SURPRISE—NOT A PUMPKIN AFTER ALL; GOODBYE, TOMATOES

19 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by backyardnotes in Fall, Fun in the Garden, Tomatoes, Vegetable garden

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fall, goodbye tomatoes, green tomato salsa, lettuce seeds, pumpkins, squash vine, surprise squash, vegetable garden, volunteer plants

Sure doesn’t look like a pumpkin!

THIS VOLUNTEER SQUASH VINE has turned into a monster in my small vegetable garden and it turns out not to be a pumpkin plant, but more like delicata squash. No matter, as it will soon be a mere remembrance of a generous experiment in curiousity.

Red oakleaf lettuce seeds, like little fairies waiting to take flight. Probably 6-8 generations away from original planting.

Finally seems like fall here with the arrival of some intermittent rain this past week and the dial back of the setting sun, a little earlier each day.

Berkley Tie Dye

With regret, it was time to pull up the tomato and pepper plants on Sunday. Good news: put up seven pints of green tomato-chile salsa on Monday. Ate fried green tomatoes one night and last night a salad of thinly sliced a green tomato, thinly sliced not-quite-ripe pear and some greens made a nice salad. This year I bought tomato and pepper plants due to our trip and found some that I had never heard of: Berkley Tie Dye, funny shaped fruits that ripen to reddish green outside and inside; Porkchop, a large yellow beefsteak with green streaking at the shoulder and Nebraska Wedding, another beefsteak type that was yellow, with a blush of orange. All tasty so I saved seed from each for next year. Now only a few ripe and ripening ones in a bowl on the counter (sigh). It will be six months or more until we taste a decent tomato.

A ripened Berkley Tie Dye tomato, streaked with green.

UPDATE: After the initial post, I found a ripe Berkley Tie Dye in a bowl with some cherry tomatoes and an Aunt Ruby’s green, so had to share.

Time spent this weekend will be planting garlic and fava beans if the weather cooperates.

APRIL PHOTO A DAY: THE LAZY GARDENER’S WAY

11 Monday Apr 2011

Posted by backyardnotes in Vegetable garden

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lazy gardening, volunteer plants

I AM OFTEN TIMES A LAZY GARDENER. NO APOLOGIES.

This nice full head of radicchio ‘Castelfranco’ was started by letting one head go to seed last year, then shaking the seed around the vegetable garden. When the seeds decide to germinate in the fall, I poke the little starts in wherever there is room to winter over. This one is planted among garlic. I like to let lettuces go to seed; the flowers attract small birds and insects, and the seeds, when dispersed about the garden come up on their own schedule and when they are large enough, I transplant. Red tinged oak leaf lettuce sprouts too at the end of summer, grows slowly through the winter and is ready to harvest about now. I also let a few leeks self sow each year and about this time of year it is time to move them to their own bed. Their big, round airy heads are quite lovely when left to bloom but not as showy as some of the large ornamental alliums. So, be a little bit lazy!