Is This Really Our First Garden Post of 2009?

I do believe it is.

This year, we decided to keep our garden fairly small and just do what we could in our front patio area. We have a small dirt patch, maybe 3' by 12', where we planted 5 tomato plants, 5 eggplants, peas, and a bunch of potatoes.

If you can see around Kimberly in this picture, you can see the start of our container garden from a few weeks back:
On the concrete part of our patio, we put a bunch of stuff into containers, including an additional 5 tomatoes, 6 sweet peppers, 6 hot peppers, basil, oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, parsley, nasturtiums, and our trusty fig trees.

If you can see around Kimberly in this picture, you can see the start of our container garden from a few weeks back:[On a side note, the guy we had out garden with last year, the Hippy Librarian, was in France this past year teaching english. While he was there, he bought a bunch of seeds from the fantastic Seed Savers. He had a garden center start the seeds for him, so when he got back he could immediately put them in the ground. He was pretty surprised to find over 800 plant starts going when he got back (something like 600 tomato plants, 100 eggplants, and 100 peppers). Needless to say, he had more plants than he could plant. We originally were only going to have the dirt patch garden, but since he had such an abundance of plants, we took pity and took some. I have to say, they look fantastic.]

The garden has been going now for about 2 months, and things are starting to get ripe. As you can see from above, we have some peas, although the delicate plants have not fared well against the violent rains that have rolled through over the last few weeks.

We also have a pepper plant that is going crazy - there has to be 40-50 of the hottest peppers I've ever eaten on it. And some of them are even starting to turn red [it should be noted that this plant is actually from last year that we wintered over in our living room; I think this is why it's already so large and fruitful]:


As always, we have a photo set started on Flickr, which we will be updating as things become ripe and ready to eat.

Growing...

So things are growing around here. There's the out-of-control garden we planted (with dozens of pots and our little patch of dirt). We've managed to fill every available spot of dirt with something green and growing. By last count, we have our fig trees, 10+ tomatoes, 10ish pepper plants, sage, basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, parsley, six eggplant, peas, chives, potatoes, nastirsums, and some volunteer squash from the compost heap. We've already made pesto once and I dried some sage last week. Half of the tomatoes have little green ones growing. The hot peppers are ridiculous (one plant has 30+ little, evily hot cayennes growing.

Here I am at 17 w 6days with part of the potted garden.

The Tadpole is growing as well. We've hit the 19th week mark (we'll be 20 weeks on Monday and, since pregnacy typically lasts 40 weeks, we're about halfway there). I now officially can't wear my jeans and I'm busting out of most of my other pants/skirts. Mom got me these cool belly bands that have allowed me to put off shopping for quite a few months. Especially with the changing weather here, it's been very helpful to not have to buy multiple seasons of pregnancy clothes. There aren't a lot of maternity options here in town (Target and JC Penny's being the ONLY options), so it's been great to put off buying. But, I'm now starting to slowly add in new clothes. Sis has been a great help, finding all sorts of online sources for inexpensive maternity clothes. Given that these are fairly disposable items (I won't be wearing them past fall!) and that I do have two seasons to worry about (November is very different from July!), it's nice to not spend a fortune on clothes right now.

A week later, and I look a bit bigger. The biggest tomato here is our cherry tomato.

We've had several visits with the Dr (we're seeing one Dr now, but will get transferred to a clinic attached to our hospital in August (either with a midwife or with a Dr)). The heartbeat is fast and loud. We're looking forward to our ultrasound appointment very soon. We're not planning to find out the baby's gender, so that will be a surprise to all of us come November! We're only scheduled for the 1, unless there are any problems that need monitoring.

So, that's the growing news around these parts. I've got two more weeks of teaching for summer class and the class I'm taking starts this week for 6 weeks. I'm also doing some contract work for a big company that I can't really discuss further in this format. Plus, you don't really care about the details, trust me.

In cat news, the cat is nuts. He has two modes: attack cat and passed out. But, his morning habits have me completely smitten. You might remember us complaining about Miles' tendency to wake us up as early as possible with loud cries and whines regardless of his supply of food. This cat, however, uses the strategy of coming to snuggle in bed and being sweet and loveable to let us know that he's completely out of food. Plus, he eats all of his food, even the crumbs, and isn't remotely picky about food. So, although he doesn't want to sit on my lap while I type or snuggle with me in bed, I'm happy to have him around.

Bounty

Wow. Yet another big haul from the garden.



This is the definition of plenty... you can see how I'm running out of space to put the squash. I squished in 5 more after I took this picture... it's getting out of control. Thankfully (but sadly) Peter and Hippie Librarian took down the fence today, so the garden is winding down. We still have carrots, eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes to pick but not much else.

I'm hoping that by keeping the squash in our cool tornado shelter (aka under the stairs storage closet) that they'll last a few months. I mean, I like squash, but this is a LOT of squash. (Especially since you can't see the ones on the top shelf above the canning pot).

Deliciousness

There are few things better than a really good tomato.

from our garden!

This is one of them.

tomato, whole wheat toast, pepper bacon from local happy pigs

Holy Crap

In previous posts (here) we talked and exclaimed about the vast quantity of produce we were picking from the garden. Clearly, we had no idea what was to come.

Here's our Saturday harvest:

that's our entire kitchen table covered in veggies. Starting at the top left, we've got white (really yellow) and green cukes, a big pile of eggplant, a few hot peppers, yellow crooknecks, green beans, purple beans, green and purple basil, one giant yellow zucchini, a "cheese" squash (so named since they're the color of cheese I guess?), a lonely beet, and in the middle are a pile of Italian peppers and two winter squash.

One day. We also ate a tomato (and a bunch of cherry tomatoes) in the garden and tossed some split melons and wrinkly squash. We've completely abandoned the lettuce (it's super bitter, completely inedible) and most of the herbs (except my basil field) couldn't compete with the weeds.

Still to come, we have tomatoes turning red (finally!) as well as tons of winter squash and melons that look like they're getting close. Thankfully, the garden is not particularly high maintenance at this point (it's rained every few days) and our gardening friends have been willing to do the daily garden checks.

See the rest of Saturday's garden pics here

Red Gold

In PEter's hand there, you can see our very first red tomato. Seconds later, PEter, Librarian Guy and I devoured it.MMMMMMmmmmmm... there's nothing like a warm vine-riped tomato. I know, I know, another garden post? But, you see, until Monday, food is what we have going on.During that trip to get our first tomato, we also harvested this bounty:

You can see giant cucumbers, yellow zucchini, yellow crookneck, white cucumbers, and purple beans. And we're going again tomorrow to pick again. A recipe I made last night with some of the garden produce is over at What We're Eating now...

Anyway, gardening gardening. We have winter squash that are ripening, melons turning colors, and lots of green tomatoes. Unfortunately, by the time the tomatoes are red, we'll both be back in school. I guess we'll have to try to devote an afternoon some Saturday to canning tomatoes. It'll be a good creak from all that studying!

In a Pickle Now

The Hippy Librarian and I were reading over the seed packets for our garden the other day. The Bush Cucumber, which is the standard green cucumber we are growing, is described as a 'good' producer. The white cucumber we are growing is described as a 'very good' producer. We thought this was a pretty good explanation as to why we're been picking somewhere around 10 pounds of cucumbers a week. And things have barely just started.

Since we were blessed with this bounty of cucumbers, and half of them were lying in our fridge, slowly rotting, we decided it was time to act. So what to do with a ton of cucumber? Why, make pickles, of course.

A couple years back, Kimberly, her mom, Sissy, and I made Spicy Dill Green Bean Pickles. Besides some early memories of my family canning tomatoes in the Old Country when I was young, I had never preserved foods in this way before. It was surprisingly fun. When we left Portland, Mom-K was kind enough to supply us with a canning pot, which is basically the giant-ist pot possible, with a metal rack in the bottom for raising and lowering the jars.

With the aid of the Hippy Librarian and the Iowa Farm Boy, and of course, the Ball Corporation Bible of Canning, we went at it. It was surprisingly easy to do - wash some stuff, cut some stuff, follow a recipe, cook the jars for a while. Since I was in charge, we made Dill Slices with the green cucumbers, perfect for burgers and sandwiches and such. We ended up with 6 pints.

Since we still had a ton of the white cucumbers left the next day, Kimberly and I decided we might as well pickle them too, so they don't just go bad. 6 more pints.


So, as you can see, we now have 12 jars of Dill Pickles. Hippy Librarian and Iowa Farm Boy will be taking some, but we'll probably end up with the majority of them. But that's fine with me, because I love me some Dill Pickles.

Eugene Ate All My Sunflower Seeds

See that up there? That's the first sunflower head I harvested from our front patio. Although you can't really tell from that picture, it's gigantic. After it dries out for a while, I'll pop out the seeds, salt them, and roast them for some homemade sunflower seeds.

In the following picture is the trunk of the sunflower. Again, there's not much scale, but that thing is as wide as Kimberly's arm.

And finally, here's the current state of the sunflower garden. With the upcoming insanity, this may be the last post regarding the sunflowers. All that will happen from this point on, regardless, is that the sunflowers will fall over, I'll chop off the heads, and roast them for seeds.

But on the bright side, those big sunflowers are at least 10 feet tall, which is pretty impressive. We're definitely winning the Fair sunflower contest next year.


ps If you know Eugene, tell him I will have more sunflower seeds soon, and if he wants, I'll send him a jar. I just need his address.

Reproduction

Along with all of our many gardening projects, we also have two "accidental" plantings to contend with. The potatoes came up from some sprouted, wrinkly, forgotten potatoes that we had over the winter. We tossed them in the ground and voila, potato plants!

We were fascinated to discover not only potatoes but also potato fruit (see here). While googling these, I discovered that you can keep potato seed and use them to plant in the spring. Even cooler, I discovered that you can make your own breed. That's right, in a couple years we'll have our very own Stuck in the Middle TM breed of potatoes. We just need to plant several varieties we like and allow them to cross pollinate. By planting those seeds each year, we'll end up with new varieties of potatoes, and can pick the ones we like.

So today, I picked the little potato fruits, diced them, and covered them with water. In a day or two, the seeds will sink and the fruit will float, making it easier to separate the two. Then we'll dry them and put them in the tornado shelter to wait for next spring, when the breeding adventure will really start.

And in squash news, that squash plant is going nuts. Peter weeded around the plant, exposing more of the seeds from the rotten shell. We now have a gazillion teeny plants.
I'm thinking I might try to save seeds from the squash as well... it just sounds like fun. And I'm sure the Irish and Italian ancestors would be proud.

Garden Photos

our loot, originally uploaded by pmauro2001.

Kimberly and I have finally gotten around to uploading and renaming all the photos we've taken of our various garden projects.

The photo stream for our current garden, which we are now calling the Somerset Garden, starts at the original planning party and traces all the way through planting and the current state of affairs. It's fairly amazing to compare the old pictures to the current garden, especially the squash pictures - they have grown from seeds to gigantic plants bearing fruit in just over a month. I will always be amazed at how fast things grow.

The first garden we had, which was destroyed by the floods, as well as the plants in our front patio (sunflowers, potatoes, hot pepper), are documented here. Some of the post flood pictures are particularly sad. The sunflowers in the front yard are doing very well, so I'll try to take some new pictures and upload those.

Murdered

We came home from Mexico to the pleasant surprise of sunflowers growing in our backyard (as Peter described here).

Well, we came home from errands to find an unpleasant surprise.



Apparently in their efforts to mow and shop down weeds, they annihilated our beautiful sunflowers. It's very sad.

"Too much is never enough"

This, I believe, is my husband's motto in life. Perhaps his farming ancestors are part of this but Peter firmly believes that one must always have more rather than just enough. He already has a family story about him. You see, while Dad was in the hospital during one of his operations, Peter kindly offered to bring us all dinner. He picked up some Chinese food and brought it to the weary group at the hospital. You could smell the Chinese food wafting down the hallway as Peter got off the elevator, and we were all blown away by the number of boxes that he unpacked. They just kept coming and coming. Kung pao and General Tso's mixed with some Happy Family and several boxes of potstickers with rice and veggies and more and more. All to feed three stressed out and scared women and one cancer patient. We took most of those boxes home.

I tell you this story to stress that Peter is WELL known for this behavior. But, it still came as a surprise to me when I showed up at THE GARDEN Tuesday morning. He told me it was big. He described the number and variety of plants. But, somehow, the true scale of the garden was lost on me.

We are so screwed.

The garden is really huge. Like crazy. There are at least 60 squash/cuke/melon mounds without an exaggeration and each mound has two or three plants. We'll be sneaking around the neighborhood and leaving squash presents on people's doorsteps in a month or two.
The white marks on the lower right aren't fungus, rather it's a melon variety called Moon and Stars. The Fruit are also supposed to have green with yellow dots.

There are 20 or so tomatoes putting out fruit. You can see them here tied to stakes.

You can start to see the scale of the garden in this picture. The lettuce, radish, carrots, basil, and weeds are in the foreground. Tomatoes and beans are in the middle and the squash are there in the back. We still have at least 100 radishes to pull, and I have two bunches in the fridge. The beans are going to go crazy any minute and the zukes are putting out babies fast. There's an entire "field" of basil. We harvested three zukes already as well a few different types of peppers. Our farming companions took home the few peas that managed to grow (it was past their season when they went in the ground). The beans have tiny beans growing (just thicker than a pencil lead) but by next weekend I'm sure they'll be huge. I'm hoping we get enough to can!

The farm project is intense and crazy, but incredibly enjoyable. Of the garden gang, I'm the only one with actual growing knowledge and it's great fun to watch them learn about plants and figure out who needs what. (Although they all need to learn to harden their hearts and THIN seedlings. By the time I got home it was too late and we have so many little two headed radishes).

And we're rather well known now. On Wednesday I went in to campus to lesson plan a bit and say hi to various profs. German prof asked how Peter was doing since his garden had flooded. I explained that he had a new garden project going and that it was a little ambitious. We talked for a while and then I mentioned that it was near PEter's old job. German Prof's jaw hit the ground as he exclaimed, "You mean that's YOUR garden?" He and his kids apparently have walked by regularly. We also get visitors from the gym and the restaurant and people drop off gifts as well (farming tools, hay etc).

I never would have wanted or planned a garden on this scale... but it sure is fun!

Gardening

Peter and I have been working hard these past few days, getting our various garden projects under control. Not only do we have the giant garden... but we also have a few side projects at our apartment.


Today, we worked on our little patch of dirt. We weeded around our volunteer squash which seemed to have sprouted from a rotten squash that Peter tossed outside this spring. So far, it only has male flowers, so we don't know if we'll actually get any fruit from it. This isn't too surprising as it was a commercial plant and probably some sort of freaky hybrid anyway.



We also harvested potatoes. Yep, just as before in the Rose City, Peter and I are doing our heritage and forefathers well and planting potatoes. We picked these beauties that we'll have lightly boiled with butter and thyme for dinner tonight.


We also noticed these. They appear to be potato fruit. After some googling, it seems that they are indeed the fruit of the potato plant (as the tubers are just the roots). Wikipedia says they are highly toxic. We'll probably follow the directions for harvesting the seeds to see what happens. I've never planted potatoes from seeds before, but since it's the International Year of the Potato , I figure we'll give it a try.

We also rescued the chives and a pepper plant that survived the floods from the old garden plot. They are safely replanted up here at the house.

Back from Mexico

We are back home in Ames. We arrived last night, after a fairly lengthy flight for Kimberly [she was routed through Washington DC and Chicago because she used frequent flier miles to buy her ticket], and a mad dash through Chicago-O'Hare by me [I landed in the International terminal at 705, was able to get through the passport check and customs without any hassle (shocking in its own right), take a train to the opposite side of O-Hare, go through security again, and run down the domestic terminal to get on Kimberly's flight at 805 - I didn't have any checked bags, so that helped].

Miles is pretty damn happy to see Kimberly. He greeted us with a series of vomitting and hacking up of hairballs throughout the night.

We were also greeted by these cool sights:

In the ten days I was gone, some of the sunflowers in the front of the house have opened to reveal big heads

and some have gotten about 8 feet tall

In the back of the house, we apparently have an army of volunteer sunflowers from our birdfeeder seed. These have grown from 'unnoticeable' to 'sunflower' in the ten days I was gone.

And our front patio pepper plant is in full fruit production.

As we get settled over the next couple of days, we'll have updates on the mega garden (apparently, they've been harvesting radishes while we were away) and stories of Mexico, including lost Mayan cities (just like Indiana Jones!), the mega-lopolis that is Mexico City, and of course, the food (because, really, isn't this blog just an excuse to talk about food?).

Welcome back, us.

Ya, ya, I suck...

So, well, the posting hasn't been as frequent as I had either hoped nor promised. But, well, the connection here isn't super speedy and it gets a little tiresome to wait and wait and wait for pictures to load. But, I have been taking tons of photos (way too many, I have no idea how I'll ever reduce them) and so you'll get a stack of updates once I'm settled back in the Middle. It's either that or hoe PEter's garden. In the summer. In the Middle. Trust me, I'll find lots of posts to write!

But, the limited posting is going to get even less as Mom arrives on Saturday and we head off for our adventures together. And then Peter arrives the Friday after... so you can see that I'll be so busy showing my family around this beautiful country I probably won't make it into many internet cafes. Ah well, you'll survive I'm sure. For all those counting the days, I'm here for only 18 more days and then back to the sweaty, sticky Middle.

Peas, Beans, Peppers, and Squash Unite to Save My Summer

I have to say, when I first started the gigantic garden project with people from work, I thought there was no way we were getting anything from it. It would be a nice way to spend some time outdoors, but we were starting everything from seed, most of which we planted in the days just before the summer solstice. I was not optimistic.

My lack of optimism was also partially based on this:That is what is left of the garden plot that Kimberly and I started before she left for Mexico. If you remember, it was under some water as part of the Great Iowa Floods of 2008. It looks even more depressing in real life. Obviously, people in other parts of the State have had it much worse than we have, but it's still sad.

I did go down there and deconstruct the fence and posts, which have been moved to the new plot - the lack of fence actually makes it less depressing, as the fence ended up being in pretty rough shape.
But I should have held out hope, because this was still in the plot:

That right there is a pepper. Still growing. After it has been submerged under 8 feet of water for at least a week. And on top of that, we have a patch of chives growing as well (at some point I want to go down to the plot and remove them from the ground and grow them in containers, but I'm going to let them rest for a little while - they've had a stressful summer). (Also, notice the dry, cracking soil, and remember, this was submerged under 8 feet of water, and has been inundated with rain for weeks - yet, it's already dry enough to crack. That's some hearty Midwest soil)

So anyways, back to my new, giant garden plot. Things are happening. And fast. As I said, we planted just before the summer solstice, which was less than 2 weeks ago. Within a few days, we had sprouts: mostly radishes and lettuce, but that was fine. But now, we have these things:

That's four rows of peas and beans, with their accompanying homemade climbing lattices. Can't see them that well, well check these out:

Those are purple peas - their stems are actually purple, which probably won't last, but is ridiculously cool. (I should have mentioned this earlier, but I didn't think of it: Almost all of the seeds in this garden (but not the starts) are from this place in Decorah, Iowa called Seed Savers - they are a seed-swapping and preservation collaborative, working to save and pass on heirloom seeds. They're pretty awesome. The Retro Librarian knew about them and bought a bunch of stuff. Anyways, if you're looking for cool heirloom tomatoes in the future, keep them in mind)

Those are beans of some variety, also with climbing lattice.


Those are bush beans. Kimberly asked for lots of beans for pickling purposes; I provided.

Lastly, there are these:
Those are Provence Squash. We have over 50 mounds designated solely for various squash, including watermelon, eggplant, cucumber, winter squash, zucchini, and 100-lb pumpkins. And all of them are now sticking out of the ground, with many of them having started with their secondary growth leaves (which you can see on some of the leaves above).

So in all, the garden is working out well. It's still ridiculously huge, and needs to be weeded on a daily basis (which is terrible, terrible work), but all of us are now optimistic that we might actually get some produce to eat from all the work we've put into this thing.

My, That's a Large Garden

Pretty much every day last week, I was out in my new garden plot, trying to get things in the ground before the summer solstice hit to try to give them a chance to actually sprout and produce some interesting goods. The garden plot is approximately 65' x 65' (4,225 s.f.), which is like 10 times larger than our old garden, that was under 8 feet of water.

Here's a picture of the full garden:
In the front are small mounds, planted with squashes, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumber, water melons, and other vine-type plants.

Beyond that is 2 rows of tomatoes, peas, and beans. Then a row of herbs, then root type veggies, like carrots and radishes. Here are the root veggies, under string rows:

As you can see, we haven't gotten a fence up yet, as we're not sure exactly how to fence such a large space without creating a huge eye sore in one of the higher-end neighborhoods in town. We need to figure it out this week, since we know for sure that there is a family of rabbits that live near-by and that there are definitely deer in the area.

We planted a majority of the new garden as seeds, which is why in the above pictures it looks like a giant dirt patch. But we do have some starts, including all the tomatoes, as well as some peppers, eggplants, and giant pumpkins. Also, we already have radishes poking up out of the ground, which is very exciting. As we were planting things last week, we were getting dispirited since it was so late in the season; but the radishes have given us hope that all this insane amount of work and money spent will at least yield us some small amount of produce.

Since we're right outside our work, we get a fair amount of razzing from our co-workers. But we also have gotten a fair amount of adoration, and have had several people come out during work to either help, inquire about what we're doing, or to bring us snacks, like iced tea and ice cream. We've also had several people from the neighborhood stop by to see what we're up to; apparently a lot of people who use the neighboring gym watch us as they run on their treadmills and are curious as to what we're up to. One guy even told us what a novel idea it was to start a garden. All I could thing was ' We're in Iowa, what else would we do with a big piece of vacant land?'
_____________________________________________________________

On another note outside our front door, I planted a bunch of sunflowers, which have taken quite nicely. Here they are, including one that fell over, but has made a comeback and is growing strong again.


I'm thinking these guys will be 10 feet tall by the time all is said and done, with some giant sunflower heads.

The Rebirth of Garden

First, a quick note to all of those who have contacted me over the last couple days: we are not being flooded in my area of Iowa. Besides the garden plot that is down in the flood plain, and some other areas of the city which are built in the flood plains, the town is relatively dry. It certainly isn't anything like Cedar Rapids, Saylorville, Des Moines, or Iowa City, all of which are, respectively, being evacuated, having their reservoir overflow, having a levee break, or being flooded and the art museum being in danger of floating away. So we're pretty lucky here. Unfortunately, most of the eastern part of the State has been fairly well damaged. One guy I work with was supposed to move to Iowa City in August, but he thinks the restaurant he was going to might shut down. And another guy I work with has his parent's basement flood, thereby losing lots of his old stuff, including lots of old books.

Thanks for contacting me to check in.

Now back to the real news: I have a new garden plot. Hooray!

I think I mentioned in my last gardening update that a co-worker had secured the plot next to our restaurant. Well, we got a long enough break in the weather that we were able to till it. Four of us went out yesterday and dug up a 60 x 60 plot. It's freaking huge.

Tomorrow, me and one other guy are gonna go out and erect a fence, hopefully scavenging as much stuff as possible from our old plot.

Here's a few pictures from the planning session we had earlier tonight to figure some stuff out:

The main players are the two guys looking at the camera: the Retro Librarian and 'The Guy who looks like he's from Iowa'. The others are either significant others or co-workers who were just there to mock us. We'll see who's laughing come harvest season. Hopefully.

Our seeds and some light reading. Retro Librarian went a little overboard with the seed buying.

Iowa Guy being sad after being told that he can't smoke around the tomatoes because of Tobacco Mosaic virus. I have no idea if this can really happen, but he was sad.

While we were outside, we saw all these little baby rabbits running around. Then eventually, we saw their momma, and then we saw this:

Those are little baby bunnies feeding from their mom's teet.

Updates to follow.