Open Thread: Thursday Garden Chat

From commentor Marvel:

With cooler temps and promised rain, today was a good day to swap the cloth row covers out and the poly covers in. Done and done.

It rained last night, with more scheduled for next week. Time to pack away the garden’s summer clothes (fabric row covers) and break out the winter wear (6-mil poly). The cabbage & carrots (and a volunteer potato) enjoy this slim moment of freedom between covers; snug/bug, u-bet.

The young pak choi, Japanese turnips and kohlrabi have never seen the yard outside their row covers—they took their uncovering well; With luck, they’ll grow up big & strong and meet their neighbors in some savory soups and stews. We’ll sing their praises.

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Open Thread: Sunday Morning Garden Chat

From commentor Carbon Dated:

This bounty is from the best garden of all: Nature untended. I’ve been collecting mushroom for eats (mycophagy) since the Carter Administration. The summer/fall of 2011 is by far the best mushroom year I’ve ever known in the Northeast. So much frigging rain. These are all from Bridgehampton, Long Island, plucked last week.

Puffballs. I’ve never seen so many in one spot (in a meadow, around elm trees). Not my favorite, gustatorily speaking. Kind of bland, like tofu, but they do absorb whatever flavor you fry them in (garlic and butter, in my case).

Two things about Hurricane Irene: she brought lots of rain and knocked down trees. Mushrooms love it when that happens. This superb specimen is a chicken mushroom (Sulphurous polyporus), so-called not because it tastes like chicken but because of the texture—truly like a succulent piece of chicken breast when cooked.

Another one growing high up on a tree. I couldn’t reach it!

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Open Thread: Thursday Garden Chat

From commentor Marvel:

The summer garden’s finally starting to wind down out back: picked the last of our corn & cauliflower this AM and have only about a quarter as many tomatoes out there as we started with. No rest for the wicked, though: the apples will want picking, cooking and canning by the end of the week. THEN we’ll rest. We must!

These are just three pix I took the other morning (9/27).

Picked: Some days I pretty much know how my morning will go….

Prepped: It’s an easy-going way to spend a quiet morning. Jack’s out back digging up the spent corn plants—they were a mighty lovely bunch. We’ll grow corn again next year, u-bet.

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Open Thread: Sunday Garden Chat

Some more photos from commentor Carbon Dated, in Manhattan’s East Village:

Honeysuckle. This gorgeous bloom is one of many flowering plants that find their way into the garden without human intervention.

The alligator’s name is Nixon. (‘I am not a croc.’) The plants are the young poppies; this pic taken in late May…

... the other, milky one taken in early September. Yes I did.

Still suffering under a dank grey pollen-laden mizzle here north of Boston, which means I haven’t had the heart to go out and deal with the last of the tomato vines yet. If I pull down the dead & blighted vines, I can probably eke another week or two out of the full-sized plants, and some years the last of the cherry tomatoes have produced into early November. Probably too late to salvage the basil plants, but I need to remember to check on the impulse-purchase oregano I tucked in with them…

What’s it look like in your gardens, on this Sunday morning?

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Open Thread: Thursday Garden Chat

From commentor Scott:

You had asked for some pix of our gardening efforts. Here’s a couple of the garden along the rail of the upper deck; or, as a friend refers to it, “nice hedge.” It does function as a sight barrier affording us some privacy on the deck.

A mix of flowers, ornamentals, vegetable and herbs taken in mid July. They’re fading a bit now in Western NY but still producing.

The tomatoes are 3 heirlooms and 3 hybrids. Herbs include rampant basil, watercress,thyme, oregano lemon verbena and multifarious mints. Getting to be time to pick and preserve them.

A pic of the Hibiscus on our lower deck, which is not so populated with plants.

Blog find of the moment: Inside Urban Green:Modern methods of growing food, foliage or flowers for the millions of us who are not green thumbs. Ran across it while looking for the Slate article on EarthTainers I linked to back last Spring. Who’s doing indoor gardening this winter? If we’re going to have photos during the dark months, either you Southern / Southwestern / Californian correspondents need to step it up, or those of you with indoor plants will have to share…

Here north of Boston, we are paying for our glorious summer with a bumper crop of ragweed and other allergy-inciting pollens. The itchy eyeballs are pretty bad, and the swollen sinuses are no fun, but it’s the perpetual brain-fog that’s wearing on my nerves.

How are conditions in your gardens, right now?

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Open Thread: Sunday Garden Chat

From commentor Munira:

Here are some garden pictures from southern Quebec. It was a fantastic garden year here – plenty of heat and plenty of rain. I have a huge vegetable/fruit garden and everything did either spectacularly well or pretty well except the cauliflower, which until today had not produced one single head. This morning I finally saw two little ones. I’ve been busy harvesting and taking pictures of all the beautiful veggies. Here are a couple of my favorites (from an esthetic point of view) – butternut, acorn and yellow straight necked squash…

... and scarlet runner beans (shelled)...

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Open Thread: Thursday Garden Chat

From commentor Feebog:

Attached is a pic of my harvest from the middle of last week. Grape tomatos, early girls (still going) and romas. Plus a yellow zuc and a small bell pepper. I’m in SoCal and the weather, except for last week, has been surprisingly mild.

From commentor RossinDetroit:

This mantis took over a large blooming sedum plant on our porch for a couple of weeks. He was right next to the front door so we called him Buggsy the Doorman. I left the porch light on at night to attract more food insects for him. He grew from a nymph to an adult, then wandered off on his mantis business. We get a lot of mantises in the summer and I always try to protect them because we like big cool weird insects.

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Open Thread: Sunday Garden Chat

From commentor Shell:

My tomato thief. Yes, poor old Clemmie. Funny, the older she got, the more fond she became of them. But would always try to hide her munching. In this photo I’d caught her in the act but she’s walking away like ‘Who me? No, no, nothing to see here.” While the half-eaten green tomato lies on the ground in the upper right corner.

From commentor Opie Jeanne:

The bowl contains our first tomatoes, a handful of the many tomatillos we got this week (they’re like gold in the Seattle area) and cucumbers and some tiny sweet peppers.

The clematis is growing on a shed at the back of the property and is just about done. I took the photo last month.

The rabbit lives in the garden and doesn’t bother anything other that the leaves on the liatris plants. She seems to be content with eating the red clover around the edges of the property and in the back driveway.

It’s finally cool enough here (mid-60s) that I should be able to browbeat the Spousal Unit into helping with some pruning chores I’m not quite tall and/or strong enough to handle on my own.

What’s on everyone’s agenda for an early-Fall Sunday?

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Open Thread: Thursday Garden Chat

From commentor Carbon Dated:

My place in the East Village, far east, near Avenue D. Some of the attached pics were taken early in the summer. We live in an old house (pre-1850); two cats, who lord it over the backyard garden. Taken from the roof (4 story bldg) in late spring. That is C-Word, front and center.

A garlic bloom. We don’t eat anything out of the ground here, as we are assuming that, though the soil is very rich, it’s probably larded with mercury, lead, and all manner of contaminants. This part of Manhattan is all land-fill.

We do have basil, tomatoes, mint, hot peppers, and parsely growing in pots (in supposedly clean potting soil).

Nasturtium. The leaves are quite tasty in a salad (this too, in a pot).

Tiger lilies and daisies. Both are “wild,” as in not planted by human hands.

Many thanks to Carbon Dated, who was not only first past the email post, but sent so many pics I’m saving the rest for another post. Thanks also to RossinDetroit, Jeanne, Feebog, Munira, Marvel—I’m drooling over your gardens & harvest!—and Shell, who sent a shot of her own little tomato thief.

Anybody have any advice about blueberry plants? Our yard should be the perfect environment for them, but the little wild plants that had been providing rabbit food along the western chainlink fence didn’t survive its replacement, and I haven’t had much luck with the dozen or so commercial bushes I’ve put in over the last three years. I’m wondering if transplanting them now instead of spring might make a difference…

How are everyone’s harvests coming along? Who’s putting in a fall/winter garden?

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Open Thread: Sunday Garden Chat

Since I’m clean out of garden photos from commentors, you’re stuck with my pathetic freeholding. This is Zevon, tomato connoisseur, inspecting “his” vines—the planters are on the other side of the fence, but he’s entitled to pick all the Sun Gold and Sweet Treat cherry tomatoes that cascade over it, a duty he addresses with great seriousness.

The spindly little sapling dividing the shot is a mail-order tri-grafted Asian pear, planted last summer. Viewpoint is a 45-degree angle from the cellphone shots I posted a few weeks back… planters along both sides of a strip of asphalt driveway, a divider strip planted with lilacs, an asphalt sidewalk and into the city street. There are also blueberry bushes on Zevon’s side of the fence, but they didn’t flower or fruit this year, alas. Urban homesteading!

For fairness, the photos below are black-and-white Gloria, failing to understand the attraction of nicotine-scented plant matter (she’ll eat ripe tomatoes, but she doesn’t appreciate Zevon’s dedication to their cultivation). And finally Sydney, puppy-mill-born pet-store rescue, who would rather invite himself up onto the table to investigate the Spousal Unit’s breakfast than play in the grass.

So, to repeat the standing plea invitation: Email your garden pictures to AnneLaurie @ verizon. net (or click on my name near the top of the right-hand column). There must be some harvest shots worth sharing!

Meanwhile, what’s going on in your gardens, right now?

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Open Thread: Sunday Garden Chat

From commentor Noreen in Buffalo:

I have enjoyed the garden photos you have been sharing in the garden blog so here are a couple of mine. The garden produce is starting to be harvested. This usually means I walk around & come back with a handful of mixed veg. Since my garden expresses itself in footage rather than acreage, the photos are correspondingly “micro” – taken by my daughter.

I’m making notes on tomato varieties to add to my “must have” list. Best discoveries for me this year are Stupice (extra-early), Kellogg’s Breakfast (huge & delicious), and the Golden Sweet Plum cherry that seems to have replaced the old Yellow Pear. Off my list: the Heirloom Great White (an impulse purchase from the local nursery)—it’s dramatic to look at but doesn’t have much flavor raw or roasted.

How are everyone’s summer gardens winding down / fall gardens taking shape?

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Open Thread: Thursday Garden Chat

From commentor TheOtherWA:

This spring was so cold and wet in the northwest, I just couldn’t get into gardening mode. Never planted the usual tomatoes and herbs. The raspberries did pretty well, they like cool weather (& were eaten before any photos were taken), but the grapevine is pathetic.

The photo is a bunch of black table grapes in mid August. I should be munching a few of these by now, waiting for most of them to get nice and dark. It’s weird, we basically didn’t have a summer this year. Most of the country was sweltering in extreme heat and drought, we’ve hardly had enough. Only people with greenhouses are getting good produce.

I’m not whining about our weather, really. Just explaining the situation.

There’s a feel of fall in the air here, and it’s not just the torn leaves & downed branches. The immediate microclime was very, very lucky with Hurricane Irene… and when I see video from places like Vermont, upstate NY, northern New Jersey or the Carolinas, I’m hardly gonna complain about my tomato towers leaning askew. (We didn’t even lose power, despite the half-splintered oak branch hanging over the powerline that Northern Grid has been refusing to remove for the past 18 months.)

What’s it like in your gardens, this week? Anybody have hurricane / wildfire / drought / plague-of-locusts stories to share?

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Open Thread: Thursday Garden Chat

From commentor Pukebot (last Friday):

I’ve been meaning to you send some shots of my western mass garden and so when I saw your post that you were fresh out of shots I decided that it was about time. Everything you see was forest 15 years ago. I’ve been picking away at it ever since making new beds and filling in with easy things like day lillies. My garlic is drying in the basement, artichokes are growing and it’s the time of year when you can’t eat enough to keep up with the garden. I have a quick job to do today and then I get to spend the rest of the weekend in the garden, weeding, supporting phlox, and picking veggies. Tell me if the world blows up.

Of course this weekend all the Northeastern gardeners are gonna be frantically tying up what can’t be taken down, as our Southeastern neighbors hunker down and wait to see how bad the damage from Hurricane Irene will be. The latest local predictions are that Pukebot’s garden will get the flooding rains, while my area north of Boston gets “tropical storm strength” winds. So if there’s no Sunday Garden Chat, it may be that we’ve lost power due to a fallen branch. Here’s hoping nobody has anything worse to report than some tomato trellises turned into tomato tunnels…

How are things looking in your gardens, whether or not you’re in the storm track?

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Open Thread: Sunday Garden Chat

From commentor Mazareth:

My garden is doing pretty well in spite of the sometime neglect. The 4 o’clock blossom is simply cool IMO. I have several growing by the chimney. It creates a micro zone 5 in my yard which allows the 4 o’clocks to over winter. They’re an annual in Central Wisconsin.

I’ve been picking beans about every other day. I generally get about a half to three quarters of a pound, which is just about right for single person. This year I have the various bean varieties, tomatoes and cukes. I’m lucky in that we have a 6 day a week Farmer’s market. I also have a share in a local CSA. My garden is more about needing to get my hands in dirt, than need. The beans photo shows a pile of Kentucky Wonder pods with Yard Longs in the foreground. I put a Kentucky Wonder in with the Yard Longs to show their respective lengths.

The bean trellis photo is an object lesson in poor design. It’s about 7-8’ in height, but as you can see, the vines have overtopped the trellis. From left to right I’m growing Scarlet Runner, Yard Long and Kentucky Wonder. The Scarlet Runner is actually a very flat bean, somewhat like a romano. This year I’m just growing them for seed. The hummingbirds love them. Yard Long is as Asian variety that I’m growing from saved seed. FWIW, I have to harvest the Yard Longs at 18” to 20” or they’re no good to eat. Kentucky Wonder is a great tasting, productive green bean. The pods can easily growth to 7-8” and still be tender.

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Open Thread: Thursday(ish) Garden Chat

(Yeah, but if I’d posted this any sooner, I was afraid of being found strangled with an ipod cord.)

Since nobody sent any pics this week, you’re stuck with mine. Roughly top-to-bottom, left-to-right: Persimmon, Stupice, Great White, Ramapo, Black Plum, Black Prince, Kellogg’s Breakfast, Tomatoberry, Japanese Black Trifele, Sara Black, Golden Sweet Plum, Rose, Sweet Treat, Black Pearl, Carbon, and Juliet.

What’s going on in your garden, this week?

Or just in your neighborhood?

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