Some Clear Winners in the Garden

Well, actually the greenhouse.  Which this year is where we have been getting most of our food.  I like to think of it as just another garden space, with a cover of course.  The outside gardens are more “industrial” with long straight rows of vegetables in large quantities for winter.

As the season progresses, it’s easy to see the standouts compared to the duds.  Here are a few.

The chard I intentionally planted and the volunteer chard is growing stupendously in the greenhouse.  I about crapped the other day when I was at the grocery store and saw a bunch of organic kale for $2.99.  I truly lead a sheltered life.  We eat about 2 bunches worth of chard and kale with our other breakfast items everyday.  See, you can save money by growing some vegetables.

Cilantro for seed, some planted and some volunteer.  This is a great beneficial attractor.  Not to mention we eat a ton of cilantro preferring it to basil for pesto, and in the place of parsley.

And don’t shoot.  A hybrid tomato…with Seminis written all over it.  Super Marzano.  What a sleeper as a plant, I only planted two, and one succumbed to symphylans.   This plant puts all it’s energy to setting fruit, there are so many tomatoes I lost count.  The plant always looked weak and spindly but grew tall.  I didn’t hold out much hope for the fruit set.  Boy was I surprised.  Purported to have more pectin than other paste tomatoes for a thicker sauce, time will tell if it tastes good or not and lives up to its catalog description.  Ugly and meaty, I’m calling it my Cornish Cross tomato!

Of course, Bellstar, no surprises here.  Lots of fruit that will be ready for processing at one time.  A canner’s delight.  And a succession sower’s delight too, these determinate plants can be pulled and the row re-used for a fall planting of something.  No fiddling around ’til October waiting for the last tomato to ripen like the indeterminate plants the next row over.

New this year, is Flavorburst F1 pepper.  It’s going gangbusters and is the replacement for Sunray which did well also but isn’t available anymore.

Mispoona, another of Frank Morton’s crosses.   I like to trial greens in the greenhouse, to subject them to adverse conditions.  One, my obvious neglect and the other, high temperatures.  So folks, here is a mizuna type salad green that is just now attempting to bolt.  It was planted in April, and we have eaten some but I wanted to leave it to encourage bolting.  (Continuously harvesting slows bolting.)  All the other mustards I planted in April have been gone since mid-June.  This mild tasting mustard green is delicious and very productive.  The strings hanging down represent where I pulled out a sick tomato plant.  But the kale and mustard have grown in to fill the space.

What can I say about kale that hasn’t been said?  We eat a lot of it, it grows well most of the year and is pretty.  You just have to grow it, it is good for you.

Bok Choy among tomatoes.

A method that is working well, is planting cool weather type plants in between the tomatoes.  My tomatoes are on 4 foot centers, which left me some room for succession sowing of salad greens.

And something that has been missing from our palates – strawberries!  One bed of 25 everbearing plants has been keeping us in berries daily since early June.   I had just given up on strawberries outside, the deer ate the berries, and then the plants in the summer and if the plants survived that onslaught, the deer reappeared to eat the plants in winter.  Strawberries are the earliest fruit around here besides rhubarb and are a welcome vitamin packed hit.

And a look at just how much stunting symphylans can do to a tomato plant.  That poor little blob of green is covered with tiny tomatoes.  That plant should be as tall as its neighbors.

So folks, that’s it for what’s new and doing well here in the foodshed.  What is doing good in your garden this year despite the weird weather everyone is experiencing?

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