Tomatoes

We’ve got tomatoes!  Looks to be a good harvest this year.  Glad to see all of the tomato plants (but one) in full bloom.  Week by week more tomatoes will ripen for beautiful pictures and delicious eats.

Beans

The beans are SO close to looking something like a bean.  There will be TONS of beans when they start to mature.

Peppers

They have been slow growing all season.  The peppers down the street growing outside of a dry cleaners are bigger than these.  Nonetheless, they are starting to fruit and I should have some good peppers in about 3 weeks.

Garlic

I harvested another batch of garlic this week including one elephant garlic.  It is huge and looks like it will be great baked and spread cover toast.  I can continue to harvest the garlic until the bulbs start to reproduce again.  It’s probably the only thing I can think of that starts regrowing this quickly.  I guess it shows just how easy garlic is to grow.

This was a late post and I’m off to work in the garden so I’ll have more pictures shortly.  Enjoy.

Related articles:

1. On the Farm, July 17, 2009
2. On The Farm – July 5, 2009
3. On the Farm, June 12, 2009

Peas

They are done!  Next weeks pictures will show the pea plants exhausted and done producing.  I will likely pull them out of the grown and replace them with a fall crop.  I planted 8 plants of peas — the middle plants grew the highest and the plants on the ends grew the lowest.  That must be normal given that my bean plants are doing the exact some thing.

Swiss Chard

This is when Swiss Chard shines.  The spinach is wilting in the hot sun and it is unlikely I can keep it shaded and cool for the hot summer months.  I will likely replant in late August or early September when the sun is a little less strong.  Swiss Chard on the other hand is much more robust.  It is growing nicely and very large.  I prefer smaller leaves, but this time of year I have so much other work going on, it is easierto let it grow large.  I have a few plants spread throughout the garden and they are all looking good.

Beans

The bean plants are now higher than the fence.  But alas, no beans yet.  I check every day for greasy grit beans but they haven’t started to “fruit” yet.  Greasy grits are known for their “highly productive” vines, but they haven’t started to produce yet.  They produce about 60 days after planting which would be this week.  I’ll keep checking.

Cucumber

I over planted cucumbers this year because I just can’t get enough.  I have about 6 different cucumber plants planted.  They will each product about a dozen or so cucumbers this summer.  If you look in a grocery store, you’ll see that some have marks — this is where the cucumber laid on the ground (if you’ve been pumpkin shopping, you’ve likely passed up pumpkins with too many marks from lying in the dirt).  To prevent this, some people grow cucumbers on a trellis.  I just don’t have enough trellis space for 6 cucumber plants (plus pumpkins and watermellon).  My cucumbers will suffer a little dirt, but last year they tasted exactly the same.  Each plant is about a foot tall.  They’ll keep growing all season and start winding through the garden.  Sometimes I cut it back — or you can just wind it in a ball.

Peppers

The peppers are so close to fruiting.  A lesson in fruiting plants — they flower, then they fruit.  A flower is just about to pop up on the pepper plant.  The main problem this year with peppers is that they want a hot sun.  We just haven’t had enough 90+ degree days to help them along.  There is a good possibility that the pepper plants will flower but they may not fruit.

Watermelon and Pumpkin

At this point, you can’t tell much of a different between the two in the pictures above.  They eventually will look pretty different (other than one being orange and the other green).  These plants will get huge and they’ll take over the garden if left uncontrolled.  The watermelon is among the tomatoes so I’ll need to make sure they grow away from them otherwise they’ll grow right up the tomato supports.  In fact, two years ago, my pumpkin plant grew up a tree.

Tomatoes

Here they come!  There are tons of baby tomatoes on every variety of tomato plant in the garden.  Lots of them.  The early plants will turn red first while some of the late varieties will keep growing for another month.  One of the plants (oddly enough, I didn’t photograph it) only grew to about 2 feet tall (the rest are close to 4 feet right now).  The 2 footer looks like it hasn’t been getting enough sun — but it still put out a few fruits.  They are troopers.  Last year a suffered some bottom rot at this point.  I plan to add a bottom rot supplement this weekend to prevent it from occuring this year.  Last year at this point, we had the perfect combination of hot sun and good rain which allowed the plants to grow extremely fast.  That fast growth led to not enough nutrients reaching the tomato fruits themselves.  I doubt that will happen this year, but I also don’t want to lose the first few tomatoes.

Related articles:

1. On the Farm, July 17, 2009
2. On the Farm, June 19, 2009
3. On The Farm, June 26, 2009

Cilantro

Wow, the cilantro is growing strong.  I’ve picked a number of bunches of cilantro today.  Too bad the tomatoes aren’t ready to go as they would make great salsa.   The cilantro smells so good.  This is slow bolt cilantro.  Cilantro bolts or goes to seed and becomes bitter very quickly.  Slow bolt cilantro is suppose to go to seed much slower.  You can see from the first photos a slight difference in some of the cilantro.  This is the cilantro slowly starting to bolt.

Radish

The radishes are huge today.  I’ve pulled a number of radishes out of the ground today.  Also for the first time in 5 years, we have a critter in the garden.  Based upon what was eaten and the location (and also what I normally see in the garden), I’m guessing I have rabbits.  I’ll keep an eye on it and hopefully the rabbits will eat only a reasonable amount.  They are hungry after all.

Peppers

The peppers are starting to grow.  They’ve been about 3 inches tall for the past few weeks and they’ve added about two inches in the past few days.  We are a long way to actually eating a pepper, but they are looking good.

Rocky Top Lettuce

The rocky top is going strong.  I took a small batch of baby lettuces out today and they tasted wonderful.  The rocky top is delicate when it is in the baby stage, but in another couple of weeks we’ll have a strong batch of lettuce.  At this point they are growing very tightly together and require almost no care, which is a treat.

Peas

Check out the peas — we’ve got pods.  I’m so excited.  I’ve never grown peas before so I was surprised to notice the snaps growing on the vine.  There are about 4 pea pods per plant — a little less than I expected.  I was able to pull a pod and took a picture of the inside.  I think they need a week or two more but so far they taste great.  I also took a picture of the pea blossoms.

Garlic

The garlic is growing perfectly.  It was planted in the fall and is about 3 to 5 feet tall today.  There are a variety of theories on growing garlic, one of which is to cut the tops of the garlics — called the scapes — to allow for the bulbs to focus on growing.  I’ve cut the scapes and I haven’t cut the scapes and have found no difference.  Anyway, I cut some scapes — enough for me to throw in a stirfry.  I have some pretty good pictures of the scapes.  It looks to be a great garlic season.

Beans

The greasy grit beans are going strong.  This is also my first year growing beans so we’ll have to see how they grow.

Related articles:

1. On The Farm, June 26, 2009
2. On the Farm, June 19, 2009
3. On the Farm, June 6, 2009

One Seed Chicago

I voted on One Seed Chicago a while back.  From their website:

Each year One Seed Chicago selects one plant to be the focus of a season-long celebration. Imagine thousands of the same vegetable or flower linking community gardens, yards and window sills across the City! As One Book, One Chicago is to reading, One Seed Chicago is to urban greening.

I didn’t vote for the Blue Lake Pole bean (I think I went corn, but it’s been a while).  Anyway, I will grow it in the spirit of One Seed Chicago.  It felt like magic seeds when they showed up in the mail yesterday.

They will go in the ground this week and I’ll try to highlight the beans seperately to showcase One Seed Chicago.

Related articles:

1. Planted: Greasy Grits Beans
2. Planted: Stowell’s Evergreen Corn
3. Planted: European Mesclun Salad

Greasy Grits Beans from Baker Creek

I had no idea what the beans would look like, but I was pleasantly surprised when the beans looked pretty cool.  (I know it’s a little hard to tell, but the beans are lying on the seed package above.)

I’ve planted 12 seeds of the greasy grits so I should have plenty of beans to eat fresh and to dry for soups (and seed save for next year).

I chose Greasy Grits frankly because of the name.  Seriously, it’s a rare heirloom that used to be grown in the Midwest and they are good for soup beans.  Should be a fun bean to grow.  Here is the description:

Greasy Grits
A popular old Appalachian and Mountain folk heirloom that used to be common in much of the Midwest and South, but now is very rare. It gets the name because its pods are smoother and shinier than other beans, giving it a “greasy” appearance. Pods are harvested small and used like other green beans, or you can allow to dry for a brown soup bean that is easy to shell. Highly productive vines.

Related articles:

1. One Seed Chicago: Blue Lake Pole Bean
2. On the Farm, June 12, 2009
3. Planted: Lincoln Peas