A disappointment of sweet potatoes

The rain we've had for the last few days means cooler temperatures and easier-to-dig garden beds, so I decided today would be a good day to dig up the bed in front of the upper pond. I didn't plant sweet potatoes here, but apparently we overlooked enough tubules for them to come up quite prolifically all on their own. The whole bed was full of luxuriant green vines, which spilled out and covered most of the walkway between the bed and the gazebo. I was looking forward to an equally abundant harvest of tasty sweet potatoes, but was surprised and disappointed to find only a few of edible size.

We'll plant spinach in this area in a few days. I don't usually have much success with it germinating when I try sow the seeds directly in the ground, so I started them in peat pots indoors a week ago. About half of them have sprouted, but they aren't big enough to brave the outdoors yet.

In other news, the article about our backyard is in the November issue of Phoenix Home and Garden. The new garden editor did a wonderful job of writing a very nice article on short notice, the photographs are lovely, and those who've seen it have been very complimentary. However it wasn't quite what I expected based on my conversations with the previous garden editor, who came out to our house several times over a period of three years, and planned to do a "garden of Eden" overview theme. The published article was more about our ponds than the system of raised beds and pathways, which we think is the most unique feature of our backyard.The pictures of our pond and streambed were very nice, though....they don't look nearly as good now!

The resurrection of the artichokes and the genesis of the peas

We've gotten some rain the last few days, which is helping new plantings and making weeding a bit easier. Of course, it also brings out ants, which makes attempts at weeding somewhat unpleasant. I cleared out a lot of mint and Mexican primrose from the area lining the streambed, and discovered that our oldest artichoke has already started to come back. There's no sign of the one I planted last year yet; we'll have to wait to see if it shows up.

The sugar snap and snow peas are beginning to break through the soil. I planted heavily because I didn't know how old the seeds were, but they're coming up pretty thickly. Nasturtiums and hollyhocks are popping up everywhere too. Perhaps this year will be the one I manage to keep them under control. The nasturtiums aren't as much of a problem as the hollyhocks as they are low growing (and edible) but the hollyhocks will crowd out everything else if I don't aggressively go after them.

Here's a line of lettuces (along with more nasturtiums) sprouting along the drip line where they were planted. As with the peas, I threw everything I had left over out there- a mixture of romaine, leaf, buttercrunch, and who knows what all else. Because I haven't had much luck with spinach germination, I'm attempting to start that inside in peat pots rather than sowing directly into the ground.

In other gardening news: I spent several hours Sunday afternoon precooking eggplant for parmigiana and freezing it, and now I need to pick eggplant again. I gave up on the tomatillos and honeydew as the vines were dying back, and pulled them out so they'd stop blocking the sun from the pepper plants, which are beginning to produce. And I noticed a young citrus tree growing behind the waterfall that I'm guessing came from a key lime seed, but who knows what it might turn out to be? Most citrus is grafted onto sour orange or lemon rootstock; it doesn't do well when grown from seed.

Eggplant anyone?

Eggplant love the heat, but in my experience they really take off bearing good-sized fruit once the weather cools a little. Here's what I picked this weekend, along with some melons and chile peppers. There are at least as many left on the plants that I'll need to pick in a few days. 

My favorite use for eggplant is in eggplant parmigiana. This year I found a recipe using baked rounds that taste-wise I actually thought was on a par with traditional fried versions. As usual, I didn't follow the recipe exactly. Here's a link to the recipe I used although as usual, I didn't follow the recipe exactly. I only let the salted eggplant sit out for two hours; I probably used closer to two than one tablespoon of oil on the baking sheet, and I used prepackaged shredded cheese and bottled marina sauce rather than making my own.

Obviously there is far more eggplant here than I could use in a reasonable length of time, so I'll need to freeze some of it. I've tried several methods in the past, including blanching the rounds, roasting cubes, and cooking and mashing. Because I've been dissatisfied with the taste and texture of the blanched frozen rounds, this year I'm going to try salting, breading, and baking them as I would for fresh eggplant parmigiana, then freezing the cooked rounds.

Fall Plantings 1

We've been working this week in the southeast corner of our yard, in an area which gets a fair amount of shade from a lemon tree. We cleared out the area of weeds and spent-plant debris, and enlarged the berm around the lemon tree so we can deep water it more efficiently. It has four high-capacity drip lines which run for several hours at a time (weekly in summer, monthly in the cooler seasons) and seems healthy and productive, but the water doesn't soak down three feet as it should with a tree of this size. We also gave it a final application of fertilizer for the year, which we should have done around Labor Day and as a result some of its leaves are looking rather chlorotic. After watering in the fertilizer, I'll sprinkle nasturtium seeds under the tree out to its dripline, and mulch with pine straw.

Because this area doesn't get much sunlight, especially in the winter, we have to be selective about what we plant here. Root and leaf crops work best, although I have successfully grown edible-pod peas. This year, I made two parallel trenches about a foot apart following the curve of the raised bed, and ran 6-inch drip emitter lines down the trenches. In the outermost trench, I planted several varieties of lettuce, and in the inner trench I planted snow and sugar snap peas. Behind the row of peas, we put up some trellis netting. The trellis netting is a new experiment this year; we've tried other methods of corralling pea vines and met with limited success. I haven't seen trellis netting in stores, but ordered this from Amazon.

And now we wait!

Taming the blackberry jungle

Cooler weather means it's more enjoyable to work outside (and less risk of succumbing inadvertently to heat stroke!) Today I worked on pruning, fertilizing, and mulching some sadly sun-stressed blackberries in a narrow raised bed between our lemon and orange trees. Blackberries do rather well here and spread like wildfire, but to produce fruit they need some shade during the summer. Otherwise they scorch and dry up before fully ripening. We didn't shade the ones in this location soon enough last May, so we didn't get any edible fruit.(Here's a link back to a post with a picture of the shade we constructed in another location and another one that discusses how to build shade screens. Next year, we'll put one in this location too)

After a given cane produces fruit, it's done. It won't produce any more from that cane, which will eventually die, and should be removed to give the new canes space to grow. This should be done right after fruiting, when it's relatively easy to differentiate this year's fruit-producing canes from the ones that will produce fruit next season. I didn't do it then, but better late than never.

After removing the floricanes, I attempted to remove as much of the Bermuda grass, nutsedge, and dollarweed invaders as possible, sprinkled the area with a little organic fertilizer, and mulched it with pine straw. I'm very appreciative of friends with a cabin in Flagstaff who regularly bring us bagfuls of the stuff. It's great for keeping weeds down, lowering the soil temperature, and conserving moisture. It doesn't break down as rapidly as bagged mulch, and as it does, it helps acidify our alkaline soil.

Here's a link to an article on blackberry cultivation in the low desert with detailed instructions and drawings explaining how to prune them.

 (Totally unrelated to gardening, but the source of my pine straw supply is a writer with several published mystery and Austen variation novels. If you enjoy reading those genres, you might be interested in the descriptions on her  blog  and website.)

Something new

Last year I decided to try growing tomatillos, and got none because I only planted one plant. I learned later that at least two plants are needed so that they will cross-pollinate, so this year I planted two. For months they've done nothing, but yesterday I noticed several dozen small fruits. They're really interesting in their papery shells. If you're interested in trying to grow them, here's a helpful link:http://bonnieplants.com/growing/growing-tomatillos/

Wheat and tares and melons

Jesus once told a story about a farmer who found his crop heavily infested with weeds. Rather than attempt to dig the offending plants out, possibly causing damage to the roots of his wanted crop in the process, he decided to allow wheat and tares to grow together until harvest time. When that time came, he reasoned, he could pull everything up at once, keep the good stuff, and throw away the bad.

September marks a "pull everything up and start over" season in our gardening year. During the long, hot summer, "weeding", if done at all, mostly meant chop-and-drop...that is, cut the weeds off close to the ground and toss their carcasses on the ground where they provide a cooling and water-conserving mulch for the roots of our fruit and vegetable plants. But as the weather cools and the days shorten, most of our summer crops are at the end of their life span, and it's time to get serious about digging up weeds, roots and all, prior to planting fall crops.

Bermuda grass is a particularly invasive and persistent enemy, one whose roots can go down several feet. We know it's impossible to eliminate entirely without the use of herbicides, which we really prefer not to use in close proximity to things we plan to eat. Mint, Mexican primrose and Mexican petunia, and a large cloverlike creeping plant are also invasive, although not as deep-rooted. Now is the time for these things to go away from places they are not wanted, at least until next spring when we'll repeat the process.

We're leaving some plants that are still producing in place...eggplant mostly, and a few surviving tomato plants that might be coaxed into setting a second crop. We thought about digging up this melon, which has produced nothing but rampant vegetative growth...or so we thought. As we peeked through its leaves this morning, we found two good-sized honeydew melons that were hidden by the leaves on its vines. I think we'll wait on digging up the Bermuda grass that is growing in here for a bit longer.

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