I’d thought today would be a good day to check in with our garden notes again. What do you have to note about how your garden is growing? I’d love to hear.
Here’s our report:
We harvested the rest of the onions and all of the shallots and the garlic this week. We’ve never grown shallots before, so we are curious to see if we picked them at the right time. They are on the smallish side, but very plentiful. I hope they keep for a while, have you grown them before? We also have enough onions to feed an army. I don’t know what we were thinking when we planted them, but there’s a pretty good bet that if you come to visit, we’ll do our best to send you home with a few.
We also harvested the majority of the amaranth that was growing around the melons. We noticed that the melons weren’t growing much at all. Either it’s the cooler weather we are having or they weren’t getting enough sun because the amaranth was crowding it out. Since we can’t control the weather, we decided to do what we could by pulling the amaranth.
Our two portofino zucchinis are kickin it into high gear and no matter how much we eat, there are still more squash sitting on the counter. Zucchini bread anyone?
The St. Valery carrots that we planted in February are ready to be picked but they are not good. Not good at all. They are slightly bitter and don’t have any sweetness to them at all. Grow fast you Purple Haze, we miss you!
The most recent thing I planted are pumpkins. 4 seeds sprouted in 5 days. I’m amazed at their zest. Previously, I had to transplant canteloupe because the zucchini and watermelons were taking over. I was certain that the plants wouldn’t take the transplant and that I would need to sew more seeds. Nope. The little melons are setting on the Golden Hearts melons. The secret to my garden this year is importing soil. WOW! The only problem I’m having is with the potatoes with blight; but they’re still producing. Like you, I have an abundance of onions and zucchini. I will be harvesting eggplant today and try my hand at making ratatouille. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten as much zucchini in my entire life as I have this season.
I haven’t quite gotten my groove back on in the garden but I’m hoping to remedy that tomorrow! I just really had to comment that after reading your post on Purple Haze carrots way back when I planted some… and I will never plant another kind! haha! We LOVE them. Ate a big pile at dinner tonight. Wanted to say Thanks
Oh and our melons seem to be on pause as well! They look similar to yours in size.
I’m enjoying your posts… I’m in Az and right about with your schedule, except my garden/harvest is sadder looking. It is however, my first one in low desert and in this soil – so I’m adding in a lot of material to the dirt every time I dig
As for the zucchini bitterness, my aunt showed me a trick that works, Cut off an end (with both knife and fruit somewhat dry) and rub the surfaces together in a firm circular motion around and around until white foam comes out, when it stops coming out, repeat on the other end of the fruit. On the really bitter ones, try cutting it in half for a third rubbing. The foam is the bitterness, and though my doubting self hasn’t tasted the foam, I have tasted small slice that I removed when cutting it to defoam – It works! Also use this trick on other summer squash and cucumber!
I hear that zucchini slices- dehydrated- work very well and hydrate up to taste/firmness nearly exactly like fresh (even? for stir fry!) for those months when you wish you had some.
For eggplant bitterness, (my current book says to peel the eggplant), slice or dice and generously toss or sprinkle with fine sea salt, let stand, covered, about 1 hour and rinse and pat dry. It mentions some cultures use dry eggplant. So perhaps a trial drying would do you well with the soon to come abundance.
Drying food here in AZ it is super simple and quick. I made simple frames from untreated, lightweight wood and stapled a cut-to-shape black plastic-coated window screen on it. (made sure it didn’t gass off , or in some cases, I suppose, give it time to gass off) and then stack them on a surface off the ground. I have three trays, the bottom two trays for food, the top one is to keep the birds and bugs off. I kept the remnants of wood for raising the trays off the table top for more air circulation and the remnants of screen over mason jars (w/ rubber bands or the rings) for screening my sprouts and beans…
There you go, my thanks for great posts.
Thank you Gigi for the tips on getting rid of bitterness. And for the mention of drying veggies. I’ve been thinking about borrowing a dehydrator for this growing season, but we have so much sun here, I should try drying on screen. I even think we have an extra one somewhere around here…. Thanks again for the great comments!
Our garden did not go in until the first week of July. Now, four weeks later, things are doing incredibly well! There are blooms on the squash and cucumbers, herbs abound and the corn and grow grow taller each day.