Best Trip Ever » Garden

Summer’s end in the garden

Chris — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 23:40:26 +0000

All in all, it hasn’t been a bad summer in my vegetable garden. Strangely cool and mostly beautiful weather has given me tomatoes that just keep setting fruit at a nicely measured pace. Only once this summer did I find myself temporarily overwhelmed with tomatoes ripening all at once. That batch went into tomato soup. [...]

Green beans — another August garden update

Chris — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:41:51 +0000

I don’t know whether green beans are tempermental for everyone or just for me. One year they’ll be wildly successful so I think I’ve got it all figured out, then the next year they’re not so hot. This is mostly a not-so-hot year. I’ve switched over to growing all pole beans since I put up [...]

Tomatoes — August garden update

Chris — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:48:07 +0000

Normally I have a love-hate relationship with August, when I have an abundance of tomatoes but it’s too hot to pick them after 8 am. This year it’s all love-love, glorious tomatoes and lovely summer days in the low 80s! A few days ago I picked 29 pounds! I’d been letting the full-size tomatoes stay [...]

Aubergine revelation

Chris — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 13:18:53 +0000

Sometimes bitter, sometimes tasteless, but almost always slimy, especially deep-fried with a greasy coating, eggplant has always been right up there with beets and okra on the short list of vegetables I really, really dislike. I even hate the name “eggplant,” although I love “aubergine,” the French name. The plants are attractive, though, the fruits [...]

July Garden Update

Chris — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 23:02:33 +0000

After a very slow start, summer weather has arrived and my garden is finally starting to produce. I’m getting about a dozen a day of each variety of cherry tomatoes, the sungolds and the sugar snacks, but none of the large tomatoes show any color yet. The plants are loaded with big green fruit, so [...]

In honor of summer: Sungolds!

Chris — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 12:36:45 +0000

My Sungold tomatoes have started to ripen. They are orange cherry tomatoes, so the three brightest colored ones are fully ripe. Or make that two, because I had to eat the one on the far left right after I took the picture. This is three weeks later than normal, and the plants went in three [...]

Best garden tour ever

Chris — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:32:27 +0000

The very best garden tours take you to real people’s real gardens, where you can talk to the gardeners who created them and do the work. The tour I attended yesterday may be my favorite of all time. Just five gardens, but incredible variety! First, the permaculture garden created by Holly. The large mixed ornamental/edible [...]

June garden, April weather

Chris — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 16:16:14 +0000

After a long, cool, wintry spring, we may be about to jump headfirst into summer. The forecast says the temp will finally reach 90 today, weeks later than our normal first 90 of the year. Except for some powdery mildew on my roses and crepe myrtle, the cool, wet spring doesn’t really seem to have [...]

Summer garden progress

Chris — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:03:53 +0000

The peas should probably be classified as winter/spring garden plants, but this year’s cool weather has allowed them to linger on and on and on. I love sugar snap peas, but I’m beginning to tire of them! Also, I think I probably should have shopped more carefully for the seeds I used. I bought a [...]

Planting tomatoes

Chris — Sun, 02 May 2010 13:47:22 +0000

I order my tomato plants from a company only 80 miles or so away. I don’t start them from seed because I don’t really have a place indoors to do it, and because I have room for only one or two of each of five or six varieties. I used to buy them at local [...]