Vegetable Garden - Transition Into Autumn

This grapevine wreath is decorated with an abundance of Chinese lantern plants that I cut the other day. It was really easy to just weave the stems through the wreath and it makes a colorful fall decoration for the front porch. Fun!

I used the pots and soil left over from my vegetable container garden this summer and planted a seasonal display on the back deck.

Parsley, Rosemary, and..........Pie Pumpkins. These might end up in a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, and then again, they might not.

I wish we could eat gourds. They look so tasty. They also look nice piled up in plant pots with some English ivy.

Summer Garden Wrap-Up/2010 Garden Plans

My vegetable container garden project this summer was a lot of fun, and more importantly - successful! Almost all my plants survived and grew to great heights. My vegetable harvests were abundant with some plants, and not so much with others. My favorites were Sungold Tomato and Boston Pickling Cucumber. We also enjoyed having fresh lettuce for salad throughout the summer. The basil was great for large quantities of pesto to enjoy with pasta and bread. So here is a summary of which plants thrived, and what I plan to grow next summer.

The Winner for "2009 Best Container Vegetable Plant" is Sungold Tomato!

Best Tomatoes: Sungold and Husky Cherry Red. These cherry tomatoes had a wonderful sweet flavor and produced large quantities. Next year I need to plant them sooner to take advantage of a greater harvest at the end of the summer. Husky Cherry had some tomatoes with blossom end rot.

Brandywine only gave me about 3 tomatoes before the weather got cold, and the texture was a little mushy. The flavor was just okay. The patio and bush tomatoes produced a better harvest, but the taste and the texture were fair to poor.

Eggplant: Dusky eggplant gave me 2 very nice eggplants that were delicious. The Japanese eggplant only produced one stunted fruit. The other eggplants were not planted early enough to produce.

Peppers: California green pepper planted in the front yard was the best with 3 small peppers that tasted wonderful - crisp and flavorful. The yellow pepper never produced and the plant was diseased. The chili red and cayenne hot peppers were great with lots of peppers to harvest. The jalapeno was good and produced well for being planted late. Overall, the pepper plants stayed very small and didn't need a very big pot.

Strawberry: A huge disappointment with not a single berry produced, but the plant flourished with large green healthy leaves and a multitude of runners sent out over the deck.

Peas: Fun to grow, but didn't produce much for the space they took up on the deck. However, they were very tasty.

Carrots: These took a very long time to grow, and when harvested were small - about 1/4 of the size that I expected. They tasted quite good, but it was time consuming to clean off all the dirt.

Radishes: Fun to grow because they can be harvested so quickly, but didn't taste that great.

Lettuce: Little Gem and Buttercrunch were the best varieties and lasted for a long time because of our cool weather. They were a little bitter at times, but still delicious. I liked the head lettuce better than the cut and come again varieties.

Cucumber: Produced large quantities of crisp non-bitter small cucumbers with tender skin. They had sharp spines, but these came off easily.

Basil: Sweet basil was delicious and flourished all summer long.

Cabbages, Kohlrabi, and Bok Choy were a complete failure in the front yard, either not producing, or being eaten up by bugs. The turnip plants are still growing and may yield a good number of pretty small turnips. (Will we actually eat these?)

The pot sizes I selected were adequate for the plants for the most part, except the peppers and the cucumber did not need much root space. The tomatoes seem to take up whatever space is provided for the roots, but they did not seem root bound, except for the 4 gallon pot. The peas did not need such a large pot. The amount of sunlight and placement of the plants was good. The weather was way too cold and rainy! Luckily, the blight (if it was truly lat blight) did not kill my tomatoes possibly because of the copper that I sprayed. The plants were affected at the end of the summer with some leaves turning brown and a few stems dying off. The blight did seem to affect my Japanese eggplant and yellow pepper.

2010 Plans:

2 Sungold Tomato

4 Boston Pickling cucumber (2 plants per pot) planted in succession

1 Dusky Eggplant

2 California Green Pepper

1 Jalapeno

1 Chili Red hot pepper

Little Gem/Buttercrunch Lettuce planted in succession

Basil - 6 plants in the same container

Oregano, curly parsley, rosemary, chives, (thyme and Italian parsley should come back next year in the front yard)

Nasturtium - plant alone

New plants to try:

3 new tomato varieties

Mint

Garlic chives

New strawberry variety

Other things to think about:

Planting herbs that survive longer into fall in the same pot.

Growing ornamental kale and other plants for decorative fall pots.

Placing pots out in the yard in sunny areas to grow more vegetables.

Wild Blackberries

Due to a recent boundary survey of our lot I discovered that we own a wild blackberry bush in the back corner. I picked a handful to eat, but they didn't taste very good. They were pretty small and a little bitter, although they might be nice in a blackberry cobbler. Or I may just leave them for the birds...

Eggplant and Garden Growth

The garden has grown very tall this summer, providing a nice foliage screen on the deck. The radishes have been harvested and pulled out of the pot to make way for more lettuce. The peas are finished, and the tomatoes are just beginning. Lettuce and basil have been plentiful this summer, with fresh salads every night and lots of basil pesto. Just one cucumber plant has provided us with almost more than we can eat, although we make sure that we eat every single one! However, we do have more chillies than we can possibly consume, but I just leave them growing on the plant and they are available when needed. So far, the largest harvest as compared to plant size has been the cucumber. The peas were so sweet and delicious, but they took up a lot of room and the number of peapods was pretty limited. We are now looking forward to carrots, eggplant and tomatoes - the long awaited tomatoes!

Gardens from the Past

We visited this beautiful mansion on a hot summer afternoon. It was built to resemble an extra-large English cottage, and is filled with many valuable antiques and fine art. Now it is a museum that chronicles the daily life of those who once lived here.

It sits on a huge estate with a view of the lake.

There is a formal rose garden with fountains and stone pathways.

Green lawns and huge, ivy-covered trees create a peaceful, quiet setting.

Hole Puncher Pest

Despite lots of searching on the internet I was not able to identify this interesting insect. Look how it punches holes in my eggplant leaf.

Can you find the culprit? It is very well camouflaged by carrying brown material on its back. (Is this digested leaf matter? Yuck!)

I tried to pry it off the leaf with a piece of bark and it was like velcro.

Here it is - a tiny green caterpillar with a unique form of camouflage!

Gray Tree Frog in the Garden

This little frog was sleeping very comfortably in a vertical position right by our back sliding door. He's a gray tree frog that lives in woodlands, or marshes and swamps with standing trees. Large sticky pads on his toes enable him to cling to the side of the house like this. The gray tree frog eats insects and his call is a musical trill that can be heard at night. Welcome to the garden, little frog!

Today's Harvest - One Spoonful of Vegetables

Each day I get a little bite of vegetables from my garden. Today it was a handful of peas and a tiny carrot.

Homegrown Salads

We've been eating salads like this every night. There's plenty of lettuce in the garden now and a few cucumbers. These tomatoes aren't from the garden, but they are from Michigan, since I got them at the local farm stand.

We should have tomatoes soon - here's my sungold. Should I pick it today or not?

Japanese Eggplant Disease

I'm not sure what is wrong with my Japanese Eggplant. The leaves are turning brown in the margins and curling up. I still have blossoms, but more and more leaves are turning brown. I've been spraying the plant with copper sulfate at the same time I treat my tomatoes (for late blight). I'm not sure what else to do at this point except wait, and hope to get an eggplant later this summer.

Indian Cooking: Dal Recipe (with green chilies from the garden)

Dal is a very common dish in India that is often served with rice, Indian breads, and different curries. Dal are lentils, peas, or beans that have been split in half. There are many types of legumes used in dal curries, but this one is masoor dal, which is a type of red lentil. Dal can be compared to a thick pea or lentil soup, but with a spicier flavor.

I made a double recipe - the leftovers reheat really well.

Here's what you'll need:

Notice the green chilies from my garden!

(Substitutions: You can use yellow split peas from the grocery store, and you can also use butter instead of ghee.)

First, rinse the dal a little bit. Pick out any debris.

Add the dal, water, and turmeric to a pot. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes or until soft.

1 cup dal

2 1/2 cups water

1/4 teaspoon turmeric

Get together the next group of ingredients:

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 cup chopped onion

1-2 cloves garlic

1-2 green chilies

1 inch piece ginger

Pour the vegetable oil in the pan and heat it pretty high. Then add the seeds. Once they start to pop (watch out!) add the rest of these ingredients.

Stir-fry until the onions are soft.

Now add the tomatoes and some salt and cook for a couple minutes.

1 cup tomato

1 teaspoon salt

Add a little ghee for flavor.

1-2 Tablespoons ghee

Now the lentils should be ready. Taste it to make sure it is soft and then mash it a little with a large spoon - add water if needed. Add the other ingredients to the pot and mix together.

You can serve the dal with some steamed basmati rice, vegetable korma, and naan. Mmmmm - healthy and delicious!

Julie's Garden

I visited a friend recently and had to post some pictures of her charming garden. On one side of the yard she has a nice sized vegetable patch protected by a picket fence. I can see basil, beans, carrots, lettuce, and parsley growing inside.

The fence is lined with chicken-wire type material to keep out those woodland creatures who like to feast on our veggies. At the back end of the patch she has the wire fencing covered with climbing sweet peas, which are doing extremely well and should soon be blooming.

Moving to the other side of the yard is a very natural looking rock wall that edges a raised bed. This is where the tomatoes are planted. Once again, we have the cute picket fence detail to tie it all together. Also, notice the thyme growing over the rocks - it's doing really well in this location! When Julie needs to tend to her tomatoes, she steps right on top of the thyme and it releases a wonderful scent as she does her chores. Afterwards the plant bounces back into its original shape. Pretty nifty!

Wait, there's a new addition to the yard! A lovely fountain which sounds like a babbling brook (or a strong rainstorm) just outside the back door. Leading up to it is a beautiful sandstone path lined with perennials. I think Julie's outdone herself this year!

Cucumber!

A nice crunchy cucumber to enjoy today!

Notice the hummingbird feeders in the background? There's a hummingbird war going on for the red and yellow one. I heard a really loud huuuummm/Bzzzzzzz and saw two of them fighting in mid-air over the feeder. This is why I have 2 feeders - I read that they were territorial. These hummingbirds need to learn how to share!

Progress in the Garden

I'm almost ready to pick my first cucumber - this is Boston Pickling cucumber.

The cayenne peppers are turning red. We already tasted them in a spicy omelette the other night, and they are definitely hot.

The first pea pods are forming. Who says that you can't plant peas in mid-June? Here in Michigan the hot weather may never arrive, and you can have peas all summer long!

The Dusky eggplant has blossoms...

And there are plenty of green tomatoes, but I'm still waiting for one that I can eat!