surprise!

We've had a lot of heavy rain this week.  While it's been nice to not have to water the garden and tomato grove twice daily, the storm brought with it cooler temperatures.  Today was quite cold for June (mid-50s) and tonight's low is predicted to be in the upper 40s.  So I've brought inside my five 2nd generation pimientos de padrón and the six habanero plants.  They'd probably handle the cooler temperatures fine, but the plants are relatively young, and I see no need to stress them unnecessarily if I can prevent it.

In preparing the ground for the summer garden, I've been mixing into the soil several shovels of compost per row.  As I've been tending to the young sprouts and transplants I've come to realize that the compost I added contained some apparently still viable seeds.  Surprise!  Sprouting up alongside the black beauty zucchini and growing in amongst the rows of italian white eggplant I have found nine tomato plants and three mystery squash.

Surprise tomato plants:

Surprise squash:

So I've put these surprise plants in their own cups and I'm planning on container-gardening them for now.  I'm really excited to see what they all turn into.  With the tomatoes, it's most likely that they are the larger "beefsteak" type.  The surprise squash I can only narrow down to butternut, acorn, or pumpkin.  They all look the same though, and distinguishable from the zucchini.

I haven't added any new kitchen scraps to that compost pile in several months, and so I'm really amazed that the seeds survived the compost breakdown process.  Maybe that says something about my compost pile...

garden update: zucchini and green bean germinated, sugar snow pea flowered and harvested

I returned from my trip to find almost a completely different garden from the one I left thanks to the watchful care of my guest gardener.  Seven zucchini had germinated and already sprouted their primary leaves.



As instructed, a few days ago I thinned them to two seedlings on each mound.  All six of the plants were very healthy, so I´ve given the two I removed to a friend (and guest gardener/photographer).

Several green beans had also germinated, although they´re struggling somewhat to put out their primary leaves.



I think that they´re being eaten nightly by slugs.  I´ve had this problem with green beans before.

The Snowy White eggplant also sprouted (thorny!) buds in my absence:



The buds are quite large now, but haven´t yet begun to open.

Both varieties of sugar pea are doing really well.  The sugar snap pea plants are now approaching 5´ tall, and the sugar pod snow pea bloomed and grew pods in the week I was gone.



I can´t believe how fast the pea pods grow.  I´ve harvested them three times in the past two days already.

Sugar pod snow pea:

The garden space itself is now almost complete.

I put in the last row of eggplant this past weekend.  These eight black eggplant are a little behind all the rest, but they seem to be doing well in the ground. 

I´m planning on sequentially planting green beans this year, so I´ll probably dig up and plant the next row of beans this weekend. The beans should be the final planting of this year´s summer garden.

I just ordered some more seeds from Seeds of Change.  I´m planning on trying out a few new types of bush bean to see if I can find something that the slugs don´t like quite as much.  Arriving soon should be Bountiful Stringless Snap Bush Bean and Robert's Royalty Bush Bean (which is on backorder, unfortunately).  I also ordered more fino verde basil and some holy basil for a friend.  For the fall garden, I ordered a new type of radish (French Breakfast) and spinach (Renegade F-1) to try, in addition to some Taisai Chinese cabbage, which is supposed to be like bok choy.  I always like trying to grow something new.  I´m hoping to extend the growing season of my leafy greens well into autumn, and possibly even have a winter harvest.

summer garden officially started

Saturday was beautiful here.  It was the first nice day I had free to work on tilling up the backyard and do some serious planting. I expanded my existing 4' x 19' garden space to include three more 19' rows (two eggplant and one green bean):

and a tomato grove:



In addition to the row of Garden green beans seeds, I also planted Black Beauty zucchini seeds in two 3' mounds:

 
As per the directions, I planted four seeds on each mound and will thin to the strongest two once they've germinated, which should be in 5-10 days.  The green beans are supposed to germinate in 6-8 days.  I'm leaving town for almost a week, and I'm excited to see what will have germinated by the time I get back! 

It feels great to have so many of the plants I've been growing in the greenhouses outside and in the ground.  Right now I have 23 eggplant (not counting doubles) in the ground, and eight more black eggplant that I'm still hardening.  In tomatoes, I have eight second generation tomato plants (all indeterminates) and nine third generation (all determinate but one):

These plants, combined with the 50+ first generation tomato plants currently producing and ripening fruit should make for a very continuous and bountiful tomato harvest this summer. 

When I get back in town, I'll dig up another row and plant the last eight eggplant.  I'm planning on sequentially planting my green beans this year to extend the harvest, so in two weeks I'll start another row of green bean seeds.  Two weeks and two more rows and my summer garden will be officially planted.

Snowy White eggplant in the ground with thorns!

This morning I put a row of snowy white eggplant into the ground out in the garden.



They are by far the largest and leafiest of the three eggplant varieties I´m growing.  I´d spent the past few days hardening them to the direct sun, wind and chillier nights outdoors, and they seemed to be adapting fine.  I was somewhat startled when I took them out of the greenhouse to notice that they have pretty well-developed thorns both on the stems: 

and down the veins of the leaves:

I've since noticed that all three of the eggplant varieties I'm growing have these thorns. I had no idea that eggplant could be so aggressive.

pimientos de padrón harvest!

Monday night I harvested the three pimientos de padrón that were ~2" long.



Then I prepared them in olive oil with sea salt, as per the Spanish tapas style:



They were so delicious! The texture was fantastically soft and supple, unlike the pepper varieties available locally.  They were even pretty spicy considering they were still green and only 2" long.  They tasted just like they were in Spain.  After all the peppers that we've tried to imitate them, it was so nice to taste pimientos de Padrón again.  There´s really no substitute.  I can´t wait for the next harvest, hopefully we´ll have enough ripe at once for a full platter!

tomatoes ripening at last and pimiento de padrón harvest pending!

The upstairs tomatoes have finally started to ripen!  The Chadwick and Fox cherry tomatoes seem the farthest along, although an Oregon Spring Bush tomato has started to turn now, too. I´m really excited that soon I will have a constant supply of fresh, ripe, homegrown tomatoes!



In downstairs greenhouse news, the pimientos de padrón have gotten enormous!



I´ve really been impressed with how quickly they´ve grown.  These three are now right around 2" long.  The Renee´s Garden website (where I got the seeds) says that pimientos de padrón should be harvested when they are no more than 2" long; "At this small size, they are fragrant and flavorful; larger fruits get very spicy."  While I´m definitely a fan of spicy peppers, I think for this first harvest, I´ll follow the recommendation.  It´d be nice to wait until I had enough for a full tapa, but I think I´ll go ahead and pick these three this week.

Both greenhouses have now required multiple light fixture raisings to accomodate the growing tomato plants.  The upstairs greenhouse still houses primarily indeterminate tomatoes which are supposed to grow to be quite large.  The Maglia Rosa cherry, already measuring over 6´, are currently the tallest.  While their size is impressive, I hope they slow down soon.

One nice thing about this more recent light raising is that it required the removal of the greenhouse plastic sheeting. As a result, the tomatoes are getting direct sunlight several hours a day through the east/west windows. The plants look really pretty in the morning and evening sun, and I´m sure that the lower leaves are appreciative of the light.

I waited too long to raise the light fixture on the downstairs greenhouse, mainly because I really didn´t think that these determinate tomatoes were going to keep growing like this. They grew up into the light until they decapitated themselves with the (minimal) heat.

The light is in a really temporary and nonideal position right now.  It´s not really even providing direct light to half of the greenhouse, but at least it is again several inches above the plant tops.

Hopefully, I didn´t affect their overall plant health too much.  I´m planning on moving them all outside in a few weeks anyway.  We´re technically past our annual average last frost date, but especially given the recent cold spell and the frost warning we´re under for the next few days, I´ve decided to wait until June to move everything outdoors and do my first planting for the summer garden.  If I follow my current plan, it´ll be more than twice as big as last year!

sugar snap pea and champion radish progress y pimientos de padrón!

Two weeks ago, I planted Sugar Snap Pea seeds from Seeds of Change.  They´ve since germinated and are doing well, in spite of the cold spell we´ve been having.

Sugar Snap Pea slideshow:



You can definitely tell that they´re related to the Snow Peas. 

My champion radishes are almost ready for harvest.  I thinned the row to 1" plant spacing two weeks ago.

Their leaves have really gotten big. I'd probably have started picking them already, but with the colder and cloudier weather we've had lately, I decided to give them a few extra days.

Champion radish:

Indoors, the pimientos de padrón flowers have been successfully pollinated!

Pimiento de padrón slideshow:



Just as with the tomatoes, the flowers first shriveled up, some falling off completely, before the peppers appeared. Of the six mature pimiento de padrón plants I have, two have flowers and peppers, and the rest have buds of varying size.  I think that the combined peppers of two plants should be more than sufficient for a pimiento de padrón tapa, so this harvest spacing should work out nicely. 

I´m really surprised how many buds each plant puts out ( > 10 ).  So far, they definitely seem more prolific than the average tomato plant, although I don´t know yet how many distinct harvests to expect over their lifetime.