Salad Turnips

The roots are crunchy, sweet, turnip-y! And the green tops are tasty, too.

The fava bean forest has been cleared!

Maestro's favorite place to hang out in the garden has been the fava bean "forest". I know she will miss the shady protection the plants provided, but it is time to harvest the Windsor fava beans.

These are giant beans!

I picked a big bucket full ... ended up with 7 pounds 4 ounces shelled beans. They will be blanched and frozen for future consumption.

Tatsoi Bolts, Cabbageworms Move In

One of the joys of the winter / spring garden is the lack of pests. This year's long, cool spring provided us with an extended season of greens ... as beautiful as they were delicious. Warm weather has moved in, though, and the cabbage worms have emerged from their eggs, ready to munch their way through the brassica crops.

We have a few vulnerable crops planted this spring: toscano kale, bok choi, and tatsoi. With the recent hot weather, these plants have been threatening to bolt. The first to go was the tatsoi. It's been wet the last couple of days (1 inch of rain today), but I finally got out to the garden this afternoon to harvest what I could. I noticed that many of the formerly intact tatsoi leaves were now as holey as Swiss cheese! I cut the entire patch, then took it to the kitchen to clean and process. That's when I discovered the hole makers ...

Cross Striped Cabbageworms on Tatsoi

There were only a few worms, but it doesn't take many to wreak havoc! I will certainly be checking the kale and the bok choi tomorrow in an effort to fend off additional damage.

By the way, the tatsoi was still very tasty in the navy bean soup I prepared for supper! And there's plenty more for a savory stir-fry.

Last Night's Special

This is what I call a seasonal meal .... beet roots & greens and fava beans from the garden, with corn on the cob from Florida. If you don't garden it's unlikely you would serve a meal like this. I've never seen fresh favas in the the grocery store, and I rarely see fresh beet greens as pretty as these. Delicious!

Next on the Menu

Tatsoi and Pok choi

Salad Turnips

Sugar Snaps

Baby Summer Squash

Finally! It's hot enough to plant the okra.

The temperature is expected to climb into the 90's today. The heat and air guys are here to fix the malfunctioning AC unit. If it's not one thing, it's another.

I headed out to the garden in the cool of the morning in order to beat the heat. I cleaned out another raised bed. Removed lots of still-delicious lettuce (hey, I bet the HVAC guys eat lettuce) plus a half-row of spent spinach. Then I planted two rows of okra. I can't wait for okra season!

I prepared a little space at one end of the tomato bed into which I transplanted zinnia volunteers that are coming up throughout the garden. I love the cheery riot-of-color zinnias add to the garden. I planted three moonflower seedlings under the gazing ball which rests on a nest of dry grape vines entwined around cedar posts. Nice place for the moonflower to climb.

I spread leaf mulch on the beds, using my handy-dandy leaf grabbers. They make the job easy. In the fall we collect leaves into a fenced containment area for use in the garden.  Free mulch.

Garden Chores

Harvested lettuce and beets. Stuck some tomato plants in the cleared space. That bed now contains tomatillos and a variety of tomatoes (descriptions below). Watered recently planted seeds and seedlings. Now I've got a kitchen full of green stuff! Salad anyone?

The Tomato Bed:

Descriptions from Johnny's Selected Seeds

Tomatillo de Milpa - Mexican heirloom. These grow unattended in family corn fields and are harvested for home use and for selling in town on market day. High dry matter, small to medium, round fruits store fresh for several weeks, handy for fresh salsa. Portions of the fruits blush with purple, especially after harvest. 

Striped German - The flat, medium to large, variably ribbed-shoulder tomatoes are shaded yellow and red. The marbled interior looks beautiful sliced. Complex, fruity flavor and smooth texture. Medium-tall vines bear 12+ oz. fruit. Indeterminate.

Defiant - This mid-size slicer has high resistance to late blight and intermediate resistance to early blight combined with great flavor. The 6-8 oz., globe-shaped fruit are smooth and medium-firm with good texture. Deep red internal and external color. High-yielding, medium-sized plants are widely adaptable. Defiant was traditionally bred to inherit the Ph-2 and Ph-3 major genes for late blight (Phytophthora) resistance. Our thanks to No. Carolina State Univ. for their cooperation. Determinate.

Cobra - Purchased at Pittsboro Farmer's Market. Popular poly-tunnel tomato with good appearance and taste. Large, 6-8 oz., smooth fruit on vigorous vines with abundant foliage. Resists cracking and some races of leaf spot. Indeterminate.

Picked First Batch of Fava Beans Today

Products of one of the heirloom varieties ... Italian or Spanish ... I'm not sure which. Both are early producers, but one is supposed to make white beans (Aquadulce fava), the other purple beans (Extra Precoce A Grano Violetto fava). The beans I shelled out were light green, seemed to be perfectly mature ... but maybe not. The plants in that bed are beginning to wilt. The Windsor favas are growing well. Chianti, anyone?

Bean Trellis in Place

Rouse the Spouse helped. It's definitely a two-person job.

Lettuce Persists in Cool Spring Temps

And the salads have been delicious!

First Kudzu Bug of the Season

Spotted on the fava beans. Thankfully, he was a lone marauder, and is now a 'has been'. Many farmers are starting to see these guys congregating on figs, beans ... and walls. They are a particular danger to the edamame crop. Hope they stay away from my garden.

Here's what Debbie Roos, our agriculture extension agent, has to say about the pests:

"I have been getting lots of queries from folks wanting to know what the weird looking little bugs are on their plants.

I first started hearing about it last fall, so I took photos and made a new web page to introduce our newest invasive exotic pest: the kudzu bug (Megacopta cribraria). Now it is spring and the calls and texts and emails and Facebook posts are pouring in because our little friends are back after sleeping snugly in their overwintering sites. Again people are seeing kudzu bugs congregate on figs, magnolia, bronze fennel, and on the sides of houses. Expect to see alot more kudzu bugs this year than last year. I updated my web page so you can read all about the kudzu bugs on Cooperative Extension’s Growing Small Farms website."

The early favas are plumping up and should be ready to pick soon!

Beauregard

a.k.a. Bo Roo Guard, short for Bodacious Rooster, Guardian of Hens

Bad News in the Garden

The cool spring has foiled my attempt to get the eggplant up and growing before the flea beetles destroy it. I'll leave it in place and hope for the best.

The "8-Ball" summer squash plants have keeled over! I can't tell what did them in, but they are dead. I planted a few additional seeds directly into the garden. Sure would be nice to get some of these unusual small spherical fruits.