Vegetable Gardening

[smilingcat]

was at a local "organic" grocery store of sort. Walked by a refridgerated section and on the shelves were all these sprouts.

a light bulb goes off in my head !!!

Hey, those sprouts... They've sprouted duh!!! and they were cheaper than seed packets and to boot, they've all sprouted duh!! ...

So bought a pkg of sugar snap peas for less than a buck. scattered them peas all over one cleared area and scattered some compost over the top and some uncomposted dead stalks and leaves from my veggie plants for cover.

voila.. Most of them have already shot through the compost cover and I can see all the green shoots poking their head through the ground cover. very very cool!!! If I'm lucky, I'll have a whole lot of sugar snap peas.

Sugar snap pea I think is a nitrogen fixer so it should help the soil too.

oh gotta can more tomatoes... make jalapeno pepper jellies... dry some serrano chilli and grind tem up substitute for cayenne pepper...

soetimes life is good.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

It will be frosts in 4 weeks here.

But I've kept up with sprouting alfalfa in jars in my kitchen...every 5 days or so I start another jar going, and I have a continuous supply of nice fresh sprouts for salads and sandwiches... Each large jar only needs two tablespoons of seed, costing me maybe 25 cents?
This will be great this winter when the snow is flying... jars full of bright green, sparkling on the windowsill....

[OakLeaf]

Picked the rest of the sweet corn yesterday. I really didn't intend to put any of it by, but wound up planting more than we could eat, so I froze 3-1/2 pints.

I'll do another batch of tomato sauce some time this week. My plants hung in there, barely, from the bacterial speck, but they didn't produce nearly as much as they would've if I'd kept them healthy, and the main crop's just about done. I've still got volunteer tomatoes coming on though.

I'm sure glad that chest freezer fit in the back of my Prius.

[OakLeaf]

Nine six-ounce portions of pesto, plus what we ate tonight. I burned out my basil receptors picking, washing and prepping the leaves, and couldn't even taste what I ate tonight. Oh well.

Even in Florida, the reminder of lush summer will be so welcome come February. There's just nothing like pesto to bring summer into your home!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Here's my blog update on how my garden is coming along:
http://strumelia.blogspot.com/2009/0...f-lettuce.html

[tulip]

veggie-wise, I only got two cherry tomatoes from my garden this weekend, but there's alot of basil still to be picked and a two green tomatoes on the big vine.

But the big news is that I harvested 8 wheelbarrowsful (yes, 8!) of finished, sifted compost from my compost pile today! It was alot of work, but a good workout and well worth the effort.

I put two wheelbarrowsful (from now on referred to as WBF because typing that out is a pain) in my winter collards raised bed, two WBF as mulch in two new flowerbeds on either side of the door to my cottage (I have a small cottage in my backyard that will be my office this time next year, but now it's just used as storage). I planted hollyhocks, shasta daisies, and coreopsis that I have been growing from seed all summer. I have alot more of them too! And the last 4 WBF are in the "finished compost" section of my three-part compost system that I made of shipping pallets. I'll be able to use that as needed.

I have four huge oak trees, so most of that compost comes from last years leaves. Just in time for this year's leaves, which will begin to fall in a few weeks. This year I'm renting a leaf shredder!

[Trek420]

Ok all you farmers. It's hardly a vegetable garden but .... I've found that chard, kale, leafy greens will survive and thrive in planters in my dark, sunless patio.

[OakLeaf]

Yum, kale!

The leaves on my red Russian kale keep getting bigger, but they're still tender and delicious. The one plant that overwintered from last year, and didn't bolt, the leaves are nearly two feet across, and still so tender.

Hope it does as well in containers as it's doing in my garden!

[Trek420]

I have very little sun. You see the patio door in the background? On the other side is another group of condos, neighbors walls to either side. So there's sun from maybe oh 10am-2pm

Remembering that greens could bolt with a lot of sun I picked up some starts at a local farm market and whadya know. They are surviving if not thriving.

[spokewench]

Here's my harvest from last night. Eggplant, bell peppers, cucumbers, zucchini,tomatoes. Can't wait for that Eggplant parmesan this weekend! It is getting cold at night; have to really watch the garden from now on. I will try to get all the green tomatoes off before it freezes!

[deeaimond]

I don't have any edible vegetables but I have a monster tomato plant that just started growing out of one of my pots. It has now completely overtaken the original pot owner, this Jasmine plant...

I mixed some worm castings into the soil... I think that is the big factor, coz before i did that it was growing pretty slowly. It grew all the bits above the metal stick's hook in just one week.

Also featured are some ginger and tumeric plants i have just potted about 2 weeks ago. seem to have taken root pretty well. turmeric is top right of the aloe and sole ginger shoot is bottom right.

anyone got ideas whats the next step to this tomato plant. does anyone have an idea if it will bear fruit? i mean, do i need to have two plants for pollination or something?

[OakLeaf]

Tomatoes are self-pollinating. You're good with one plant. Might want to stake or cage it though, because it'll start falling over when the fruit gets heavy.

I had no idea you could grow ginger in pots! How cool is that.

I made five more pints of tomato sauce last night. How is it that all those tomatoes cook down into such a tiny amount of sauce??

[NoNo]

I spent all day yesterday cooking down 25lbs of tomatoes into 8 quarts of sauce. Almost doesn't seem worth the effort, but I'm sure I'll feel otherwise some winter night when I'm exhausted and don't want to cook. Also picked a boatload of massive stringbeans from the garden. The further they're getting from the ground, the larger they're getting. Broccoli is making a tiny comeback, eggplant is just about done, tomatoes are definitely done, still a few zucchini here and there, and the peppers are going strong. Oh, and the blueberry bush is still flourishing

[spokewench]

This week may be the end of the season for us. Looks like it will likely freeze on Wednesday night.

Only 37 tonight and tomorrow.

[GLC1968]

We have been totally neglecting our garden for the past 3 weeks. We've been watering...but that's about it. So yesterday we had a couple of extra hands, so we had a good harvest... This was what we ended up with (leaving a ton of blackberries & grapes behind!):





The massive zucchini's you see are actually going to be goat treats. The acorn squash was our bonus compost plant - so we have no idea if it'll taste ok but we plan to try it tonight!