So, not to brag or anything? But insert mine-is-bigger-than-yours joke here, and give me a little while to brag about how happy and great my new squash box is doing this year. This zucchini was hiding deep in the box and I only found it by accident. It’s bigger than my arm. I can’t wrap my hand around it. (More opportunity for jokes, there.) Last week we got four loaves of zucchini bread with two enormous-seeming zucchinis, but this one is most definitely even bigger. I can’t even decide what to do with it yet. Squash box: Best Idea Ever.
This beautiful Midsummer day I was greeted with my first full corn tassel! By tomorrow I’ll have a few more, but this one was up and open at sunrise, which I think is pretty magical.
So about a week ago we built a lattice for the bean plants, from a dozen 8 foot wooden furring strips. The idea was to attach a wooden frame to the veggie box permanently, since the previous string contraptions haven’t lasted very long; but actual lattices, even four-foot ones, are really very expensive. The furring strips were only about a dollar each. So it was cheap, easy, and built to fit the box exactly. Bigger picture here.
I’m pretty proud of it and it seems to be working out well so far! The vines have almost reached the top bar already. Knowing my greenbeans I give them two more days of climbing.
So for all of fall/winter my one little borage plant exploded into hundreds of seeds and a scattering of new plants with huge trunks all around the side of my veggie box. Give borage a few spare inches of dirt and in a month you come back and notice you’re missing a whole two feet of space. It was still blooming at almost four feet tall, but I had to cut it down so my veggies could get to the sun. It was that big. This is most of that harvest.
I’m not sure why I’m even drying all of this borage (there are actually 11 bundles this size and a few of just flower stems and fresh leaves, smaller trunks) because I don’t yet know what to do with it, but I’ll figure something out. I saved the freshest leaves for teas and healthy salads (yeah, if you’ve ever tasted borage, the idea of tea probably doesn’t sound appetizing? But practice + tons of orange blossom honey + chamomile = the best PMS-neutralizing tea in the world [colds, too!] and it becomes indispensable real quick, in my humble opinion) & the amount of blooms/seeds I’ve taken from these plants is insane. I’m a step away from my own borage farm. Theoretically.
Borage is a stubborn, strange, absolutely magical plant and I constantly find myself eyeballing it in astonishment and amused confusion after noticing new patches in unexpected places, but I never regret growing that first one plant.
These aren’t actually my trees, they’re my Grandmother’s, but I wanted to brag about my orange picking skills and giant take-home haul. (See the bright blue tub.) Fresh valencia orange juice for weeks!
I love oranges, orange trees, and that bright sweet smell of orange blossoms that shows up sudden and thick right as spring is starting.
These are the two biggest new staples of my garden this spring.
For one, I haven’t given up on my Sisyphus hill this year. Now with a ton of compost, new soil, and a lot of clearing up, I’ve started a corn patch with sister melons. It’s a a bit larger than 4′ by 4′ (think less “where is the tape measure?” and more, “this stick is like four feet long, right?”) and, following the tenant of square foot gardening, I’ve planted what could be 64 plants.
To the right/top of the patch are baby watermelons, and to the top/left are some pink melons. They’re both surrounded by a recycled, broken old plastic pot, a good temporary border until they’re tall enough to fight off grass.
Growing something to the point of production really has been my big heavy boulder on this hill (not to be dramatic…) but it’s always a relief to see something new pop up, like my tiny fast-growing dozens of corn stalks.
The second newest improvement is an entirely new cedar box just for this year’s squash. Last year the squash did so well in the big veggie box, but I think they could do better on their own. The new box is 4′x2′ and doesn’t take up too much room but is perfect for big, bushy growth. Plus I’ve planted five kinds of squash, now that there’s a bigger space for more variety.
A little while ago I noticed some green onion shoots growing in my compost from some old scraps I had thrown out. I waited to turn it until the little aliens were strong enough for transplant, which was today. (Plus there was sunshine today!) They’re still a bit scrawny and lanky, but I hope they survive.
The broccoli heads have gotten considerably larger recently; flourishing while every other plant of mine has been inconvenienced (at best) or wounded (worst) by the sudden change in weather. The biggest plants will be ready for harvest soon! Pretty exciting, since it’s my first time ever growing broccoli.
This past week most of my tomato plants exploded in fresh yellow blooms. All over. Not just a few stray blooms, but entire bunches on many different branches. At the end of October, and the beginning of November.
Without much care, without fertilizer, with some random waterings and 80-90degree full sun fall days, my tomato plants are still producing this year.
Yesterday was gray and stormy, menacingly windy but never actually wet, so I decided to mix this update together while staying inside, suppressing the desire to go play in the dirt. Long post ahead. The hill has changed a lot since I planted it a month ago. I mean, look, green!
Most of the green is of course grass, but hidden amongst those blades are a lot of flourishing vines. I’ve just decided to let the grass thrive freely this year [there are so many seeds in this dirt anything else would be, I don't know if there's a word for that kind of crazy-crazy] but reasonably so; every few days I hand-cut it so it won’t overshadow my young plants or grow those annoyingly spiky pods. It’s a little crazy of me, but manageable. And that kind of gardening counts as cardio. Maybe.
I’ve tried to photograph everything new [and piece together a clear panorama] but a few things are missing. Growing up here but not big enough to show up in pictures are a lot of calendulas, which I planted as a sort of barrier at the top of the hill. I will plant calendulas anywhere I can get away with. What does show up in pictures are a few random scatterings of sunflowers. I didn’t plant those; they’re courtesy of the birds in my yard. Yes, I’m accidentally growing sunflowers in October. Poppies are also appearing in huge numbers up there. The random wildness of it all makes me so happy.
The pumpkin vines are impressive! Pictured here are two seperate blooms about a week apart. Four of my plants have already bloomed at least once, and I have a lot of bees on the hill so they get pollinated pretty speedily. Next to the blooming plants in the first picture are my younger pumpkins, the ones I started from seed. They’re already pretty big as well.
The yam monster had rooted firmly into the ground no more than a week after I planted it. Now it’s incredibly intricate and widely roaming; each time I wander up the hill I find a new little limb sticking up from a new place.
Fingerling potatoes! I’m so excited about these. Three are growing here in a row but more may pop up later because I planted maybe 7 or 8 pieces of potato all in random places. Please excuse this horrible picture. Right now they are still dark green and smallish youngins.
Lastly, the whole thing in panorama:
Click for the biggest size and best detail! There you can see, from left to right; butternut squash, mounds of golden health squash, pumpkins, yam, pumpkins, and young fingerling potatoes.
This year’s harvest moon saw the removal of my greenbean plants. Once they were out of the box I painstakingly picked every single dried pod and cut the winding vines from their bamboo & hemp climbing contraption then into smaller, compost-ready pieces. More dried beans were salvaged than edible green ones, but those are just as useful; some will go to cooking and the rest will be grown next year. Waste not, right?
For one, I haven’t given up on my Sisyphus hill this year. Now with a ton of compost, new soil, and a lot of clearing up, I’ve started a corn patch with sister melons. It’s a a bit larger than 4′ by 4′ (think less “where is the tape measure?” and more, “this stick is like four feet long, right?”) and, following the tenant of square foot gardening, I’ve planted what could be 64 plants.
