Pickles, pickles, pickles!

Maybe all is not well in Tomatoville, but I've been enjoying plenty of cucumbers!  It was a rocky start, but the plants have been very fruitful and I'm a little sad that they seem to be heading towards the end of their run.

Not looking too healthy.

On a recent day off I made a huge batch of Garlic Dill Pickles -- 6 pints total.  So now I can officially say that I have a Windowsill of Pickles! (add that to the 4 pints already on the shelf, and the 2 in the refrigerator, and I probably need to start giving some away...)

Pickles!

There's not much to report this week... I've not been posting as often because not much is happening.  The same things are just... still growing.  I'm looking forward to maybe seeing a little red in the garden (hint hint, cayenne peppers and tomatoes!) sometime soon.  In the meantime, I will rejoice that my cucumber plant has yielded enough for me to make my first batch of pickles!

I used the recipe for Garlic Dill Pickles from the website Food in Jars but did not bother to process the jars in a boiling water bath because we are going to eat them ASAP.  I had enough cucumbers to make one pint jar and one quart jar of pickles.  Mine also have a little something extra in them, because I mistook dried oregano for dill and added it by mistake to one of the jars.  Possibly a tasty error?  I placed the jars in the refrigerator and will let them "steep" for a day or two.  Cannot wait to enjoy these soon! The next batch I will definitely process so they can be saved for another time of year.  And with hope, the next batch can be bigger! (but the recipe is so easy it is no problem to make just 1 or 2 jars at a time)

Both coins and spears for my eating pleasure!

What a busy week!

Leaving home during a major heatwave and then returning 2 days after a substantial rainstorm has its benefits.  All kinds of things are growing like crazy!

There are tomatoes all over!  Every single plant has at least one, and most have many more than that.

The cucumbers are growing like crazy.  While they have taken the hint to grow vertically, I did have to spread these out a little since they are really favoring the right side.  But, messy or not, these plants are starting to yield some fruit!

Okay, two to be exact.  They aren't beautiful, but I'm growing them for pickling anyway and I think these will do the job!

If you'd like to see pictures from my vacation, you can visit my other blog.  I'll be keeping up with the garden updates here but will be posting my personal content on the other site for simplicity's sake.  If you share my dual interests in vegetable gardening and health/fitness, you may have found the right place!

Oops!

I am on vacation and thought I had scheduled some things to post... But I guess not! Anyway, I look forward to arriving home a week from now and seeing what surprises my garden has produced. In particular I am keeping an eye on these cucumbers... So many flowers, but no fruit yet!

Also of course my favorites the tomatoes... Some plants have gotten really tall, and there are little green tomatoes starting to grow!

Unfortunately, I forget which plant is which... So the real surprise will be discovering what is what!

Labor Day Weekend

No, it wasn't really Labor Day, it was June 30, but it was a day of major manual labor.   This was my unfortunate payback for not keeping up with the weeds and general plant maintenance over the past week and a half.  Last weekend was incredibly hot and humid, and the past week was nothing but rain.  So I was unable (or, on the really hot days, unwilling) to do much, and the plants (and weeds) grew unabated.  You will see no photographic evidence of the mess - it was a total eyesore.  But I will admit that it took over two hours to pull the weeds.   Butch was so exhausted from the work that he had to take a nap.

Butch likes to nap under the hammock, and prefers his water refreshed regularly, thanks.

In my several hours of toiling, I was able to clear out most of the weeds, and get things back into a presentable state.  Here's a series of "after" pictures...

The tomatoes are now tall enough for a second row of string on their trellis system.

I also pruned the heck out of the tomato plants, aiming for the one single stalk.  Just about everything below the flowers got hacked (for more info, see here).

Even the cucumbers have gotten into line, and are growing vertically along their trellis.  Except for the outlier on the far right, but what else would you expect?

Swiss chard ahead!  These are so pretty. 

Miscellany, and... murder?

A few updates from the past weekend when I was finally able to catch up on things in the garden.  I'll be honest - the reason there are not a lot of wide-angle pictures here is because the weeds are pretty out of control.  I've kept up with the ones growing near my plants but much like a vacant lot in a neighborhood lowers the value of the surrounding homes... well, the vacant space in my garden is an eyesore.  And during my free time this weekend it was either uncomfortably hot and humid, or rainy.  Both circumstances are great for the plants, but not so great for my weeding efforts.  But I digress...

The cucumbers, once the focus of much anxiety, seem to be thriving in the hot, humid weather we've had lately.  Which is perfectly in keeping with my characterization of them as angsty teenage plants.  It would figure that they'd love the weather that I hate the most!

I put some mulch at the base of the cucumber plants to keep them from getting crabby.

I harvested and cooked the Toscano kale.  One great thing about it is that it is much easier to wash than its curlier counterpart!  No dirt in our dinner!  It cooked up nicely in a stir fry and there is still plenty more growing.

I sadly don't grow them myself, but I've come into a large amount of amazing locally grown strawberries lately.  More on that to come, but in the meantime, here are some pictures that just looked too much like a crime scene to resist.  My apologies to sensitive viewers.

And last but absolutely not least, I finally decided to do something about the fact that my third cat (and constant, fuzzy shadow) has not made an appearance on the blog.  Sadly, she was a little resistant to our photo shoot. Must've been a bad hair day.

Cucumber angst

This is my first attempt at growing cucumbers - if you don't count two years ago when I planted seedlings and one of our neighborhood grazers came by and ate all of them within 3 days... because those really didn't get the chance to grow.  And so far I am finding them to be a phenomenal pain in the neck.

Yes, I started my seeds too early.  Yes, I put them out too early.  And yes, as feared, that group of seedlings got all weird and yucky looking after the near frost we had the other night.  (I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that we did not have a true frost, but it did get really chilly... and within 2 days the temperatures were up to near 80 degrees.  This is a crazy planet sometimes.)

So, once the temperatures got nice and warm last Saturday (5/18), I went ahead and transplanted the remaining two seedlings outside.  Why?  Because they were also starting to look weird.  Pale.  A little yellow.  I don't feel very good about their fate.  Plus, I know that in attempting to transplant them, I was risking ruination of their delicate little root systems.

So then I decided to just plant a whole row of seeds, in the hopes that some of these might turn into cucumbers.  Someday.  Fingers crossed. 

I found some info here that makes me feel like it's just the weather that is my problem.  Even the seedlings on the porch, though it is enclosed, were exposed to colder temps than normal the other night.  The ones outside, despite their cozy bedsheet, probably did not stand a chance.  The OSU Extension website is a great source of information, especially because it is geared towards my local growing zone. 

Oh, snap!

I was so ready to publish some pictures of the cute little pea plants reaching their way up to the sky.  See how much they have grown?

I was then planning to express some concern over the state of the cucumber plants.  It's been chilly and they don't look too healthy to me.  See how the edges are a little curled?

But, as it turns out, there are more pressing things to discuss, like the fact that it is May 13 and tonight we are under a "Freeze Warning."

So instead of doing whatever else I may have done when I got home from work today, I had to tuck my plants in for the night in a desperate attempt to save them from the frost.  Honestly, I'm not sure the peas need it, as they are pretty cold tolerant.  And I'm not sure the cucumbers weren't already beyond help... so it may or may not have been necessary, but it's done:

But seriously?  The frost free date is supposed to be in 2 days! 

Cucumbers, Round 1

I say "Round 1" with the full knowledge that these cucumbers may not make it.  This is actually the first time I have tried to grow cucumbers.  It is quite early to have moved them outside, but they were outgrowing their little peat pots, so why not try?  I can easily start some more seeds if these don't make it, but it seemed worth a shot.

I set them up adjacent to the peas, with an identical stake-and-twine lattice system.  These cucumbers are the pickling type, so they will be a little smaller and hopefully something I can get away with growing vertically (otherwise they spread over a very large portion of the ground).  My gardening class and several websites and gardening books have led me to believe this is possible. 

Another tip I learned from the gardening class is that the roots of cucumbers (and any other squash plants) are very, very delicate and you have to be extra careful when transplanting the seedlings so as not to disturb the roots.  The roots on these guys were pretty well adhered to the peat pots (and growing through the small hole at the bottom) so the process of removing them delicately was a little tough.  By which I mean... it is very possible these were not all handled as gently as was necessary.  So, one more strike against these cucumber plants' possible future.