2012 Veg Garden Late Summer Harvest

Purple broccoli, yellow and zucchini squash, green beans, cherry and early girl tomatoes make up this basket. The purple broccoli has a smaller, looser crown than typical green varieties and the green bean bush is performing very well considering it was planted in July. Despite the numerous flowers in the winter squash patch there is only one pumpkin and no sign at all of a butternut. Better luck next year I guess.

2012 Veg Garden Hiatus

County fair time again. These little piggies were taken off early this week to strut their stuff. One of them has already won champion market hog and another's FFA handler won champion fitting and showing. All are at the fair market auction as I type and will be gracing some lucky bidders dinner plate very soon. Bacon, Hammy and Barbecue would be their names if I had my way. I love fair, a spell seems cast so that strangers all nod and say hello, lost items are found and returned and worries are checked at the gate. Of course the cowboys are always nice... 8-)

2012 Veg Garden Tomayto Tomahto

Either way they're here! These yellow sweeties along with similar sized gold nuggets are the smallest and first to ripen. Both bushes, comprised of 2-3 seedling plants shown in a blog posting in May, are just packed with fruits. The larger early girls, siletz and heirloom plants are also full of green beauties and all are still flowering. These yellow sweeties are very sweet with delicate skins while the gold nuggets are a bit more acidic with a more sturdy skin.

2012 Veg Garden Apple Futures

Visions of apple pie dance in my head. Last year every apple, those still on branches and every one on the ground, disappeared. The neighbor says he saw several deer munching on them. Impressive considering the 6ft chainlink fence. These are pretty tart and on the small side.

2012 Veg Garden Oddities

These two (four?) yellow straight neck squash grew on one plant from some of the first blossoms of the season. They were in fact four separate squashes and joined rather quickly. At first they were all about the same size but as time went by you can see that each pair had it's dominate member. I had intended to let these go to see how they would progress but the smaller of each set began to go soft.

2012 Veg Garden Grilled Summer Squash

We cooked these on the grill using a woklike pan with holes made just for grilling odd shapes. Green zucchini and yellow straightneck squash from the garden were sliced very thick so they had time to get good carmel color without getting mushy. Adding a sweet onion, also a large chop, along with salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil then into the pan over medium high flame got the job done. A dressing to pour over after cooking sounded good so I held out a chunk of onion to dice finely, snipped some thyme and basil from the herb pot and gave that a fine chop, added a quarter cup of pear vinaigrette, a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, a few tablespoons of olive oil, a finely chopped garlic clove, salt and pepper into a bowl and whisked lightly. I let that sit while cooking the veg and dumping it into a bowl, then I just poured the mixture over the still hot veggies and tossed. Skewered
shrimp and grilled top sirloin rounded up the meal, if you don't count the red velvet cake...

2012 Veg Garden Summer Squash

The first real summer squash harvest is in! The mildew was kiboshed on this side of the garden with no real damage. Turns out spraying the leaves with water early in the day is enough to keep the nasties away as unlike most mildew this one spreads in dry conditions. We ended up cutting out the most damaged leaves on the winter squash side and that left one pumpkin plant a bit bare, I hope it makes it.

2012 Veg Garden Powdery Mildew

About a week after laying down straw the winter squash and volunteer crooked necks developed this hideous case of powdery mildew. It has spread across the entire 15x8ft patch. The soaker hose runs under the plants and straw. I suspect this, combined with the sheer mass of leaves from the volunteers that blocks the light, has created the perfect moist condition for the nasty mildew. We of course went straight to the garden store to pick up an organic solution. However it turns out even organic products have precautionary labels. In this case, don't let it drain into stormwater runoff, don't inhale, wear long sleeves, 72 hours before harvest... So, we'll be searching the books for a more user friendly solution. If you have any wisdom on the subject feel free to let me know.

2012 Veg Garden Native Bees

This little bee and it's friends arrived on the patio several weeks ago and began going into and out of the tiny holes on the underside of each metal crossbeam that makes up the patio cabana. They were few and small and didn't buzz around our heads so we left them to it. A week or so later we noticed they were carrying in bits of green leaves. They looked like about 3/4 of an inch of thick bladed grass. I took a closer look and saw a smallish, silver and gray striped fuzzy bee with no real stinger that I could find (not that I was super close). Now we saw that nearly every crossbar had it's own 'busy bee'. They were bringing leaf after leaf. A quick lookup finds we have native leafcutter bees. They say the cuttings are roundish but these really look leaf bladish. The one shown above looks a little waspish unlike the others and is yellow and black but still fuzzy with small or no stinger. We're glad they're here to help pollinate.