Post-Frost Harvests

Our first real frost was on October 26.  It got down to around 30 degrees, killing much of the non-hardy plants in the garden.  I was expecting it, but there is always a bit of drama about the first frost.  It truly does represent the end of another gardening season...although I always try to stretch things just a bit further.

Some mornings, like this one on

Lemon Basil Gin

I grew lemon basil the past 2 years...it has a great lemony aroma, and I like using it to flavor water. Shove a clean sprig of lemon basil in a bottle of water, let it sit overnight, and you've got a tasty beverage.  I was reading a great article about infusing flavors into liquor, and it hit me - I need to marry lemon basil to gin.

My cocktail of choice is a classic gin and tonic...ice, gin, tonic, and a twist of lime.  If I'm

Fall Harvests

We had a week of solid rain followed by a week of cooler, but pretty nice weather.  During the wet week, I did not pick at all.  In the past week, I picked twice.

This is my garden loot from October 17.  Snap beans, acorn squash, red amaranth, lettuce, arugula, a red bell pepper, a few cherry tomatoes, and

Figs, Eggplant, and Snow Peas

Exciting new produce coming in from the garden recently...

Here's the harvest from October 2.  In the middle, there are 2 kinds of eggplant, and directly above them, a brown turkey fig.  Just to the left of the fig are the first of the fall snow peas.

My brown turkey fig tree has

Nearly Free Seed

I'm always on the lookout for ways to reduce my gardening costs.  Primarily, this is because I am a tightwad.  A skinflint.  One cheap bastard.  I cringe when my wife wants to show me all the stuff she got when she returns from shopping.  My sons know better than to ask me to buy them stylish new jeans.  "New clothes for back-to-school?  Sure, hop in the car.  Ok, here we

Gleaning the Field

I harvested from the garden three times in the past week.  Tomatoes and summer squash are almost totally spent, but pole beans, yard-long beans, and winter squash are coming on strong.

This batch of veg is from September 17.  From the top, we have green yard-long beans, 2 butternut squash, eggplant, a few tomatoes, a moulin rouge sunflower head, cowpeas, a lone fig, and a pile of purple yard-long beans.

This is from September 21.  More of the same, although most of the tomatoes are cherry-type, there's basil there in the upper right corner...purple and green varieties, and a bunch of purple and green pole beans below them.

With supper that night, I cooked ditalini, a small macaroni-like pasta, then mixed in sliced cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, shredded cheese, vinagrette...chilled it in the fridge, and it was a hit.  My older son had seconds.

I'm also cooking the beans (pole and yard-long) in a tasty but very heart-unhealthy way.  I fry up 4 or 5 slices of bacon in a stockpot, take out the crisp bacon.  Add chicken broth or stock, add beans, salt, pepper, and crumble the bacon on top.  Stir, boil till tender, and serve.

This is from yesterday, September 22.  A branch of a bell pepper plant broke off in the rain, so I harvested 4 baby bells.  There are also 2 figs in the picture, but the big boy there is a crook-neck pumpkin that volunteered out of my compost pile.  He's got 3 younger brothers that haven't fully matured yet, so you will see more of these monsters soon.

Harvest Moon

Due to some of the usual start of the school year insanity at my workplace, I was only able to pick the garden twice in the past week.   

This first harvest was fast and hurried.  I was throwing produce into a basket as fast as I could one evening, slapping mosquitoes and trying to get it all picked before I lost daylight.  I was surprised and very happy to find a couple fat cukes.  I thought all my cucumber vines had died sad deaths, but the garden proved me wrong.

Despite that giant basket of veg picked earlier in the week, the weekend haul was still ridiculous. Left to right in this picture, we've got purple and green pole beans, green yard-long beans, sweet banana peppers, hot thai bird peppers, purple yard-long beans, and then the basket of tomatoes.  

I have been growing these red bird peppers for 8 years.  A neighbor gave me one of his plants, and I've been harvesting and drying the fruit and growing new plants from the seeds ever since.  These little hot peppers were the beginning of my gardening hobby, and I will always grow them.  Not only are they one of the most attractive plants I grow, they are also a fiery hot test of manhood.  I can count on them to reduce someone at my workplace into a gasping, crying, milk-guzzling pool of jelly at least once a year.

Yes, I am a bad man.  

This time of year, I still get a lot of cherry tomatoes, but larger types are in short supply.  I was able to pick 5 or 6 slicers, and I was happy to get them.  Many of my late-season cherry tomatoes are actually coming from volunteer plants that I allowed to mature...black cherry and ildi yellow varieties in particular.

September is the traditional harvest month, so I suppose it all makes sense.  My wife mentioned that Wednesday night there will be a Harvest Moon; the closest full moon to the autumn equinox...and a haunting Neil Young tune...

"But there's a full moon rising,

Let's go dancing in the light."

Four Gardens

Last year I planted one garden.  This year I planted four.

This is our backyard garden. 52 feet by 20 feet, it is 1040 square feet, which does not include the asparagus patch, the herb garden, and the 2 fig trees.  This is Garden #1.  Since the entire blog is basically about this garden, I'm not going to spend time writing it in this post.

Garden #2 is the garden out at Adventure Camp.  The camp rangers tilled it, and during two different days this spring, I planted seed and transplants.  The picture above was taken in late summer.  It got really weedy, but it actually produced, as evidenced by...

I also planted some things in the camp garden that were experimental.  One of the best producers was okra.  I'm not a fan of okra, but it grew very well with zero maintenance.

Also, okra flowers are surprisingly attractive.

Garden #3 was in front of my office.  We installed a garden box last year, and this year I filled it with dirt, compost, and 9 yellow beefsteak tomato plants.

It has been very productive...we have harvested dozens of large, meaty yellow tomatoes.  I grew yellow 'maters at the home garden, too...but the office garden tomatoes were far superior.  I saved seed for next year from one perfect specimen from this garden.

Garden #4 was at my wife's workplace.  With the property owner, she and I built a garden box in front of the shop.  Later, we put in sunflower seed, tomato plants, and marigold seed.

With all the rain we've had, this garden box needed zero assistance once planted.  It produced cherry tomatoes.

The sunflowers that we planted were the moulin rouge variety.  They are a deep dark burgundy.

My wife has way more claim to this garden than I do.  She initiated it and made decisions about what would be planted.  I just helped.

So, those are the four gardens.  I'm very happy about how the two workplace gardens turned out.  With the camp garden, I would have done some things differently.  Nonetheless, I will replant all three satellite gardens next year.

16 Harvests

Gardening in August is all about harvests.  I've tried really hard to take pictures each time that I pick.  It's been hard.  Sometimes I find myself rushing to pick after supper before the light is gone.  Other days I sneak one in before heading off to work.

So, the following images are 16 harvests in the month of August.  Be advised: these are unduplicated vegetables.  Each veggie is photographed once and only once!

The garden produces more than enough food to feed the whole family during August...if only that were the case.  We love meat, bread, cheese, and chips far too much.  I think my sons could live on frosted flakes and pizza exclusively.  We do work lots of garden veg into the family meal plans, often having meals that might have just one ingredient from the grocery store.  

Garden staples that we are NEVER without in July and August include tomatoes, snap beans, squash, banana peppers, carrots, basil, mint, chives, and cucumbers.

Finding ways to cook these items and have my sons eat those creations winds up being the biggest challenge. Thankfully, butter makes everything taste good.

Just giving it away

Yes, I am just giving it away.  We have so much.  Below are some recent pickings...each picture is of completely different veg.  Just a habit now: I pick and then take a pic.  Harvest are almost daily.  Getting lots of tomatoes, squash, and asparagus (aka yard-long) beans every day.

July 27

July 28 - Banana peppers there in the middle

July 29 - that's broccoli on the bottom left

July 30 - that's a little cabbage on the top right

August 1 - huge harvest of long beans.  Eggplant in the upper right.

See something you like?  Need veg?  Let me know.

Garden Vegetable Mega-Bowl

The amount of tomato, squash, cucumber, and beans inside my house has reached hoarder levels.  This Saturday I will hold the 'Flint, Michigan Mega-Bowl' of front yard produce sales.  Yup, in the future they're going to be talking about 3 things: the discovery of fire, the invention of the submarine, and the July 27th Givler Garden Produce Sale.

 Here was my kitchen table on July 21st.  There's a lot more now, despite having tomato & mozzarella salad every day for lunch and some sort of squash dish with supper almost every day...and giving some away.

Above is the harvest from the 21st.

Here's the harvest from the 23rd...notice the yellow thing?  That's not summer squash...it's a cucumber that grew from seeds in the compost pile.  I'm pretty sure that it is a cross between regular cukes and the round yellow cucumbers that I like to grow.  The one next to it is from the same vine, just not a mature.  It has a yellow tint.

Here's a picture of the "compost garden."  It has the weird cukes, pumpkins, and an unidentified tomato plant.  The vines are amazingly healthy.

This is the harvest from July 24th.  The yard-long beans, aka asparagus beans, started coming in heavy in both green and purple varieties.

Harvest from this evening, July 25.

So, put the morning of Saturday, July 27 at 8 AM on your calendar.  It's the Givler Garden Vegetable Sale, and if we're successful, there's going to be a 12-foot trophy.  It's glorious, I've seen it.  Oh, and if we sell all the produce, this big gun is going to shoot off.  Bring your turtlenecks.  Bring your white pants.  I may also wrestle a bear.

Disclaimer: if some of this post makes no sense to you at all, immediately rent and watch the movie "Semi-Pro."  Do it today.  

Garden Production Outpaces Family Appetite. Again.

I pick the garden daily.  A delicious torrent of tomatoes, squash, and snap beans pours into our home.

I eat tomatoes with mozzarella and vinagrette nearly every day for lunch.  We have squash and beans at supper.

Kale, cherry tomatoes, burgundy beans...soon I will enlist the dehydrator to aid us.

Potatoes are another family staple right now.  I've been slicing them into wedges, adding fresh rosemary and chives, salt, pepper, tossing them in oil and baking them in the oven.  We all like them.

This is the first year I've grown patty pan squash.  Cooked, they are firmer than yellow squash and zucchini.  I like them; they are good with onions and butter.

The Garden is Good

Work has kept me away from home most of the week, but I slipped back this evening.  We've had lots of regular rain, and the garden is doing very well.

Tonight I picked shallots, yellow onions, garlic, fava beans, snow peas, and the first of the purple pole beans.  There are lots of cool things happening in the garden.

Summer squashes are huge and healthy.  Very small fruits have formed, and I suspect we will see the first squash in less than a week.

Tomatoes are coming along nicely.  Lots of small green ones on the vines, just waiting for the magic that turns them vibrant and delicious.

This big sunflower is a volunteer, growing near where we grew mammoth sunflowers and moulin rouge sunflowers last year.  This sunflower is a cross between the two.  It is huge, but colored much like the moulin rouge variety.  Very cool.

More volunteers, brown-eyed susans growing from seeds scattered last year by mature plants, wild and free.