2022 Veggie gardens!

I think cucumber is under-rated in gazpacho. I really enjoy what it brings to the dish.

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Amazing! You are so self sufficient, and what a green thumb. Do you put new dirt in your containers each year, or just amend what you’ve got with some fresh compost?

Today’s pickings




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This all looks so wonderful! How is your corn??

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Harvest day for shelling beans. Cannellini, cranberry and French Tarbais. These were grown in cattle troughs. Only the Tarbais required a trellis.

We have two more varieties yet to pick – turtle and cattle – which are about a week out yet.

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Thank you!

We leave the soil in the containers, however to the extent possible, rotate crops between containers (season-to-season, year-to-year) and work in compost and worm castings with each new planting. Every couple of years we have to add a little new top soil to the beds and containers as the compost decays and the surface sinks.

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It’s pretty good. The first time I picked some, I should have let it mature a more. This is the first year I’ve had a good crop. Last year was my first attempt and it wasn’t a success. I had maybe 20 stalks and a few cobs.

This week and last week, it has been pretty sweet. Days are getting shorter, and it’s dipping below 16 C at night, so I’m hoping the rest matures. I still have about 3 dozen cobs that aren’t mature yet.

It’s a little less sweet than the corn from the 2 farms I frequent.

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Amazing ! I Do they take a lot of space for the yeild? Will you be using them fresh as well as dried? How do you decide how much of each?

What kind of potatoes? My apologies; I’ve probably already asked you that.

These are from Kew Garden in London.



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The bush beans we plant pretty densely - about an inch apart in rows, and rows 4-5" apart. So no, they don’t take a lot of space. They are some of the last seeds to go in the ground, so we pretty much plant as much as we have space left for. They’ll do fine in big pots. We plant the varieties I like to cook with. The turtle beans (not yet harvested) are probably the most tedious to de-pod – they’re so small! They also happen to be my favorite bean for cooking – they’re so small!! :grin:

The French tarbais was another story. We planted those in clusters of 3 (or 5? can’t recall) plants, and about 8 clusters in a 5’ trough. They required a trellis to the sky, given that we planted in a raised bed (trough) - we used one of these things, putting one cluster of bean plantss in each of the V-shaped crevices created by the zig-zag. We had to secure the trellis from both above and below to keep the wind from knocking it over.

Not sure if your question about potatoes was directed at me, but we planted Yukon golds.

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Today’s harvest: scallions.

We planted this bed for the purpose of pickling the onions. We harvested just under half the bed this morning and got the equivalent of 9 pints of pickles. Plenty! Will harvest the rest as we need them for cooking.

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This is the one from Plenty More. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but it has grown on me. A good thing, as a half recipe made about 8-10 cups! Not sure how a full recipe yields 4 servings in the book.

I found that it needed more vinegar, and I usually avoid vinegar. It was best with the fresh hot croutons, but then I ate them all so ate the rest plain.

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A few weeks ago I was wistfully musing about the possibilities of a warm and sunny fall. It’s happening! We’re making up for some of the lost days experienced earlier this summer.

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Love fresh Lima beans! A nearby farmer grows them every year. Not easy to shell! I tried by hand, using scissors, tried a knife - fastest and easiest method I found was using a vegetable peeler to get them started.

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During zucchini season, we’ll keep in the fridge containers of grated, wrung zucchini for use in different dishes. It holds up well, and lends itself to a lot of applications. My favorite way to use it is in egg dishes (scrambles, bakes, etc.). My second favorite way is as an add-in to meatballs.

Tried a new version today, which is a hybrid of the two, titled Zucchini Garlic Bites. Basically, this is grated and wrung zucchini shreds bound together with egg, bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. Choose your herbs. I’m sure basil would be awesome here, but since I’m hoarding my basil in hopes of making one last batch of pesto for the season, I opted for chives. Using a packed #50 cookie scoop, I got 10 “bites” out of a full recipe.

Similar to a fritter, only baked. These made a great snack – easy, quick, tasty - and I’ll make them again (only a double batch for the two of us - these went down quick). I’m also tempted to try them as a traditional fritter – pan fried or deep fried, rolled in panko or not.

FWIW my third favorite way to use up grated zucchini is to bake with it - cakes, breads, muffins, etc. We eat a LOT of zucchini this time of year.

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I’ve been trying to work my way through the scallions too for the last week. This is only about a quarter of what’s left. Also getting tons of shishito peppers; this is a few bigger ones ready to harvest, but I’ve been having shishito multiple times a week for the last 3 weeks - ready for that break. :upside_down_face:

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Some limas will start to split if you give the pods a good twist, so the seams crack. They are still a bit tedious to shell, unless you have Dr. Martin limas.


And, they still have the taste and texture of butterbeans.

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I checked my garden after being away since Friday. Apart from greens and long green bean, the rest of it is growing very slowly now.

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All of my citrus are experiencing a second growth spurt. They had new leaves and blooms in late spring, but this year’s heat and drought meant most fruit didn’t mature. Also had some more sun burned leaves. But we finally started getting some rain and days of cloud cover the last 3-4 weeks and my citrus seems to be responding.

This is a dwarf Meyer lemon, and look at all the buds that sprung in just a week! I don’t know if they will have enough time to mature before the cold comes.

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Beautiful! How old is the plant?

Even if fruiting isn’t…fruitful, the flowers have a wonderful scent! There’s a ton of flowers on that little tree!

For you folks growing potted citrus, I highly recommend you feed them regularly with a combination of fertilizers. The first group, let’s call “general” fertilizers, soluble blends which have the usual NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium), plus other nutrients, like iron, manganese, boron, etc. Follow label directions to drench the soil or spray the foliage, on a weekly–biweekly basis. Citrus are good at foliar uptake of nutrients.

The second group of fertilizers we’ll call Cal-Mag, which is often the trade names of these very important nutrients. These are often missing from the regular fertilizers. Often, if these plant-ready forms of Calcium and Magnesium are mixed into regular fertilizers, bad things happen: some of the nutrients fall out of solution like microscopic rocks, the precipitate out and become useless for the plants.

So, you never want to mix the first and second types, or even apply them so they contact each other. If you foliar feed the first group, and a few days later, foliar feed the second group, you can get a stubborn black residue on the leaves as the two types combine. There are several solutions:

Soil drenches: use one type one week and after 7 days (or so) flush the pot/soil with regular water to remove any incompatible residue. Then apply the other fertilizer.

Alternately, use a soil drench for one type and foliar-feed for the other type: e.g. NPK drench and Cal-Mag foliar. This keeps the different types separated.

It’s best not to apply foliar feeds when it’s hot and sunny, apply them in the evening, when the suns is less intense.

Foliar feed: use one type or the other. Do not apply both to foliage without first rinsing off any prior residue, lest a black “soot” coat the leaves.

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