Month: June 2009

My current favorite bean, Dog Bean, is growing here filling the bed and doing a pretty good job smothering the weeds.  It’s just started to bloom, so the dry bean harvest should be in 4-6 weeks.  I’m growing lots of different beans this year, given to me by a lot of different people.

I’m quite excited about the sweet corn.  It’s Painted Hills created by plant breeder Alan Kapuler.  I purchased the seeds from his daughter’s seed company Peace Seedlings.  The website is a little out of date, and it’s worth asking them for their printed seed list which may have more varieties available.

The variety is a combination of a multi-colored starch corn called Painted Mountain and Luther Hills sweet corn, yielding a cold soil tolerant multi-colored sweet corn.

It’s clear this variety needs some more breeding/selection before it will truly be suitable for my climate.  I first had problems getting the seeds to germinate, because of damping off problems.  This might be unrelated to the seeds.  Then I had problems with the plants dying after transplant, again maybe this might be my fault for transplanting too early.  Now however, many of the plants are small and stunted and unlikely to produce ears.

The remaining healthy plants are however a true delight to watch growing.  Like the ears of corn, the plants are all different colors:

Among the plants that seem to be going slowly this year are the pole beans.  Many of the varieties I’ve planted this year have yet to start climbing their poles.  This one, Nekar Queen given to me by Crazytomato is not only climbing the pole but the name tag as well:

The edible Chrysanthemums Kate gave me at last years meeting in Oxford are blooming their hearts out.  I never did get a chance to taste the greens before they started blooming.  Oh well, there’ll be plenty of seeds to try again next year!

Mike gave me seed for Cape Spitz, an oxheart shaped cabbage.  Oxheart cabbage is a real food staple here, sold in all the supermarkets and markets and often used in both Dutch foods and foods of former Dutch colonies.  The only other oxheart variety I’ve grown is Henderson Wakefield a few years ago, and I’m very curious to see how what Mike grows in South Africa compares with what’s available here locally.

I had originally intended to do a big planting of artichokes this year, and expected seeds from a couple of different seed savers as well as some purchased varieties.  In every case, something went wrong and I didn’t get the seeds I expected or they didn’t germinate, except this variety of Cardoon from Baker Creek.  I wasn’t really interested in trying cardoon particularly, except to grow it along side some artichokes, but here it is…  I keep hearing very negative things from fellow gardeners about it’s taste.  The gardener next to me says she has a friend who grows it, but only as an ornamental plant.  Anyway, here it is.  If I don’t get a chance to eat it this year, I’ll select the best 1 or 2 of the 12 or so plants I have to keep and grow next year and try then.

Finally, here is one of my oca plants.  They’ve been blooming and look good so far.  Last year I was unprepared to protect it from early frosts, and I din’t get much of a harvest.  The plants are daylight sensitive, and produce most of their tubers in the run-up to the winter solstice, but at the same time are killed by frosts, making this a challenging plant in almost any climate.  It also apparently doesn’t like to be grown in a greenhouse.

This year many plants seems smaller than last year, but in the last few days it’s been hot and wet, a combination that’s making things grow fast.

As well as other plants, the weeds have really been taking over, and you’ll notice lots of them in the pictures here.  The new plot I got at the community gardens this year was neglected and very weedy.

The asparagus is almost as tall as me.  Here’s what the male plants look like, sort of bushy and green:

The female plants have seed pods forming on them:

The garlic is beginning to brown and the scapes are straightening out.  Harvest is a few weeks away.

The pear tree has a few small pears on it:

I’m growing mustard for the first time this year, and here are the last few blooms on the plants.  I’ll certainly be growing it again.  The young leaves have a nice spicy flavor, and are great in salads.  The plants do a great job smothering weeds, and the flowers attract pollinating insects.  The plants sure have a lot of seeds on them, and it’ll be interesting to see if I have enough to cook with.  This variety is called Florida Broadleaf and comes from a local gardener, Crazytomato.

The yacón is still small, but starting to grow fast.  This is the normal brown skinned variety I grew last year:

The is yacón morado, a red skinned variety.  Both these varieties come from Frank.  You can see the leaves look very different:

I grow celeriac or celery root most years.  I don’t save my own seed, and this is Giant Prague from Baker Creek seeds.  I think this is one of the more underrated vegetables, in particular it makes great soup: