Category: gardening

It was a overcast, blustery winter day for this morning’s veggie harvest.

…Actually, it was in the upper 70s with a slight breeze, the birds were chirping, and the bees were buzzing busily around with giant pollen baskets on their legs. I saw at least 4 different types of butterfly- I really need to learn to identify those. One was some sort of skipper, and one was a sulfur. I didn’t get a good look at the birds, because I was concentrating on the veggies, but there were palm warblers and probably other species.

This weekend, we did some work planting. We pulled out two big dying eggplants, and transplanted some tomatoes and bell peppers that I’d had growing on the porch. I’m not sure how they’ll do over the winter, but they were being by a mysterious something at home- plus the tomatoes were threatening to grow into bunny reach. This would be bad, because they’re toxic & she’s not necessarily smart enough not to eat them.

Today I harvested several pak choy heads, a bunch of collard greens and misome, and a few radishes. I also harvested the first parts that were big enough to take of the chard and parsley- and our first carrot. The carrots are growing much more slowly than I expected- this one was growing right next to another one, so I pulled it out to give the second some space to grow.

The misome seems much more pest resistant than the pak choy. There seem to be very few things eating it. It also seems like the type of plant that can be harvested bit by bit by trimming off the outer leaves. At some point, I’m sure it’ll flower, but until then we’ll keep taking it.

About two weeks ago, I planted some onions, radishes (a different variety), more carrots, and turnips. The radishes sprouted very quickly- no surprise there- but the onions and turnips took longer. No sigh of the carrots yet- I suspect it will be a while.

We’re likely to get frost a few times this winter, so I tried to plant things that are somewhat hardy. We’ll see how it goes- it certainly hasn’t been very wintry so far.

So I harvested three plastic grocery bags full of veggies today. We’ll freeze a lot of the leafy greens and cook with them later. I’m thinking of trying to make a modified squid luau (only without the squid) with the collards.

Okay, so the inevitable consequence of planting all the pak choy at once is having to eat tons of pak choy every day. I realize this now. Should have realized it earlier, but live and learn, I suppose. Looks like Plan B (which we can pretend stands for “bountiful harvest,” and not as a testament to planting over-enthusiastically to begin with) will be a pak choy giveaway.

Other than the massive quantities of cabbagey veggies, other things are still growing at a more manageable pace. Most of the remaining radishes were harvested today, and the sprouts for the new radishes have just started to pop up. So in a few weeks we’ll have more.

The collard greens are not quite starting to go crazy yet, though those at least freeze well, so it’ll be easier to save them for later. Our one remaining fennel is doing nicely, as are the italian parsley and cilantro seedlings. The cilantro is all “volunteers” from the existing soil seed bank, which is pretty neat.

The misome seems to be doing better than the pak choy, in the sense that it’s not starting to look too old. With the pak choy, some of the leaf bases are starting to split on the bigger plants, which suggests it’s really time to harvest them. So that’ll be the first priority. When we replant pak choy, I’ll definitely be less ambitious- it did much better than I expected, so definitely less is needed.

After a very long weekend leading up to the election, I finally got back into the garden to check on everything. I was in last week to mulch the second border path, do some weeding, and fertilize with bunny poop, but had not time to get in there since.

I’d last been in to look at things about five days ago, and I was wondering how the plants were doing. Because the community garden has a sprinkler system and deer fence, we have a lot less to worry about than most gardeners in this area. One thing I was wondering about was whether we’d have to think about thinning the bok choy again… and it seems we do.

We planted seeds a bit more than three weeks ago, and most of them have really been doing well. The bok choy’s nearly at the stage where it’ll have to be thinned again. It seems that the beans that were planted by the previous tenant have finally about had it, but I did manage to get a few pods from them, which I’ll eat tonight.

The misome is also doing really well. It’s had less insect damage than the bok choy, and has these lovely dark green leaves. It sure looks yummy.

The radishes and carrots that we planted from seed are also doing well. Though we double-planted the rows and the radishes seem to be shading the carrots quite a bit. Some of them will be ready for harvesting in a few days- we like to eat the leaves as well as the roots, so even if the early roots are small they’ll be appreciated. I did peek at the top of one of the radishes and it looks like the root’s attained about a 1-cm diameter. So a bit soon for harvesting.

Out collards and kale are also doing really well. We planted those from seedlings rather than seeds, so they’re further apart.

The herbs that were already in the plot are doing fine- since fertilizing, one of the mints (peppermint I think) seems really happy. There was also a fennel and small eggplants that are going quite well, though the last two older eggplants may have had their day. But I kind of like the aesthetic of having some taller plants in there, so don’t want to pull them just yet. Plus they’re flowering, so attract pollinators. So far, I’ve seen five or six different kinds of butterflies in the garden, which is neat.

About 11 days after planting the bok choy, misome, and radish seeds, the seedlings were ready for thinning. The carrots were just starting to peep up above ground at this point. These photos are actually from about a week ago, so stuff is even larger now. But more on that later.

This first photo is blurry, but you get the idea. The bok choy sprouts are about an inch tall. We thinned them to about 2″ apart. This is still probably too close, but we wanted to try to harvest some intermediate-sized ones. Because baby bok choy is delicious.

While one of the rows of radishes + carrots is growing quite well, the other two rows seem to be getting a slower start. This could be for any number of reasons- most likely watering issues, but also possibly because bugs have been eating the seeds in one part of the garden (fire ants will sometimes do this). You can see the vigorous row contouring the edge of the plot. The other two rows should be near the bottom of the photo.

You can also see that the collard greens that we planted as seedlings are doing well. The remaining eggplants actually seem to be doing better now that they’ve been fertilized and had weeds removed. You can’t see in this photo, but they have quite a few blooms.

While thinning plants is somewhat sad (though I’m sure we’ll get over this), the benefit was getting to eat the thinned sprouts! Here’s the pile of sprouts that became destined for eating sooner, rather than later. We did not share with Noe this time, though she’ll certainly get to share later.