Holy Cow! It's October 1!

written by Yvonne

We've had pretty good success with the melons...

What do you mean, "Those don't look like melons, they look like butternut squash?"  Hmm. They sure do look like squash, don't they? Well, as it turns out, that's what they are.

Before you think us complete idiots, yes, we had planted some volunteer plants that we had assumed were melons, but we also planted a TON of melon seeds in the same location so we figured at least SOME of what came up were melons.

Early on, when we still thought they were melons, we cut one off the vine that was white-ish in color. It was green inside, but of course Honeydew melons are green so we proceeded to try cutting it with the intent of eating it. The knife wouldn't even go thought it. Then we smelled it - hmm, doesn't smell like melon. Kinda smells like squash. Know what? I think this is a squash. We left the others on the vine and just watched their progress.  They continued to change color and get more butternut-squashy looking until we finally determined, sho nuf' those are squash. We've eaten two now and these two are ready to be eatn. They taste GREAT as squash, not so good as melons.

We purchased new fall seeds from Sow True in Asheville to get more Fall crops going.  We bought 5 varieties of lettuce, two carrots and spinach. (Some of what's shown is seeds we already had.)

I did some work on the small herb box. The oregano finally came up but it was long after the dill, basil and cilantro. I cut most off this oregano to dry.

I cut back all of the basil and made a large batch of pesto. The first of the season. (Honey helped.)

Bed #1 is looking good with our late summer crops.

The dwarf okra is certainly dwarf in size. We really didn't get the okra planted in time but I think if Tom get's a least one serving, he'll be happy.  The days are still warm (high 70s) but the evenings are getting cooler and cooler so I don't expect they'll last long.

Tom has been pruning the tomatoes plants and it seems to be working. As new branches come out, he pinches them off. This is supposed to direct the growing energy to the fruit instead of the plant.

It looks like we'll have at least two varieties of late-summer tomatoes. Although today is October 1 so I think they'd technically they are early Fall tomatoes. Is there even such a thing?  I just hope they hold on and ripen before it gets too cold.

Same with round two of cucumbers. Hopefully they hold on long enough to produce something, but I won't be surprised if they don't.  Not sure if I mentioned this in the last post or not, but Tom planted these cucumbers the same way he did some of the tomatoes; he just took a cucumber that had fallen off the vine and partially broken open, and shoved it into the ground. It certainly worked!

Peppers are STILL putting out.

And changing colors too.

We have had several dinners over that last few months of Red Pepper Fajitas and it looks like there will be for this weekend!

The new kale Tom planted a few weeks ago is coming along.

The collards are small but are coming out.

Now, on to Bed #3. Here is the before of our embarrassing laziness of the latter half of the summer.

Tom got to work pulling out the mass of old tomato plants and VERY old kale.

Way to tackle it, babe!

Once Bed #3 was all cleared, I planted five types of lettuce. As I face the bed, from right to left is:

1. Red Romaine
2. Lolla Rosa Darky
3. Speckled Amish Butterhead
4. Green Oakleaf
5. Black Seeded Simpson

As much salad as we're eating these days, we felt a whole bed of lettuce would not be overdoing it.

Tom also added beets and more collard seeds to Bed #2 (behind him). Then a good watering for all the new seeds.

Last Bit of Catching Up

written by Yvonne

Here's the last bit of catch up, then we should be back on track with up-to-the-minute vegetable news from TYs Veggie Patch

Now this is a harvest!

On one hand, we had success with beans this year. We planted them in a new spot on the side of the house which expanded our growing area. That was great. The plants actually produced beans, which was also great. But we didn't do a great job of harvesting and eating them. They didn't produce enough at one time to constitute a full meal so they'd end up going bad before we had enough of them to eat them. (It didn't dawn on either of us until LAST WEEK that we should have frozen them as they came up! DUH! That's the whole reason we bought a big-a$s freezer.)

Where we didn't have such great success was in keeping the little yellow, fuzzy bugs away. This was not a new occurrence; these bugs got to our beans in previous years when they were grown in the beds, so the issue wasn't due to the new location. The little buggers take no time in turning otherwise big, healthy green leaves into lace. These just got decimated.

Of all the melon seeds we planted, this looks closets to the Swan Lake. It's not exactly the right shape, but it's the right color.

More melons on their way.

It wouldn't be honest to report only the good things, so here's our dirty laundry. This is what's become of our beds. Nightmare!! Yes there are tomatoes in there...

and yes the peppers (right) and cow peas (left background) are producing quite well, but we let everything else go to weed and it's quite embarrassing. But after a long, long span of ignoring the garden, we got back to it.

Tom cleared out all of bed one and I worked on the left half of bed two. He planted more tomatoes, kale, collards and peppers in bed one. We figured it being the beginning of August, there might still be time to get a late summer crop going.

Tom embarked on an experiment. He took a tomato that had fallen off the vine and had broken open and he planted it 'as is'. He didn't harvest and/or dry the seeds, but just planted the tomatoes directly into the ground. His theory being that we get so many tomato plants that come up all on their own (in the beds and in the compost pile) that they are likely seeding themselves when they fall off the vines. So why not just plant the tomato instead of buying new seeds? After all, we're using heirloom varieties and they seem to want to produce just by falling off the vine. We'll see.

The bell peppers are taking off! That's $6-$9 of peppers right there, my friends.

And the banana peppers produce three for every one I harvest. Not complaining, mind you.

And even though they are buried in the weeds, the tomato plants are producing. We got lots of these small, round ones and lots of cherry-type tomatoes, but not as many large tomatoes as I'd have liked.

End Of Summer Is Upon Us

written by Yvonne

I know, I know! We suck. We're the worst bloggers ever! I mean the whole point is to keep people up to date on what's going on. And if too much time passes, people lose interest, right? If that's you, I completely understand. Our main excuse for not keeping up with the blog these past three months is that not much has been going on in the Veggie Patch other than a lot of embarrassing weeds.

But that time has passed and we're getting the beds going again, thus the blog will begin again.

The post below is from a while ago but I already had the pictures so I thought I'd put some text to them anyway.

July 19, 2013

Lots of herbs growing and our dried stash from last year is getting low. So I chopped off a good bit of the basil, dill and parsley....

and hung them in bundles to dry.

Talk about smells wafting through the kitchen!

The melon vines are really taking off. We keep re-routing them to keep them out of the driveway.

The green beans took over one of the FU bushes.

The other volunteer melon is also taking off.

The cow peas are starting to latch on to the zucchini plant. The zucchini has stopped producing so it's time to rip it out and re-train the cow peas to go up the stakes.

I unwound the cow pea vines and showed them where they need to be.

It's kinda hard to see, but here are the stages of the cow peas. Stage 1: They are green and look pretty much like string beans.

Stage 2: They begin to dry out on the vine.

Stage 3: They completely dry out.

Stage 4: Shell them and put 'em up for eatin' at a later time.

 Man! Peppers are slow to mature.

But, they do mature eventually. Here is the start of a bell pepper.

As you can see the collards started to bolt so this will be the last harvest of them.

A HUGE bug greeted me when I pulled up the collards. A June bug perhaps? It was big and kinda pretty.

And speaking of bugs... WHAT THE ?@#$?! IS THIS!?!?!

Small yellow pear tomatoes doing well. Great to pop into a salad.

(OK, Stephanie. Here's your Where's Honey & Olive.)

We pulled all the rest of the beets out. I roasted most of them...

and made beet chips with a few of the larger ones. Love the beet chips but they don't stay crisp for long.  Anyone have any tips?

Had a recipe for a roasted tomato sauce that I hadn't tried so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Drizzle olive oil over the tomato halves, sprinkle with course salt, put in a 250 oven for 7 hours. Take them out, wazz them up in the food processor with a few cloves of garlic and PRESTO, yummy tomato sauce. I ended up doing this several times with batches of tomatoes and then froze the already prepared sauce.

Harvest After a Vacation

written by Yvonne

The story goes something like this...

We were in St. Augustine from Wed-Sun last week for our nephew Matt's wedding. Brought the dogs, visited with family, ate lots of fried food, drank, played on the beach and at the pool, your standard great beach vacation. The wedding was fantastic too.

As we approach Charlotte on our drive home, I ask Tom, "What do you want to do for dinner? There's really nothing at home to eat." As I say this, I'm thinking 'We have to drive right by our favorite sushi place so I hope he's on the same page with me and wants to pick up sushi.'

He says "It's been raining ever since we left so I be the garden is chock full of veg needing to be harvested. And since very few vegetables have passed our lips since we left home, I know my body could certainly use it."

On the one hand, I was disappointed 'cause I wanted sushi. On the other hand, I hadn't even thought that our back yard would be full of dinner fixin's. And he was right; I needed a good shot of nutrients so a big ol' vegetable salad would be just right.

After unpacking the car and getting the dogs situated, we headed to the garden to scavenge for dinner.  This is what we came up with...

There were actually more cucumbers and tomatoes than this but it started to rain so we left the remainder for another day. I threw together a nice big cucumber, tomato, and pepper salad with a few olives scattered on top. It was exactly what we needed. How great to come home to a yard full of food!  :)

General Update

written by Yvonne

We could have pulled the beets up a while ago, but they're still hanging in there. Good recipe? Beet hummus. Bad recipe?  Beet and avocado smoothie.

Out of all the pepper plants that were started from seed, the only ones that took were the banana peppers.  :(  Big time bummer 'cause we had a lot of varieties and really wanted lots of peppers this year.

I guess some peppers is (are?) better than none (and none is what we had the last two years).

Tomatoes are gettin' big!!!

The small ones are really taking off.

There are little clumps of them all over the place.

Is that a blush of red I see on that tomato?!?!? Won't be long now.

Cucumber flowers are everywhere...

as are the cucumbers. I can't get enough of cucumber, tomato and pepper salads.

Bug.

This is actually a weed of some sort or another.

The kale and chard are kicking in one last time before they bolt.