Returning to the Scene of the Crime

The holiday season might mean winter for most of America, but here at the Shandy Dandy we're still waiting for fall.

Wishing you a Merry 77 & Sunny, and a Happy 76 w/ Clouds!

December is traditionally one of the coldest and wettest part of the year in my area. Our average rainfall in December should be around 2.75 inches. Unfortunately, this year it's been exactly nope. 
Ditto for November.

Which leads me to the real topic of this post -- Because although our weather has been lovely... I haven't been here to enjoy it.  Much to my shame, my garden rap sheet now includes abandoning my vegetables for the last 5 weeks.

The person who was going to water/check on it had to back out last minute. So my poor garden has spent the last 40 days enduring the following all on its lonesome:

• zero rain/irrigation
• warm temps
• 25-45mph Santa Ana winds
• ash from the huge Thomas fire, and two smaller nearby fires

Cut to: MY ARRIVAL HOME!

Stumbling around the garden in the dark, fully expecting to be arrested by mother nature for criminal garden abuse, tripping over fallen branches fatter than my arm, camera flashlight my only guide, desperately seeking out any signs of life...

Truthfully, I was expecting to find nothing more than what I found this spring when I moved in -- an empty sandlot pocked with a few scattered weeds, poking up their plump seed heads like middle fingers, crows guffawing at my stupidity from the trees. She's going grow stuff, here? Ha! Hey Lou, check out this joker...

(Truthfully, when I moved in last March it was actually a not-quite-so-empty sandlot... unfortunately.)

However, an empty sandlot is not what I found that night. 
And... well, I'm still confused about it.

BEHOLD! The stubbornness of life.

So, without further ado, may I introduce you to my new friend, dry farmed.... lettuce?

I know, I should have flipped the photo. But this post has so many pics... I got lazy.

Um, what.

Seeing as peppers are planted nearby, I assure you this is not a shady part of my garden. I planted the lettuce here with the intent of putting up a shade cloth before leaving (and having someone here to water it, clearly) but in my rush I completely forgot to cover it.

So... not only did the lettuce survive in +/-10 hours of daily sunlight and warm-to-hot temps, but it did so in sandy soil with no rain/irrigation for over a month. But... doesn't lettuce have shallow roots? Need constant moisture? Hate high temps? I'm confused. 

But wait, there's more --

Here's the second bed, in a far SHADIER part of the garden and with NO competition from pepper roots for what little moisture there was.

It did worse than the other bed. >?? Both were seeded from the same seed packet at the same planting density on the same day and watered the same amount (then abandoned the same amount.)
This makes no sense. 

And that's just the lettuce. 

As for carrots...

Sorry for the crappy photo, I was losing light and moving fast.

Also seeded right before I left. Also... sprouted?

Now, the picture below was taken the day before I left. Carrots were seeded that same day on the bottom of the right bed, below the flags (which don't mean anything, they were re-used). Above them, elephant garlic seeded a few days previous. In the left bed, onions (no survivors - at least one thing I expected!) 

Everything was deeply watered that day, then abandoned, blah blah, you know the drill.

Fast forward 5 weeks of summer weather and no water, yadda yadda, and here we have:

Carrots?

Ok... so I don't know about you, but everything I've ever read about carrots says they take 3 weeks to germinate and must be kept evenly moist. Meanwhile, these guys are living in dirt dryer than my sense of humor.

While germination was clearly spotty, the fact that there was germination at all truly perplexes me. The carrots were a mix of several varieties sown together, and now I really wish I'd differentiated. Was it a single variety that did well? Or did one side of the bed just have a magical water gnome kingdom nestled below it? 

Dry lettuce? Dry carrots? What is going on here?
 

 
On the other side of the spectrum -- 

Brassica bed before I left:

Annnnnd.....after.

the glory

 ...fine, don't like kale anyway.

Onto the legumes, which I figured would survive, if anything would. Boy, was that a mixed bag. As far as the fava beans went, the young sprouts survived the drought and heat much better than my more established plants (huh?) even though they did grow very slow.

Even then, the level of 'success and survival' I'm talking about here is pretty helter-skelter.

On the left, Ianto's Yellow and Extra Precoce a Grano Violetto were barely sprouted when I left, and seem to have done ok. On the right, Robin Hood and Windsor were about six inches tall when I left, and were mostly destroyed.

All peas, on the other hand, were as cheerful as ever, even for being 1/4 their normal size. All varieties were seeds in the ground when I left. I did have a few dead sprouts here and there, but those that lived show no damage from heat/water deprivation. 

I gotta say, I love peas... both to eat and for their endearing, childish nature. They always look like they're reaching for you to pick them up. And they're nosy, touching everything. What's this... i grab this? mine... what's that? --

One of my other Cascadia plots has even given me flowers!

I want to draw eyes on it so bad you don't understand

And this overachiever even gave me one whole pea, huzzah.
 

OH. Another big surprise... elephant garlic! I feel like a proud mother, and I didn't even do anything. The cloves were hardly two days in the ground when I left (remember the carrot picture?) 

But boy oh boy, look at my babies now...

another crappy, losing the light pic

100% germination. And, yes, turns out even the slacker in the bottom left was present and accounted for, albeit tiny and drowning under tree crap. 

And you know what's even MORE interesting? All these elephant garlic sprouts came from grocery store! (except the three closest to the flags) Yep, plain old elephant garlic, $3 a head (I think?) with tons of huge cloves per head. And those three topmost cloves? Um, the entire contents of a $4 bag at Green Thumb.

I know, right. Garden hack win.

Here's the grocery brand. Definitely no sprout inhibitors in these. Hard to tell from the picture, but all grocery store clove plants (excluding poor drowned bob) are taller than the three from Green Thumb. 

Oh, and I almost forgot.

Remember when I posted about growing eggplant for the first time and being really 'blah' about eating it and all the plants being covered in spider mites and finally just saying fuck it and ripping them all out?
yeaaah, about that...

Meet the Moriarty, the un-killable eggplant.

You should see him in a crown.

In my defense - I did rip up all the Casper, and three of the Mitoyo plants. But instead of ripping out this last Mitoyo, I cut it down to a wee stick, snipped every leaf, then left it in our August heat. A spur of the moment, curious and casual experiment. Would it live? How long? Did I care? Pass or fail, I was ripping it out later anyway.

Was. 

Clearly, I got attached. 

But I mean -- its recovery was astounding. It went from a dumb stick to a fully leafed dandy producing flowers like crazy, all in a few weeks. Three plump, grapefruit sized fruit in it's first reborn flush, no problem. 

Right before I left, it was working on ripening this masterpiece:

And when I got back:

A bit dirtier, no bigger, but ultimately no worse for the wear. If this little dingle-berry has seeds, I'm saving them. 

I mean, look at it! It's like a perfect little purple... anatomy. I love it.

A few more before and afters:

(excuse the constant switching between photo angles; I don't think that far ahead when I take them)

BEETS - before

 

... and after.

 They don't look much bigger in the picture, but I assure you they got huuuge while I was gone.

 Here's another shot of the beets, but instead of the beets, take note of the volunteer mystery tomato on the right.

That thing... is the slowest growing, least needy tomato I have ever encountered. It's like a stoner tomato. It showed up, maybe, five months ago? Hardly grows, lives happily with only 3 to 4 hours morning sun. In fact, it had its biggest growth spurt this past month while I was gone, and had zero crispy/dead leaves after five weeks no water.

It was even putting out it's first flower the day I got back. 
Who are you...

so dark, so fast

In other volunteer tomato news --

I dunno who this dude is either, or how he got all the way back into my pea/bean patch, but hey, keep on keeping on little slugger. I wanna taste those green ones on the bottom once they ripen up.

Unfortunately I was overeager... those red ones were, um, severely overripe.... *retches quietly in the background* 

As for my intentionally planted tomatoes...I'll just let the 'after' pictures speak for themselves:

 

If you know anyone in need of a few spiders mites, I might have a couple I could spare...

The wind completely snapped this brand new bamboo stake. Touché, Santa Ana, ya jerk face.

And, go figure, the Ajvarski Peppers that I've been talking smack about ALL summer because of their blossom end rot issues (due to inconsistent watering, I thought) decided to be cheeky and produce some of the most flawless, huge, tasty, non-butt-rotted fruits ever... after being consistently not-watered for more than a month.

Regardless, I won't complain about having a ripe, sweet peppers a few days before new years.

In cucumber news, this hastily constructed trellis made from early season Sunflower stalks was home to a few Suyo Long plants I was trying out (and one dead pickling type, rip). The plants were already succumbing to powdery mildew when I left.

... and now it just looks like the cucumber monster took a shit in my planter. 

This Tetsukabuto squash plant was also dying from powdery mildew when I left. It was a late season start, kindly made possible by Dave @ Our Happy Acres who sent me the seed. Thanks Dave! This poor plant was over crowded and poorly treated from the start, seeing as it was my test subject and not part of my original garden plan. In turn, it produced only one fruit, which was still growing when I left.

 After I returned:

Not too shabby, all things considered. I look forward to growing more of these in much better conditions this coming season.

I'll finish with a personal squash project picture -- this is my nicknamed 'Bourbon' F1 (Buttercup x Turban) that colored up nicely while I was gone. I was an 'out of curiosity' cross made early last year, so I was able to grow out the offspring later the same season. This spring I'll plant seeds from this baby, mostly to enjoy watching how the different colors/shapes/sizes segregate in the F2. I probably won't continue the project beyond there, unless something unusual, tasty, or interesting pops up.
 

In conclusion - what a strange, fascinating homecoming!


I need a beer. 

Harvest Monday: 8/14/2017

Harvest Monday! The day when all you amazing gardeners post all your gorgeous harvests in all your gorgeous baskets and then cook gorgeous meals with them.

Also the day when I plop a bunch of over-ripe / under-ripe / butt-rotted / bug-bitten veggie rejects onto a dirty old board and then make hand-guns at the camera.  

Onward!

The Spread: 

left to right, top to bottom: Golden Jenny Melons, Corbaci Peppers, PASS Peppers, Rainbow Swiss Chard, Ajvarksi Peppers, Georgescu Chocolate Peppers, Giant Scissors.

I tried to include me and the hand guns in the pic, but it was kinda hard since I was also the one holding the camera. Merp.

The Breakdown

We're jerks.

These two Golden Jenny melons are a late crop from the pre-heatwave melons. Or an early crop from the post-heatwave melons? Either way, they're little bastards because they started to ripen in the beginning of July and then just... stopped. Ever since then they've just been hanging out together, half ripe, getting sunburns and just, ya know, bonding. In melon years, these guys are ancient.

Their seeds were supposed to be contributing their DNA in the new mixed breed melon bed on the other side of the yard. But noooo... they refuse to ripen. And they've been taking up half a bed of real dirt prime real estate while I've been waiting.

So today I was just like, fuck it, and picked them. Cleared the bed. Feel so much better. Tasted ok, but definitely not that delectable, oh so sweet, perfectly ripe taste of glory that home grown melons can be.

I'll just dramatically over seed to compensate for the likely low fertility from the early harvest. Gardener's version of throwing money at the problem, right?

CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP

These guys, seriously. They mean business. Look at this plant:

He's not messing around.

Truth be told, I have no idea what to do with these Corbaci peppers in the kitchen,  and I find the taste decent, but ultimately shruggy. Damn though... not a single case of blossom end rot (even when all the other varieties were plagued with it) and just pumping out these peppers like there's no tomorrow.

I might have a crush. Just a little one.

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't...

...fuck off.

I'm not the only one excited to have ripe PASS peppers apparently. My first taste last week was thumbs up, and I've been waiting for these three to ripen up with excitement.

BUT SEE -- the PASS pepper does this annoying thing where it sticks the pepper butts straight up into the air. And since they're so plump and curvy, it makes it really hard to see what's going on on the other side.

I swear we're still talking about peppers.

Point being -- I've yet again picked these suckers before they were completely, perfectly ripe. I've also had more difficulty grub huntin' on these plants, as you can see by mr. caterpillar and all the webbing crap.

RAINBOW SWISS CHARD

CLOSE-UP THAT I FORGOT TO TAKE 

GOES HERE

And here, just pretend I said something witty and insightful.

  (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Ajvarski! I just... can't I... seriously all I want is... ONE. 

One ripe, un-poopy pants Ajvarksi pepper. 

But to avoid going on a a repeat rant like last Harvest Monday, I'll just leave this here and walk away, shaking my fist dramatically as I go.

I got my eye on you, lefty.

Despite the worrisome diaper-pepper on the left, Georgescu Chocolate peppers are just starting to come into their own and have been relatively unplagued by pests and blossom end rot. This is the first example I've seen on Georgescu. And, alas, the one on the right got a bit too sunny on the bottom. 

As for taste, these peppers have a very distinct flavor profile that only really emerges when very ripe. It's hard to describe, not unlike trying to describe the difference between, say, a black tomato and a red one. It's mostly sweet pepper taste, with a little hint of... something else.

I'm going to sample a few more before I pass a final flavor judgement, but so far... I quite like them.

~~~~~~~~~

Sorry for the quick report, my life is like a Rihanna song right now: work, work, work, work, work, and the rest I don't really understand.

So while I'm not harvesting much, I'm doing a lot of breeding projects, new plantings, and general garden overhaul this week, so check back for more posts on that if you're interested. 

However, if you're still craving more harvest goodness (and who could blame you), head on over to Our Happy Acres and check out what everyone else harvested this week. Happy Monday!

Harvest Monday - August 7th, 2017

It's Monday! That means I've scavenged, scrounged, and scraped through my veg-lab to find something edible to share with you all this week for Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave over at Our Happy Acres.

And since learning that our Harvests don't technically have to be from just Monday, the main spread below was actually picked yesterday. Because I sit on a throne of lies.

Tally ho!

left to right, top to bottom: Corbaci Peppers, Mitoyo Eggplant, Mary Robinson's German Bi-color Tomato, Black Vernissage Tomatoes, Blush Tomatoes, Ajvarski Peppers, PASS Pepper, Georgescu Pappers.

Like my table? You might have seen it last week. It's actually my newest work of art, entitled: board held up by two blue buckets, 2017. It's high concept. You wouldn't understand.

In other news, this week's harvest is sponsored by: Spider Mites! Spider mites everywhere. But that's a story for another post. For now, here's the breakdown:

Like shootin eels in a barrel.

I have such mixed feelings about these Corbaci peppers. I'll save my full list of feels for the end of season review, but basically while I'm not the biggest fan of them, it sure is nice to have one variety that's actually producing ripe and plentiful peppers without kicking and screaming. (*coughAjvarksi).  Despite some claims that they're really seedy, there haven't been many seeds at all inside most of mine. They're just a little difficult to get out because these peppers be all long and noodley. I've found that if you slice them in half all the way down, the seeds and flappy peel out with very little fuss.

...and then there were none.

Oh Mitoyo. Sad to see you go. Sorta.

I'm pulling the plants. Before this season, I'd only ever eaten eggplant at restaurants where they had chefs who knew what they were doing. So it's been a fun experience to grow and cook my own this year! But, alas, I'm just not that passionate about them: neither for veggie-hack nor culinary purposes. So tomorrow these spiney sponges will be cleared out, both to help get the spider mite population back under control, and to free up prime garden real estate.

While the child in me keeps screaming 'gotta catch 'em all!' in regards to growing as many varieties as possible, I've got to be more diligent about culling less inspiring plants and only keeping those that really excite me. We have enough tolerated baggage in our daily lives, nay? I must be careful not allow my garden to become a dusty museum of spring sown misadventures.

P.S. Any clever advice on how to cook those two extra pokey, rock hard, green ping-pong balls would much appreciated. 

...basically, unripe tomatoes.

Oh gawd, don't look. Just, look somewhere else. You don't see these. These rocks. These green, Frankenstein stitched loser stones. Ugh.

I got exactly one partially ripe fruit off Mary Robinson's German Bi-color Tomato plant this year. That's a mouthful. Both literally and linguistically. This is another variety that I have a lot to say about, and will be saving most of for the main review later this year. At the moment, Mary is engaged in all out war with the spider mites and is losing, badly. Lost, really. I'll be cutting her web covered mass down to about 8 inches, washing what's left with soapy water, and seeing if she's got a second wind left. She was never particularly vigorous. Still, the one not-even-completely-ripe fruit I did get was pretty good... so I'll give her a second shot.

we're not ripe either

Ah yes, the Black Vernissage Tomato. This was a free gift from Baker Creek because I ordered a metric stupid ton of seeds and they must have thought I'd be crazy enough to plant more.

They were right.

About these tomatoes... these are... well... they're kinda... they're really bad tasting, actually. Quite mealy. Vague flavor. 

HOWEVER, this plant can take a beating. I started one dinky seed out of a weird obligation complex. Germinated super quick. Almost mad, I left it in four inch pot forever because now I didn't know where to put it. Didn't care, kept growing. Finally, I gave up caring and planted it in a 5 gallon bucket. Happy as a clam, branches everywhere. Even in un-ammended native dirt  (which is to say, sand) it hasn't so much as whimpered all season

It even held out the longest against the spider mites. This is one of only two tomato plants that won't be required to undergo the dramatic haircut treatment. So despite the fruit being super blah, I'm pretty excited to do a few crosses with "Vern" and one of his tastier neighbors.

And in case you were wondering, the tomatoes never actually turn black. They just get a little darker red, with burnt orange/dark green streaking.

Blush, with a Corbaci photobomb

Blush! Everyone loves Blush tomatoes. And they are pretty good. I've talked too much about Vern, so we'll keep it short and sweet for blush. Get it, short and sweet... like the fruit? Ha! Well, actually they're sorta long... but not the point. Point!

I disgust myself.

Though tasty, Blush will also be getting a sever haircut to deal with the mite issue, since mites also seem to find her delicious. Which is why the above are not the prettiest specimens.

With friends like these, who needs enemies. Dammit Corbaci, keep your noodle to yourself.

 I'm watching you Ajvarski... always watching. 

They really do look like something out of Monsters, Inc. I just need some googly eyes to stick on them. I was really excited to try a ripe Ajvarksi pepper at the start of the season. And now... well, I'm still really excited about it SEEING AS I STILL HAVEN'T GOTTEN ONE. Tantrum.

As I've mentioned previously, my garden had some serious issues early in the season with blossom end rot. Even in things I didn't know could get blossom end rot, like watermelon. But while everyone else seems to have grown up and gotten over it, Ajvarksi is still sniveling in a corner and wetting his pants. Between that and the sunburning, the left pepper is the closest I've gotten to ripe.

And I hate green peppers.

In other news...

it's ripe!

Well, mostly at least. The PASS pepper (hover for birth certificate) really likes to stick its fruit ass up into the air. And so it wasn't until I cut this bad boy off that I saw his green shoulders and realized he probably could have used a few more days with mom. Oh well. Though a hint of dreaded green-taste still remained, it was still pretty tasty! Thick walled, few seeds - a bit funky to cut, and kinda small, but ultimately a tasty raw bite-and-a-half while I chopped up his neighbors for the pan.

 nnnce nnnce nnnce

I dunno what techno-color rave these two went to last night, but they were certainly out past their bed time. Similar to Ajvarksi, I've been waiting for a taste of a ripe Georgescu pepper for far too long now. Last week I got a wee nibble on one the size of a bouncy ball. I've been watching these two sizeable gents for a while now, waiting for them to ripen.

They were fine yesterday... So I dunno what shenanigans they get up to last night, or in the hot afternoon before, but it must have a been a doozy. I'm kinda jealous, actually.

Though I was moving some metal objects around near the pepper bed. Perhaps I left one sitting at the perfect angle to the sun. Pre-cooked peppers, anyone?

~~~~~~~~~~

That's it for this week! If you haven't already, head over to Dave's and see what everyone else harvested this week. I mean, you don't want to hang out here all day, do you?

Happy Planting!