Look what Billy gave me for my birthday! His name is Wallace.
The fall and winter plants I started in mid-July are now healthy teenagers and have been transplanted into their winter beds, which had previously been the spring beds of the peas and red potatoes. The first bed has Dwarf Siberian kale, Nero di Toscana kale, collards, and Apollo broccoli. The second bed has cabbage (I forget which variety and don’t have my gardening notes at hand) and purple sprouting broccoli, which is a raab and will be ready to eat in early spring when we’re damn sick of kale and collards and cabbage.
The winter stuff I started a couple weeks ago (spinach, beets, a few more cabbages and broccoli) will go in where the storage potatoes are now when they’re ready to be dug. Yes, I know beets aren’t supposed to like to be transplanted. We’ll just see how it works out. Their space is full of potatoes at the moment. If we get no beets of our own this winter, that’s fine. They’re cheap enough at the farmer’s market when we simply must have some.
My guys, harvesting the red potatoes:
In pots (a few seen in the main garden pic, but most of them unpictured on the patio because they want partial shade) I’ve started mixed mustards, miner’s lettuce, braising greens, and carrots. All the pots will nestle under cloche once the weather turns. Also cloched will be our two 4X4 raised beds: the one you can see in that photo with spinach (Winter Giant) and one (not pictured) with lettuces (Arctic Tundra mix from Territorial Seeds, and some winter romaine whose name now escapes me. It’s also from Territorial, as are all our seeds). Last year our cloche system failed due to crappy engineering on my part, so all we had in the garden after a week and a half of deep freeze in December (or was it January?) was a ton of kale and Brussels sprouts. I’m optimistic that we’ve got it figured out this year and will eat quite well from the garden all winter. If it goes to plan (heh), we won’t need to buy any produce but fruit (storage apples).
We’re not buying any produce but fruit right now, but that’s easy in summer. We’ve got kale, green beans, artichokes (though I think the four I harvested on Monday were probably the last for the season), those red potatoes, and three varieties of cucumbers right now. And finally, FINALLY, the tomatoes are ripening. We’ve got this gorgeous stand of tomato plants this year–the best yet, because I planted them in the ground instead of pots this year–and they’ve set an embarrassment of fruit, but it’s only now, at the ass end of August, that we’re eating any. Ah, Portland. June was so damn cold that it’s a miracle we’re even getting the cucumbers we are. And the winter squash all got stunted, so it looks like we’re only going to get one or two squash from each plant. I didn’t even bother with eggplant this year. This just isn’t the right climate to count on the heat lovers growing worth a damn. At least not in my yard’s particular climate.
The jungle that is our beans, tomatoes, cukes, and squash. I love to let the summer plants get all unruly like this.
Mystery squash. It was an unlabeled start leftover from the kid's school's garden.
Still, I think I like the spring garden the best. All my favorites are around then: asparagus, spinach, lettuce, peas, broccoli raab…
Gah. I’m making myself hungry. Tonight we will be eating kale and potatoes and garlic* from the garden, along with the farm-raised pork chops that Heather passed me over the back fence the other day to welcome me to the omnivorous fold. Pork chops were the last meat I ate in ’88. I can’t wait to try them again.
Yes, it’s going well. My body is liking the meat very, very much. That’s a post in itself, though, so I’ll save it for another day soon.
*The garlic! I forgot to show you the garlic! We harvested it in mid-July and cured it in the basement, and here it is! Isn’t it gorgeous?!
Fifty-one heads. That should last us about nine or ten months, maybe a little less. Then we’ve also got a bunch of shallots, now curing in the basement, and I’ll show you those when we’re done. We’re going to plant a bit more of each this fall. I wish I’d gotten it together to do storage onions from seed, but it’s too late now (I think?) and onion sets are so pricey. Next year.
De-lurking again – beautiful garden! Squash looks like a Delicata if my sleep deprived memory serves.
Yep, Mystery Squash=Zeppelin Delicata. Sooooo delicious!
I need to get some garlic in the ground! Too bad winter is so harsh where I live that I can’t garden in the snow.
I’m with you on the favourites from the Spring garden. Please do write about venturing into meat again. I grew up a die hard carnivore, but at times will go weeks on an almost vegetarian diet.
Another vote for delicata squash. Substitutes very well for butternut and pumpkin in recipes, especially pie. Mmm, pie.
Beautiful garlic indeed!
I wish I was as organized as you. My garden has become this overcrowded jumble. Peas and salad greens get over-planted in the spring and the summer vegetables get wedged in and sunflowers keep volunteering, leaving almost no room for fall veggies. Sylvetta wild arugula seems to be a perennial shrub. There should be intervention services for people like me, like there are for hoarders.
I’ve actually had good luck with eggplants (and peppers) for the last two years. Planting them in 5-gallon black containers so they can soak up the heat helps a lot, as does choosing Asian and baby varieties instead of the large Italians. Of course it means watering every other day, but they are both tasty and attractive plants.
Delicatas are sweet and delicious. Unlike other winter squash, the skin can be eaten. It doesn’t keep quite as well as pumpkin and butternut.
Wow. That’s all there is to say.
I agree with the above, your mystery squash looks like the Delicata we got from our CSA 2 weeks ago.
Is it wrong that I want to take a nap under your summer-garden jungle? Beautiful beautiful. Also, bountiful.
About the meat thing -don’t forget about fish, it is sooo good for you! There are various websites that list the most eco-friendly, pollution free fish.
….another vote for Delicata…….the very best squash in my opinion.
I am overwhelmed with garden envy. I suddenly understand the lust, the uncontrollable and unstoppable desire for someone else’s vegetables that inspired “Rapunzel.” And I love that you have a garden gnome. 🙂 Me, too!
We’ve had the best summer for gardening here on the East Coast and what did I plant?
Zippo.
Looking at your bounty and kicking myself in the pants is very tricky to do.
Yep, lots of people beat me to it — the squash is a Delicata, one of which I grew for the first time last year and it was the most delicious squash I had ever eaten.
I wasn’t a vegetarian as long as you were — only 10 years/6 as a vegan eater (without the dogma crap). And I could hear a lot of me in your last post. It was supposed to make me healthier, and that’s why I did it, when in fact it was just the opposite. All my numbers were bad, my health in general was BAD (in fact, it was a crisis point that got me back to eating meat before they stuck me on all kinds of medications), and I could not fight off viruses or fevers.
When I went back to [organic] meat, all my problems went away — the huge weight gain, the high blood pressure, even the lipid numbers changed all back to “healthy.” (The cholesterol needs to be checked again, to be sure it’s still doing well, since I have been indulging in some real no-nos such as cakes and ice cream….)
Humans are omnivores. I guess we shouldn’t fight it. However, if we can eat clean, that makes alllll the difference.
When Michael Pollan (and then Nicholas Kristoff, who basically says the same thing) came to speak at UVM, a woman in “my” department (I call it that with quotes, because I am not an employee, but it’s the Dept through which I get hired) devoured his book, and read it at least twice. She said to me, “You’ll NEVER EAT THE SAME AGAIN.” I did not find religion in his speakings, though, because, as I said to her, “Not true. The way he speaks IS the way I eat, and have for a long time,” and though I liked him, I kind of sat there doing my captioning of his speech, saying, “Yeah, yeah. Blah, blah.”
However, it’s sooooooo wonderful to see it getting more into the mainstream.
And tonight, though it is hot as freakin’ hades here, I’m roasting a local pasture-raised organic chicken, red potatoes, yellow beans, broccoli, kale, and zucchini from our garden. And I can’t WAIT to eat it.
Have you found this to be true, as I have? (Though you have not much of a yardstick to measure it by because you have been veg for so long)…. as these writers say, because the food is nutrient-dense, it takes much less to fill you up, and therefore the argument that organic is “too expensive” kind of goes by the wayside. Very true in my experience. Whereas with the pumped-full-of-hormones and corn-fed (or whatever) supermarket chicken or meat makes me want to eat half of a chicken, I can be satisfied with a leg and thigh, or half a breast, of an organic one…. Same with a piece of organic pastured beef or pork chop. Therefore, we get many more meals out of our roasted chicken or piece of steak.
(Sorry this is so long, but it’s a wonderful topic, close to my heart.)
Cari, you rock! You’ve become a gardening queen! I have to get my crap together for real. I am so impressed with the amount of goodness in your backyard. I live on ten acres in the country and am COMPLETELY ashamed of myself now.
Because I would love to eat some of this pig but can’t, I am passing on the link to you:
http://www.goodstuffnw.com/2010/09/livin-in-blurbs-bites-birds-and-bikes.html
I miss living in Oregon already.