Armenian cucumber sprawl

My outdoor thermometer sensor says it's 109 in the shade, but the heat doesn't seem to faze this Armenian cucumber. Not only do the vines sprawl everywhere, but they also continue to set fruit. There's a foot-long cucumber hiding in those vines that wasn't there a few days ago.

Armenian cucumbers are actually in the melon family, but they taste like cucumbers and can be used as such in recipes. I like to chop them up and marinate with olive oil, basalmic vinegar, and fresh basil and/or oregano. Sometimes I add onions or tomatoes if I have some on hand. They don't need peeling and don't taste bitter when they get big.

That's my rescued basil plant cozying up to the Chardonnay bottle in the large pot. I have irrigation in the pot which comes on twice a day, but pots dry out quickly in our summer heat and I've found that wine bottles work well in allowing water to seep out slowly. The new foliage is coming in nice and green rather than mottled, so it apparently likes its new home.

Missed one!

 I only thought I picked all the vegetables and fruits that were out there yesterday. This morning I went to toss some kitchen scraps in the garden and look what I found hiding!

Squash and eggplant

Yellow squash, and what was supposed to be a white eggplant and obviously is not.

Interestingly, this yellow squash was a transplant from a mound in another location. The squash that came up from seed in the original mound are doing rather poorly,while this one is flourishing. This eggplant is also doing much better than an older one that survived the winter.

In addition to the squash, I picked the first Armenian cucumber today from vines growing at the other end of this bed. I'll use it tonight, along with the last of the Purple Cherokee tomatoes, in tomato-and cucumber salad. There's no need to buy out-of-season lettuce for a salad when you have tomatoes and/or cucumbers.

OK, so I was wrong

I braved the heat long enough to due a little weeding in the back of the zinnia jungle, and found this acorn squash....

...so I checked the Armenian cucumber for signs of life and found these!

Survivor (Phoenix style)

Summer is for my gardening motivation and success as winter is in other climates. Yes, I know it's theoretically possible to both plant and harvest something every month of the year here, but it is not enjoyable this time of year. High temperatures are still well over a hundred, and many days the monsoon adds humidity to the discomfort level. So I don't do a lot, and the garden shows it.

The largest plant in the foreground is a cherry-type tomato that came up as a volunteer, and deserves the title Survivor of the Summer. Although it currently isn't setting fruit, it is much healthier than most of our other edibles and I am hopeful that it will begin to produce again when the temperatures cool down a bit. Most of the other tomato plants I planted last February haven't made it this far.

We are also still harvesting Japanese eggplant and Armenian cucumbers. Unlike me, those plants seem to love the summer heat. The bed in the background has been overtaken by zinnias, which are on their second round this year. (They happily reseed themselves without much effort on my part). The sweet potato vines around the gazebo are going crazy, covering a fair portion of the gazebo floor and rooting themselves in the streambed.

I'm a little worried about our apricot, peach, and nectarine trees, particularly our oldest, largest apricot tree. They have lost most of their leaves, which is not uncommon for them to do this time of year, but I don't see any new leaves coming out on the big apricot tree yet, and that might indicate a larger problem. The leaves look as if they are suffering from salt burn, which is more likely in the summer when we have to water more frequently. Texas root rot is also a concern in our area, and there isn't a cure for that, other than not to plant fruit trees.

We (or rather Mike, who is doing the heavy digging) are currently preparing the raised beds for fall planting. That means digging out as much of the Bermuda grass as possible, working in soil sulfur to help alleviate the high soil alkalinity, adding nitrogen and phosphate, and checking that the drip irrigation system works properly. If you're interested in doing some fall planting of your own, here's a link to the Master Gardener publication, "Ten Steps to a Successful Vegetable Garden".

I'm looking forward to cooler weather when I can once again enjoy myself in the garden.

Things that grow well in the heat (3)

I haven't neglected the garden quite as much as I have this blog, but close. It's still far too hot to enjoy working outside, with highs still over 110 almost daily. This time of year, we also add humidity to the mix. It's definitely not a dry heat....it feels more like a sauna than an oven outdoors.

Most vegetables have long given up any attempt to stay alive, but Armenian cucumbers and eggplants apparently love the heat. I picked these Japanese eggplant from one plant today, and the Armenian cucumber was hiding in an unexpected location, allowing it to grow to giant size before I spotted it. The nice thing about Armenian cucumbers (which are more closely related to melons than traditional cucumbers) is that they still taste good even at this size. They never turn bitter and don't require peeling. Just wash, slice, maybe take the seeds out when they're this big, and enjoy dipping into a favorite veggie dip.

I usually make crockpot eggplant parmigiana with the eggplant. It's not necessary to peel or fry the eggplant; just slice into rounds, put in the crockpot and add a jar of spaghetti sauce. About an hour or so from serving time, top with grated mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. However, since Mike is trying to restrict his sodium intake, I went looking on the internet for recipes that didn't use processed spaghetti sauce or a lot of cheese. I found this recipe for a vegan eggplant stew and decided to use it as a base for tonight's dinner. Instead of canned tomatoes, I'm using ones from our garden than I froze earlier this summer, and I'm going to add some fresh basil (another plant that likes the heat) in addition to the Italian seasoning suggested in the recipe. And since we aren't philosophically vegan, I'll add a little cheese towards the end of its cooking time.

Not the melon!

I've been waiting for what I thought was a honeydew melon vine to set fruit. Surprise, surprise! It wasn't a melon, but an Armenian cucumber vine. No sign of melons anywhere...now I'm wondering if the vines growing on the trellis are melons instead of cucumbers!

And of course, the never-ending battle with Bermuda grass continues....

Good Mulch

If you miss two weeks in the garden, you miss a lot, and that's how long I've been away from it. Larkspur, hollyhock, bachelor's button, sweet alyssum, black-eyed susans, yarrow, and Gloriosa daisies have faded and gone to seed, which the birds are enjoying. Surprisingly there are a few petunias and snapdragons still blooming. Without my daily walks through the garden to pull up the tall dandelion-like weeds, they have multiplied exponentially. Some things are wilted because of malfunctioning drip irrigation emitters-checking the moisture status of plants and giving supplemental water when needed is another daily responsibility. However, nectarines, blackberries, and tomatoes are ripening, pole beans have started to produce, and the apple tree is bowed over by an abundance of fruit. Squash, melon, and cucumber plants look anemic and spindly...the spring flowers grew faster than the spring vegetables, and probably shaded them too much. The corn plants are producing tassels, and soon we will see if our hand-pollination efforts produce any edible ears.

We spent the morning pulling up flowers that were past their prime, and removing weeds and grass from the raised beds. This involved separating the dead flowers from the weeds as their remains will make a good mulch that also contains the seeds of next year's flowers. The weeds and grass have to go into the trash as we don't want their seeds spread around. (Unfortunately, quite a few of the ones that sprouted in my absence have already done that) There were a few surprises that were hidden until we removed the taller plants- tiny zinnia and snapdragon plants that sprouted from last year's seeds. After a run to Home Depot, I planted a few six-packs of vinca and portulaca in the most barren raised bed, scattered more zinnia and cosmos seeds, and topped it all off with two bags of mulch.

As I was pulling up plants and separating them into usable and nonusable piles, I was reminded of the parable Jesus told of the wheat and the tares:

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from? ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

This story probably came to my mind as I was working today because two recent events that occurred in close proximity have caused me to think about "the end of the age", or at least human mortality. In practical terms for the individual, I think the two are synonymous. First, there was a great deal of publicity about the May 21 Rapture prediction by Harold Camping, which of course, did not happen. Second, my younger sister suddenly and unexpectedly died due to a complication from a medication she took that was supposed to prolong her life, not take it. As "no man knows the day or the hour" of Jesus's return, so also no one knows when his or her life may end. I hope and I pray that my life will be the kind of "good mulch" that enriches the soil and contains the seeds that will one day grow into next spring's beautiful flowers.

It's fall, although you wouldn't believe it by the temperature

Fall planting season is officially upon us, but we're in the middle of a heat wave (110 yesterday) and it's still too hot to work in the garden for very long. I worked on getting the bermuda grass out of a couple of the raised beds today, and scattered seeds of larkspur and snapdragon. I'm harvesting a lot of Japanese eggplant and Armenian cucumbers, and that's about it. We didn't get one bean from the lovely tent of pole bean vines- I think that I planted them too late. Likewise the corn was a waste of space and water- poor pollination and some kind of giant black mutated kernels. I won't bother trying corn again.

The only fall veggies I have planted to date are yellow squash and bush beans, which according to my Master Gardener chart, should be planted in August. A disappointing number of beans are up, probably because I used an old seed packet, but there are about a dozen squash plants scattered in the raised beds. We'll see how they produce- this is the first time I've actually tried them in the fall.

Home Depot had a good price on flowering hanging baskets, so I replaced three of the baskets hanging from the gazebo, which were looking pretty sad. I decided to leave the fourth one in place, because when I took it down, there was a hummingbird nest with two tiny eggs! I can put up with ratty-looking annuals for a few more weeks.

We're in the middle of another big project....taking out a 10-foot wide section of lawn on the north side of the house and putting in a pavestone patio, and enlarging the raised beds so they abut the patio. You can see the location above delineated by the two-by-fours and dead Bermuda grass. (Killing the grass was the first step) When completed, it should be a nice shady place to enjoy the garden, with a view of the raised beds and pond waterfall. Mike is doing most of the work...too hot for me to stay out there more than 5 minutes at a time! I don't see how he stands it, but he says it doesn't bother him.

It's hot!

The garden is a mess after being neglected while we were on vacation for two weeks. The intense heat and an irrigation malfunction affecting the raised beds did not help matters much. They look pretty sad. The "old" vegetable garden wasn't affected so much as its watering system was on a different line. We picked a bumper crop of tomatoes before we left and have at least that many green ones maturing now. No beans yet but the vines continue to grow up the trellis and look healthy. The volunteer sugar snap peas, not unexpectedly, died from the heat. I also picked a couple of giant Armenian cucumbers.

I'm trying to catch up weeding, deadheading, and pulling out spent annuals in the raised beds. The irrigation malfunction caused water to just seep from the sprayers, so I have a nice healthy crop of bermuda grass and a purslane-type weed growing in some spots, while other things are dead. I cut the allyssum way back and most of it is still green underneath, so it will probably come back. If not, it dropped lots of seeds for new plants. I can't find the Japanese eggplant- maybe it will appear once I get all the weeds and grass out, and remove some zinnias that are past their prime. I think we've lost one of the new fruit trees we planted this spring, a peach. We have really had a difficult time with stone fruits- it is hard to get the watering right with our heavy clay soil.

I was accepted to the Master Gardener program and have been to two classes so far. The first was on basic botany and I was surprised how much I remembered about cellular structure and photosynthesis from my college botany classes, which were in 1970. Fortunately the lecture did not include the Krebs citric acid cycle nor having to draw any three-dimensional chemical formulas. The second was on soil and fertilization and reminded me more of my chemistry classes. We have a huge stack of books with reading assignments each week. Some of it is pretty technical, but it's kind of fun for a geek like me. The most practical thing I have learned so far is that it's OK to put oleander and thevetia leaves in the compost bin....the toxins are broken down by the composting process. Considering how messy those are, that is certainly a good thing to know...both in terms of not sending more trash to the landfill than necessary, and in saving money because the more compost we can make, the less we have to buy!