Thursday, September 10, 2009

September 10, 2009

Alright, you asked for it, you get pics of my disasterous garden.  In my defense, I'm almost out of broccoli and caulflower seeds and they've turned into a big hit with the big people in my family (namely my wife, who is the first person to tell you she hates those veggies).  So I decided after the plants flowered that I'd see what it took to make them go to seed.  The bumblebees loved them so I let them stay.  The bees were a welcome addition to that area of my garden.

Well, now they look like this...



I think each of those pods needs to dry out and inside are about 10 seeds.  When I opened one earlier they had about that many green seeds. 

Of course I have since seen the package and thee Fiesta broccoli from Territorial is a hybrid.  Oh well, no harm no foul.  These will make a welcome addition to the compost pile. 

Speaking of which, I haven't been doing much adding to it this year.  Three years out from the last time I weed and fed my lawn, it didn't grow at all all summer.  It really didn't turn majorly brown either, just didn't grow.  I'll take that from an effort perspective, but it makes me quite shy of greens in mass quantities for my compost pile.  I figure with the kitchen compost and leaves that are bound to start falling, I'll have one more major flip before I put it to bed for the winter.  For greens I'll use these plants and some handy coffee grounds from Starbucks. 

Lastly, I thought I'd take an overview pic of my garden to scare you all into going out this weekend and cleaning up yours, hehe.  Needless to say the major winner this year were the carrots.  I swear my kids is turning into a rabbit.



Oh, and that monster in the picture is a volunteer tomato plant.  No clue what type it is, but it looks healthy enough.  I figured if I had tomato volunteers I'd just leave them and see what happened.  So far it looks like I'll have a late crop of salad makings, even if I have to ripen them inside.  Not Judy and EG kind of second crop, but pretty decent for the Pacific Northwest.

Enjoy your garden, and let folks know I'm back.  It's kinda lonely without the 400+ folks reading my blog each day, hehe.

12 comments:

  1. It's definite fall garden "tidy up" time. I am letting the sugar snap peas, pole beans, runner beans, and bush beans set seed. They have "podded" but the snap peas are the furthest along in setting really fat mature seeds and moving to the dry pod stage. I really don't try to save seed on harder items like carrots, parsnips, onions (all three biannuals) and gave up trying to save spinach seed because it just consumed too much valuable garden real estate to keep a crop held over to go to mature seed - right in the most productive season of the garden (summer).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow, your garden has turned into a jungle! That's really interesting about saving the seeds, I may try that in the future.

    ReplyDelete
  3. We knew you wouldn't stray for long. People will come back in droves, you just wait and see.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Rich,

    Glad to see you are back online. I took a break from posting myself but am now getting back to it. I look forward to catching up on your gardening adventures.

    Sandy

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Rich,
    I did exactly what you did with your broccoli. Unfortunately it was right next to a trap nasturtium that was covered in aphids. So no dice on seeds, but the bees and wasps did enjoy the flowers and the bugs. I also did the same thing with a couple of leeks that I let go to seed. After a full summer of drying out the seeds should be ready for planting next year. We'll see how it goes.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am passing a Meme Award on to you. Thanks for sharing your garden!
    http://transplantedgardener.blogspot.com/2009/09/meme-award.html

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Rich! I know what you mean.... my garden needs some clearing out too. I did manage to pull some yellow squash plants that were spent this past weekend. I still have 4 more to go. Plus, I need to pull the last cucumbers I planted - wilt got them and I didn't get any cucumbers from the plants. And it's time to start planting for fall already!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wait, wait, wait. Those weedy looking things are broccoli and cauliflower? Happy to know what "wild" brocc. & cauli. look like now! HA!

    I love the concept of saving seeds, and if I had the space, I'd do it too...

    ReplyDelete
  9. I just did a lot of my cleaning yesterday. I pulled down the cucumber plants and the roma tomato plants - the Best Boy tomatoes just started putting on a few more flowers - so maybe we'll get a couple more tomatoes from those.

    We pulled up most of the corn that didn't set an ear yesterday and also pulled up about 20 ears of corn. We had 18 "good" ones but they still were small and bad looking - I guess that is what happens when you transplant too late!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hi Sinfonian.... where have you been hiding?

    ReplyDelete
  11. I also let my broccoli go to seed. I couldn't believe how many bees were in there! I'm going to try using the seed for salad sprouts. I saved some radish seed for this too.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hi: I think what you are doing for the earth is fantastic, but somehwere today I read that you recommend PEAT MOSS FROM CANADA as being SUSTAINABLE. NO PEAT MOSS FROM ANYWHERE ON THIS GLOBE IS SUSTAINABLE or RENEWABLE. BOGS ARE DISAPPEARING AT AN ALARMING RATE! and uneducated gardening practices are responsible. Please, please, please do your research and correct this false assumption. With humble respect...

    M

    ReplyDelete