September 27, 2008

First Harvest

About 10 days ago, Tom created some vertical lift for the cucumbers, beans and squash. This will make it easier to harvest the vegetables and will take up less space as they grow up instead of laying on the ground (at least, that's the theory).

Here's how TYs Garden looks this week:

Collards: We thinned them out yet again. This time the leaves are big enough to eat (see end of post).

Carrots: Tom did a great job of spreading out the sprouts so more of them will mature.

Swiss Chard: Coming along, but not as many plants as we would have liked. Looks like we've managed to stop bugs from eating it long enough for it to grow.

Lettuce: This is also coming along. In fact I may make the first salad sometime this week.

Spinach: Slow in coming. Not going to get as much of a harvest as I would like.

Squash: Growing like crazy. Flowers just starting to come, but not fully blooming yet.

Broccoli: I'm still perplexed by this. It's growing. It's producing leaves. But there still isn't anything resembling a flower or pod or anything close to broccoli. I suspect this is all that's going to happen here.

Beets: Now these guys are doing GREAT. Tom spread out the sprouts like he did with the carrots and they are flourishing.

Beans: We're going to be eating beans for some time to come! Look at these plants! There are flowers everywhere. And guess what......

...it's producing beans! Pulled off the first batch to cook this weekend! Very exciting!

Cucumbers: I keep talking to these plants, asking them when they're going to quit flowering and actually produce a cucumber. I have hope. Guess I'll have to be more patient.

As mentioned earlier, we thinned the collards and are going to eat a batch today. In fact, Tom is cooking them up as I type this. Here is what I harvested.

What we will NOT be cooking is the non-edible green bug that accompanied the collards into the kitchen. Eek! Tom did his husbandly duties and escorted it outside. IF you look close, you can see the batch of eggs the bug left on the leaves. Tom saw these eggs previously on the collard sprouts and thought snails or beetles or mites were doing this. Turns out it was these living leaf-things. Eek!

And here is the first harvest of Blue Lake green beans. I'll be cooking these up with some tomatoes and garlic tomorrow. I ate one in the garden and loved the fresh taste. I gave one to Tom, who chewed, spit it out and made a face. I accused him of not being a real gardener for not liking uncooked green beans. Pfah!

~Y

2 comments:

Phil Davidson said...

Wow, glad you actually got some food coming in. My cukes took a longgggg time from flower to fruit. And the fruit was inedible. Seeds were huge and hard. Guess the drought (even tho' we watered) had a lot to do with it. Beans - plenty of blooms - no fruit. Man told me you need bees to Xpollinate. I did get maters. And still getting some - but small ones. Good job!! I'll have to remember Blue Lake instead of Bush Beans next year. And, we're going to try vertical potato growing too!

Anonymous said...

garden looks great