Radishes

I love radishes - they are so quick and easy to grow, and so good as snacks or in salads! I've harvested about 2 succession crops of radishes from my garden so far.

Radishes Growing, June 11

Here's yesterday's harvest:

Radish Harvest, June 19

Park's Whopper

Park's Whopper is currently my biggest tomato plant. It is also a container plant. The pot is 6.5 gallons, the largest size I have - but I am still a little concerned that it will not be big enough. The plant has, at least, doubled in size in the past 10 days.

Park's Whopper, June 5

Park's Whopper, June 16

Flowers on Park's Whopper, June 16

Tomatillos

This year I've planted 2 tomatillo plants together in a big (6.25 gallon) pot with a trellis. They seem to be doing pretty well so far! They have flowers already and they're getting pretty bushy. The trellis seems to be working a bit better than the stakes I used last year. The young tomatillo plants have REALLY fragile main steps, and last year the wind whipped one of my plants away from its stake, breaking its stem where I had tied it. This year, the branches and leaves are holding the plants to the trellis without much tying. Now that the main stems are thicker, I think they'll stay put.

Tomatillo Plants, June 12

Tomatillo Flower, June 12

Tomatillo Plants, June 16

Last year I had no tomatillo flowers until the beginning of July... so I am excited for a possible early harvest this season!

Garden update

Photos of my mid-June garden:

Tomatoes, radishes, greens - June 5

Glads and marigolds up front, veggies in raised bed, James working on the landscaping project in the background - June 12

Peas, green beans, radishes, peppers - June 12

Garden Peas Update: Loaded with peapods!

Can't wait to harvest the first garden peas of the season!

Pea plant loaded up with peapods, June 16

Cabbage Worm

I have 3 collard plants in my garden. 2 of them have been decimated by the cabbage worm. The cabbage worm is a tiny little caterpillar with an AMAZING appetite. Case study:

Collard Plant 1: Healthy

Collard Plant 2: Eaten by Cabbage Worm

Devastating! I even spied a worm in action on my plant. He is camoflaged, but if you look closely you can see him in this picture:

Cabbage Worm on Collard Plant

Apparently, an organic remedy is available to take care of this problem. It's a bacteria called "bacillus thuringiensis", or BT. Benign to humans, pollinators, and beneficial insects ... but deadly to these little worms. A bottle of this product is on its way to me currently, to take care of this problem ...

Valley Girl Tomato

I have a potted Valley Girl tomato that I am growing in a 5-gallon pot on my front steps. Just wanted to show how it's been doing over the past few weeks (this post is mostly for my mum, who raised Valley Girl seedlings out in MA and gave me one of the plants when she came to visit in May).

May 21 (Valley Girl on far right)

May 28

June 5

June 13 (Valley Girl up front, Orange Blossom to its right)

Garden Peas

So far, I have harvested radishes, green onions, and lettuce - but I am also trying a new vegetable for the first time this year: garden peas. And they are a Spring crop: almost ready to start harvesting!


Just wanted to show a few pictures of my pea plants from the season so far:

May 21

June 11 (they have flowers!)

At this point, they've sprouted little baby pea pods ... more on that later.

Additionally, you may have noticed a dramatic difference in the background of the pictures (weeds on May 21, gravel path on June 11) . We've just finished a big landscaping project which will be the subject of an upcoming post!

Garden Layout

Here's this year's layout:
Here's how the raised bed looks now:

I'm back!

Spring comes pretty late in Upstate NY. This season we had 127 inches of snow. It snowed a few times this week even, and it's nearly May. But winter or not, late April means it's time to start planning my summer garden!

I found a useful chart for when to plant what in my zone:



(Source: http://www.veggieharvest.com , and you can get the calendars for other zones at http://www.veggieharvest.com/Table/Vegetable-Planting-Calendar/)

So far I've planted peas, beets, radishes and lettuce outside - although the bunnies already ate the tiny lettuce seedlings ... sigh. I also started a few herbs, tomatoes and peppers inside to transplant after the frost-free date. In Zone 5, that's around Memorial Day, although I might try to jump the gun this year with a few of my plants. Last summer, the neighbors were harvesting tomatoes probably a MONTH earlier than I was ... maybe I was a little jealous ;-)

winter is here ....

Winter has definitely arrived ... lots of snow on the ground. I will resume posting in the spring.

More tomato sauce - 9/14/10

This weekend I was away visiting James for the weekend, and I came back to SO many ripe tomatoes:


Made another big batch of sauce, and some salsa ...


Canning supplies ready to go ...


Processing the jars ...


Finished!

(Salsa are the orangey ones on the left, and the other redder ones are marinara sauce).

First batch of tomato sauce - 9/5/10

10 lbs of tomatoes for sauce ...


Cooking them down ...


Almost done!

Eggplant parm - 9/1/10

Homemade eggplant parmesan ... made with roasted Ichiban and Gretel eggplants, served with garden tomato&cucumber salad:

Lots of tomatoes

I've been harvesting tomatoes like crazy! Here's the harvest from Sunday:



I made a fresh tomato salsa with part of the harvest ... entirely from the garden with fresh cilantro, jalapenos, and tomatoes. Yum!

Pickles

Made a batch of refrigerator Dill Pickles with vinegar, water, spices, fresh dill, onions, garlic, ... and of course my surplus of cucumbers! Mmmm...

Veggies harvested today

Tomatoes and cucumbers

20 cucumbers harvested to date ...

Fried green (and yellow and red) tomatoes

Today a branch full of green tomatoes broke off one of my tomato plants. I hated to see the baby tomatoes go to waste, so we made fried green tomatoes! None of us had tried them before. We also experimented with frying yellow and red tomatoes.



The fried tomatoes were all DELICIOUS! James and I both liked the green ones best because the red and yellow ones were much tangier / tarter.

To make them, we sliced the tomatoes 1/4 inch thick. We prepared a shallow bowl of flour, and a bowl with an egg and a dash of milk. In a third bowl, we combined equal parts cornmeal and breadcrumbs and seasoned with salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. The tomato slices were dipped first in the flour, then in the egg mixture, and finally dredged in the cornmeal/breadcrumbs. We deep fried them for a few minutes each until they were brown and crispy, sprinkled with salt, and dried them on paper towels. Mmmm....

Garden Update 8/3

I have so many green tomatoes and none ripe yet!


Here are my Romas:


Romas and Early Girls, side by side:


I'm hopeful that these Yellow Pears will turn yellow soon!


Lots of baby tomatillos too:


I've already harvested ~10 cucumbers so far (in the last week), so they are certainly my most productive crop thus far in the season. Here are a few more on the vines almost ready:


My mum gave me an Ethnic Sweet Frying Pepper plant that she grew from seed out in Boston, and here are a few peppers. They're supposed to turn orange or red when they're ripe.


I also harvested a mutant, 3 pronged carrot this morning:

Very bizzare!