Starting to get cold.

It's starting to get cold here in New York (not that it got very warm this summer) and I'm trying to decide whether I should go ahead and pick the little watermelon. It was suppose to be small but I really did expect it to get a little larger.

It's also time to start cleaning up. I think after I clean out all the dead or dying plants I'll put in a few mums till winter just to make it look nice for the neighbors. I did get enough zucchini to make six loaves of bread and plenty of eggplants. I got some tomatoes though I was hoping for more because we really like tomatoes. It was just too wet this year. I never did get any broccoli. Every time it started to get a little head of broccoli it would jump straight into flowers. A friend of mine said her father use to grow broccoli and would wrap the leaves around the head to keep it from flowering and let it grow bigger. I'll have to try that next year. I never got any pumpkins (since I actually planted more zucchini) so I'll have to hit the farmers market to do my pumpkin baking. When I start I'll share some of our favorite recipes with you so you can enjoy the bountiful fall harvest too. Though I did hear that pumpkin crops were having some problems this year too. So I think I'll go this weekend before scarcity kicks in and the prices go up.

I'm going to be spending the winter doing a little research to help me get a better crop of veggies next year as well.

I Should Have Taken a Picture

Do you remember me telling you this was PUMPKIN??? Well it's not it's Zucchini!! How do I know ...

Well after months of checking for nice pumpkins and getting nothing but big yellow flowers. I noticed the other day the leaves were wilting and needed some water. So I headed out and grabbed the hose. I turned toward the plant and saw the biggest zucchini I have ever seen! It was a good foot and a half long and about 6 inches around. After I finished being flabbergasted
..... I mean how the heck did I miss that monster after all the checking I did??? I grabbed the zucchini and headed into the kitchen. Now if you want to use a zucchini in any recipe where you taste a lot of zucchini any one will tell you to use them before they get more then 5 inches long when they are still young and tender. So I chopped and grated my zucchini and made 4 Yes 4 loaves of zucchini bread. Now I wish I had taken a picture to show you but it's to late it has been eaten... My zucchini bread doesn't stay around for long!

Tomatoes Watermelon and..... Fungus ?!?

No more picture perfect round tastless Tomatoes for me! My tomatoes are ripe and OH So Juicy that they are putting those pretty supermarket tomatoes to shame.

I'm finally getting some watermelon this is the biggest one. There are a couple of tiny ones too. I hope they ripen before the weather gets too cold.

I'm getting a white powery fungus on my zuccini and my pumpkin plants

and the flowers keep falling off with out producing fruit.

According to GardenGuides.com I can use milk to help control the fungus by mixing one part milk to 9 parts water and spraying on the plants once a week. I did it this morning I'll let you know how it goes.

Tomato Blight

It appears here in Long Island we are in the grip of a tomato blight due to the massive amount of rain we have had this year. Its effecting large and small gardeners alike. Lucky for me it hasn't gotten a hold of my tomatoes yet but I'll have to keep an eye on them. Here is some information from the newspaper about Tomato Blight so you can keep an eye on your tomatoes too.

What to look for: White-mold encircled gray spots on leaves and gray or brown lesions on stems. Eventually the fruit exhibits dark, greasy-looking lesions (yuck) and the plants blacken, wilt and die. Since I don't have any (knock on wood) I looked around and found this picture on Illinois Fruit and Vegetable News Website. (click here) Itt

What to do: Affected plants must be tightly sealed in plastic bags and put in the trash. They should never be composted or allowed to linger on the ground.

Preventative: For organic gardens the paper suggests products with fixed copper but states it's the least effective against blight. for non organic it suggests looking for products that contain maneb, mancozeb or chlorothalonil.

Vegetable Container Garden Update

Ok time to post some more pictures of my Vegetable Container Garden. Here are how things are growing.

The tomatoes are growing well you can see plenty of the just waiting to ripen. You might notice I've intertwined the tomato plant into the fence for support. This helped to save money since I didn't have to build or buy a tomato cage.

The best growing plant is the Pumpkins. The funny thing is they aren't in a normal planter I had an empty storage bucket and just filled it with dirt. The only problem is there are plenty of flowers but no pumpkins. I think today after work I'm going to go out and hand pollinate them with a small paint brush.

The Watermelon is growing too slowly I don't think I'll get any good melons before it starts getting cold. I didn't have them in a spot that was getting enough sun. Something to remember for next year.

Remember that pepper plant I started last winter indoors .... Well it finally got a pepper. LOL


My zucchini is doing very well it looks nice and healthy and

look at the size of that zucchini. I think I'm going to have to dig up a good recipe for that one.

My broccoli isn't looking so well but it did start growing a couple more bunches.

Remember my Experiment... Well I'm marking it as a failure though I might try it again next year. The cherry tomato looks scraggly but it is still producing tomatoes. But the tomato plant that is hanging upside down hasn't produced any tomatoes.

Last a little money saving tip. If you don't know what a plant is don't buy it. I bought a "salad mix" six pack I saw when I was checking out the local garden store. I though how cool a mixed salad container garden. Even though I have used some of the lettuce there were three plants that I have no idea what they are. They are growing well but I haven't a clue what to do with them or when to harvest them. The two in the front are starting to get flower buds.

My First Dish From My Vegtable Container Garden

Here it is my first dish. Fried Eggplant

I wanted to do Baba Ghanoush which is an middle eastern dish. Kind of an eggplant dip. I've been having a little problem finding a recipe. You see there are two kinds of eggplants. Now I'm assuming the recipes are calling for the regular type of eggplant that looks like this:

I have Japanese Eggplant growing which looks like this.

You might notice that it is much thinner they the other eggplant. So that leaves me with the question how many of them should I use to equal one of the fatter eggplants. I'm thinking two which means I'll have to wait because only one of them was ready to be picked.

Anyway the Fried Eggplant was delicious. Here is what I did.

Take Eggplant and slice it into no more then 1/2 inch thick slices. Dip in egg and dredge through flour mixed with a little salt pepper and garlic powder. Fry in hot oil until tender.

I have to thank Shawie from A Grateful Heart for the idea. I hadn't considered frying it, but she mentioned it in her comment to me and it sounded tasty.

Broccoli

I had to do some research on broccoli. My plants started sprouting flowers before I could pick them. They were still pretty small so I thought I had more time until harvesting them.

I thought since it had flowered I wasn't going to get any edible broccoli from it. But I am happy to announce that after hitting the library I learned that once I cut off the central bunch more will grow. This will give me plenty of tasty broccoli. I just have to watch out and harvest them before they bloom.

I also learned that I probably have them planted a little too close. I have four plants in my container and the books I looked at said they should be about 18 inches apart. But other then a little insect activity they all appear to be healthy plants. Now I just have to see about keeping the bugs away.