Oh well, I can’t complain! In this odd year of mostly hands-off-farming, I’ve actually learned a whole lot. And I’m so excited for next year! I can’t wait to implement all my new insights, and I just can’t wait to see this baby beast all covered in dirt and sprinkling seeds as he toddles along. We’re gonna have so much fun!





So speaking of seeds, I sort of have this grand idea. I want to organize an international seed exchange for Bonzai readers! I’ve always been enamored with the idea of saving seed – there’s something so inherently whimsical about this incredibly practical act. There are tons of really great reasons to do it, not to mention the fact that it’s just plain fun. I mean, talk about recycling!

I’ve written a bit about various seed-saving techniques, but the truth is, it’s fairly universal no matter the species. First, remove the plant part that holds the seeds. If it’s a pod or a flower, allow it to dry completely and then liberate the seeds. If it’s a fruit like a tomato or gourd, simply excavate the seeds and then allow them to dry out. Either way, collect your fully-dried seeds and label them clearly, storing in an airtight container (old spice jars work great). Easy as pie!

So this autumn as your garden begins to wind down, why not save as many seeds from as many plants as you can? Then email me, tell me what you’ve got and let me know what you’d want, and I’ll do my best to get everyone matched up for a great trade. I’ll post more info as the time draws near, but for now just remember to let some of your stock go to seed!

~~~

And now, a little look into my pitiful plot, haha. But I swear it’s not all my fault! It’s a similar story in every raised bed across the city. All the plants are petite; each bloom and fruit is delayed. I don’t know anybody who got homegrown blueberries, and even the Farmer’s Market produce is showing up late for the season.

What a strange year it’s been . . .



One thing I haven’t had any issue with is my gourds! Funny, since last year I planted a ton and didn’t get a one. But check ‘em out this time! They’re lovin’ it!



My very first homegrown pumpkin! There are a few of these guys already, with hints of more to come. I’m so excited!



I think this guy would grow up to be an acorn squash. Alas, I’m pretty sure he won’t make it. One of the casualties of heat + weekends away . . .



These are my first ripening tomatoes. Yes, my first tomatoes. It’s basically September. The best thing about waiting so long for your garden to get it together? Man, these are gonna taste soooo good.



What’s left of the chard. It was super lush but never got very big. But it still made many a smoothie! (of course!)



Beet greens . . . I wonder if there’s actually anything going on under there? Ah well, if nothing else the greens will be delicious!



My basils are finally starting to take off. I just hope it’s not too late! Pesto ahoy!



Summer is never complete without sunflowers! My big beauties are finally getting ready to bloom. They’re just about 7 feet tall already!


So tell me my dears, how has the season been where you live? Any luck in the garden this year? If so, I hope you’ll be saving your seeds!

It’s been a big year here on the Micro-Farm, with an addition to the family leaving little time for tending the land. Waits is approaching 5 months now, and my poor yard . . . my poor yard is approaching catastrophe! But that’s okay. I have a plan, a long-term vision to work off of through summer and fall. If all goes well I’ll be set up to take off running next spring!

And for now, the babe is a bit bigger and I’m able to get outside a bit more – accompanied by my munchkin of course!

baby-wearing-yard-working : it’s a *great* workout

My wee little garden gnome!

Despite my [reluctant] neglect, my garden – beautiful beast that it is – is thriving! You may remember what it looked like freshly planted, back in May. It’s come a long way! Here’s the right-side bed :





The lower left quadrant used to house the pac choi, but I tore that out when it bolted, and I’ve replaced it with six nice tomato starts from the Farmer’s Market.

Tomato flowers. BRING ON the home-grown ‘matoes! Pleeeeeease!!!

My snow peas, which I feared I’d gotten into the ground too late, have made it:

Ain’t they sweet? But the real stars are my gourds. They’re totally out of control!

Standing between the two beds.

Bursting from their box, invading everything around them!

Ginormous, gorgeous pumpkin flower (there are about a million of these!)

Awesome (alien-esque?) acorn squash bud. I think it looks extra-terrestrial, but then again we’ve been watching a lot of old X-Files . . .

Behind all that, the sunflowers have just shot up (we *finally* got some heat around here) and are growing like crazy now. Yay! I planted the same monster variety as last year.





And last but not least, though I can’t eat them this year because Waits reacts, I still think the strawberries are soooo adorable.

So tell me tell me, how are your gardens growing? Link to pics if you’ve got ‘em, we all want to see!

BONZAI!

Oregano – one of my very favorite fresh herbs. I use this a LOT.

The biiiig pot of parsley. I don’t use tons of parsley in my recipes, but it’s *awesome* for homemade stock.

Cilantro, mmmmm. Mexican food is made for summer.

Thyme is my other favorite herb. So perfect in so many dishes of the season!

My dill is just now coming alive, I can’t wait till it it’s matured. I don’t cook much with dill but it makes a mean green smoothie! (pair with strawberry, oh man!)

That header picture up at the top of this post was taken a few weeks ago. ^^^ That is what it looks like these days – filling out quite nicely I’d say!

I didn’t think my jalapenos would make it after such a late-start summer, but here they come. Hot!

Container gardening is an awesome option for apartment-dwellers and others with limited space. You certainly don’t have to let your circumstances stop you. Even if it’s just a little basil on your window sill, anybody and everybody can be a farmer!

Are you growing any herbs this year?

Hello from HQ! It’s been a while since I’ve posted garden pictures, and this year’s tiny plot is finally taking off. These images are actually from a few weeks back, so there’s even more action now. We’ve had an exceptionally wet June and the extra moisture stunted some growth (tomatoes) while simultaneously stimulating others (gourds and greens). So it’s a mixed bag this year and who knows how it’ll all turn out . . . with my incredibly limited garden time, I’m just thrilled to be growing anything at all!

Let’s start in the front yard. You may remember my cherry tree discovery from last year. Well, this year was even more bountiful!

And recently Damian spent an afternoon high atop a ladder, harvesting . . .

We got maybe 6? Maybe 8? pounds of cherries. I can’t wait to show you what I did with them! Coming soon . . .


Moving around to the back and my 2 raised beds :

For reference, this was the layout as of mid-May, just a few weeks after planting.

And here’s the righthand bed, as of mid June :

The beets (up top) and all the greens are flourishing.

Kale blend: mostly Red Bohr, some Dino.

The chard is so bright and beautiful. Thriving!

Happy little chard. Grow baby Grow!

The collards . . . mmm . . . I can’t wait to make them into RAW summer wraps!

And just like last year the pak choi bolted at the first sign of sunlight. I’ve already torn out this entire patch and replanted with some Farmer’s Market tomato starts! Meanwhile these guys went straight into my blender, NOM

To the far right of the bed (not pictured), strung up on an old box spring frame, are some sugar snap peas that I may have started too late. And on the other side of those (protected in their shade) are 6 little basil plants.

Cross your fingers for these guys – I’m *really* hoping to preserve pesto this year.

The lefthand bed is split between squashes and tomatoes. I started most of my tomatoes from seed sown directly into the ground. Not ideal, but I was busy with baby! The poor little guys damn near drowned in all the rain we’ve been having and they’re seriously stunted in growth. I don’t think any of the Goldens or the Green Zebras made it. But the cherries and the reds are finally starting to take off!

Precious cherry tomatoes that fed me so well last year, you can do it! I believe!

And the gourds are doing GREAT. I planted both pumpkin and acorn squash and got them in early enough for once. I expect I’ll be carving my homegrown goods this Hallowe’en!

Pumpkins in the foreground, acorn squash behind, w00t!

And of course beyond the boxes lies the strawberry/sunflower patch. My sunflowers were started from seed in the ground, but the made it!

The strawberries have been demoted to mere slug deterrent. Waits gets gas when I eat them, and if I leave them on the bush they draw the slugs away from my greens. So, this veganic method is working well for us this year! You can also see in some of the other pictures, I’ve lined the beds with copper tape. This has been *excellent* for keeping slugs out of my goodies. Highly recommend!

The strawberries and the sunflowers (with the compost in the background).

And that’s the micro-farm! So what about you, my dears? How are your gardens growing??

But this year . . . this year I’ve got my hands a little full! So I’ve had to scale it back a bit, which is very hard for me to do (but also good practice). This year I’m keeping things mini and manageable – that’s my mantra! I’m hoping the lightened load will free up some time for other outdoor activities of a more aesthetic nature.

So what am I doing then? Well, first things first I planted out my red raised beds!

Couldn’t get rid of my shadow, so I went with it. Peace!

And what did I include? This year I focused solely on my favorites: tomatoes and greens (and some beets for the husband) (and some winter squash because last year was such a squash fail) (okay, so maybe not *solely*, but mostly ‘matoes and greens, yum yum) Specifically:





I’m soooo excited!!! I’v been on a greens binge and pillage the Farmer’s Market each weekend, so I just can’t wait to be picking the goodies out of my own back yard! Mmm, yes yes, it’s gonna be a good summer.

And as you can see in that picture, my fragile asparagus actually [barely] survived the savage scratching of those surly hens. Just when I thought it was a goner (grrr birds!), a single shoot shot up in late spring. So it’s not dead, yay!

And the strawberry patch is also back in full effect. All my propagation really paid off. In fact, here’s the little dude that I featured in the propagation article last year:





Back in the boxes my seeds are starting to sprout. The beets keep popping up another each day, the tomatoes are just now starting to break ground, the kale and the collards are filling in nicely . . . and the pac choi already needs to be thinned!





And that’s about it for veggies this year. Mini and manageable. Of course there’s always the fruit trees and berry bushes and the herbs on the patio. But this year there’s no massive pea patch, no spiny experiments, no potato tire project. Until next year, oh yes, next year . . .

And now I leave you with the cutest of cuteness, a teeny tiny brand new pumpkin plant, still wearing his seed hat:





What about you my friends? What are you growing this year?

But cutting it open, this barbed little beast was nothing like what I expected. The inside was very seedy, with a watery flesh that was certainly not sugary. It reminded me of something but I just couldn’t place it, until Damian took one bite and said, “Oh, it’s a cucumber.” Yes! That’s exactly it! The spiny melon is an exotic, wild cucumber.

So just for fun, and because it was March and I was eager for planting season, I decided to take a gamble. I rinsed off a bunch of the seeds, and spread them out on a paper towel (this was back before I stopped using paper towels) to dry. A few weeks later I remembered about them, fashioned some newspaper seed pots, and plunked them into potting soil.

They actually sprouted! So I put them into the ground, right amongst my corn stalks, and they took off. They grew! And grew . . . and grew . . . and overtook the corn, and the butternuts I’d planted alongside, and anything else nearby. They were these creeping curly prickly vines that just covered everything!

But I never saw them flower – all I ever saw was leaves and vines and curly-q crawlers. So in early fall I finally gave up on them. It was winter prep-time anyways. I put on my gloves (the vines were so thorny!) and began pulling up the vines. I’d gotten maybe 3/4 of the way through the bed, when suddenly something caught my eye. This stalk I’d just cut . . . bore a teeny tiny yellow flower!

I dug a little deeper, and lo and behold, what did I find underneath? . . .





Spiny cucumber! I did it!!!

Excitedly, I dug into the remaining vines. To my delight and surprise, I uncovered an entire crop of those funny foreign fruits, imported from the land of the Tuatara and the Kiwi bird.








You can try this too, with anything you bring home from the grocery store! Some of them will be viable, some of them will be sterile. You’ll never know until you plant ‘em. But, you may just end up with your own peculiar little garden, too!

Check out the adorable wee baby spiny! BONZAI!

Question: What does a vegan do with a wonderful set of egg cups?
Answer: Tomato display, of course!


Much to my surprise, my summer crops have lasted well into autumn, and continue to fill my kitchen even today. But things have certainly changed around the ol’ farm, as you can see below.





The grass is dying back and the ground is littered with plum tree leaves. The potato tires have been re-stacked and filled in, to serve as flower planters come spring. The left side bed has been cleared and mulched. The sunflowers are downed and the brush has been tidied. The right side bed hosts the small fall garden. All the clean-up and spring prep is complete, and MAN it feels good to head into winter with a clean slate.

Still, the harvest keeps trickling in! Why just today I plucked a bunch of tomatoes. In November! Granted, they’re not as flavorful as they were a few months back, but they’re homegrown and that alone is good enough for me.





This is what the tomato bed looks like these days, drying out and dying back – but still fighting:





I planted a bunch of pumpkins this year and they started off so strong. But then they just stalled, flowering and re-flowering and re-flowering again, but never producing any fruit. I’m still not quite sure what went wrong, but at least the flowers were pretty:





And then finally one little punkin’ popped out. Poor thing, it’ll never make it now. But look! It’s so cute!





I had all but forgotten about the peppers I started from seed, waaaaay back in early spring. But I was pulling up a beet the other day, and my hand grazed the small stunted bell pepper plant. I’d overlooked them because the green just blends right in with the foliage. But there were actual bells on there! Two baby bells in fact.





And these pretty peppers came in as well – I just picked them today. I’d scavenged the seedlings, half dead, out of the free pile at the nursery. Does anyone know what they are? They remind me of peperoncinis, so I’m thinking of pickling them!





And finally, the actual autumn crops. These have sort of been demolished by feisty chickens scratching for bugs, but I’m still holding out hope. At least you can get an idea of what they looked like a few weeks ago, of what the potential was. *sigh*

The lettuce (with beetlings in the background):





And the kale:





And that’s all I’ve got for now. Honestly, I never expected to be giving garden updates in November, and I’m just delighted its lasting this long.

So what about you dears? Are you still getting your green on?

You may remember all the way back in April, I posted an article outlining how to grow potatoes in tire towers. I started my own tater seeds that month, and would periodically update every few months. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly, but there’s really no way to tell what’s going on under all that dirt.

Recently, I decided it was time to harvest. To be honest, I think I jumped the gun a bit. I was supposed to stop watering and let the greenery die back slowly, which would give the little spuds time to mature into big spuds. But I was also supposed to harvest before the first rain, or risk squishy spuds rotting in the mud.

Well, a few weeks ago we got a ton of rain here. I spooked, I guess, and decided to dismantle the towers before the greenery had died back. Maybe it wasn’t the best decision, but it was the one I felt I had to make. So I began digging. And sifting. And removing. And digging. And two full tires down I was really starting to worry, until . . .





Eureka! I think I actually squealed.

All in all it took me over an hour to break down the stacks. In total, I only found one potato higher than the third tire. Almost all of them were clustered in the second tire (the tire the seeds had been planted in), which I didn’t expect. As well, many of them were teeny tiny. So perhaps they’d needed to mature after all.





In the end, my haul was pretty puny. Not that I’m complaining, and it actually seems on par with what other bloggers have gotten out of this project. I wonder what we’re all doing wrong?

I’m still debating about whether or not I’ll do this again. If I do, I’ll definitely keep my stacks lower – maybe seed in tire #1 and then only stack three high. That way, energy can go to growing existing taters, instead of growing more green foliage.

The crotchety Russets. They’re so mutant!

My pile of Yukon Gold nuggets. This was the largest yield for sure.

And finally the Reds, with quite a size range!

Am I disappointed with my harvest? Hells No!! I’m so proud of what I grew, and thrilled it worked at all. For a first time spud farmer, I’ve got no complaints.

Of course, the fact that they’re maybe the richest, tastiest taters I’ve ever eaten, certainly helps!

First meal: crushed Yukons with herbed gravy. The Yukons taste like butter.

So I’ve been spending some quality time in the yard this week, and thought I’d share the latest progress and produce. First exciting things first, my sunflowers finally bloomed! These are my first successful sunflowers, started from tiny seeds, and now the tallest one towers a good foot above my head – that’s over 7 feet high!







The plums are coming fast these days, faster than I can pick and prune them. There’s evidence of my failure all around.







But that’s okay, they make great snacks for hungry foragers, all soft and split and filled with yummy bugs. Mmmm! The chickens love the yard these days, though I don’t love constantly chasing them out of my garden plots. Such stubborn little birdies! Here’s a few shots of a recent sunny dust bath under the plum tree:







Those incorrigible hens just couldn’t get enough of my root-veggie bed, for some strange reason. Every time I turned my back they’d be in there, scratching away. As a result they killed or stunted every single walla walla I planted . . . all except for one. My one small survivor onion, which we finally unearthed and enjoyed in tonight’s green curry.





The other raised bed is doing great, with cucumbers slowly coming along, and tomatoes off the charts. My cucumbers could be happier, but at least they’ve stopped turning bright yellow on me (nutrient deficiency). Tonight I made my first ever jar of pickles, and if it turns out you can definitely expect a recipe.





The tomatoes are also going off, dropping fruit almost faster than we can eat it. Almost! Pictured on the vine are the cherries and green zebras (they’re ripe in that picture), but we’ve also got goldens and standard red slicers (pictured as harvest). The slicers make the *best* Tofurkey sandwiches!











And finally, my brand new fall garden is starting to unfold. I’ve been weeding and fertilizing and thinning out seedlings (oh woe!), and it looks like I’ll have some pretty nice options come autumn. You can see the broad-leafed brassica sprouts (cauliflower I think), the bright green lettuce line, and the tight row of forest-colored kale babies.











And that, my dear, is that. So tell me – how is your summer crop shaping up? Was it a good year for you in the garden?

Ah, summer, how quickly you seem to slip away. Oh well, at least it means more treasured gifts from the garden! We’re well into midsummer crops by now, and that means some of my favorite veggies. Love it!

In my last harvest post, I introduced some early wee carrots. Now a month later I’ve dug up my largest carrot tops, only to find . . . MUTANTS below the surface!

Seriously, crazy right? What’s going on with these disfigured carrots? Well whatever it is, they sure were tasty!

*sigh* You know how I write love songs about baking soda? Well, I’m thinking of penning an ode to tomatoes next. Seriously. I’m working on it.

My cherries were first to ripen and I still get a handful every day or two.

The goldens came next in all their sweetness, and still are steadily ripening,

The red slicers just began ripening. I ate the first of them today!!

Look at this little cutie! I rescued a few half-dead pepper plants from the free pile at the nursery, and to my surprise they sprang back to health! I’ve already gotten a couple of these mini hot peppers, with many more budding on the bush.

The last of the brocollini crop. It was a pretty low yield this season, due to some unexpected heat. But I loved what I got, and apparently so did this little green caterpillar. Ha!

And finally, the plums are here! Our tree is simply covered in fruit this year, who knows why? All I know is I’ve got enough pluots for plum pudding, plum chutney, and plenty of prunes. Time to get to preserving!

And that’s that (for now!). I’m still picking parsley, basil, and blueberries, along with a few other patio garden herbs. Coming soon: cucumbers, corn, and cross your fingers for my onions!

And what about you my dears? How do your gardens grow?