Fwigf Has Fed Me Today

I promised an update and here it is:

We got into the garden today (yay!) turns out the combo really starts with a 1 and the person who sent out the email started it with a 2, just to keep us on our toes apparently. But Garden Buddy and I got in! We planted the last of the tomato seedlings.

Ox hearts are finally in the ground, This is about when I got tomato seedlings in last year so I hope that it gets hot/sunny enough to let them grow enough to produce fruit. I'm really looking forward to these guys and I hope against hope that I get some. I think next year I'm going to do these guys in big pots so I can bring them indoors under a grow light if it gets cold. It's been a weirdly cold summer this year. It took forever to warm up, and I'm still alternating nights between the air conditioner and an extra blanket. But I digress.

We  also got in eggplant, broccoli, carrots, and more beans today. Out 3 sisters area is officially all planted, so we'll see how it goes. The corn seems to be happy (two stalks have silk!) and the squash are ENORMOUS. This will clearly be a good year for squash. The tomatoes that had already been in are starting to produce fruit, there was one mature indigo rose tomato there today. I'd show you a picture, but I ate it. The cucumbers also have wee little proto-pickle nubbins!

I also discovered a volunteer! The bird's eye peppers that I'd planted last year and intended to save see from (but didn't) came back! Those hot little numbers were a favorite of Ben's, so I'm really glad they came back. Even if they're at the end of my eggplant row.

As for being fed today? I had to thin out my turnips. I got three bulbs about the size of golf balls and some nice big bunches of greens. I had 2 commercially bought turnips at home, so today's lunch is oven roasted turnips with sauteed greens. I am inordinately pleased with this.

Mini-Update 'Cause I Said I Would

So garden buddy and I went to Fwigf at 8am. The plan was to plant the last of our seedlings, do a little weeding, squee over the flowers on various veggies, ect. We got there with our seedlings, went to the gate... and the combination didn't work. My community garden has changed the combination on the lock and emailed us the wrong one. They didn't open until 9. So we got no garden time today.

Instead we went to (big box home improvement store) and picked up plant stakes. Tomorrow we're going back in the morning, planting the seedlings, staking what needs to be staked, pulling the worst of the weeds, and squeeing over flowers.

From what I could see through the fence (so close and yet so far *sobs*) we've got a couple ears of corn on the biggest stalks, the little ones are growing just fine, I've got flowers on my squash, green tomatoes, flowers on my cucumbers and Buddy's melons, and everything is nice and strong looking. Hopefully I'll have a better update (and some pictures) tomorrow.

2015 Update!

Yup, I am terrible at blogging, lets just accept that now shall we? Good.

Ok so lets start out with what I actively did today. I'm going out to Fwigf tomorrow and so will be able to give a better update about what is going on there after I check it.

Today I made two quarts of refrigerator pickled peas. The vines I had in my backyard had been... lets say neglected... for the last couple of weeks. Which means everything bloomed, and ripened, and I wasn't harvesting. So those two quarts are all I'm getting out of my pea plants this season. They feel they have succeeded in their mission of "reproduce damnit!" and so are now going to die off.

Note: Harvest your food as it becomes ripe. This will keep your plants producing far longer. Learn from my failures.

I also made a small pint jar of what I will now call DEATH SAUCE. Yes the caps are required. What is DEATH SAUCE? DEATH SAUCE is what happens when you take about 20 peppers of a stupidly hot variety (say 80k scu) and pack them into a pint jar with some brine and garlic powder and proceed to ignore it on your counter for two weeks. Added fun? Add in some OTHER stupidly hot peppers as those ripen. Because you hate your GI tract and want your sinuses super clean every time you open the jar.

I also thinned out my carrot pot so hopefully I'll actually get some carrots out of it and not just spindly, twisted, bits of orange sorrow. We'll see.

My front garden is doing lovely. The pumpkin vines are nice and strong. they aren't flowering yet but it's still early for them. The brussel sprout plant is doing ok, it's growing. Something (some kind of beetle) is eating my cabbages, but I'm not sure what.

So yeah. That's home. We'll see what's going on at Fwigf in the morning.