Harvests

I've been doing a little harvesting every day lately. I'm getting tons of cucumbers, a few zucchinis (those that haven't succumbed to drought-induced yellowy wrinkle disease), basil, and potatoes. I can almost taste the tomatoes, but I've still only gotten one ripe one.

This is the first broccoli crown I've ever grown (not due to a lack of trying). Unfortunately, it's only about 3 inches across.

Fava beans, West Indian Gherkin, Suyo Long cucumber, White Wonder cucumber, and Lemon cucumber. Most of these went into the slowly evolving pickle bowl in the fridge.

Any suggestions on what to do with these West Indian Gherkins? They are painful to the touch and I can't quite figure out how you are supposed to eat the without peeling them. They're so small that there wouldn't be much left after peeling. I guess I could lob them my enemies! 

I finally got around to digging all of my Red Norland potatoes. The plants have long since died, but the potatoes happily waited for me all cozy in the ground.

My First Fava Bean

I harvested a few pods of fava beans the other day. I really disappointed y how few pods have formed on my plants. They flowered like crazy! However, either the flowers didn't get pollinated or the pods aborted early on. That said, I've been savoring the few beans that I have been able to collect. I would love to be able to make something like this recipe from Jamie Oliver, but I don't think I'll ever get enough.

Once the beans reach a certain size, you have to peel the outer coat off of them before eating. I haven't figured out the best technique for doing this yet, but making a little slit on one end and squeezing seems to work okay (assuming the bean doesn't shoot off through the air several feet).

I really like the flavor! It's difficult to describe, but they taste "beany" and sweet, but as if they have some kind of seasoning on them already. 

Keeping Up With My Speed-Of-Light Life

I've been up to all kinds of gardening and cooking-related mischief late last week and over this weekend! Hopefully I'll have time to write about it all soon.

In the meantime, here's a quick rundown of what I've been doing and making:

• Acted as a tomato matchmaker (I can't wait to share this with you)
• Foraged for about 9 pounds of wild black raspberries (and I have the scratches to prove it)
• Scouted out some potential wild grape foraging locations
• Pitted cherries (I don't even want to know how many more pounds I have done)
• Made both black-raspberry and black-cherry vinegar
• Made both black-raspberry and black-cherry shrub
• Made both black-raspberry and black-cherry jam
• Made both black-raspberry apple and black-cherry apple crumble (can you guess what I'm overloaded with?)
• Made a yummy garden cucumber salad
• Collected an egg that I highly suspect to be a double-yolker (we'll see)
• Started hand pollinating my hard-shelled gourds (it's a nightly ritual)
• Ate the first fava bean of my life (and I don't appear to suffer from favism)
• Got a great idea for a new blog (that may or may not come to fruition)

Around the Garden

The edamame and green beans came up nicely. They don't look quite as drunken as my snow peas.

I hope these strawberries survive until ripe. I've been seeing some nipped-off stems here and there. Rabbits? Squirrels? Feral Cats?

My white peonies look great right now. As soon as it rains hard, they will flop over though.

My fava beans are looking good. I can see tiny flower buds forming.

Finally! Some harvestable spinach!

Slow, But Steady Seedlings

I'm mildly concerned that my veggie seedlings aren't doing so great this year. Due to all the cold weather, I've had to confine most of the warm-weather crops (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc) to the basement for most of the spring. My basement maintains at around 60 degrees and my fluorescent lights aren't super bright. While these conditions are fine for a time, my seedlings really need some bright natural sunlight and warm weather to bulk up before planting time.

These tomato seedlings are enormous, but that's because I got them from a greenhouse at work. I feel like this is cheating, but who can pass up free heirloom tomatoes?

My homegrown tomato seedlings, on the other hand, are much much smaller (most only have one or two sets of true leaves at this point. Some of my other tomato seedlings (I'm too embarrassed to show them) are even smaller due to an unfortunate watering mishap that happened during my conference in Iowa (in short, some of my tomatoes got a tad bit dry, which was exacerbated by the heating mat, and I lost probably 30-50% of my tomato seedlings. Oops! That said, I think I'm almost back on track now. The youngest set of seedlings (the ones I can't show you) have two more weeks to shape up before planting time.

My first foray into favas seems to be going well. All but one seed germinated, which had some weird maggot disease upon investigation.

The basil I started a week or so ago is looking good too, although I don't know if it will be ready by farmer's market time.

This year's jarrahdale pumpkins are doing well too.

In fact, all of my squashy crops seem to be doing well...with the exception of some of the gourds, which refuse to germinate. I've been growing ornamental gourds for several years now and the germination rates are always very variable (I'm talking over a month apart for the same cultivar, from the same seed packet, grown under the same conditions).