This week has been one thing after another, on a personal level and out in the wider world, and I’ve been trying to get a post together for you guys since Monday.
It’s Friday morning.
Oops.
So let’s talk about gardens. It’s not really the venue for it, but oh, well. Bite me. Actually, don’t; I bite back. Bite a tomato or something.
If you’re a regular around here, you know that I moved, back in June, and went from a balcony garden to a house with a backyard. This change of scene made less difference to my garden than you might expect, since the house is a rental and we’re not sure how long we’re going to be here. No sense in asking the landlords to let us put in raised beds if we’re only here for a year.
But I have more space for pots, and planted accordingly. I had started tomatoes and peppers before the move, and they’ve done… okay. Moving is stressful for everybody, including plants. They bounced back, but didn’t give as many fruits as I was hoping for.
On the other hand, I sowed cucumber seeds the day after I got here, with my dad’s help, and they did great. Two pots worth, and they’ve been giving me about one fruit a day between them for the past few weeks. I like pickling cucumbers better than slicers, and I can never find pickling cucumbers in the store, so it’s worth it to me to grow them even in weird conditions.
But fall is approaching, and it’s time to think about cool-weather crops. I sowed golden beets for the first time- I don’t particularly like the taste of beets, but I’ve been told that the yellow variety has a milder flavor- and they’re hanging on, but it’s been two weeks and they haven’t gotten the first true leaves yet. Is that normal? If you’ve grown these before, sound off in the comments.
The carrots and spinach are progressing as they should. I tried some older romaine lettuce seeds and I think they’re germinating, but slowly. The scallions were a bust, again. I wonder if I got a dud of a seed packet. Or maybe I’m just bad at growing alliums; everybody tells me they’re super easy to grow, but my forays into onion and scallion farming have ended badly so far.
I also have a line on acquiring some raspberry plants. I’ve never grown raspberries in pots before; we’ll see how that goes.
The year’s garden has been colorful, considering how small it is. Orange and yellow calendula, white alyssum, and purple mint flowers. The insects are happy, and it makes me smile when I go outside and see the fruits- and flowers!- of my labor.
How does your garden grow?
Mad Genius Club 
6 responses to “Gardening While the World Goes Crazy”
I have trouble with onion-like crops as well. My garlic perished this season. In the past I’ve tried onions, and while they survived, they were tiny and sad.
Cucumbers, chiles, tomatoes, snow peas, and potatoes have gone well for me. The cucumbers especially. Bell peppers were so-so. The corn was assaulted by ants and didn’t survive. The grapes were fantastic, but the birds swooped in and consumed them. Citrus went well and most survived the woodpeckers.
I’m not in an area these days that has much of a growing season, but I still try. I have cluster tomatoes, and potatoes going this year. As I mentioned, the garlic succumbed. I’ve had a handful of tomatoes ripen so far, and they were delicious, but too few. The jury is still out on the potatoes. The top plants are doing great, but I don’t know what’s going on underground. It will be a surprise, hopefully a good one.
It’s likely too warm still for the beets, try succession-sowing another round of them. They are frost tolerant, and the tops are edible even if the roots don’t have time to develop.
Allium seeds have to be very fresh, like less than six months, so even a packet from this spring will have poor if any germination.
Try some violas (johnny jump ups) as they like the cool and will overwinter for more blooms in the spring (plus, edible flowers are a fun salad garnish).
I have a favorite beets recipe you might like… This is a Swiss treatment, I believe.
Beet or Potato Rosti w/Rosemary _New York Times by Mark Bittman_
Prepare:
1) Peel 3 large or 4-6 medium beets and grate them.
2) Toss in bowl with 2 tsp rosemary & some salt
3) Add ¼ c flour, toss, add another ¼ c flour, toss.
Bake:
1) In a 12” iron pan brown 2 tbl butter. Med to med-high heat.
2) Make a plate-sized pancake (1 or more). It should gently sizzle.
3) Cook until crisp, shaking the pan to keep it from sticking. 8-10 minutes.
4) Slide onto a plate, invert with a second plate, add more butter if necessary
5) Cook 10 more mins on the other side until crisp
6) Cut into wedges to serve
Note:
Best with golden beets. Watch out for red beet stains.
Good with potatoes, too. Must use waxy variety, boil in jackets until tender, drain and leave overnight, then continue the recipe.
(No flour needed if potatoes.)
Brown 20 mins on a side.
Optional: top with Parmesan and gruyere.
Sounds yummy!
I love beets. IMO the best way to cook them is to bake them. Scrub, cut off the tops (edible) and straggly bit of the root, rub with a little oil and bake them at 350 until you can stick a fork into them easily.
the skins slip off easily, they tend to not bleed onto the cutting board so much. They can be sliced and eaten as is, diced and added to soups, shredded (carefully, and a little firmer is best) for salads etc.
I find putting a tray with a wet paper towel on it, sowing the “questionable” seeds on it and then covering the tray with plastic wrap makes a great germinator. Like all tray-germinated seeds, you have to be careful moving them to soil. I haven’t tried the paper towel cut into narrow strips trick, and planting those directly into the soil yet (no handling damage to the seeds that way!)
I get a lot of old seeds by buying them out at the end of the season, so I’m kind of used to lower germination rates. I do save seeds from the best fruits and plants of the garden for propagating next year, so there’s a bit of human selection gradually improving the yields, unless I have a year like this one for a crop.
Tomatoes did great this year, and only hand to pick off hawkmoth caterpillars once. Cucumbers were so-so. Every single squash plant shriveled up and died (don’t know if it was the heat wave, or if I over watered trying to keep them from scorching.) Red cabbage did well, until the damn tree rats found them and started stripping the leaves off; so the BB gun is by the door, and I’m accumulating meat for baked squirrel. (Raising rabbits and chickens for meat would be more efficient, but when nature gives you lemons, lemonade.)
Blueberry harvest was fast, and I got a couple of quarts. These are all transplanted wild blueberries, about a dozen bushes, so fruit is about half the size of the cultivated fruits you see in the stores. I don’t net the bushes, so I have to pick fast to beat the birds.
Still no American Chestnuts this year. All 9 trees are past the 1 inch at chest height stage (15 years old), and so far, no signs of blight. Keep fingers crossed I got lucky on resistance. (These are the pure American Chestnuts from the American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation, not hybrids.)
Decent mast year for acorns and the turkey’s and squirrels are both going to town on them. Haven’t seen any bear, so maybe they’re getting enough food deeper in the woods.