cucmbers, cucumbers, tomatoes and storms

On the cutting board today:

We've been eating cucumbers, cucumbers and more cucumbers this month. Tzatziki, cucumber and mint salad, cucumber sticks, cucumber rounds, cold cucumber soup, cucumber everything. And the hudson valley has had so much rain that I can hardly keep up with the harvest. Tiny little fetal cucumbers morph into giant monster kirby cuke blimps, quite literally, overnight.
Next to the pile of cucumbers on our countertop are two of the dandilion pots I've been making lately along with a handful of rudebeckia from the garden.

Thus far, my three tomato plants have shown no signs of late blight in spite of the havoc it has wreaked everywhere else during this cold, rainy summer (knocking firmly on wood). I've been harvesting the cherry hybrids since late July and I've got a dozen softball size heirlooms hanging in there through some incredibly strong storms. Two did fall a few nights ago and I have put them in a paper bag with a banana in the hopes that they will ripen off the vine.

The beets are doing well in spite of encroachment from the cucumber and jalepeno plants. Barely visible in the front here are the strawberry pips that Vika dug up for me from her garden in Nantucket. They are liking all this rain.

Meanwhile, the phlox and delphinium are barely surviving the slug fest in the front garden. Rain rain, go away for a little bit, ok?



The same storm that pummeled my brandwines also brought down a large Norway maple branch a few nights ago which landed upright, impaled in a rear flower bed. While John and his dad turned this overnight "tree" into a pile of firewood, I snapped a photo and decided we'd have to plant a real one in that very spot this fall.

Peas and beets in June

The garden enjoyed the rains and 70 degree weather in much of may, and I've been mostly neglecting it these last weeks...just letting things grow as I work on another huge project. The early spinach came in all at once and my mom has been helping clip and freeze the overflow. Nearly 6 feet tall now, the sugar snaps are finally blooming and fruiting out in early June, although they don't like the 80 degree noontimes.


6 different varieties of beets are adjusting to their outdoor beds, hopefully well out of the future reach of the tomato and cucumber plants this time. Two jalepeno pepper plants have been transplanted for a few weeks now but don't really appear to be growing much. Perhaps they are waiting for warmer skies.

I gave away most of my extra tomato seedlings and put in one each of the Striped German and Brandywine heirlooms and the F-1 cherry hybrid. I get striped zebras and sungolds aplenty from my CSA share so I thought I'd try something different this year. No sign of cutworms yet.

And finally, my herb garden is beginning to ballon with cilantro and parsley volunteers leftover from the seeds of last season, chives, sweet and purple basil, fennel, dill, thyme, and several varieties of mint.

spinach, peas and seeds

While tomatoes, beets, marigolds, lettuce, cucumber and morning glories were sprouting under lights this month, the peas and spinach that I had direct sewed with my mom's help in March were emerging.

April 23rd

Peas took nearly two weeks to show any signs of life, but by early April they were starting to look like they'd make it. Only 1/3 of the seeds I sewed germinated--next time I will try to inoculate them beforehand. Around April 10th I sewed a few more in the bare patches.

April 6th.

partially constructed bamboo lattice, April 6th.

April 19th

April 19th

The Spinach seedlings emerged in step with the peas, and by April 19 they, too, were taking off.

history-August 2008

In August, a hot month, the rudbeckia (black-eyed susans) were in full bloom and in the rear beds they were joined by an explosion of heliopsis, which mostly overwhelmed their poorly cited foxgloves neighbors. These would later in the season , along with the guara, become covered in aphids and require hosing, cutting and eventually spraying with a "safe" neem oil solution that didn't seem to do much good. I will keep my eye out for some way to import more ladybugs next season I suppose.

Equally loving the heat, my crowded tomatoes completely overwhelmed all my peppers and threatened to shade out the cucumber plants as well. I let them go, as I could hardly keep up with the number of cucumbers from these two little plants. One I didn't get to until it was nearly 18 inches long. Not great eating, but fun to pick and give away as an oddity.

history-June 2008

By early June I finally got some of the perennials into the new front garden: a few Penny Mac hydrangea, three Garden Sun climing roses, french lavender, sedum and a smattering of other things.

The grass was coming up on the driveway through the burlap John and I laid last month so I removed it and delighted in the first green to grace that area for a long long time.
In the back, the hydrangea along the fence were blooming--amazingly I had only killed 4 out of the 13 the fall before with the homemade baking soda concoction. So I replaced those with new Endless Summers and enjoyed the blue blooms that would probably only last for this season. I tried a sulfur mixture to acidify the soil but the year-old transplants came up pink this year anyway. John's dad suggested I bury copper wire or rusty nails to blue them, which I might try sometime.
I also planted several flats of pink impatiens by the back steps, which did well last season there in mostly shade.


In the one corner of the back that gets a smattering of sun I laid out plans for an herb garden backed with clematis, and I planted seven tomatoes, all started from seed by my neighbors and given to me last month, some bell peppers, a mystery pepper and a cucumber plant in the vegetable patch.


At the end of the month, the Shasta daisies were starting to bloom. On a nice morning I was clearing weeds from around some Kansas-grown hostas that I had transplanted from my Mom's yard when I was startled by a baby deer (who seemed just as startled by me). Deer are common garden guests in this part of the Hudson Highlands but I live in the middle of town on a small fenced lot near a busy road so I don't ever see them. It was unclear how long this little guy had been there or where he came from. He apparently had been separated from his mother and was clearly scared. As he tried several times unsuccessfully to jump the 4 foot fence in the rear and then ran in circles around the patio, I tried, just as unsuccessfully, to get a hold of animal rescue. But by the time I returned outside, he had disappeared. No dead body in the street, no clues about his point of exit. He was just gone.