Harvest Time (Small Scale)

We have been drying out some of our onion flowers in some paper bags so we could harvest the seeds.  Today I sat down and sorted through the detritus and picked out the seeds.  Here are a few pictures of the progression of flower to seed:

Onion flower still growing.

Dried Onion Flower after a month in a paper bag.

A Pile of seeds from about 6 flowers.

We plan to plant most of the seeds this fall in hopes of a big onion harvest in the spring.  We’ll see how it goes.  We also plan to let our lettuce, cilantro, carrots, leeks, basil, rosemary, dill, parsley, and sage go to seed, as well as collecting seed from the rest of our plants.

Cool, Cool Harvest

The cool weather we have had for the past few weeks has really effected (affected??) our garden.  This the harvest we had about a month and a half ago when it was still above 100 each day.  We thought this was a great harvest, given that it was really hot and that it's our very first vegetable garden.  

There are a few banana peppers, jalapenos, and some eggplants.   Then the cool weather started, and I was hopeful that it would cause our garden to perk up and start producing.  It did, here's a picture of our cucumber plant from "underneath".  Remember I arched some wire mesh so that the plants would have something to grow on, this created a little "cave-like" area.  It's pretty cool because it allows the cucumbers to hang down when they get large enough, as you can see in the picture.  

If you look really hard you can see about six or seven cucumbers, and a couple of eggplants in the background.   Today I go out side to see what I could get to add to our harvest, and I came up with this group.

 

There are four cucumbers (about 20 more still growing on the vine), seven eggplants (about seven more on the plant), a large pile of Serrano(?) peppers that I've already prepped for drying, and some ornamental peppers.

 

Here's a closer look at those ornamental peppers, there are some pretty cool colors growing on that little plant.   Our jalapenos used to be in the cucumber cave, but since they didn't get any light they weren't producing hardly anything.  So we moved them to where the lettuce and corn used to be, in hopes that they will put out some peppers.  We also planted some lettuce in the cucumber cave, thinking that they don't need a lot of light (direct light anyway) so they might do well there.  I think I'll go put some carrots under there as well.

 

Last is the banana pepper plant that has been steadily producing all summer.  So far I've pickled three medium size jars of them, one whole, two sliced.  As you can see I've already been at the whole ones, that's why it looks foggy it's the condensation from being in the refrigerator (they were pickled about a month ago, the other two were about a week ago and will be done in about three weeks).

How Does Our Garden Grow…

Our garden is growing nicely these days. Some of our plants are starting to flower, which is very exciting. Although some of our other plants are not doing so well. Take our corn for instance; our tallest one is only about 2 feet tall while the rest of them are struggling to reach a pathetic 6 inches. This doesn’t stop them from trying to grow full sized ears of corn (ears that are getting to be bigger than the plants), some of them are even trying to grow multiple ears. They are all (all but one) looking pretty sad, here is a picture of the one that is the most respectable out of the lot.



Here is a picture of the first flowers to pop up on our many tomato plants.



This is the first of our pepper plants to flower; I believe this one is the bell peppers.



This is the first sunflower flower to open up. These guys are looking pretty sad as well, although I still hold our hope for them unlike the corn.



And finally here is one of our lettuces; these guys are getting quite large. I’m actually surprised at how well they are doing. It looks like these will be the first things we will eat out of our garden.