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.