So so sorry, dear blog, that i left you in shambles as the season waned. The truth is, i had planned a winter garden; but while wracked with indecision, didn't clear the proper space for one until too late. The vast quantity of winter squashes turned out, predictably, to not be that good.
Oh well, mistakes noted, a new year approaches.
Now's the time of year you can start your broccoli and heat lovers (tomato, pepper, eggplant).
More a bit later (promise!) on some DIY projects cooking in the background for the Noble Good Of The Garden.
Growing herbs is one of the most cost-effective gardening you can do. For the price of a single serving of oregano or basil at your grocery store, you can buy a packet of seeds that will grow you ten or twentyfold that amount.
This year has been my most successful for herb gardening, and the secret this year has been using containers to grow multiple plants of each herb I wanted. Before, i would dedicate a small amount of ground space to a single plant each. Then what would happen is I could only harvest a small amount at a time, and it would take a week or two to grow back a usable amount. This year, I have 4 basil plants, at least 3 oregano plants, and 3 marjoram plants, and I can have fresh cuttings whenever I want. In fact, if I don't keep cutting, the basil threatens to flower and stop producing leaves altogether.
Our Flying Saucer summer squash has begun to produce fruit, and it's sublimely tasty, as is the first Black Beauty zucchini we harvested this weekend. Some partial pruning occurred this weekend to reclaim some bed space. Mostly around the raspberries which grew larger this year than ever. We tried to follow the suggestions in this nice PDF file, but really just ended up hacking them off to knee-high. They seem to come back stronger each year anyway, so unless they're noticeably lackluster next year, i don't think we'll have too many problems.
The aforementioned winter squash that had taken over the back plot revealed undiscovered dark green gourds, and one of the vines had even climbed a nearby tree and dangled two foot-long fruit. I'll report back if they taste any good.
Turn your back for a second, and they strike! Actually, more like turning your back for a week or two. The urban gardener isn't always quite as vigilant as the farmer, and sometimes the combination of the 8-to-5 grind and the small garden area makes you say, "I can skip a day, these plants grow pretty slowly." Bad decision.
Actually, the bad decision comes much earlier. Springtime, when the gardener is flush with anticipation and has all their seedlings in neat rows, the temptation is great to tell oneself that Chaos Is Vanquished. It's not until mid-to-late summer, when the gardener really finds out the consequences of earlier decisions. My mistake, a mistake I keep repeating and am probably doomed to repeat in future years, is to see the eager volunteer seedlings standing up forthright in the newly groomed beds and allow them to prosper, rather than yanking them out and planting my own. As I've alluded to before, sometimes these volunteers are a nice surprise and bear some interesting fruit. But other times, as in this year, they end up taking over the garden and giving not much in return.
This sprawling winter squash has spilled out of its own bed and threatens to take over the three adjacent beds. the flowering you see is the last of the spring broccoli, which was definitely a success for repeated harvests, so much so that we would have needed to eat broccoli almost every night to keep up with it. But now it's time (and rapidly becoming too late) to start the winter garden, and this squash will completely bollox that idea. Our plan is to go in and take back some of the bed space so we can get some fall planting done pronto.
So first we went to China on vacation:
and then we remodeled the guest room:
But look! More garden blogging is coming! Honest!
I CAN HAZ SPINNICH!
this weekend mostly saw me do maintenance and preparation work instead of anything fun like sowing or harvesting (unless you count the overwintered cauliflower, which ended up slightly bitter, but still tasty). As I walking past the new carrot bed i noticed a bud of leaves attempting to break through the top layer of compost. Upon pulling it out, I was startled to find a five inch section of rosebush branch, presumably from my fall pruning, that was magically sprouting young leaves in the spring sun, even without any roots to draw nutrients!
I marveled at the resiliency certain plants seemed to have. It's one of the many things that rewards me in my efforts. Then I looked down and saw another emerging leaf bulb. I pulled it out to find a similar situation, but this time with a Hydrangea branch. Crazy.
Growing vegetables can be fun for many reasons, of course, but one of my favorite parts is getting a seed or a volunteer and not knowing exactly what the finished product is going to be like. Last fall I planted a number of cauliflower and broccoli seeds into an old recycling container filled with a mixture of soil out of my garden space, compost, and potting mix.
Portland has pretty mild winters, so you can grow many things through the winter and harvest them in spring, as long as you plant far enough in advance. Throughout the winter, i kept an eye on my two final candidates, one sprouting broccoli, and one Purple Cape cauliflower, but they showed only little activity until the daylight started increasing in February. And now, come to find out, the Purple Cape cauliflower begins to resemble broccoli soon after the head has set. Looks like I'm a bit late in harvesting this one, but i think it will still taste just fine.
