Pictures of the Community Garden

After my last post about the community garden, I had to take a little break and calm down.  I had to tell my self that the garden still looks pretty nice, and most things are still doing fine.  I didn't plant that sunflower, anyway.  It was a volunteer that made it past my weeding.  I plucked out lots of other volunteers but that one made it through.  I shouldn't be so upset.  Another gardener saw me looking at  the damage and said, "that's what you get for having the most beautiful garden."  I can either take that as a compliment and be happy, or get angry.  I am trying to be happy.

I will start with pictures of the harvest strewn on the backseat of my car.  I forgot to bring my paper bag and box with me.

Here are the tomatoes.  The green ones were on the ground, so I picked them up.  I might do something with them or wait until they ripen.  These are mostly Romas.  I think the thieves picked a bunch of the Early Girl and Superfantastic because there should be more of these.

This is over two quarts of cherry tomatoes.  I sent a bunch with Heath to work today.

There were a few purple beans, a garden salsa pepper and one jalapeno from the plant on the right hand side of the garden.

These are the other peppers.  There are two Anaheim chili peppers, two jalapenos from the other side, and two Thia hot peppers.  I can't wait to see how hot those are.

Blurry pictures are starting to bother me.  Maybe I should invest in a camera instead of trying to use my iPhone camera or borrow one from my aunt.

This tomatillo fell off of the plant.  I don't know how to tell when they are ripe, but I will try to roast this one up and see how it is.

I pulled out a few carrots that could be reached from the front to make it harder for people walking by to pick them.

These are from one of the volunteer tomatoes on the back fence.  They hid out in the peas until my aunt and I started to pull the peas out.  We decided to leave these and tie them to the fence.  This one is some kind of pink fleshed large variety and the other large volunteer tomato is a large red cherry tomato variety,  They are just starting to get ripe.

I took this picture from where the sunflower used to be.  You can see most of the garden.  the sun was getting low so the shadows are dark.

This is the cucumber patch.  They are trying to creep into the potatoes, but my aunt and I have used small stakes to hold the vines back and make them grow to the side.  It is working pretty well.  We still have to check on it and move the stakes periodically.

This is the Cheyenne pepper plant.  You can't see any peppers from here, but...

There are a few hiding back here.  I almost missed them.  I will pick them when they turn red.

These are the Garden salsa pepper and the right side jalapeno plant.

These are the Danver short carrots.

This is what is left of the right side onion rainbow shape.  The produce thieves/vandals have left these two alone so far.

This is what the potatoes look like.  I am sure there are a few small new potatoes down under the ground.  I hilled the dirt up over the stems two weeks ago.

This is the early girl tomato.  I had to cut it back quite a bit last week.  The top branches were getting very tall and trying to grow fruit way up there.  That could only lead to broken branches.

The same plant from the side.

The scarlet runner beans are just getting cooked in the sun on that fence. We are not getting nearly as many beans as we should be. At least they are protecting the garden from the cooking heat off of the sidewalk and asphalt road.

This is a picture looking down the fence at the volunteer tomatoes and tomatillo.

The cherry tomato plant is incredible.  It has produced gallons of tomatoes.  They are so sweet and delicious.

The bush beans are still looking pretty poor.  I saw the beans at my mother-in-law's house last week.  Hers are looking so good.  She has been picking beans everyday for a while.

This is one of the pumpkin plant hills.  I doubt we will get any pumpkins.  They are just too far behind.  The heat is helping, but probably not enough.  I hope I am wrong.

This is the other pumpkin hill.

Just another view of the cucumber patch.

The little Bradley heirloom tomato plant still looks pretty much the same.

The Anaheim chili looks pretty bad still, but the other peppers are really going to town in the heat.

These are the Thia hot pepper and the other jalapeno.

This is the volunteer tomato plant that I picked the two tomatoes from.  The one in the back is the cherry tomato.

This is the roma bush.  It is really starting to produce strongly now.  I have to make another batch of sauce.

From here you can see the ripening tomatoes.

Well, that is about all there is to say about the community garden plot.  I made two jars of pickles when I got home form this garden trip.  I hope to make several more.  Some of the cucumber plants were planted much later than the first and haven't even started making fruits yet.  Have a wonderful rest of the week.

Wow, It Has Been a While

I am sorry I haven't updated this blog in a while.  I have been very busy with the garden and my summer job.  My aunt and I were featured in an article about the community garden in the local paper (The Wenatchee World) last Wednesday, on the front page! The article was very nice and the pictures weren't bad.  I won't say that we looked sexy, but at least you couldn't see my plumbers tan.  I will try to scan the article in or find a link to the online article or something.  I promise that this week I will take some new pictures and post some more interesting news.  Here are a few tidbits.

We have harvested pounds and pounds of tomatoes over the last few weeks.  We have made several batches of salsa, eaten too many BLTs, and I even made a batch of pasta sauce from scratch.

This is what is left of the sauce.  We couldn't wait to eat it.  It turned out pretty good. Onion, carrot, and celery with herbs and hot peppers cooked in olive oil until soft then added peeled, deseeded tomatoes and cooked and stirred until thick and saucey.

We already have this many more tomatoes waiting to be made into more sauce or salsa.  Can you beleive it? The Roma tomatoes are just starting to produce.

These are mostly Romas. Some are from the porch and some are from the garden.  The garden plant is definatly making more, especially since about half of the porch ones have end rot, but the porch plants are still making quite a few tomatoes.  The Belgian beauty heirloom tomato on the porch is finally making lots of green tomatoes, one has even started changing color.  The Superfantasitc that fell over is doing just fine although we did have to straiten it and restake it once again this week.  It is just too heavy with giant tomatoes.

These are Superfantastic tomatoes.  Aren't they huge?  These are my husbands hands.

We have also had gallons of Sungold cherry tomatoes.  We eat them one by one, or by the forkful in salads and put bowls of them out for guests.  My cousin's girlfriend loves them.  They are very tastey.  My husband took about two quarts to work in a bowl and they were gone in less than three hours.

Our cucumbers have been making lots of cukes as well.  I have yet to make any pickles, though.  I just finally bought some apple cider vineger today.  I will make pickles out of the next fresh batch.  We have made several salads with them and there are a few here in this box waiting for eating.

The danver short carrots just keep getting fatter and not longer.  We picked a couple this weekend.  The are great in the pasta sauce.  They add a little sweetness and lots of vitamin A.

I have been picking up the naturtium seeds from the porch when they fall.  I will save them for next year.  Hopefully they will be the creeping beautiful kind.

Here are a few peppers from the super hot jalapeno plant on the porch.  None of our pepper plants have really taken off yet.  It just started being hot enough here two weeks ago.  I espect them to start producing heavily over the nest few weeks.  The cucumber plants should increase yeild as well.

I am declaring victory over the eggplant aphids, finally.  The trick that finally worked may surprise you.  I told you I brought home some lady bug eggs form the community garden before, but those didn't make a dent, grew up and flew away.  Well, I stepped it up a few notches.  We had a huge population of aphids on the lower leaves of our sunflower in the community garden.  After a while I noticed a whole host of predators and parasitoids attacking them, so I picked about four leaves and brought them home and placed them in the eggplant pot.  Within days I noticed parasitized aphid mummies, predatory maggots, lacewing larvae, and ladybug beetle larvae having a hayday.  The new leaves and flowers that have grown this week are totally aphid free.  I have notice the first very small fruit developing, as well.  I am sure I would have had some earlier if not for the swarms of aphids on the flowers and shoots.

I promise I will have pictures of the garden and porch in the next couple of days.



Peas, Cherry Tomatoes and Early Girls, Oh My! Community Garden Update

The community garden plot has really  changed in the three weeks since I last posted.  I didn't take pictures of everything, but the things that are really different were captured at twilight the a few days ago.  The pictures are either a bit dark or the flash went of, which looks kind of spooky.

My Aunt made us a sign for the garden on her laser etcher:

I love it.  I hope the bees can read, because I mean it, they are very welcome. Actually, they are cordially invited for as much nectar and pollen as they can hold.  As are the lady bugs for all the aphids they can stuff in their own and their children's mouths.

Here is one of the lovely ladies, now.  Suddenly, I remember the scene from A Bug's Life when the male lady bug gets very upset about someone assuming he is a girl just because he is a lady beetle.  Sorry.  I mean handsome man.

The carrots are really growing.  We thinned them out a bit more this weekend and were pleasantly surprised to find some very tasty carrots at the end of the stalks we grabbed onto.

These are some rainbow carrots we pulled up.  Some went directly into my cousin's mouth, so this is not all of them, but you get the idea.  They are colorful and delicious.

Here are some of our plain, boring old orange carrots.  The one with three legs is not really boring.  My aunt was reminded by this carrot to tell me about a contest that happens in some small village in England where locals bring in vegetables that look like naughty bits to a church to be judged.  I can't, for the life of me, think why this carrot reminded her of this story.  Hm.  Anyway.

This is a close up of the rainbow carrot stalks. You can tell which ones are most likely to be purple without actually pulling them up.  The other ones can be orange, yellow or even white.

The cucumbers are looking very nice.  It has been very warm here over the last couple weeks.  There are actually some small cucumbers starting to grow on the largest vines already.  I planted a few more hills of cucumbers to fill in the empty space up front, however only one survived the heavy bird predation. We now have a huge open area in front where the cucumber mounds are empty and the spinach and lettuce are pulled up.  The lettuce was going to seed, so it had to come up as well.

Somehow I missed taking a picture of the potatoes that have come up and started growing very nicely, but the hilling for those will take up some of the empty space.

We have been harvesting cherry tomatoes from the garden for two weeks, almost.  They are very  sweet and delicious.

This is my Aunt's hand with some of the first young cherry tomatoes.  The first ones were the tiniest.

We have been harvesting peas everyday the last few days.  The kids can't stay out  of them, and devour them raw and crunchy before we even get them into the fridge.  This last time I picked more than Molly could eat and this is what we have:

The peppers are Anaheim chilies and there are the first two ripe early girl tomatoes in the bowl as well.  My husband ate two of these chilies and said they weren't that hot right before the tears started coming out of his eyes.  He usually has a pretty high tolerance for spicy hotness, so I didn't eat one. These peppers are off that plant that looks kind of weird and sickly and the peppers are all half black. I wonder if that is why they are so hot.

Here is a picture of the first pea harvest before we went to my aunt and uncles house for barbecue stakes.  We snacked on raw peas and cherry tomatoes that night with dinner.

Here is a small purple bush bean.  I have some bad news about these beans.  I think the community garden went two days without watering last week.  I usually check on it everyday and water if it looks like it hasn't been done, but last week when I got there after skipping a day, it looked really dry and half of the bush beans' leaves had fallen off.  They look really sad now.  I hope they pull out of it.

This is a picture from last week of the scarlet runner beans.  There is now at least one small bean developing on one of these plants.  I remember from last time I grew these that it took a while for the flowers to start setting, but once they did there were beans everywhere.  I hope that happens now.

The early girl tomato is really laden with fruits and they are just starting to turn red.  I picked the first two yesterday.  They were small, but some of these green ones are huge.

This is the super fantastic which is really getting loads of tomatoes on it.  They are not very big yet, but they are getting bigger every day.

It really is a bushy mess inside its cage, but I just haven't trimmed it back yet.

Here are a couple of the Roma tomatoes.  We are going to get a lot of these a bit later.  This plant, if you don't remember, was quite a bit smaller and a little behind the others.

In this picture you can see three small pepper plants.  The front largest one is the new garden salsa pepper I planted a couple of weeks ago the other two are Cheyenne and jalapeno that are finally recovering from being chewed on by my cat, Cooper.  The Jalapeno actually is starting to set fruit.

This is the heirloom tomato I planted at the same time as the new peppers, the Bradley pink tomato.

This tiny pepper plant is a Thai hot pepper.  It already has little peppers on it.  I am a little scared to try these.  The one is back is the jalapeno that was pilfered from earlier in the year with small new fruit showing up every day.

The coordinator of the community garden asked me last week if it was okay if he gave my number to a photographer for our local paper, The Wenatchee World, who had mentioned he might want to get our picture with our garden for a story in the paper.  We haven't heard from anyone yet, but that would be kind of cool.  I don't really like having my picture taken, unless I am wearing a costume, but I am proud of the garden my Aunt and I have been able to grow so far this year.  It looks pretty nice with the custom laser etched plant stakes and sign and the huge tomato plants.  Our tomatoes are, by far, the largest, greenest and most fruitingest tomatoes in the whole community garden, so far.  I am sure some of the other people's will catch up. There are some that look very nice.  I am not putting down any other gardeners gardens at all.  Most of the gardens are very nicely done, but our tomatoes are the best, so far.  One person actually asked me if we were sneaking in fertilizer.  I won't lie and say we never considered the idea, but we haven't added anything but seeds and water to our plot.  It was nicely composted and tilled when we got there this spring.  I think the difference has been that we have been supplimenting the automatic sprinklers with our own almost nightly waterings and keeping the weeds pulled pretty well.  Have a good week, until I have something new to post.