Baby Veggies

Trying to keep track of developing fruits can be difficult, especially with the squashes where a giant fruit can develop seemingly over night.

Here's a 'Waltham' butternut squash. It's already the size of my thumb, and it hasn't even flowered yet.

'Cinderella' Pumpkin

I was really surprised by how large these 'Costata Romanesco' zucchinis got prior to even flowering! 

 I've yet to let any of these 'Yellow Crookneck' squashes get much larger than this. They're so cute at this size.

This is a teeny tiny mexican sour gherkin. The plants are just covered in them!

This 'Corsican' gourd flowered really early this year, so this particular fruit should get fairly sizable by the end of the summer.

I'm assuming this is a 'Tepehuan Canteen' gourd. I've never grown it before, so I'm not entirely sure what they look like.

These tomatoey looking things are actually potato fruits. You can plant potatoes from their true seeds, but most people use what are called "seed potatoes", which are actually small tubers.

I'm pretty sure this is 'Cream of Saskatchewan' watermelon. I'm also growing 'Blacktail Mountain', which has much darker skin

Earliest Zucchini Ever!

I may have grown the earliest zucchini ever this year! I noticed a couple days ago that one of my Costata Romanesco plants was already producing female flowers. Several of the fruits are already fairly large and would be completely acceptable as baby zukes. Most years, I'm just now getting my squashes planted, so I can't believe I already have fruit. It must be the black plastic that's helping heat the soil.

I still haven't staked any of my tomatoes (I'm not sure what I'm waiting for), but I did finally built a little trellis for my mexican sour gherkins. It looks really cute, but I'm hoping I don't poke my eye out on it at some point.

My beans and soybeans are up and growing already. Every year I'm astonished by how fast beans germinate. You'd think I would get used to it after a while.

My corn is up a running too. This is the first time I've ever grown corn, so hopefully it will be successful. I planted two different types of sweet corn and two types of popcorn. I saw a baby rabbit investigating this corner of the garden the other day, so I might have to put up more rabbit fencing.

My salad greens and brassicas are getting out of control! We've finally had spring-like weather the last couple weeks, so the leafy greens are pretty happy. We've been eating salad with nearly every meal, and I haven't even made a dent into our supplies.

This was the first year I intentionally grew mesclun. I usually just pick different greens and mix them together, but I thought I'd try some pre-mixed mesclun this time around. 

M.I.A.

Why the nearly 4-month gap in blog posts? Blame graduate school! In the last several months I've worked three different part-time jobs, written countless cover letters and job applications, finished writing my thesis, defended my thesis, submitted my thesis to Michigan State University, and tried to figure out my post-grad school health and dental insurance needs. Only now are things starting to settle down...and that's only because I'm partially-unemployed.

During my (hopefully brief) downtime, I want to try to reclaim my jungle-like vegetable garden, work on some home-improvement projects, and do some canning, reading, crocheting, cooking, cleaning, etc...you know, all the things that didn't make the priorities list for the last few months.

When life gets busy, things like this happen:

The behemoth of 2012.

What Is This Thing?

My brother sent me this photo with the caption "I grew this thing. Now what should I do with it?"

I'm assuming he knows it's a zucchini, but it does look a bit different from a typical zucchini...and it's so big! Luckily, Costata Romanesco are supposed to stay tasty even when they get fairly large. 

I gave my brother and his girlfriend and my parents a variety of vegetable seedlings back at the beginning of June (including the seedlings responsible for this huge zucchini). I'm actually pretty jealous because even though I got my garden planted earlier and I live farther south, for some strange reason it sounds like their gardens are further along than mine. Maybe it's because I live in an area with a strange microclimate. I swear that half of the weather fronts that come our way head north and south of us and somehow completely loop around where I live. My parent's only live an hour north, but they often get snow storms and thunderstorms that never materialize here.

Here are my little Costata Romanesco zukes. I've actually had a few of them abort early because it has been so dry.

P.S. In regards to my brother's silly t-shirt...my family is Scottish and we love us some bagpipe!

Starting Squashy Crops

I put my first seedlings in the ground this weekend (mizuna and cilantro)! I also direct sowed snow peas, daikon radish, lettuce, spinach, and onion sets.

On top of that, I also started all my squashy-crops (pumpkin, watermelon, melon, zucchini, scallopini, cucumber, and ornamental gourd) and some fava beans and cat grass.

Mizuna

Cilantro

A variety of cucumbers, and squashes sown into peat pellets for easy transplanting.