Eat it! The Soup Edition

Made some soup with our tomato crop this season. We made 5 quarts total which is plenty for just the two of us. I typically over-do it with items like this and then it sits around for YEARS because we are just too tired of eating it.  But the quantity seems perfect this time around. A very simple soup but great tasting and even better with a cheesy melty sandi. Yumm.  I found the recipe here.  Next time I'll go a little lighter on the celery though.

Instead of busting out the water bath canner, we just froze it.  Canning can add a layer of fussiness and work to a project so I was happy to avoid it. Most of the things that I can would do well in the freezer so I'll have to keep it in mind.  

Last Days

Disease and a couple of frosty days here and there means the tomatoes are seeing heir last days in the garden.  Can't complain about the crop this season, got a good amount and used it wisely.  We had 1 regular tomato and 2 cherry tomatoes which was nearly perfect for our consumption.  The only concern is...what happens if your only plant kicks the bucket early?  You have no back up and you're paying $3.99 a pound for organic vine ripened 'maters.   Gardening is gambling!

Volunteers

This beautiful lettuce has decided to come up all on it's own.  We haven't actually planted any seeds for lettuce in over a  year!

Harvest Time!

Culantro Failure

Failure times two.  I had 2 culantro plants going at the same time and neither one made it.   They were both in pots which is where I typically grow all of our herbs. Herbs tend to be invasive so I don't let them loose in the raised beds.   Both of the plants immediately went to seed when I potted them and then they stayed in a perpetual state of seeding until they turned black and dried up.

One of these plants was rescued from a neighbors pathway! I can't believe that I killed something that literally was walked on repeatedly.  My basil and oregano that are also in pots are still alive and doing well, so I'm concluding the culantro just doesn't like to be contained.  Next time I'll plop it into the main bed since it didn't seem to be aggressive.

Garden Update

Ugh.  What an ugly garden.  We're winding down here in this zone and mentally getting ready for the next seasons spring crops.  When a garden is at the end of it's cycle it's not a pretty sight.  All the way to the left are the 2 cherry tomato plants that have merged into one hot mess.  Delicious though and that's what ultimately counts, right?  The broccoli are the low dark green plants below the tomatoes then the scallion/onion and garlic section.  The spiky plant up front is one of my pineapple plants.  As I take out an expired plant, I'm filling in the blank space with the spiky plant to deter the cats from coming to poop play.

Here's the second bed.  All that light green equals 3 brussels sprouts plants, only 3.  Still going strong but producing near nothing of any quantity.  All the way to the left is a large variety of tomato that has performed really well for us.  Just one plant has produced enough to make a huge pot of tomato soup and another huge pot of spicy spaghetti sauce.  Which reminds me, if you haven't tried shakshuka, you really must. Really.

Meyer Lemon Tree

Here's the lemon tree that the Hubby purchased for our last wedding anniversary, it's still alive!   This  teeny little tree gave us quite a few lemons last season.  Not enough to really make any baked goods or full scale canning adventures but amazing anyway!  A few basil seeds snuck in there which you can see in the pic.  Also in the pic is the hand truck we use to wheel this guy in and out when the weather takes a turn toward chilly.  It's a special treat for us when the tree comes in the house because the flowers smell so devine, there is nothing else like it. 

Supposed to be Raspberries

Raspberries.  Hmm.  Well, I totally messed them up and am now avoiding them because I don't know where to go from here.

We made a nice little box for the berry plants and I threw in some tomato cages to keep them under control.  I knew the canes would get long so I planned ahead.  Go me!  Those things get SO long. They bent over the cages and wherever the tips found soil, they rooted.  So now I have plants rooted at their bases and at their tips.  One even found a potted plant and is now stuck in there.  I'm inclined to just leave them alone  since I'm feeling lazy.  Can it be good for the plant to be rooted on both ends?  

Eat Your Sprouts!

Brussels sprouts.  Well, I've learned a few things, that's for sure. First of all, I always thought they were "brussel sprouts", but a quick search shows that "brussels sprouts" is the correct way to spell them.  Alrighty then.  Secondly, I learned that I'll be purchasing these guys in the store whenever I get a hankering for them.

In a limited space garden like we have, they just don't make sense.  The foliage is massive and shades out everything around it, not a good use of out square footage.  They do rank extremely high in the entertainment  department though.  Fast growing foliage, bright green colors and quite a few growing sprouts makes this plant a hit for kids or those that love to watch things grow.  But the amount of  food per plant and the gigantic footprint make these fellas lousy bed mates for a small time gardener like me.  I didn't find any real advantage in flavor either as compared to their store bought cousins., another reason to skip them over next time around.  I'd much rather grow more broccoli instead, which is way better out of the garden then in the store.  Broccoli winning a vegetable battle?  You heard it here first folks!

Bad Breath Section

Here is a close up of the onion and garlic section, both making a first time appearance in the garden.  We were pretty brave this time around, trying out so many new things.  It's been fun!  
For some reason I thought I'd be able to tell them apart so I didn't label anything.   Yikes!  As  you can see for yourself, they all look exactly alike.


The theory with the onions is that we plant them all at once then harvest as needed.  The first few to be picked will be more like a spring onion and the others just grow bigger and get picked at various stages. All delicious and no storage needed, we would essentially be storing them outside in the ground.  But, I forget they're there and I buy scallions from the store all the time.    So much for that plan.  Onion soup anyone?

Clean Up

Lots of things to do even in our tiny raised beds.  Since room is at a premium, it's always wise to trim and thin where we can.  Most of these are brussel sprout leaves, those plants are trying to take over. The leaves are gigantic and shade everything else out. I highly recommend putting them in a place where you are not trying to grow other things because they get big...and tall...and wide...and bushy.  Who knew?  

The yellow spalsh of color is a broccoil head that flowered from the heat we've been having.  The flowers are actually edible and I saw online that they are considered a delicacy, as in expensive to buy.  And here I am throwing it away!  We definately eat the brocc that has a few flowers on it but Hubbie is not too interested in all flowers like the one here, so out it goes.  

Peppers - Disease Report II

Disease has run rampant. I mean RAMPANT!  I planted quite a few pepper plants and had lots of plans for those peppers, but it's not to be. At least this time around.  It all started with a favor to a friend.  Do you recall the mystery pepper from Puerto Rico?  Well, I finally got one of the mystery pepper seeds to grow and it just never stopped.  It got HUGE!  The friend who provided the seeds wanted his picture taken with the thing to show his friends because it was the biggest he had ever seen.  Go me!  But, the thing got so big that it shaded out all of the other peppers around it. Moisture plus shade in Florida means disease.

I'm thinking this is gray leaf spot. If not that, then something very close and they're pretty much all treated the same. So I diligently clipped all of the affected leaves and disposed of them off site to control the spread. And....nothing.  Just more and more spots.  I'm pulling the plug on them this weekend. Poor things have been hanging in there but no real growth and hardly any peppers.

The seasons coming to a close anyway, so I won't have to wait too long to try again.

Scallions From Seed

I had lots of fun with seeds in this garden, including these little fellers. These scallions youngins were just dropped in the ground with little attention to detail and up they came.  They're awefully slow growing compared to everything else in the garden.  I literally planted boc choy at the same time and have harvested AND eaten it in the time it has taken these guys to grow. And they're still not ready.  Sigh.  At least they're cheap to buy at the grocery store.

Evicted Strawberry Plants

When I was young, I remember my Aunt Mary having some berry plants and I thought how wonderful it would be to have my own one day when I grew up.  So last season I planted 6 strawberry plants. Doesn't sound like many but I don't have a large garden and relatively speaking, these plants were given the most space of any plant in the garden so far.  But remember, this was a childhood dream, so they were treated like kings!

They say that you can grow them in Florida as a perennial, just plant once and they'll keep on producing.  The truth?  Who knows!  These guys went wild last season, growing all sorts of greens, sending runners out and forming new plants anywhere and everywhere....then they just stopped.  Went dormant maybe?   They got thin looking, lost lots of leaves and stopped flowering.  But with space at a premium, nothing is allowed to be in stand-by mode, so they were evicted and relocated into a few pots.  Looking nice and green, will they flower and fruit?  Let's wait and see....

Tomatoes - Disease Report I

Ugh.  Powdery white meldew.  It's a hotbed of disease in the raised beds this season.  Usually this powdery mildew only latches onto the cucumbers and leaves the rest of the garden alone. Not this season, it's on everything!   It's way too extensive to try any treatments so it'll just have to run it's course and hopefully not kill every single thing in it's path.

I'm starting to realize that it's futile to try and grow cucumbers in this zone.  Between the pickle worms that attack the fruit and the powdery mildew that attacks the vines, it's just not worth it.  I was very lazy in getting the diseased cucumber vines out of the garden and I'm wondering if that kicked off the wide spread damage.  Is this gonna linger into the next garden?  I guess I need to start reading about solarizing my soil.  Double Ugh.

Chinese Broccoli - Kai Lan - Gai Lan

We planted some Chinese broccoli which is also called Kai Lan and Gai Lan.   Chinese broccoli is a more delicate version of regular broccoli.  The stalk is very thin with a small broccoli head and soft leaves.   It's close in appearance to broccoli rabe but not in flavor since broccoli rabe tastes super bitter to me. You typically harvest the small head with a few inches of stalk and the top most leaves. 

At restaurants it's steamed then sauted with 

garlic.  The leaves wilt down like spinich so you end up with this interesting dish that is like a few different veggies in one. It's wilted like spinich, has tiny heads like traditional broccoli and crunchy/tender stems too.     

These are pictures of baby Chinese broccoli coming up from seed.  Super easy to grow and came right up on their own without any fuss.  The leaf miners seemed to have found them but not a whole lot and most of the damage is on the older leaves that you wouldn't eat anyway.  The powdery mildew that has taken over the rest of the garden (more on that later) doesn't affect these guys. That's my kind of veg.   The down side is that you have to plant quite a few to get enough for a meal.

Improper Broccoli Harvesting

It's been a great treat to grow broccoli in the garden this time around. It's our very first time growing it and I had no idea what to expect. I'm not sure why, but Dad never grew broccoli from what I remember.  Probably because us bratty kids would never eat it.

Well, times sure do change because we eat ALOT of it in my house now. It's Hubbies favorite veggie, we eat it four times a week and I'm not even exaggerating.   Since we eat it so much, it was a no-brainer to plant it. I'm so happy we did!  Homegrown brocc is mild and a little......sweet!  You have to plant it if you have room.

Needless to say, as first timers, we made some mistakes.  The main one being at harvest time.  We sorta cut the brocc head straight across which resulted in a rotting pit of nasty.  I kept looking around for what smelled so bad....like a rotten fish in stagnent water.....and found that the plant above was the source of the stink.  So be warned, cut on an angle to avoid a rotting hole of stink. 

Peas Please

Snow peas just starting out

Snow peas are always gonna be welcome in any garden that I plant.  They perform just as well down here as they do for Dad back in New York.  They definately prefer the cooler weather but fare pretty well when it warms up.  Speaking of warming up....we tied a record high of 85* a few days ago!  It's been so nice that the neighbors were swimming in their pools...in January!

Something I'm proud of is the succession planting that's going on over here.  That top picture is a second crop of peas planted AFTER the first crop.  Now that's some A+ gardening!