Eats, Writes, and Leaves » kitchen garden

Kitchen Garden Update

lizhamillscott — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:14:59 +0000

It always starts out so innocent. Look at these cute little baby plants!

Liz’s veggie garden, May 2009

I planted these just a few days before I took these photos. 3 tomato plants, 4 pots of delicate, almost pathetic looking cucumbers, and some beans and corn.

Itty bitty tomatoes and cucumbers

I lost all the beans and one of the cucumber sets. I never got around to replanting. A pity about the beans, though I’m enjoying my mom’s surplus and the farmer’s market offerings.

Given what’s happened, it’s best I did not replant that last cuke set. It might have been…a little bit too much.

Kitchen garden, July 2009

Those things that are 5 feet tall are of course the tomato plants. Don’t all tomato plants create their own shade?

The things with the salad-plate sized green leaves crawling up the tomato jungle on the left side of the photo are the cucumbers.

It’s very, very green out there

So almost exactly 2 months after planting, I’ve got an overgrowing jungle of cucumbers and tomatoes locked together in some sort of power struggle/secret pact.

No ripe tomatoes yet. Which is a pity–a nice tomato would go well in a salad with one of the 31 cucumbers I’ve picked so far.

13 cucumbers in a basket

They’re beautiful, and they taste fabulous. Light and sweet and crunchy.

Want one? I’ve got 18 in my fridge right now.

My Orange Carpenter Bees Have a Name!

lizhamillscott — Sun, 17 May 2009 14:10:09 +0000

They’re Valley Carpenter Bees, a little bit north of their usual territory in SoCal.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/01/HOGU86BSRR1.DTL

Finally! I’ve found a real explanation for my new all-orange carpenter bees.

I first saw my BOBs earlier this spring, hovering exactly as described over some of my flowering bushes. It took about a week to confirm that there are two rather than just one, but less than that to realize that they are carpenter bees. I saw them entering and exiting the various nest holes in the bottle brush tree. As it turns out, their mates live there too–I’m guessing that my biggest black ones are the female Valley Carpenter Bees.

I love the soap operatic element of carpenter bee life in my yard. A couple of weeks ago, I watched one bee yank another bee out of a nest. This afternoon, I listened to at least 2 bees buzzing *inside* one of the nests. And watched one bee endlessly circle the bottle brush trunk over and over again, occasionally taking one or two chomps out of incipient nests.

I should make up a story about what they’re all doing, Meerkat Manor style.

Gravity Defying Tomato Gardening

lizhamillscott — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:07:27 +0000

Why am I not surprised that this dangle doodad has the “As Seen on TV” logo prominently displayed on its (oddly secure) web site:

https://www.topsyturvy.com/?cid=643942

Er, okay. But what do you hang the Topsy-Turvy from that would support the full weight of a loaded tomato plant? How do you keep the tomatoes from falling off? What about birds pecking the fruit? How do you fertilize it?

If any of my readers have ever tried this, please comment! I’m perishing to know whether/how this works?

When Good Lettuce Goes Insane…

lizhamillscott — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:28:28 +0000

Last spring I let my lettuce bolt. (That is, go to seed.) I didn’t think too much about it at the time. Then, last October, little seedlings started popping up all over my yard. I couldn’t identify the plant based on the seed-leaves. Because I’m strange and curious that way, I let them grow. They turned out to be red leaf lettuce. Next thing I knew, this happened:

Liz’s Lettuce

My very own lettuce farm! Granted, 60 lettuce plants is too many lettuce plants for one or two or four people to keep up with. No one can eat that much salad.

But there’s nothing like lettuce fresh from the garden. Even Farmer’s Market lettuces can’t compete. The true freshness that comes from picking the tender leaves, then eating them within an hour, cannot be replicated. Nor, for some reason, can the taste of homegrown lettuce. Maybe it’s the varieties I plant, but my red leaf, butter lettuce, and odd red heading lettuces taste so good. Much more flavor than anything I’ve ever bought.

Here in the Bay Area, lettuce season is coming to an end. You might be able to put in a few starts from the nursery and keep them from bolting for 3-6 weeks at best. I won’t be planting any new lettuces until October. But if you live in a cooler clime, now might be the perfect time to plant lettuce! For in-ground planting, be sure all danger of hard frost is past. Plant leaf lettuces now for a gradual harvest through May or even June. Yum!

If you’ve got leaf lettuces, you can harvest them a few leaves at a time. Pick the outermost leaves once they’ve grown to at least 4 inches across. This won’t hurt the plants; in fact I find that it encourages my lettuce to grow more vigorously.

Now I’m all hungry. Salad for dinner!