The VeggieSmith Blog

I’m thinking it’s just about time to lean on Mike to jazz this blog up a bit (visually, that is).  I’ve been perusing many a blog as of late, and I’m frequently impressed by the visual loveliness lots of them boast.  While I’m technically rather deficient, my better half is a programmer with mad skills, heretofore un-highlighted.  Stay tuned in the upcoming days, as I hope I’ll twist his arm sufficiently to generate some pizzazz* in the blogosphere.

In gardening news: after harvesting some spinach on Thursday, we were able to make an enormous salad on Sunday (in honor of Father’s Day) to share with my parents and Joan’s family.  I have to say that that spinach is the most delicious I’ve ever tasted.  It’s absolutely perfect raw and cooked.

Yesterday we decided to take the plunge and harvest the 5 carrots that we’ve been eye-balling for some time.  As you can see, the tops of the carrots were, to say the least, impressive.

Carrot Tops (and friends) with Mike

I’m told they were also delicious.

Binky: noshing on the tops (sorry it's a bit blurry)

Mike and I had visions of carrot behemoths.  Carrot juggernauts.  Carrots that would block out the sun.  I mean, those tops had to be harbingers of plenty, right?

Alas, as you may have gathered from the preceding, we were rather disappointed in the size of said carrots once we’d actually yanked them out.  They were quite small, really.

Carrots: Less Than Meets The Eye

I’ll admit I’m mystified by several aspects of this carrotage:

1. Why were they so gosh-darned hirsute? (yes, I realize carrots cannot, actually, be hairy; these were zillions of roots sprouting out in every direction).  To wit:

Captain Vegetable**: it needs to be said.

2. Why were they so short?  It has been my (limited, admittedly) experience that thick, dense tops equal large carrots.

3. Why, I’m still wondering, did Mike start these carrots indoors and 3b. why did they survive transplanting?

4. Does 3 really explain 1 and 2?

If you have any clue, let me know!

The good news, however, is that the carrots were pronounced delicious by one and all.

Yum: I swear the orange shirts were a coincidence

*Anyone else think it’s a crying shame that the word pizzazz will never, ever be played in a (legitimate) game of Scrabble?  Truly tragic.

** Also tragic would be a lack of knowledge as to the identity of Captain Vegetable.

In this family we’re all about support: support for trying and not entirely succeeding, support for giving one’s best effort, support for doing the best that you can within reason.  Unless you’re a plant, that is.  In that case, we refer to the immortal words of one Homer Simpson: “if at first you don’t succeed, give up.”

While we’ve had some wonderful growing successes, some of our plants just didn’t make the cut.  While we’re all about giving second chances, we felt that it would stink if we devoted precious gardening space to plants that weren’t  going to come up at all, or that weren’t going to do much in the way of producing veggies.

X marks the non-producing squares: this was our least-producing box/pot collection

Thus, some plants have had to be removed.  In some cases, the plants were victims of transplanting gone horribly wrong.  There are a lot of reasons that transplanted plants can fail to thrive.  Sometimes it’s just the shock of moving, other times the process involves damage to delicate plants, there is also the harshness of the elements compared to the cushy lifestyle to which they’d been accustomed.  We are also pretty sure that some plants were simply sown too early indoors, and therefore they were far too tall and delicate: they grew thin and spindly because nothing was forcing them to put energy into making strong stems, and as soon as they were faced with wind and rain they simply fell apart.

Dill: demonstrating how to properly adapt to a weak stalk. Whatever works.

In any case, Mike pulled and replaced the following: some basil was replaced with jalapeños, some tomatoes were replaced in kind and some with peppers, some peppers were also replaced in kind, marigolds (that never even sprouted) were replaced by pepper and broccoli, squash was replaced by melons (of what sort, I’m not sure, nor is the little taggy thing very helpful in this regard), and some parsley was replaced in kind.  In the pots Mike planted broccoli in lieu of both squash and melons.  I’m a little sad about the (apparent) dearth of squash, but I’m reassured by my mother’s ability to produce bumper crops of squash year after year.

Melon: aka Squash Supplanter (note the helpful tag which reads "Melon." Thanks for that).

Parsley: new and improved (alive, that is).

I would also like to point out, at this juncture, that in spite of my aforementioned cavalier attitude to unsuccessful plants, Mike has not entirely given up hope.  The pulled plants have been given a second chance at life in a heap of sod next to our compost pile.  Best of luck to them. Mike had lots of fun replanting these transplants.  Or something like that!

The Plant Retirement Patch

Ah, yes, planning one’s garden.  ‘Tis fun, challenging, and sometimes downright complicated: where to plant stuff, when to plant it and, of course, how to protect one’s wee plants.  We honestly thought we’d covered that in our plans…but clearly we’d forgotten one of the menaces of living very close to the world’s highest tides.

Now, I’m not blaming the ocean (this time) but seriously sometimes when the tide changes we can get these absolutely abrupt and fierce wind squalls .   And while it may seem that I’m digressing here: I’m simply trying to explain that it was silly of us to plant as though we’re unused to sudden blasts of strong wind. However, this past weekend was nothing like that.  That would have been fine. A short squall we could handle.  Instead, for some reason, we had gale force (I think: clearly it’s becoming obvious that I’m no meteorologist) winds that just kept on blasting at our garden (and us, too, but we’re not prone to snapping when the wind blows).

We have frost domes, but let’s face it: PVC piping and flimsy plastic are no match for hurricanes (and yes, I’ve now lapsed into hyperbole).  Perhaps if we’d kept our wee darlings inside a bit longer, or maybe if we’d planted them outside sooner to give them a chance to harden themselves out in the REAL world.  Alas, we did not.

Thankfully, most of our plants emerged unscathed, but not all.  As you can see this poor dear was snapped off in the prime of his young life.  So terribly sad.

Wind 1, Plant 0

On the other hand, we noticed some wee beans sprouting on the bean plant that we thought were done!

New Bean!

And hopefully the wind toll will not cut into our “production” too much.  Thankfully, not all of our plants were destroyed.  This square is looking wonderful.

Growing goodies: this is our happiest square.

I’m particularly excited about these adorable zucchini plants.  I can’t wait to eat tender young zucchinis (unlike the monster zucchinis of my youth)!

Lovely and robust Zucchini plants