli today....

Ah...November!

This is what I woke up to on Tuesday...lovely foggy morning. This is not sarcasm...I really love the fog we get down here.

I've had some good harvests this week. Carrots, spinach, collards, chard, kohrabi, rutabega, and still getting bell peppers.

I'm sorry to say that our great pepper project has failed miserably. None of the pepper plants survived indoors - that is, they're not dead, just going dormant - which means, we're not getting peppers from them anymore. Today I actually BOUGHT some jalepenos for the chili I'm making this weekend. It REALLY bummed me out to have to do that, because if we hadn't messed so much with all of our big, healthy, and heavily producing pepper plants we'd still have tons of them because we haven't had a frost yet. I wish I'd preserved some peppers this summer. I will DEFINITELY do that next year. Looks like I'll end up with three or four heads of cabbage - my first time!

The garlic is coming up!

This colander is the makings for the roasted root veggies I had a few nights ago for dinner, all from the garden! Every single one! Whoo hoo!!!!

Happy Halloween!

I am pleased to say that I have nothing scary to report - unless you think that miracles are scary! These slender red shoots below are what rye looks like coming up...


And this beautiful green grass is what it looks like when it IS up!





Success! Yeah! I have no idea what the heck I'm going to do when it's time to harvest it, how to do it, etc..... but that's for another day. For today, the rye is up!!!

I'm still harvesting, though I'm not getting out there every day or anywhere near every day.

I haven't lost any more broccoli plants, and it continues to come in nicely, though I'm not sure I'm going to have enough to freeze.

I believe this dude is one of the good guys....though a little far from home...hanging out around our soon to be new construction, and not in the garden doing what he gets paid for...Do you see how he's posing for the camera? I tell you, this little guy looked straight at me when I pointed that camera at him. I'm willing to concede that he wasn't actually posing for the camera, but I'm telling you, he knew that I was there.

And last but not least, a lovely spring color - a bulb on the new fig tree. I did tell you I ordered a fig tree, right? It's inside.

Next time, a pepper update. Not sure what to say about them today, the verdict is still out on whether or not they're going to make it inside. Though the serrano is still putting out peppers. I also have a new eggplant. Maybe I'll actually get to eat this one!

Cold, Rainy October Garden Update

Turns out I spoke too soon about the fungus gnats. They came back in force. I think I need to repot this in some new, dry soil, and maybe add an inch or so of sand on top. Right now it's just sitting on the back porch in the dampness (which I know isn't helping anything) but I don't want all those bugs in my kitchen, and quite honestly I've been in something of a funk this past week, so I haven't done anything about it

And since I seem to have a habit of leading off with bad news...

Today was my first day out into the garden in almost a week. It has been cold cold cold and wet wet wet. Today it was still wet, but at least there wasn't anything drizzling down out of the sky. So we ventured out, and got a good big basket full of greens, and a beet, and a turnip, and a rutabega, and I'm pretty sure I have one nice big purple kohlrabi that's about ready to come inside to be sampled, and all of that is good news of course, so wait a minute...what the heck?



Now as anyone who has been reading this blog for 6 months knows, I have done some battle with bugs. This is NOT the work of a bug. As you can see from the bottom front of the picture these two plants are right by the rabbit-guard fence, and this has the look of some animal that reached over the fence and just started a-munching. I would say deer, but that just seems awful far-fetched. I know that the rabbit guard wouldn't do doodly against a hungry deer, but you see I have a six foot high privacy fence around my whole back yard. I suppose a REALLY determined deer might, possibly, jump it, but I've had the fence for about 5 years now and have never seen a deer inside of it.

My second guess would be groundhog. We have a nice plump one living under one of our sheds, inside the castle grounds, so to speak. Is it possible that he's tired of eating grass and has only just discovered the buffet? We'll have to keep an eye on that. Up till now I've been pretty live and let live with the groundhog (giving him a running start before I let the dogs out, and all that). But I have my limits.

Below you'll see a smattering of turnip seedlings. (The big ones are the turnip seedlings; the little ones are weeds.) This is from my newly planted crop which I'm hoping to have for storage. I actually thinned them out a lot and then replanted about a dozen of the seedlings in new holes. I don't know if that'll take, but they seem pretty doggone hardly, so I don't see why not.

This little beauty is a volunteer hierloom tomato of as-yet-undetermined variety. It'd be nice if he lived.

You'll see my hansel eggplant is STILL blooming and still forming little eggplants, though I have yet to eat one.

And this...ah. This. This would be my nicely planted rye seeds after 5 days of rain have pounded the heck out of them. All right, so I wasn't THAT careful about planting them, but I did kind of hoe up rows and I did make sure they were covered with the requisite 1 - 2 inches of dirt, and then FIVE DAYS of relentlessly pounding drizzle. However, there is a bright side. Two bright sides actually. The first is that the birds haven't eaten all the seed. The second is that upon closer inspection, these seeds seem to have sprouted little white tails, so it would appear that all is not (yet) lost.

Among the good news is that my jalepeno plant, indoors for a week now, is still growing lustily, and we're still picking peppers. Hang in there, big fella. I can make it worth your while.

And we DID have broccoli for dinner a few days ago. Broccoli and collards, in fact, in a lovely fall pasta dish, with shrimp from the freezer, garlic I wish I'd grown, and plenty of hot red pepper flakes. Yum!

All's Well Again...

Less than 24 hours and there was no more sign of fungus gnats. How crazy!

Fungus gnats?

I think that's what they are. I woke this morning to find that my habenaro pepper plant in the kitchen was just crawling with tiny white insects, and covered with pink specks that must be eggs. A close look at the soil reveals that it was alive with little black gnats. What a mess! I tried to get a picture, but it was all just too small. My husband has been on something of a watering spree the past few days, and I think that he really pushed that habenero over the edge and the fungus gnat population exploded - literally overnight. I wiped off everything that I could, and have been making a trip by the plant every half hour or so and wiping the little white bugs up as they reappear along the rim of the black planter. I think things are getting back under control. But we definitely need to let that soil dry out. I'll be chatting with hubby about that later!!!!