In the Garden

It's Friday so we're having another garden party, hosted by Tiffany at No Ordinary Homestead.

Here's one corner of the garden; the picture was taken this morning.

NE corner of the plot

Let's see... there are beans on the trellises, rattlesnakes to the left, struggling Chinese Yard Long beans in the foreground (they don't like much water... oops). In the rows behind the beans, right to left and parallel to the rattlesnake green beans, are basil and drought tolerant Sioux tomatoes in one row and okra in the next. Just fyi, the poles you see are about 6'6" tall.

Yep, those are Chinese long beans ...which reminds me of small town moment we had recently. We were sitting at the bar for a wine tasting event and started chatting with the older woman next to us. After a while I just had to ask, "Do you have a garden this year?" The answer was no, but she had had them in the past and a lot of her friends gardened and were having a hard year, too; what had we planted? In my mind's eye I started in the patio pots and went on to the main garden, naming things from my mental image..."Japanese eggplant, tomatillos, basil, Chinese long beans, shishito peppers..." She interrupted me, "No wonder you're having a hard time, those aren't American plants! This is Smallish Small City, not some foreign country." I assured her that we also had all-American vegetables like okra and black-eyed peas (tee hee*) and changed the subject. When I run into her again I'll have to let her know that the international garden is doing well and the 'un-American' plants just took a little time to assimilate...I mean acclimatize.

Looking a little more closely at what's in the garden, there are still lots of blossoms...

Chinese long bean blossom

But they are slow to produce.

rattlesnake green beans

tangle of rattlesnake green bean vines

Happily, there's plenty of Swiss chard this year. I've found chard to be one of the most versatile culinary greens there is, it's easy to grow and it over-winters in our region.

prolific, tasty, good-for-you chard

chard thinnings went on top of a stir-fry in early June

Yum! It's even a World's Healthiest Food. The really tender small leaves can be eaten raw (recently M's lunch box held grilled oryx sandwiches with fresh chard and homemade aioli on hard rolls). Now that I think about it we don't use any recipes for chard but it is consumed in lots of ways... chopped and sauteed in eggs, quesadillas, with garlic and lemon juice, with sausage and pasta; baked with mushrooms, cheese and bread crumbs; in soups & stews.... If you're not familiar with this green buy some at your local farmers market or grocery store and use your Google-fu to find a recipe that appeals to you. If you aren't growing it already, I bet you'll make space for it in next year's garden.

*That's right, Intrepid Reader, okra and black-eyed peas have African origins but she didn't know that.

In the Garden

No Ordinary Homestead, an American ex-pat in Germany, has started hosting a Friday link-up, "Garden Life." This time of year is all about the vegetable garden: tending, picking, eating, canning & freezing... so today we join the celebration. Here's a true 'overview' of the garden to-date.

view from the roof

This has been a tough year for this brand new garden. At first I just thought it was something we had done wrong (soil amendments, etc.) but after talking to all sorts of local gardeners* I realized everyone was having similar problems. Turns out that the combination of a lack of moisture and high temperatures puts the kabosh on the sex lives of plants (too). Lots of plants put on male flowers - again and again - but the production of female flowers was delayed until conditions were more favorable. That's why it looked to me like nothing would 'set,' all those flowers and not a tiny fruit anywhere. While the arrival of the 'monsoons' is still overdue, the overcast afternoons cool off everyone and everything, and the occasional soaking rains have created a better climate for the production of pollen and the pollinators who help out.

black-eyed pea flower

rattlesnake greenbean flowers

okra flower (edible pod to the left)

Some of my favorite memories of growing up were my Granma Cassie's fig preserves. Canned in heavy syrup, they were served every morning on bread that was fried in butter to a perfect golden-brown. My Dad carries on the tradition with figs from the same shrub that fed his great-great-grandmother. When we heard figs would thrive here and over-winter without much problem, I bought four varieties from three different sources. Of the six shrubs we planted, five remain and three of them are bearing fruit this year. There aren't enough to can so we're enjoying them with blue cheese, water crackers and a glass of wine.

blossom end of a fig

Besides the figs, we've been eating eggplant, zucchini, black-eyed peas and chard from the garden. These are some of the offerings that aren't quite ready...

golden midget watermelon

this is a Chinese long bean, what's wrong with this picture?

rattlesnake green bean

All the happy activity in the garden has attracted a few visitors. This week it's a juvenile or female Flame Skimmer Dragonfly (not a pollinator but a friendly predator in the garden). Embiggen at your own risk; management is not responsible for nightmares (no really, do it: it is so cool).

I'm going back out to pull weeds but if you've got the time, buzz around here to see what else is going on in the garden and then head over to Garden Life to continue the international celebration of vegetable gardens.


*You might not know this about me... I will strike up a conversation with almost anyone, anywhere, about anything. So if I was within hearing distance of another adult human being -- standing in the checkout line, buying straw, banding birds, wine tasting, etc., -- I asked, "Do you have a vegetable garden this year?" 

Garden Invaders

No matter their destructive potential, there is beauty in those plants and bugs that come into our gardens uninvited. I doubt any of these are new to you if you're a gardener but maybe if you just take a little time to look at them differently, you will see what I mean.
And then you can pull them up/off, squish them, feed them to the birds or a compost heap and hope you got every last rotten #@$!

So much for straw as weed control...

This is the first time I've seen spurge flower and noticed the tiny seeds (they look like fruit, embiggen if you can't see it). Although you can compost this weed, the pile needs to be hot enough to kill the seeds, otherwise you'll just be doing the spurge an evolutionary favor when you add the compost to your garden next year.

Found a few hornworms (caterpillers) in the Ichiban yesterday. Look like Tomato Worms, right?

Tomatoes and eggplant are both part of the nightshade family... as is tobacco, which is a hint for the correct identification of this bugger: it's a Tobacco Hornworm larva. Tomato worms are similar except they have green horns with black sides instead of red horns. These guys were pretty young so there's no color in their horns yet but the white striping on the sides gives them away (Tomato Worms have white 'v' markings). The Colorado State University Extension folks have a nice fact sheet here. The moths are on the big side; I kind of hope I can catch (and release) one if any caterpillars survive the purge. Hey, they're eating my eggplant! Without eternal vigilance, the tomatoes are next! (Apologies to drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs.) 

As for my last invaders, it's really not their fault. Truly, it's a case of being deemed a weed only because you're in the wrong place. That burst-out-of-your-chest alien look-alike is a pecan seedling.

We have red squirrels all over the neighborhood; they sit on the fence and laugh at our neighbor while taking one or two bites out of his ripest tomatoes and melons and leaving the rest for the birds. Of course they need something wet and delicious, it's hot and dry here and they have been working really hard... planting pecans all over our yard and garden.

pecan seedling in the wrong place

Here in Smallish Small City they have had pecan trees since the late 1800 - early 1900s; they grow in people's yards (planted so folks could make a few bucks selling nuts to the wholesalers) and in the city parks.  Nuts from trees in public spaces are considered fair-game as the local PD generally doesn't enforce the laws against picking public pecans. Even laden branches hanging across sidewalks might be available to the intrepid forager who asks permission, so there are plenty of free of pecans available: we don't need to grow them. (Don't get me wrong, I LOVE pecans: raw, toasted, in ice-cream, on salads, in pie...) Plus, we are not yet ready to cede our hard-won garden space to an orchard. Even if we wanted to grow them, the nuts are not buried in great tree spots and they would take at least 15 years to start producing, so they are deemed invaders and yanked as soon as possible.

There's not a total anti-immigration policy in the garden, a few weeks ago I welcomed a most auspicious visitor:

showing the distinctive white stripe

Who is Mr. Toad?

That's a Woodhouse's Toad. He's an insect eater and would have been allowed to stay but for this display...

chemical warfare via the parotid gland

I wasn't planning on licking him but the three cats and Chessie might have mistaken him for a playmate so he was shown out the back gate and into the alley. I still listen at night to see if he's still in the neighborhood; haven't heard these dulcet tones yet.

As more invaders appear in the garden I just have to remember to take the time to observe and appreciate them all... before raining death upon them.

Ladybugs

They came in a fairly innocuous box. Temporarily housed in a cheesecloth bag,

they nested snugly in a raffia matrix. 

Invited to dine, they now breakfast in Japantown (Ichiban Eggplant)

and over in the barrio (tomatillos).

At Sol's place (giant sunflower), it's catch-and-carry.

bon appétit!

Ladybirds, ladybugs

Today's mail:

Per the enclosed instructions, the ladybird beetles are resting quietly in the refrigerator before their debut this evening. It was 99 degrees when USPS dropped them at the door so they have a few hours to chill out before it's safe to release them. The garden will appreciate a little extra water as we all share a welcoming toast to our ~4500 new residents. Of course, they won't all move in tonight -- the instructions say to stagger their release over several days -- and there are more coming from a different source (comparisons will be posted). I'm hoping for some fun photo opportunities; good thing I figured out how to set up the 'continuous shoot' mode on the new camera.

"Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home; your house is on fire, your children do roam..." At least within the limits of Smallish Small City they won't have to worry about that fate.

Bugs!

It's been hot here; we're looking at 100+ degrees for the next 7 days with no moisture in the near future. We're still learning how to garden in these searing conditions so... um... I'll admit it...mistakes were made. Now we have bugs.

 

No, not beetles. That is a happy little 'infestation' at a local park today and I'm pretty sure it will clear up without intervention.

This is what we've got lurking in our sunflowers and tarragon, two potted plants that were a under-watered and over-stressed, making them easy targets for bugs and disease. Whether these are mites or aphids the treatment will be the same.

I should have known better: this unrelenting heat, combined with dessicating winds, is scorching petals on the gladiolus in a matter of hours. Fine tuning the watering schedule in this new-to-us place will take some time, I just hope there aren't any more plant casualties. In the meantime, the ladybug brigade will take a few days to arrive so I 'm off to fetch the pyrethrins.