All squashed up

Over the years my experience as a volunteer - whether it be a girl-guide leader or a weed picker - has taught me that volunteers are happy in their work in even the harshest conditions, probably because they choose to be there and are there for no other reason than they want to be. This applies to plants too!

This year, I carefully planned out my raised beds, following scale drawings of where I would plant my warm season vegetables. I planted seeds and lovingly tended to them. Some grew and others well... struggled. Meanwhile, in a far distance corner of the garden, a host of squash plants germinated. They were ignored as I poured love and care over the plants I had in my raised beds. I didn't even water the volunteers. And now they have outgrown the chosen ones and look fantastic, and I can't claim any of the credit.

So what happened? Well, some of this is elementary, my dear Watson. The volunteers popped up where I had emptied the compost bins, before I spread mulch after removing lava rock, back in the spring. No mystery there. However, I know that I only had pumpkin seeds and seeds from butternut squash. And here's what has grown.

Pumpkins sure:

And something approximating a butternut squash:

Then we have a selection of different shaped, colored and sized squash - some that remind me of acorn squash and others I've never seen before.

So what's all this about? Well, still not a huge mystery - at least not to a gardener. Squash plants are, shall we say, promiscuous. The female flowers can be pollinated by lots of different varieties of squash, such that, unless you have those little ladies under wraps (a plastic bag will do) they will be pollinated by any squash pollen that a bee presents. The fruit is already genetically coded for so, if you know you have a butternut squash seed from a butternut plant that has only been subjected to butternut pollen (seed packets should guarantee this), then you will get a butternut squash fruit no matter what pollinates it. But if you seed save from a squash that has been open pollinated then you won't know what you may get. That is, the fruit does not guarantee what type of offspring you will get. So, in this case the butternut squash and the pumpkins seed I had thrown in the compost were obviously  pollinated by pollen from a variety of different squashes.

The the real mystery is this - what happened to my carefully tended squash?

Here are the pumpkins I planted.

Not even fruiting!

And the sibley I had such high hopes for.

My candy roaster was a complete disaster.

Especially when you compare it with the volunteers.

The bottom line is that the soil in my raised beds is tired. It really needs some serious soil amendment before I put in  the winter garden. I was still able to eat from the garden all summer, but I don't have much by way of surplus (except for pole beans!).

My friend Judy gave me a pumpkin seedling which I planted in an "overflow" bed - a small bed where I had cut out a shrub and instead of digging up its roots I covered it in compost and wood chips - and it has really taken off.

One huge pumpkin and the vine is 10-15 feet long.

Mystery solved - So with out any further BS it's time to break out the steer manure!

But another mystery alludes me - how will I know when to harvest my mystery squashes?

Byddi Lee

Did my garden miss me as much as I missed it?

Judging by the growth spurt - no! Okay, so maybe it's an illusion. I go out every day and peer closely at my plants to see if they have grown any in the last few hours - seriously mad, I know, but I can't help myself. So you can imagine what joy it is to see my garden after three weeks. Things have really got growing out there.

I was greeted first by a profusion of flowers in the native garden. I arrived back after dark and they seemed white in the moonlight, but the next morning the Hookeri Evening Primrose (Oenothera Hookeri) flaunted her full glory.

Considering this was six inches tall when I bought it last October, it's simply stunning. And close up you can see how beautiful the blossoms really are.

The coyote mint ( Monardella villosa) has also blossomed. As well as having perfumed foliage, the purple blossoms are attracting the bees.

The old plum tree in the front yard, one of three non-natives spared in the conversion, is rewarding us for our mercy with bough breaking loads of fruit. Delicious! I see plum jam in my immediate future!

 

The pomegranate has blossomed. Hopefully, it will produce more fruit than it did last year -a grand total of three pomegranates! Perhaps that extreme pruning the year before last has paid off.

In the succulent garden, most of the plants are happy and some have even sent up blossoms. What a big turn around from the days when I seemed to kill every succulent I looked at!

 

Some funky things are going on with my vegetables. I have several squash volunteers. They sprung up in the mulch under the fruit trees. Before the mulch went down, I used everything in my compost bins to provide a layer of compost whether it had composted yet or not.  My guess is that these are from a butternut squash we'd eaten a while ago.

Why is it that volunteers seem to grow better than the ones I carefully tend to?

While I was in Ireland it rained here. This patch of unseasonably (though I've yet to figure out just what seasonable means in California!) cool weather brought a few surprises. The late peas, that I had given up on and hadn't gotten around to pulling, took off. Back to having mange-tout and sugar snap peas for dinner again - yipee!

After reseeding my parsnips several times I eventually got them to germinate. And now look at them.

I'd tried and tried to get kolrabi, the space ship-like brassica, to grow. Again I'd given up, had noticed unidentified brassica leaves growing amonst the peppers and decided to leave it until I came home. I was astonished to see a beautiful apple-sized kolrabi - ready to harvest.

I sliced it and stir-fried it with the peas and carrots I've been harvesting.

I've also been harvesting French round carrots. These are excellent for stony ground or containers. I was growing them for fun and because I got a free packet of seeds. Now, I'd grow them for taste. They have a lovely aniseed aftertaste. I steamed these ones.

The pole beans are living up to their name and growing nicely up the poles.

In the foreground you can see potatoes that are ready to harvest, and which I actually have harvested since the picture was taken. I love the maths of gardening - I planted 3 potatoes here and dug up 16 of at least the same size, if not bigger. On the topic of potatoes - my bags of spuds have really taken off.

 

It won't be long before I'm harvesting them.

My last garden observation involves alcohol. I have sunflowers planted in two beds. One of the beds is orderly and quite regimented. I can watch as these little sun soldiers stand up tall and turn their faces to the sun, all facing the same way.

The other bed is the one where I carried out my beer experiment on the slugs. I did spill some, but oh boy, those sunflowers have really been partying! Can you tell which bed is which?

Byddi Lee

Home is where the garden is.

I really missed my garden while we were in Hong Kong. It was exciting to see what had grown while were were away.  Dalton, our young neighbor, had taken great care of the garden while we were gone and had done all the watering, even rolling up the hose pipe (a task we are extremely lazy about).  The place looked great BUT before I get too deeply engrossed in this blog - Please can someone tell me what this is?

When I first planted out my squashes and melons, I had them all labeled, but when the slugs ate them down to nothing, I panicked and replanted seeds left, right and center without recording what went where.  Also, I found some volunteers in my dill pot.  I've no idea what they are or how they got there...birds, I presume, so I planted them out too.  All lessons for future gardening!

So, I also need to know when to harvest this thing - its about a foot long right now.

The day after our return we had a visitor to the garden - Or is he  visitor?  This is the third sighting of a gopher snake in our yard - perhaps he is a resident?  I don't mind.  He keeps the rat population down - not to mention gophers.  I like him.  My husband doesn't - he does have a snake phobia. But I feel like I'm doing something right in my attempts to have a garden that also supports wildlife.

I dug up some parsnips - delicious.  The okra is ready and the bell peppers are nice thought less fleshly than I would like.  We got four cobs of corn that tasted rubbery.  We did miss the best time for them.  I'm never leaving my garden in July or August again for so long...  Brocolli, kale, onion and carrots abound - I think I'll be able to grow them year round (yes Scarlette, never go hungry again!).

My cherry tomatoes are a riot of red garden candy.  Yesterday, Al popped over to show me his "cherry tomato" and wanted to know did I want to compare them to mine - like his other veggies in a previous post.  Then he pulled out from behind his back a beef tomato, the size of a babies head!  He insisted that all his cherry tomatoes were hanging just as big as that back in his yard - He's a funny guy.

I had intended posting a picture of it but we ate it before we remembered to photograph it.  I had to resort to using an Artists impression.  Mind you, I use "artist" in its loosest term.  My art teacher in School used to make strange noises when I'd show him my art work - I couldn't work out if he was laughing or crying!

It was the most gorgeous tomato I've ever tasted.  My husband and I plotted to get another one.  We wondered if he'd given us the first one free to get us hooked then he'd make us pay big money for subsequent ones...  I figured I'd tell him about forgetting to photograph it and that we needed another one for the blog.  Clever me!  Though no more have shown up, knowing Al, he's waiting for it to ripen to the perfection he demands from his garden.

Speaking of great neighbors, the neighbors on our left hand side are wonderful too.  Their son Dalton, whom I've already mentioned, had a camp to attend for a couple of days prior to us coming home.  The garden and indoors plants all seemed healthy and happy at that stage, so he handed over the task of the watering to his Mom.  When we got back the coffee tree in the corner was looking decidedly upset.

All the leaves had drooped and no amount of watering would bring it back.   Then his poor Mom (whose own house plants are beautiful and is a great gardener herself) decided that it was over-watered, so she tried to dry it out, but nothing worked.  Being the conscientious and kind person that she is, she was terribly upset about "killing the tree."  Her words, not mine.  I suspect that I am to blame for starting the process of over-watering by trying to "stock up" the water in the pot before we left.  Dalton's Mom felt so bad about it that she bought me a beautiful replacement plant with a gorgeous glazed pot to boot!

Something she really didn't need to do.  We all know plants have the potential to up sticks and die if they feel left out at vacation time.  Obviously "Big Green" had his case packed and was very annoyed he'd been left behind.  I don't think we can really blame anyone - these things happen!

One of my friends had to go overseas for a while leaving her husband in charge of the two plants I had given her, a spider plant and  a basil seedling.  He forgot to water them and brought them to me in a panic.  The spider plant recovered, with the addition of water, but the poor basil - well the photo says it all really!

Our new "Little Guy" will be a much loved addition to our household, and a reminder to me that my garden has not only provided food for our tummys but has help nurture the seeds of friendship with which we feed our souls.

It's good to be home.

Byddi Lee