10/4/10 First Harvest of Fall Crops

The night time lows dropped to high 30s this weekend.  In California, this would be considered winter.  In Indiana, as in the most of the rest of the country, I guess this is fall. 

I harvested my first small batch of fall vegetables, consisting of some baby Red Russian Kale and a sampling of baby asian greens including bok choy, china choi (seeds shared by Ottawa Gardener), and tatsoi.  I'm having a lot of trouble keeping these plants alive due to serious damage by cabbage worms, aphids, and possibly slugs (the only one I haven't visually confirmed yet).  You can see a little bit of the damage to the surviving leaves in the picture above, but this is nothing compared to the damage to the non-surviving plants.

Since I didn't have any prior experience handling these hardy greens, either as a gardener or a consumer (except when they are included in a prepared dish), I wasn't sure how big I should let them grow.  I harvested these leaves fairly small because I was curious about their flavor and also because I don't trust the pests to allow them to grow to a decent size.  I've already lost almost half of my crops to the stinky pests that munch on them leaf by leaf, leading to total destruction.  I did finally sprinkle some Sluggo out there today, so if there are any invisible slugs out there, hopefully Sluggo can start controlling the problem.

By the way, these greens were delicious as a quick stir-fry.  Between Keith and me, there was barely enough to have three or four bites each.  These cook down a lot, just like spinach.  Inspired by our first tasting of these tasty hardy greens, Keith and I sowed more seeds in our indoor grow box today.  We're hoping to grow this new batch to maturity entirely in the grow box to avoid the pest problems in the garden.  I'm not sure how much room the full-sized versions of these vegetables will require, so this will be yet another grow box experiment for us.  Next year, I'll grow them all under row covers outside.

I also harvested the first three sugar snap peas from my remaining three plants that survived the cutworm attack.  They were still too small and did not taste very sweet.

The outdoor Jelly Bean tomato plants are still pumping out tomatoes, although they are very slow to ripen.  I picked a handful that had any hint of blush, so that they can finish up the ripening process indoors.  Only one Jelly Bean tomato has ripened in the indoor grow box so far.  But since we don't have to worry about the impending first frost in the grow box, I'll just let them take their time to ripen on the vine.

This post is part of Daphne's Harvest Monday.

More Jelly Bean Tomatoes in the Indoor Grow Box

Keith told me this week that some Jelly Bean tomatoes in the indoor grow box are finally starting to ripen.  Before I get home this weekend to see them for myself, I wanted to share a couple of pictures from last weekend.

Compared to three weeks ago when this tomato plant first started showing evidence of lateral growth, the plant has put on a lot of growth in terms of stem, foliage and fruit.  The stems and branches are now growing every which way that they can within the confines of the indoor grow box.  I'm guessing that the plant is stressed to no end, but it's certainly serving a good experimental purpose and proving that this grow box can grow indoor tomatoes.

Here's a close-up of some green tomatoes.  I'm looking forward to seeing them all ripe and red.  The best part about these indoor tomatoes is that I don't have to worry about the impending frost in the upcoming weeks or having another encounter with a tomato (or tobacco) hornworm.  I guess that's two best parts.  Granted, I probably won't be harvesting that many tomatoes from this plant, but the amusement value of growing a tomato plant in the indoor grow box has been totally worth it.

Happy gardening weekend, everyone!

Mystery Solved - Velvetleaf

About a month ago, I was babying a plant that I thought was a Hale's Best Jumbo cantaloupe plant.  Not only that, I thought it was a bush-variety of this cantaloupe.  Now I know that I was totally and utterly wrong.  I blame everything on my first-year gardener's ignorance and inexperience.

Then this plant started flowering and setting seed pods and my more experienced readers confirmed that not only was this not a cantaloupe plant, it was most likely a weed of some sort.  Lou Murray, Mr. H. and Anonymous commented here and here that it looked like something in the Indian Mallow family.

Well, I let the plant live out its life and I'm now positive that what I accidentally grew was Velvetleaf in the Mallow family.  I found a few websites that provided lots of information about Velvetleaf.

The scariest piece of information that I learned about Velvetleaf, which is actually a pretty seriously invasive weed, is that its seeds can remain viable in soil for more than 50 years.  FIFTY YEARS!

And I grew it in a five-gallon bucket. With a stake for support.

Icky Garden Pests: Hornworms, Cabbage worms and Aphids

I have been "lucky" enough to spot some pests in my garden during the last few weeks while I've been making my weekly rounds with my camera. 

Check out this puppy - I mean, hornworm.  I've seen many pictures of them on the internet, but that still didn't prepare me for a up close and personal encounter.  I initially thought that this was a tomato hornworm (Manduca quinquemaculata) but I learned from my pest research that this was actually a closely related tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta).  Tobacco hornworms have seven diagonal white lines on each side with a slightly curved red horn on their rear ends (exactly like in my picture above!).  Tomato hornworms have eight V-shaped marks on each side with a straighter black horn.  Both tomato and tobacco hornworms feed on various Solanum species, which was good to know, since I'm definitely not growing any tobacco in my garden.
 

This must have been my lucky day, because I also saw another less fortunate tobacco hornworm infested with parasitic wasp eggs on its back.  I know this is supposedly to be natural and all, but ugh, I have to admit, I was thoroughly, completely grossed out while taking these pictures.

On to slightly less disgusting, but nonetheless evil pests in my garden.  Here we have two cabbage worms feasting on my radish leaves.  A few weeks ago, I posted some pictures of damaged seedlings in my fall garden.  Many of my regular readers suggested slug damage.  That may still be true, but I have yet to see any slugs in my garden.  What I have seen lots of are these cabbage worms.  They are everywhere, and they eat the leaves of radishes, kale, all kinds of asian greens and even chards.  I could (maybe) deal with them nibbling a bit here and there.  But left unchecked, many of my seedlings get stripped bare of their foliage and just die.

Here's a picture of another cabbage worm.  They blend in really well with the leaves, don't they?  I must have squished dozens of them in my garden just last weekend. But they keep popping up everywhere and I just can't keep up. 

Here we have an aphid infestation on the underside of a radish leaf.  The aphids are out in full force all over the same crops that the cabbage worms seem to love.  I tried to spray them with soapy water and squish what I could, but as you can see, they way outnumber me.

Cutworm Damage to Sugar Snap Pea Seedlings

As I work out of state during the week, I sometimes text Keith to get current status reports on our garden vegetables.

"Hey, how are the peas doing?"

"Um... Oh, did I tell you that we have peppers growing in the grow box now?"

"Oh No.  What's wrong with the peas?"

"We have lots of new baby peppers!  They look really good!"

"TELL ME ABOUT THE PEAS"

"They don't look so good."

I must have bad pea karma, because I just can't seem to grow them in my Indiana garden.  Due to my first-year gardening inexperience, sugar snap peas were planted too late this spring (mid-May), and what few seedlings that tried to survive either got munched on by wild rabbits or got fried crispy brown by the hot weather.  On the other hand, the same peas that I planted in my mom's garden just thrived in the cool coastal California weather this summer and gave my mom pound after pound of fresh and sweet sugar snap peas.

As we slowly transitioned from summer to fall, I was determined to try my hand at pea-growing once again.  I direct sowed them in a shadier part of the herb garden in early August.  All the peas germinated within a week.  I even called them my butt peas.  Everything seemed to be going really well.

 My precious Butt Pea seedlings towards the end of August

Then a few weeks ago, I discovered that more than half of the seedlings had fallen over, like someone had taken a pair of scissors and went snip snip around the base of the seedlings.  There were also a few seedlings that were cut off at the bottom, but looked like they were still up because their tendrils were holding hands with other seedlings. These were literally floating in mid-air, like ghost peas!

Even though I haven't personally seen any cutworms yet, I knew from my pest research that they were the culprit here.  Those darn cutworms!  I tried to find them by digging around the fallen seedlings, but I couldn't find any.  I protected the remaining seedlings by pulling cardboard cylinders - empty paper towel rolls and toilet paper rolls cut about 2-3 inches tall - over them.  I have no pictures from this day, because I was too mad to play photographer.

I really hoped that the remaining pea seedlings would survive, but a few more of them just dried up brown from the bottom without any apparent physical damage to the stems. Not sure what caused that.

 Some remaining pea seedlings died this slow browning death

We still have a few pea seedlings that survived this ordeal and are trying to set flowers, but the pea patch is much more sparse than I had planned and I just don't have a lot of hope left for the remaining few pea vines.  The level-headed side of me thinks, oh well, I'll just have to try again next year.

But what I really want to say is: WAHHHH, I WANT MY PEAS THIS YEAR!

Overwintering Peppers Indoors - Day One

I first entertained the idea of overwintering peppers about a month ago.  This past weekend, I decided to pull the trigger and go for it.  First, we took the two cayenne pepper plants in the five-gallon bucket and tipped the whole thing upside-down.  While Keith was holding the plants and the top of the soil (which was now at the bottom) in his hands, I lopped off about a third of the roots from the bottom of the soil (which was now at the top) and separated the smaller pepper plant from the larger one.  The larger plant got transplanted into a new pot to be brought inside for the winter.

Here is the pepper plant in its new pot and new indoor space for the winter.  I pulled off all the damaged leaves from the bottom, so the plant looks a bit bare at the moment.  That is a south-facing window behind the pepper plant, so I hope the plant can get enough sunlight to survive the winter indoors.  I'm definitely not expecting the plant to thrive indoors - I'm willing to settle for any level of "alive"! 

Here's a close-up of the pepper plant.  As you can see, this plant still has lots of green cayenne peppers.  If they ever turn red, this pepper plant is going to look really pretty!  Well, it already looks like a pretty houseplant in the living room, and Keith and I are very happy to have some greenery in the house.  But with some red peppers, I'm sure it will look even prettier.

I'm really curious to see how this will work out.  I'll be providing regular update during this winter for those of you who may be curious.

Linked to: Tuesday Garden Party

9/27/10 Harvest - First Cantaloupe

Lupe the Cantaloupe has finally arrived in time for this week's Harvest Monday!  In case you haven't read my previous cantaloupe posts, Lupe is the first melon from the first melon plant that I grew from a seed from a random supermarket cantaloupe.  It's been exactly three months since I sowed this seed outside, and Lupe was finally ready to be harvested this weekend.  She weighed in at just over 2 lbs, so she was fairly small for a cantaloupe, but Keith and I were nonetheless really excited about our first successful melon harvest.

Even though this melon smelled like a perfectly ripe melon on the outside (what a difference a week makes), I was still a bit anxious as I cut it in half.  What if it doesn't look right?  As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about because this was one ripe melon!  It may have been even a day or two overripe, but it was still very sweet, juicy and overall delicious.

Since the weather has been cooling down and the night time lows are more consistently falling down to the 40s, I'm not holding out much hope that we'll be able to harvest many more Jelly Bean tomatoes.  It's a little sad to see all those flower clusters and half-sized tomatoes that won't have time to grow to their full potential this year, but I keep reminding myself that these plants were started very late in the season (seeds were sown in early July) for experimental purposes, and any harvestable tomato is just a blessing.

I harvested all the ripe ones plus all the others that showed any hint of changing color.  Hopefully these green ones will ripen indoors.  There are still many more smaller green ones on the plants.  I'll let them go another week and see if I can get any more ripe or semi-ripe ones next week.  

I've noticed that these Jelly Bean tomatoes come in all different sizes (not sure if they are designed that way, or if the smaller fruits were just too stressed), with the smallest ones just a smidgen bigger than the size of real jelly beans.  As I mentioned last week, these tomatoes seem to be a bit on the thick-skinned side, but they are still very sweet and delicious.

I also harvested a few more cayenne peppers from our outdoor pepper plants whose days are probably numbered at this point.

These cayenne peppers just don't show any signs of turning red, but I'm going to just let them be and see if they will ripen and turn red indoors like tomatoes.  Otherwise, we can use them green, since these peppers pack plenty of heat as is.

Keith and I spent all weekend doing hard labor expanding our vegetable garden for next year.  This is a pretty big project for us and will require several more sweaty weekends, but I'm really looking forward to having more and better garden space next year to grow more of our own food.  Stay tuned for our drawings and designs for the new garden!  I'll post them later this week or next, as soon as I figure out how to convert my design documents to a picture format.