Garden 2013 Edition

By this point you've probably assumed that I gave up gardening for parenting this summer, but have no fear--my garden is growing in its full glory; I just haven't had the time to post regular updates on it. In fact, part of the reason for my delay in posting about it is that I got a late start this year (on top of the whole parenting thing). We had snow/freezing temperatures into the beginning of May, and then with William's baptism and my sister's bridal shower Memorial Day weekend, I didn't get around to getting anything planted until right before we left for the beach mid-June. Apparently that hasn't caused too many issues with the success of my garden, though--we have produce coming out our ears.

Here is a current photo of my garden in all its green and seemingly over-grown glory:

I stuck with pretty much all the same vegetables I've done in the past: zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes, green beans, peas, green onion, bell peppers, carrots, and sweet corn. I think this might be my last year for bell peppers though because for whatever reason they just don't grow (my plants started at about six inches when I transplanted them in June and they are now about eight inches. And certainly not "thick" enough to support a pepper). And I don't think we'll get corn this fall; only one of the stalks is really growing, so it won't have another plant to cross-pollinate with (plus it isn't exactly shooting up itself). My tomatoes got an even later start than everything else because the plants I transplanted before we left for the beach mysteriously disappeared while we were gone (for reals--it's not like they were bitten off or died or anything--they were just gone), but thanks to my neighbor I got some new plants in shortly after getting back. And my zucchini. Oh my zucchini. In addition to heat and dryness and everything else, I've battled with a mysterious bug infestation on them for the past two years (check here and here for details). I vowed to be more diligent about monitoring for bugs this year (probably seems a little counter-intuitive since I actually have less time to garden this year thanks to the baby, but whatever), and so far, I think it's actually worked. On more than one occasion, I've caught branches when they were first beginning to droop/show frassing, and upon removing them from the plant actually found larvae inside of them. That may not sound like a good thing, but actually finding the larvae means I'm closer to figuring out what exactly the bugs are (most of the signs are pointing to squash vine borers), plus the fact that I've caught the infected branches before the larvae have a chance to move into the stalk hopefully means the plant will persevere (actually, on one plant, the larvae had grown and moved into the stalk, but I was able to pull it out with a teasers after removing the infected branch. Not going to lie, it was insanely gross and I almost puked).

And now for the proof that we have produce coming out of our ears, here's (most of) what I've harvested already this year.

First pickings on July 20th

Round two on July 31st

Most recent haul on August 4th

And for the record, I'm really not complaining about how much stuff we have; we love the fresh produce. We're just going to be eating lots the next few weeks!

Louie and JR

So a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I've successfully kept two houseplants alive for well over two months. That may not sound like much, but it's kind of a big deal for me, given the hit-or-miss luck I've had gardening (and the fact that I usually give up on the garden about two months into the summer). Of course, house plants don't really require any weeding or pruning or insect removal, so all I've had to do is remember to water them (thankfully they seem pretty hardy because this does slip my mind occasionally) and open the curtains so they actually get sunlight during the day (I'm definitely not the best at remembering this, but thankfully the days are getting longer so they can still get some sunlight even if I don't open the curtains until after I get home from work).

For the record, I'm probably jinxing myself and will find them both wilted and dead when I get home from work today, but whatever. I'm impressed they've lasted even this long, so I totally won't be heartbroken when/if they die.

Introducing Louie and JR:

Louie (top photo) is a Croton Plant, and was gifted to me after the death of my grandfather Louis in October. Apparently if we were to put him into a larger pot he could grow to four feet or taller--I think we're happy with him the size he is.

JR is an amaryllis, gifted to us by someone with the initials J.R. (shocking, right?). About a week after the photo shoot the other two flowers bloomed; since then all four flowers have started to die. But I'm pretty sure that she will flower again as long as we keep her alive (knock on wood).

And just for fun, while I was taking pictures of the plants, I decided to play around with Darrell's new camera flash a little bit. Here is the same picture of JR as above, but with the flash tilted at a different angle.

Shadows!

And for this next shot I put a different filter on the flash (a "warm" filter, as Darrell tells me).

Isn't that fun how much of a difference the flash makes? Of course, I don't really understand any of the logistics behind it; I get the shot I want by playing around with all the different settings and filters whereas Darrell can do all the adjustments before he shoots and get the shot he wants the first time. Which is why photography is his hobby and not mine. 

Garden Fail

Totally inattentive gardener + record drought conditions =

And here's another picture for good measure:

If you look closely at the pictures, you can see plenty of green tomatoes, some of them fairly decent sized. However, it will be hard for them to ripen considering the plants themselves are completely brown and dead. There's even a cute little green pepper visible on the plant in the first picture, although it isn't too hard to spot since the rest of the plant is brown and wilted. And let's not talk about dry and brittle corn stalks....

There is some semblance of green in the second photo thanks to our broccoli plant--and even a few last florets of broccoli that might actually be edible. And hiding behind the broccoli plants are our carrots, which are remarkably green and full, so we might actually have some carrots for stews this fall. Provided we actually, you know, go out and pick them.

Here's to better luck next year (and, you know, actually getting some rain so we don't have to spend a ridiculous amount of money watering our garden. Speaking of which, our neighbors just installed sod. Which requires TONS of water to keep it from dying. I don't even want to think about what their water bills are going to be. Shudder).

Perseverance

Fact: I have all but entirely neglected my garden for the past three weeks. We totally lost our zucchini/squash plants, which was a major deterrent, plus things started getting really busy with soccer/school. And in the back of my mind, I kind of figured that even the plants that survived the heat of July would not yield very much produce, not making it worth my time to prioritize gardening.

Well, apparently my plants had another thought in mind. I won't exactly say that production has been outstanding by any counts, but I suppose something is always better than nothing. Like this fairly decent sized bowl of broccoli:

Or this nice robust carrot:

I was even surprised by the number of tomatoes that were starting to come in--none of them are close to being ripe (they're like a month behind where they were last year), but there were still quite a few out there!

Now if I could just figure out how to keep my zucchini plants alive for longer than two months... Darn bugs.

Unreal

First, there was what I thought was near-and-certain death for my zucchini plants. But, I persevered and proactivity tried to stop the infestation (unlike my method of just ripping the plants out like I did last year) and some of them made a recovery. And not just a weak, slow recovery, but instead produced this massive zucchini less than a week later.

Well, folks, apparently the show isn't over yet. Because just a few days ago, I harvested this bad boy from my garden.

And for a visual on the girth, here is me trying to wrap my hand around it.

Seriously. That's all the farther I can get my hand around the zucchini. It's ridiculous.

Unfortunately, my plant must have put any and all energy that it had into this fruit, because when I went out to the garden a few nights later to pick some broccoli for dinner, the plant was totally wilted. Not just overwhelmed from the ridiculous heat kind of wilted, but totally and completely gone kind of wilted. I don't think any amount of water and/or cool weather could help this plant. But, at least it went out with a bang. And I've still got one zucchini plant that is fighting away, plus my squash plants are starting to produce some fruit, so not all is lost (and temperatures are supposed to drop below ninety this weekend! Still no rain in the forecast, but at least that's something I can help supplement).

As I mentioned, we also harvested some broccoli the other day.

Not near as spectacular as the size of my zucchini, but any time I can get fresh produce for free by walking out my back door I call it a win in my book. Hopefully it'll only be a few more weeks before I can start getting some beans and tomatoes from our garden as well!

PS Have you gotten your blizzard yet? Don't forget about Miracle Treat Day today going on at Dairy Queens nationwide!

Back with a Vengeance

Apparently my zucchini didn't take too kindly to the fact that I said it was dying. Because it's making a rebound--and wiping out any lingering questions about its vitality.

Is that not a massive zucchini? Of course, the plant doesn't all the credit for its rebound; I definitely had a part in that. But I'm certainly glad to see the plant is a fighter--and will be even more glad if it keeps producing crazy big zucchini!

For those of you who are curious, my approach to combating the bugs that had infested our plants was pretty simple. Some of plants definitely looked beyond saving, so I pulled those out to give the other plants more breathing space as they worked to fight against the infestation. With the remaining plants, I started by cutting out as much of the damaged area as I could (and in the process found quite a few larvae inside the stalks--definitely the culprits, and most likely squash vine borers). Then, I sprayed the "open wounds" with a soap/water solution and packed fresh soil around the area to encourage new roots to set. That's it! We haven't cut into the zucchini to see if the soap/water solution is going to affect the taste of the fruit, but I'm not too concerned. And we've seen quite a few blossoms pop up over the past few days, which makes me believe the presence of this zucchini wasn't just a fluke incident. Now if I could just figure out how to keep these pests out of my plants in the first place life would be good (and, you know, a few inches of rain would be nice too. I'm seriously dreading our water bill this month).

Peas and Carrots and Onions Oh My!

Well, although discovering the infestation of our zucchini plants was a disappointing start to the week (they might be recovering though! fingers crossed), we've actually had a fairly successful week of gardening.

Since these were all new additions to our garden this year, we weren't entirely certain when to harvest them. The peas weren't too bad since they are above ground, but we were shooting in the dark with the onions and carrots. We were pretty pleased with the size of the red onions, although stopped after pulling just one carrot since it was still pretty small. And because we really weren't going to be doing any cooking with just one carrot, Darrell insisted that I eat it Bugs Bunny style.

I was pretty pleased with the flavor; I usually buy baby carrots which generally have less of an "earthy" taste and are a little more tender, but this one was pretty good. Definitely looking forward to picking the rest when they are a little more ready!

We love using sugar snap peas in our stir frys, which was exactly where these peas (and one of the red onions) ended up.

We kind of made this one up as we went; we had a partially used jar of asian toasted sesame sauce that we wanted to get rid of, so we cooked the pork and veggies (yellow pepper, broccoli slaw, sliced zucchini, peas, and red onion) in that and then tossed some rice noodles in hoisen and soy sauce. It was actually a little less flavorful than we were expecting it to be, and probably not something we're itching to recreate, but it was perfect for what we were trying to do. Looking forward to trying something different with the next batch of peas we get from the garden--and it looks like we'll be getting green beans soon as well!

...And Then You Lose Some More

Seriously must have jinxed myself on Friday. I swear I didn't notice anything unusual about the zucchini plants on Friday when I was out in the garden, and then on Sunday when I was out there the plants looked like this:

Noticeable browning/yellowing along the stem near the soil line, lots of milky white spots along the stem, and some spots with buildup that is reminiscent of sawdust. And limp, droopy leaves (although that could be partially due to the heat). I'm at a loss; I suspect that in two or three days they'll look exactly like they did last year, with the stem essentially disintegrated at the base. We have one decent fruit left on one of the plants, otherwise the few others that are coming in are already starting to yellow. And one of the plants is totally barren at this point. We also haven't gotten anything larger than short pencil off our summer squash plants at all this summer. I immediately started some new seeds in our small pots and plan to transplant them if (and when) these plants die, but I have no idea what I should do differently with the new plants to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to them (provide they are even able to germinate and grow fruit this late in the season). My mom, who grew up on a farm and had a vegetable garden for years, doesn't know what it might be. My dad wondered if it was maybe something wrong with our soil, which might actually have some legitimacy to it, because our summer squash are planted where we had zucchini last year and the zucchini are in a new spot, which might explain why the zucchini started okay then turned bad and the summer squash never really did much.... But who knows.

I refuse to give up on growing zucchini, though--of all the things we plant it's the one we love the most, and nothing would make us happier than to have an over abundance of it in our house (as is we probably buy it from the store to eat twice a week and would gladly eat it more frequently). Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

You Win Some, You Lose Some

The zucchini pickings from my garden yesterday:

No, the beer bottle was not something that came from our garden. I'm using it to give a visual on size. And, you know, to shamelessly promote Granite City beers

Darrell and I can't figure it out. Some of those rotting, yellow zucchini came off the same plant as some of those deliciously healthy and plump zucchini. And I can't get any conclusive answers off the Internet--not really all that surprising, since every garden and situation is a little different. So far, I've determined that it could be blossom end rot (caused by a calcium deficiency), too much or too little water, or a problem with pollination. But, if any one of those issues were the problem, shouldn't it be affecting the whole plant and not just some of the fruit? Who knows. All I know is that so far it appears to be free from the pest issue that killed off our zucchini plants last year, so fingers crossed that continues to hold true. We've also gotten more zucchini off the plants than we had at this time last year, so that has to be a good sign, right? I'll count it as a win, especially in light of this super hot and dry weather we've been having. And we also have a slew of peas that are ready to be picked (a new addition to our garden this year!), but it's just so darn hot I don't want to go outside and deal with picking them. Maybe tomorrow when a "cool" front comes through and drops the temperatures into the eighties.

Nothing Beats Garden Fresh

When we got home from our vacation, I was super excited to discover that not only did our garden not totally die (thanks neighbor!), but it also had some produce ready for the picking!

Apparently it doesn't take spinach any time at all to get to maturity, and Darrell and I were certainly happy to make a fresh spinach salad part of our dinner fare the other night.

The rest of the fixins--grilled pork, roasted green beans, watermelon, and whole wheat bread!

And because I've done a terrible job updating the progress of our garden this year, here are a few shots of it from this morning!

Tomatoes, Beans, Peas, and Peppers

Spinach, Onions, Carrots, and a little bit of the Broccoli plants

Squash/Zucchini (fingers crossed that they don't get destroyed by pests like they did last year!)

Win!

Last spring, we painstakingly built a (pretty annoying) fence around our garden to keep out the rabbits we had in our yard--and subsequently didn't see another rabbit until October.  But this year, the fences are earning their keep.

Haha Mr. Sad Bunny. No garden goodies for you at this house!

Guess next time I practically trip myself going into or out of the garden I'll have to remind myself that without the fence there might not be much of garden to tend to!

Garden Space

Earlier this week I posted about the kick-off of our gardening for the summer, and mentioned that I might have gotten a little overly ambitious when it came to selecting vegetables for our garden. In fact, some of you who remember our garden space from last year probably saw the picture of the seed packets and thought that I was outright crazy with the amount of plants I was buying. Let's refresh. Here's a picture of our garden bed right after we built it last year, all six by six feet of it:

And here's a picture of all the vegetables I am hoping to grow:

Now, before you start shooting off advice about how I'm way out of me league and don't know a thing about gardening if I'm planning to put all that into a 6x6 plot, allow me to tell you that I've got exciting news to share!

We're increasing the size of our garden! Doubling it, to be exact. I'm planning to till up the ground this weekend while I have a few days off work, and hopefully Darrell will be able to get the plot built the following weekend while I'm out of town. And if this nice weather keeps up, we might be able to get our plants in shortly after that! I know that logic would suggest that we gain enough experience to be successful in our small garden before adding more space (if you recall, last summer we only yielded produce from about half the seeds we planted), but I like to think that more space and more vegetables means a greater likelihood for success (just don't try to tell me it could also mean an even more massive fail). I've got a few more tricks and tools up my sleeve than I did last year, so I'm (probably foolishly) optimistic about lots of delicious homegrown produce this summer!

Summer in April?!?!

Seriously. This weather has been straight ridiculous lately. I'm definitely enjoying it, although as I've said before, I really hope that we eventually hit a plateau. I'm dreading what we'll see in July if these temperatures keep rising (although we're supposed to "cool down" to the sixties this week, so that'll be a nice change).

Over the weekend, though, we had temperatures like this:

For the record, I'm the one taking the picture from the passenger seat. I can't say for sure what Darrell is doing, other than clearly not focusing on the road 

Since we actually had a mostly free weekend for once, we decided to spend some time together and take advantage of the nice weather. First on the agenda was some biking:

The trails in Sioux Falls were pretty busy, as we certainly weren't the only ones enjoying the weather. In fact, we were enjoying it so much that we ended up biking for about ten miles, which resulted in some sore butts the next day and a little bit of this:

Who knew you could get sunburned in South Dakota in March/April?!?!

Then it was off to Menards so we could get started on a few projects around the house, namely gardening. After all, with weather like we've been having, it's hard not to be itching to get our garden started!

It's a little early yet to get anything planted outside (we have gotten snow in April before, so there's always that concern), but we got our tomatoes and peppers started and picked up the seeds for the rest of our plants.

Even though we only had mediocre success last year, I'm excited to try my green thumb again. And I may have gotten a little over-ambitious about trying some new things as well, so we'll see how that goes (Darrell may have reined me in on a few other vegetables that I also wanted to try citing lack of space. We'll see about that).

We're also trying something a little different for our herbs this year; growing them in the windowsill didn't work out so well last summer so we've attached a planter to our deck and hopefully that'll increase our herb yield.

Oh, I should also mention that while I was doing all of our gardening stuff on Saturday Darrell was at the driving range trying out his new irons. Not that I'm holding it against him or anything :)

Sunday we spent the day in Mitchell celebrating Easter with my mom's family, and it was another scorcher. I didn't have my camera so I couldn't get a picture of the temps (or any of the festivities) during the day, but I managed to take a screenshot of the temperature before we went to bed.

I couldn't get a timestamp on it so you'll have to take my word on it, but I took that shot at 9:45 last night. And yes, it was still 80* at 9:45. Which was down about thirteen degrees from earlier that day, but still way hot. Darrell and I refuse to turn on our air conditioner in April out of principle, and also because it's supposed to cool down this week, so last night was a hot night. Even with the window open and the "cool" night breeze our house was still 72* when we woke up this morning (which explains why we both woke up not feeling very rested). Hopefully it actually gets into the forties tonight like they're predicting; our house could use the cooling off!

Green Beans!

Well, it was about time we had some good news come out of our garden. After losing all of our summer squash and zucchini plants, we were starting to feel a little discouraged. But then we finally started to see some produce on this guy!

Let me tell you, we sure weren't expecting much from our green bean plants based on the progress (or lack thereof) that they've been making the past few weeks. But it seems that these beans must have shot out in a few short days because the plants went from bare to bountiful in no time at all! We actually had enough to make a fairly hearty side for our meal last night, and they were sure tasty. Not quite the pronounced difference between the garden and store-bought like we saw with the zucchini, but still good. 

And in other exciting news, we also had a pepper! Which, again, was a total surprise because the plants really haven't changed in weeks. We almost didn't see it either, because it was growing underneath some of the leaves and blended in perfectly. Unfortunately, it rotted before it ripened (and before I could get a picture of it), but it's a promising sign!

From Bad to Worse

Well, apparently the death and destruction being wrought by pests in our garden wasn't done yet. Remember this picture from last week?

Well, here's the picture from today.



Totally bare in the middle of the plot, except for a few vines from our winter squash plant. We've officially lost all four summer squash/zucchini plants. Saddest day ever. 

And, as helpful as the Internet can be, we still aren't entirely sure of the problem. This is what the stems looked like prior to pulling them.

Here's a close up shot of the stem after we broke it off (which, believe me, wasn't a difficult task at all as broken down as these stems were).

So, I did some research, and the best explanation I could find for this was that it was frass, which is a common indicator of an infestation of squash vine borers. And sure enough, as I looked at the pictures, I remember thinking that I saw black and red bugs like that in the garden but just didn't know what they were. Squash vine borers lay their eggs at the base of the plant and the larvae burrow into the stem and grow there, which is basically what kills the plant (and what causes the frass). So, I grabbed my gloves and a box cutter and decided to dig a little deeper into the plant, hoping to find a larvae to confirm the presence of squash vine borers. And all I found was this.

Little black beetle-looking things. Which we also found in one of the other plants. But we never found any larvae, and bugs like this are not consistent with squash vine borers. So, back to the Internet I went. The only other common squash pest are squash bugs--which, coincidentally--look strikingly like stink bugs. And we definitely had one or the other in our garden this spring, because I happened to see one while Darrell was out there with me and he identified it as a stink bug. However, squash bugs lay their eggs on the leaves (which we never saw, but then again, we weren't looking there), and the have longer legs and antennas than the bugs we found in the stem (plus they never really have a black coloring). So who knows. We'll definitely try a few things differently next year, so here's to hoping that something actually works and we can enjoy a full summers worth of squash and zucchini. Fingers crossed!

Casualties

Well, it was bound to happen. Our garden has suffered some casualties. Can you spot the differences?

June 23rd

August 2nd

Aside from the obvious differences in size, you might notice that the middle and front center of the garden seems a little under-populated (that leafy thing you see front and center is not actually something rooted there but rather a vine from one of the winter squash plants). All three of our spinach plants died, and (the saddest news of all), so did one of our zucchini plants. We're not entirely sure what happened to the zucchini plant; in the past few weeks we've gotten three or four good sized zucchinis off it, and just a week ago Darrell picked two. A few days later when I went out to water, the entire plant was yellowing and completely limp. Upon closer investigation, it appeared that the stem was starting to disintegrate near the soil. Darrell thinks he may have damaged the stem when he picked the zucchinis, but I'm not sure it would have died that quickly. To make matters worse, when I was out taking these pictures it appeared the same thing was happening to the other zucchini plant. I may have to do some investigating into this--I've already used the Internet to determine that our summer squash keep rotting on the stem because they are suffering from blossom end rot, which can be caused by low calcium levels. We might be doing a few things differently next year if a similar ailment has affected our zucchini.


In happier news, it seems that the remaining plants are thriving. Our tomato plants are going pretty crazy--nothing has ripened yet, but two of the biggest ones looked like they were starting to darken this afternoon, so I'll have to keep an eye on them.

I count six tomatoes in this shot alone--how many do you see?

Our broccoli appears to be making broccoli, but we're not entire sure when and how to pick it. I think we're waiting for it to get a little thicker? We'll see.

Although the fate of our remaining zucchini plant and summer squash plants remains uncertain, our winter squash plant doesn't seem to be facing any of the same issues. It's vined several feet outside of the garden (in addition to all over the garden itself), and the rabbits that were living under our front step must have died because it doesn't appear that anything has been snacking on the vines. Which is fortunate, because it's starting to produce some good-looking squash.

Still no produce on the green bean or bell pepper plants, but they continue to grow and are flowering a little more consistently, so hopefully we're on our way to getting something out of those.

As a parting shot, I can't help but share what might be the last zucchini picked from our garden. Here's to hoping the remaining plant and summer squash plants start making a recovery!