Almost fall

After a period of cooler temperatures, both frightening and exciting, summer seems to have started up again. But the front garden knows that fall is coming.

At the top of the stairs, the cucumbers and tomatoes are fading.

The cucumbers have gotten mildew, though I don't know if it's downy or powdery. I suspect powdery.

Mildewed cucumber!

I haven't done anything about it, since we're trying to be organic here, and the plants out back are fine. I'll probably just pull the two plants out front and replace them with something for the fall. The only problem is choosing between broccoli and sugar snap peas. Sugar snap peas would usually win, since they're guaranteed to do well and I love them, but I'd like to try at least one broccoli plant out front.

At least the third wave of beans is going well.

Provider bush bean flowers.

Edamame pods.

It looks like I'll get more, and bigger, beans from the 10 or so plants out front than from all of the summer ones out back. I'm developing a serious dislike of the mulberry tree that gives the shadier bed out back its name.

In the back there's never much to report, as it's mostly tomato plants chugging along, doing their late summer thing but at a slooow pace. The last minute bed I threw all of my extras into turned out to be a very good move.

It's a mess in the back, where the stakes keep falling over, but the plants don't seem to mind too much and have been supplying a steady stream of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, with some Black Krims that might make it to maturity. This bed has never even had a suspicious, blighty looking leaf show up.

And a whackload of harvest pictures since I haven't been keeping up.

Strawberry problems

It's with great regret that I inform the internet of the passing of one of my strawberry plants.

Dead strawberry.

This is one of six I picked up at the Union Square farmer's market for $5 this spring. The tag helpfully calls it "Everbearing", not like everbearing versus June-bearing, but like that's the variety's name?

If you've been reading along you'll have seen photos from harvested strawberries, so you know I haven't been following recommendations to cut off all runners and berries in the first year, to allow the roots time to get established. I actually did do that with four of the plants for the first few months, but it seemed a little silly with plants in such small pots, especially as I might be moving them again before the fall. The dead plant is one of the two I've harvested from since the beginning though, so maybe I should have given them the recommended time.

I also ended up with a few runners when I got more lax about trimming them off, which ended up in the back, in the rubbermaid container I repurposed.

Baby strawberry plants in the back deck.

As you see, one of them is maybe, probably dead too. The middle plant was added a day after the first two but then got pulled out by a squirrel and never seemed to recover. I haven't pulled it out yet since I'm still not sure it's really dead and I don't have anything needing that spot.

So far I'm not sure if this is a problem with feeding or watering, or caused by discarding common strawberry wisdom. Probably all three!

More sun in back, and a first tomato

This week the neighbors to the west mowed down the weeds along the fence. For reference this is what it looked like earlier in the summer

July 29th, two weeks ago.

and what it looks like now.

August 11th, this afternoon.

I'm hoping that more sun will help the plants along, especially the herbs at the edge of the sunnier bed which have been shaded by tomatoes and weeds since June. I'm also hoping that more air and less shade makes the backyard a little less hospitable to mosquitoes.

Some of the larger tomatoes are ripening, finally.

All of the full sized tomatoes in the back are black krims except for this one plant I picked up at the farmer's market. I can't remember what the variety is but I chose it because it said they didn't get too big. They're also meant to be pinkish when ripe, not bright red.

This year I only grew cherry tomatoes out front, since they do better in containers, but next year I might put a couple of larger plants out front. Mid-August is a long time to wait for the first real tomato, for this area at least. I'm also going to beg, borrow, or steal some equipment to prune back the trees, which haven't been touched a couple of years (except for the one taken down after Sandy).

And finally, before I head back outside to enjoy the rest of the day, what we've been picking and eating lately.

Wednesday, August 7th. (Taken at night, so terrible lighting.)

Thursday, August 8th.

Sunday, August 11th.

Bits and bobs

These days, round three of the beans are coming along nicely.

Provider bush beans to the right, nearly 2 weeks after planting.

Edamame flowering, planted back in July.

I'm hoping for more and bigger soybeans from this batch, since they'll get direct sun. The ones in the back garden have so little sun they don't even reach upwards, instead they just snake around on the ground, lost.

Two more eggplants will be ready soon, maybe even around the same time.

It's cooled down enough these days I might consider a baked dish, especially if I get one or two more from my CSA.

Here's how the front looks this morning, which mostly differs from last week in that I've moved some plants around. And also a new zinnia bloomed.

Next year the front needs more flowers, definitely.

In the back I managed a better picture of my thick and thin cucumbers a couple of days ago.

Poking around online led to the usual suspects: uneven watering, lack of nutrition, or too much nitrogen. But another possible culprit is uneven pollination of the flowers, which I'd had no idea about. My money is on water though, since I rarely water out back. It's been a wet enough summer that I can get away with it, and watering means standing still for more than 5 seconds which leads to more complete mosquito bite coverage.

Otherwise the back keeps churning out cherry tomatoes, below pictured with the roommate's cat.

City compost

Before I set up a compost bin at this apartment I spent a lot of time worrying about how to make it animal proof. Between the downstairs cat and dog and all of the various cats, squirrels, birds, and mice I've seen (as well as the wildlife I haven't seen) I figured it would be an irresistible siren, doomed to be ripped apart each night. I had settled on something like this metal can, but not yet figured out how to get one home or where to put it.

In the meantime I ended up drilling a bunch of holes in a plastic bucket that was kicking around the back yard.

It went right outside the kitchen window, so I can lift the screen and toss things in without climbing outside. The holes are small, because I didn't want anything larger than ants taking up residence, so it doesn't get much air. In order to be sure it doesn't devolve into an anaerobic mess I add in lots of ripped up newspaper after adding anything.

Full. This happens 1-3 times a week depending on how I'm cooking.

When it fills up I take it down to the back, where I never got around to putting in a real composter. Instead I have a bit of metal fencing held in place against the chainlink fence.

The "big" composter.

If this thing were filled to the top I reckon it'd hold about 12 cubic feet of material, if that. Of course it always seems to stay at around half-filled, no matter what rate I toss things in. If you've read anything about compost you know this is a small pile and not likely to generate or retain much heat, but since I add a lot of carbon to make sure it stays aerated and doesn't smell bad by the kitchen I'm not even trying to do this properly. I don't turn it, don't try and balance greens and browns, don't pay attention to the moisture level, except to see that it's not drowning, and don't even chop up large bits to get them to break down faster. I'm just trying to avoid sending food waste to the landfill where it can't break down.

You might also notice that this container is very, very open. It turns out that while young plants and fresh, bare dirt are unbelievably alluring to animals, actual food is not. I've been waiting months now for some sign of animal disturbance, but there's been nothing. In the meantime the squirrels are still pulling out tiny plants for no good reason while the downstairs dog excitedly digs random holes in the mulch. I guess we all need hobbies.

Blending together

Summer garden updates sure do run together after a while. Even the newest seedlings aren't quite the miracle they were back in March. One magical thing the summer does have are the harvests:

July 27th

July 29th 

This morning (August 2nd already!)

The first eggplant got used on a pizza that same night. That photo also includes lettuce and arugula, a rare sight since it's usually eaten directly after it's picked. Sometime I should detail what happens with the food, especially since this might not count as a real gardening blog until I post a photo of homemade pickles.

Yesterday and last night were rainy and sometimes windy, and that combined with not visiting the back garden since Tuesday meant I lost out on a few cherry tomatoes.

Poor fallen tomatoes.

Between the unsalvageable fallen tomatoes and a few that had split open on the plants I'm down a whole handful, but the price of good food is eternal vigilance and apparently I'm not always ready to pay.

I also lost my most recent eggplant blossom, which you can make out on the ground in the photo below.

I'm not sure why it fell off, hopefully some of the other nascent flowers will soon bloom to make up for it.

In other news out back I think the older soybean plants are on their way out.

Older plants are on the right, with yellowing leaves and bean pods.

There are quite a few pods that never filled out, and most of the ones that did have been fairly small. Next time they'll go someplace else, even if it's outside of the protected beds. They're one plant the cats and squirrels don't seem to bother once they're big enough.

Some of the latest cucumber out back are coming in oddly shaped, varying thickness along their length. This is a bad picture to show what I mean, but the adolescent cucumber below is sort of gourd shaped, something that hasn't happened to the front cucumbers.

I can't imagine how bored any NSA or CIA operatives would be if they had to trawl through records of my googling: fallen eggplant blossoms, weird cucumber shape, how to tell when edamame is ripe.

I take it all back

Yesterday, not 12 hours after I wrote about how worried I was about the transplanted eggplant, it had already started to perk up. And today not only is the stem lifted up from the side of the pot but all four of the green beans I planted in the same pot have sprouted.

Recovering eggplant.

Baby "Provider" bush beans. You can't quite see the fourth one from this angle but the stem is pushing up the dirt between the left and middle seedlings.

In fact the whole front was looking pretty nice this morning, after the rainy day we had yesterday.

Of course by early afternoon everything was dried out and droopy, but nothing 4 gallons of water couldn't fix.

In the back things are chugging along, slowly. There's a bunch of new cucumbers starting out, and a few tiny black krims just getting started. It's a relief to see that some blossoms made it through the heat wave, though full sized tomatoes take their time back there so it'll be some time before the real celebration.

My second planting of edamame have been flowering and setting fruit too, but I'll be lucky to get much from that bed.

At least three edamame pods and more to come.

Behind the high tech bean trellis you can see the empty space where the fall broccoli and brussels sprouts will go, along with a new trellis at the other end.

On the right side there's a sweet potato vine and on the left I've wrapped a regular potato plant around the string. The bamboo holding this up is 5' tall; this is what happens when you plant potatoes in the shade.

First, the bad news

The transplanted eggplant isn't exactly flourishing.

Two days in.

It's not totally dead either, but I'm not sure what I can do for it. If anything the pot it's in has too much water, so I'll just wait and see some more, again.

Then there's the figs, which haven't grown at all since the first couple of weeks they came in.

I wasn't expecting them to get huge, it is a tiny plant in a tiny pot after all, but I worry they don't get enough water/nutrients/whatevs and I'll be looking at tiny green figs in October, wondering where it all went so wrong.

Finally the cucumber that had one end cutely supported by the plant is growing all funny, even though I clipped it free the day after I took the picture, just to avoid this scenario.

It's not a huge tragedy or anything, but these variable thickness cucumbers I seem so adept at growing are harder to pack into jars for pickling. Maybe I'll just end up with a lot of slices for sandwiches.

The good news is I can console myself with at least a few berries or cherry tomatoes every day.

This morning, from the front garden.

Friday, from the back garden.

Thursday, from the front garden.

And my first eggplant is almost big enough to harvest, any day now...

Building a better container

This large pot was acquired last winter when someone down the block threw it out, complete with soil and very dead houseplant. I dragged it to my stoop, thought about all the amazing things I could plant in it, like a currant bush, and eventually settled on some cosmos and poppies. Mostly because that's what I had on hand (it's not like currant bushes grow on trees), but also to put off worrying about what might be in the soil.

The poppies were fine, until the lack of water got to them, but the four cosmos only ended up with one flower between them, while growing huge, leafy stalks. They were lovely and green but nothing was getting established at the base, I think because the large plants were hogging all the water, and it was scraggly and ugly down there.

Since I was going to be ripping them out I decided it was time to install a water reservoir while I was at it, since everything out front gets so dry on sunny days. One of my roommates had left a super-skinny liter bottle in the recycling so I poked some holes in the top with an awl and cut off the bottom.

Then stuck it in the newly cleared out and heavily watered pot. Later it was covered with some netting, held in place by a rubber band, to keep it from being a mosquito breeding ground.

The pot got some compost and a few more inches of potting soil, then I headed out back to grab an eggplant. Below you can see one eggplant on the left, but under the huge cucumber leaf there's another, smaller plant.

The poor thing gets so little light and the cucumbers growing like mad next to it doesn't help matters.

It got replanted out front, along with four bush green beans that say they mature in 50 days and enjoy lots of sun. The eggplant is pretty wilted, even after being watered in and I'm not sure it'll hold up to the move. But I'm pretty sure it was never going to set fruit in the back, so even if it doesn't make it I won't be losing much.

There's still room for some more in the pot, but I still haven't decided what exactly. I'll wait to see if the beans germinate.

In other news I thought this cucumber with it's end being held up by the plant was cute. If only all the heavier melons did this automatically.

Self-supported cucumber.

And I actually took a picture of today's harvest!