Happy Birthday, Dad!

Thanks for teaching me to appreciate a good, homegrown tomato! That summer you decided to dig a garden in Virginia Beach made a big impression on me. Every year for a while now when I have had my own (or rented) yard, I have to plant marigolds and tomatoes (I don’t think I knew what a marigold was before that summer).

The smell of tomato leaves always makes me think of the heat and humidty and hot sun of that little side garden, outside the bathroom window. We had just enough room on one side to walk the length of it. The other side was bordered by the prickly junipers. When I remembered to water, I used the sprinkler. I remember being amazed that you could dig up a lawn and plant and something would grow and transform like that!

I still can’t believe the number of tomatoes we had. They will always be the juiciest, tastiest and biggest ones I have ever had. I have never been able to get as many green peppers, full heads of iceberg or cauliflower.

(I also still can’t believe how readily we sprayed for bugs back then, but that was just the times! I remember dousing everything and probably eating a snack at the same time.)

Thank you for introducing me to the fun and profit of a veggie garden!

Look for a special delivery on your doorstep early next week. Happy birthday!

[photos from last week of August]

End of August Round Up

We are at last able to pick tomatoes every day this week! This is what it is all about. This year is still disappointing as we haven't been overcome by the tomatoes, but I suppose we might be enjoying a little more variety.Today for lunch I made this orzo salad to feature almost all of the varieties of tomatoes we have this year. I kept meaning to go out and check the tags to provide an accurate accounting but that was hard to do, considering the plants have all grown and the tags lost or hard to find. Maybe during clean-up, I'll be able to record them.

Featured are (these names aren't exact but maybe close): Mr. Green Stripey, Early Girls, Lemon Boys, Sweet Millions, yellow pear, and I forget what else. (Baby zucchini from farmer's market; garbanzos, onions, and mint from the grocery, and basil from the garden!) It was very good.

Other things we've been enjoying:

Trying to Catch Up

I’ve fallen behind in updating the garden progress this summer. I guess that should happen at this point, when there are so many fun things to do outside, it seems like it’s everyone’s birthday, and you have to go sit in an office most days anyway. So here’s a quick round-up of some news and photos from about the past month or so — the most-recent still at least a week or more old, I think.

I had just been really feeling awful about the garden’s progress so far (aside from all that lettuce), when I heard that it has something to do with the weather. We had tons of rain a couple of weeks ago and cooler than normal temps, so even other people’s tomatoes, eggplants, and so on aren’t doing as well as last year at this time. (The good news is that the lawn isn’t totally brown and crunchy yet this year.)

We’ve also had some issues with our wonderful soaker hose system we were previously so thrilled about. It needs some fixing and adjusting, but we can’t seem to quite get that done these days, either.

Things that are going well despite it all:

• I am happy with the Dahlia Lounge. It may look a mess to most, but it’s just what I wanted! Tomatoes hanging out with basil, fennel backing up the dahlias, corn leaning on squash, (one) big sunflower leaning in from the back.
  
• Basil! My first year ever when my basil has really grown easily like everyone says it does, instead of shrivelling off and withering away. I have pinched off handfuls and used in all sorts of things, and it just keeps growing! I don’t know what it is about this year. (I did buy starts and put in the Dahlia Lounge, where everything seems darker green and heartier than the raised beds.)
  
• Fennel. The fennel is planted in several places and is ready to start eating any day! I’m thinking about a French fennel and onion soup this week.
  
• Beans. We’re getting lots of them on the little bean bushes. They’re really tasty.
  
• Garlic chives. I’ve been cutting the leaves for several weeks, using in place of scallions on all sorts of things.
  

New Uses for Lettuce — The Salad Days Continue

For the past few weeks, we've been eating lots of lettuce and giving bags of it away. I've brought washed and cut bags of mixed salads to people at work. Two weeks ago, I even carried the laundry basked out to the garden, cut out a very full basketful, and then created large waxed-paper bags/containers, and brought them to my brother-in-law's 40th birthday party as (unrequested and odd) party favors. (You really couldn't even tell I had cut that much lettuce!)
When I tried that new-to-me broadcast seed method, and also started the garnet oakleaf lettuce inside in the Spring, I assumed it would be like most years, when I get some but it suffers a bit and is sort of sparse and then I don't want to cut it because I like how it looks. This is by far a lettuce year to remember!

Last Saturday night we had friends over for dinner, and I thought of a new use: How about a decorative bathroom arrangement?
Greedy me, I got nervous that we'd run out of lettuce before the end of summer, so I started sowing more seeds a few weeks ago, too!

Well Over Knee-High

On the eighth of July!
(surely was at least knee high four days ago)

To see an exciting demonstration of the pop-up sprinkler system, watch this:

Watering System

In March, J started putting together a soaker hose system on a simple timer package I happened to walk by and grab at Costco one day. We never thought we’d be able to afford a real garden-wide sprinkler system for the front, back, lawn, and so on. But since March and success with this initial plan for the raised beds, we’ve slowly been expanding. J has since added the same system to the side of the house, which allows us to use timed soakers in the front garden (where we started improving and working on an eventual mixed hedge), and another on the side for our blueberries and wee pumpkin patch.

Most recently, we tried adding pop-up sprinkler heads for another bed, which I converted from lily field (hated that they all went brown and died at once and that was that) to Dahlia Lounge (then realized I wasn’t getting as many dahlias as hoped because of gnawing-off) to a mixed vegetable and flower garden.We had a few things to learn getting started, of course. A little water hammer to learn about. And backflow valves. And timing issues. It all seems to be working perfectly now!

I love to hear the gentle shush of water out an open window as it turns on, when I am busy doing something else. I’m still not used to it and always a little surprised, but very happy. I think we’ll appreciate it even more when the weather here turns dry in August to September, but even now, it’s keeping things going during the week when we’re too busy.And it’s really helping the front garden get established. All those divided and transplanted stinking iris that hadn’t bloomed in a long time are doing much better now!
I haven’t looked at the water bill yet. That is sure to promote our rain barrel project to the top of the list.

What's Blooming