Death knell for the zucchini

Well, it put up a good fight, but unfortunately the zucchini just couldn’t make it.  We found it this morning covered in bugs, and the leaves it was attempting to grow were all chewed-up.  No more zucchini for us this year.

Tarzan no longer at home in Shafjac’s Garden

Bad news, devoted readers.

Whilst away on vacation, enjoying the trails and scenery of Olympic National Park (and attending nuptials in Seattle), tragedy struck the garden.

The jungle plant took a big hit.

Fruits are coming in!

At long last, the fruits are starting to come in!

The zucchini have been coming in for a week or so now – like I said, they’re jungle plants, and grow like crazy.

I’m pretty glad we got rid of those other 3 plants.  I think I started picking zucchini last week, and I’ve probably picked 7 or 8 already.  If it keeps up at that pace, we’re going to have to train the cats to eat vegetables.  The good news is, they do taste pretty good; we sauteed some for dinner last night and Amanda said they were the best she’d ever had (full disclosure: she’d been drinking for over an hour by that point).  We’ve also got some blossoms we’re saving for frying, which will be a new treat for us.

The tomatoes, however, have been the worst teases in the garden.  I’ve been staring at blossoms for what seems like weeks now, waiting for something to show up, to no avail.  But finally, last night, we got itty bitty fruits on the Black Cherry and Green Zebra plants.

I’m pretty sure the Prue and German Johnson will be catching up shortly.  Shaggy’s going to need some more time; he got a late start.

Finally, Rosey the Red Pepper has also joined the party and is fruiting nicely.

Hopefully she’ll shame the jalapeño plants into getting their act together.

Aphid infestation, zucchini breakup, and the end of the radishes

Well, I did finally spare some energy for the garden over the weekend, despite the stubborn illness that would not go away.  Stepped out on the deck to find the parsley lookin’ not-so-good:

See those little green buggers on the leaves?  Pretty sure those are aphids … and they were all over the plant.  The sources I read said “remove and destroy affected parts of the plant” or use insecticidal soap.  Since the entire plant was “affected”, I decided to try out option 2 (and move it away from the other herbs).

The good news?  The aphids appear to be gone (now several days later).  Bad news – I think I had too much “soap” in my mix, because a lot of the plant looked “burned” (lots of leaves with yellowed spots and edges).  I removed the “burned” parts of the plant and hopefully it will recover.

I also made some time to thin out the zucchini jungle.  Everything I’d read about zucchini said that they’re extremely prolific plants and take up a bunch of space, so you better love zucchini if you plant them.  Well, I ordered one plant, with that in mind, but ended up with 4.  To remind you, when we first planted them, they looked like this (05/04/08):

Less than a month later (06/01/08), they looked like this:

I’m tellin’ you, these things are freakin’ jungle plants.  It’s pretty impressive.

I like zucchini, but I don’t want that much zucchini, and I also don’t want it taking over the beans and tomatoes – I like those waaay more.  So we decided to keep one plant, as far away from everything else as possible.  We threw 2 of the plants in the compost collection, and transplanted the other one to a bucket for transport to Independence Hell (yep – Bing’s house).  After the eviction, the keeper breathed a huge sigh of relief and now has no less than 5 zucchinis rapidly maturing for our pleasure and is trying his best to fill up all the empty space.

On a final note, we finally harvested the remainder of the radishes.  They were starting to get too big in the ground and some of them had split.  Note to self – do not plant 2 rows of radishes at one time ever again.  Turns out, that’s a ton of radishes.  We gave a bunch of them to our neighbors and we still have way too many to eat.

To do – fill up the empty space near the zucchini (maybe another bush bean plant) and fill up the empty space where the radishes and failed carrots were.  I’m open to ideas on the latter space.  What’s a good summer veg to transplant this time of year?

Garden keeps growing without any help

I’ve been sick and laid up the past couple days and haven’t had much of a chance to get out there, but things are still going great guns.  In fact, I sneaked out briefly this evening, and our first zucchini showed up and is already as long as my thumb!  The prue tomato plant is also growing like a monster – it’s head and shoulders above the others and already has several blossoms showing.

Hopefully I’ll be up to snuff tomorrow and can get some work done out there.  Plenty of maintenance to do.

Also, got word from our friend Bing in Independence Hell with updated pics of Scooby (the other Cherokee Purple).  I’ll upload them tomorrow with a side-by-side comparison of him and Shaggy.

Back home on Memorial Day

Came back home after being gone Wednesday afternoon through Monday day-time, and WOW! Garden explosion! In five days, significant growth all around. Check it out:

The radishes, mesclun mix, and arugula are all ready for harvest now, and the zucchini and a couple tomato plants are starting to show some blossoms.

It was late when we got home and we had almost nothing to eat in the house, so we raided the back yard and had an awesome salad of mixed greens with radishes and topped our pasta with home-grown basil.

It’s official – having a garden kicks ass.

Planted tomatoes, zucchini, and herbs … built badass trellis

We got the majority of the organic garden transplants yesterday from Bear Creek Farms and got everything planted today.

Container herbs:

• Parsley – Italian flat leaf – 3 seedlings, big pot
• Cilantro – 2 seedlings, big pot
• Basil – Italian – 2 seedlings, medium pot
• Rosemary – 2 seedlings, medium pot
• Thyme – standard – 1 (really large) plant, long rectangular pot

Container plants:

• Pepper – Jalapeno – 4 seedlings, 2 large pots
• Tomato – Black Cherry (heirloom) – really large pot

For a potting mix, we used a blend of Fertilome potting mix and Summer Field Farms “Professional Potting Soil” (mix of pine bark and compost). The Fertilome is pretty light and the SFF mix is somewhat heavy, so we used more of the former than the latter.

Raised bed (east) plants:

• Tomato – Prue (heirloom, paste)
• Tomato – Green Zebra (heirloom, medium size)
• Tomato – German Johnson (heirloom, beefsteak size)
• Zucchini – Spineless Beauty – 4 seedlings

We planted the tomatoes about 24 inches apart from each other, in a square, and the zucchinis about 8 inches from each other, with the intention of keeping the healthiest of the plants and giving away the rest of them.

We watered the plants in (not the herbs) with Nature’s Creation Liquid Plant Food per the instructions and mulched all the plants (not the herbs) with shredded hardwood mulch.

On the hardware front, we installed our cattle panel trellis for the tomatoes – 8 vertical feet of growing room for those babies. We’ll never be able to reach the top but they’ll have a good time growing.

Pictures of the aftermath: