The State of the Garden – October

As frequent readers of the blog already know, before the heat of the summer was upon us, Chris and I put time and effort into working on our backyard, in the form of building two raised planter beds in which to get our garden on.  The smaller planter was mainly used for herbs, although we also have a jalapeno plant in there that is seriously loving life right now.

Here’s the smaller garden right after we initially planted, back in March:


And here’s the garden right now:


That’s the jalapeno plant on the left, the basil on the right, and if you look closely,
you can see a tiny sage plant growing underneath the basil toward the center.

The odd little mesquite tree in the back corner of the yard shades the jalapeno plant nicely, and the lime tree handles the other side (closer to the basil), so things in here have stayed pretty happy for the most part.  The jalapenos, basil, and sage have been growing nicely throughout the summer heat, although the jalapenos got a bit small for a while; they’ve all plumped up nicely again, though, since the temps are consistently under 100 (FINALLY). 


The basil has been going crazy all summer, and the bees and sparrows are loving it, too; the bees like to pollinate the flowers, and the sparrows nibble on the stalks that grow off between the leaves.  I’ve been trying to remember to continue to make pesto and freeze it, so we can use it in the winter when the plant generally goes dormant.  When we started in March, we had a transplant cilantro plant, but it died off once the temps hit 110 or so; we also had transplanted thyme, but it died off, too.  We also started a few other herbs from seed, but they never really took – oregano and chives, mainly.

On to the bigger bed!  In March, we initially started out with all seed in the bigger planter – from left, tomatillo, eggplant, several different types of squash and cucumber, watermelon, and pumpkin:



Also, Kaylee.

We had a fair amount of squash and cucumber in June-July, even making homemade pickles a few times; we also had a few watermelons and pumpkins starting to plump up.  However, in early July, we had a week or so where water didn’t flow properly due to a faulty sprinkler valve, and it killed off most of the produce in the bigger garden bed; that plus the ridiculous temps just decimated the majority of the garden.  The tomatillo lived through the drought, and it grew to a huge size, flowering and looking lovely; however, apparently, one tomatillo plant by itself won’t actually fruit, so despite our efforts to re-seed and find a transplant buddy for it, it eventually died off without producing anything edible.

Here’s the bigger garden bed today:



Those massive leaves on the left are eggplant and the vines on the right are watermelon.  The eggplant seeds we planted in March sprouted just a tiny bit until August, at which point they started to grow exponentially and take over the left half of the bed. 


We’ve been eating the eggplant, one-two a week for the past month or so, and we have another 7-8 that will be ready to go within another few weeks.  It’s eggplant-a-palooza at the Olsen house.  We’ve had eggplant parmesan, eggplant with spaghetti and roma tomatoes, eggplant with pine nuts and romano cheese, baba ganoush, and grilled eggplant with peppers, all within the past few weeks.  Honestly, it’s getting a little excessive.


Eggplant parmesan, eggplant stir fry…

We planted a new crop of watermelon seeds in mid-July (after we solved the valve issue), and the vines from those seeds have taken over the right side.  They’ve even consumed an old patio chair (no longer fit for its original use) and pulled it into their web of vines for extra support.


Look at that melon!


All your chair belong to us.

I tried cutting open one of the watermelon about two weeks ago, and the results were disappointing.  It felt like the right size, shape, and heft, but the flesh was mainly white inside.  The small strip of red inside the fruit was sweet, though, so that was promising. 

I’m waiting for the eggplant and watermelon to pull back a bit, but once they do, I’m planning to plant broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussel sprouts from seed; I also have some cilantro seeds ready to go in the smaller planter once the basil backs off a bit more. 

Later!

Amy

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