The weekend's haul

You know you're a nerd when ....

You have a spreadsheet to track your garden production, and can compare it to other worksheets from 05, 06 and 07. AND you are thinking that simply tallying the numbers of vegetables picked really isn't enough ... that next year you need to go to weighing everything, which will also allow for accounting of herbs and leafy vegetables not included in the current data.

This is what my poor wife has to live with.

The coolest eggplant ever and other garden progress

Rosey loves Eggplant. I've expanded my palate significantly over the past few years, but haven't completely come around on it yet. So our garden features just a single eggplant plant (do you need to repeat the plant, or is the plant an eggplant and the fruit also an eggplant?). I didn't think it was going to do well. I planted it right next to one of our mutant sprawling tomato plants and it kept getting covered up and shaded by the tomato plants mighty vines. After some makeshift trellising the eggplant got some regular sun and has started bearing fruit. This is the first one picked:


Isn't that the coolest? Twin eggplants? I think it looks like a Hippopotamus.

Zucchini is also making its way to the table.

Our early planted plum tomatos are going from green to orange. The others, including several volunteer plants from the compost, are bearing fruit nicely a few weeks behind.

The beans and spinach are long gone, but the lettuce has been very heat resistant. I've finally let it go to seed, but the remaining leaves still look appetizing.

Garden Update

Although the overall amount planted is smaller this year, we have for the first time tried a spring crop. We ordered lettuce, spinach, snap peas and sunflower seeds from Seed Savers. They were planted on the enclosed front porch in March, and transplanted outside in early April. The yield has been excellent. We've had fresh salad for a few weeks already, and the snap peas will make their way to a stir fry pretty soon.

Six tomato plants, three zucchini, three pepper, two basil and an eggplant were bought and transplanted. Rosemary, thyme and parsley round out the lineup in containers by the front door.

The sun and rain (and perhaps our home grown compost) have been good. Here's one garden section on May 28th, along with that evenings salad:

And here's the same plot this afternoon. Holy cow, those peas are really taking off!

Getting the Garden Ready

I love the smell of compost. Not the kind from Home Depot made in giant hoppers from leaves and little else. The kind from the backyard that began life in our kitchen as banana peels, coffee grinds, tea bags, egg shells, vegetable scraps, and paper towel tubes; mixed in with our leaves and grass clippings.

It was not as easy as I thought though. The compost bin was free at a seminar at the local public library back in October 06. Last spring the half-filled bin wasn't nearly done. But last month i dug through to the bottom and there it was: A homemade extravaganza of nutrients and worms! Only a few cubic feet though; and I had to pick out the unfinished bits (mostly the egg shells and some sticks that got tossed in with the leaves I guess). As you can see, I didn't really mind. This summer I'll experiment with a double bin to see if we can get it hotter and finished faster.

I wonder if Al Gore has ever bothered to bring a single bucket of vegetable scraps out to the backyard bin? Poseur!