July Gardens - St. Paul, MN

As I've been allowing things to grow, I've noticed one thing in particular. Stuff doesn't really happen very often in a garden.

This is the point, I guess

So, the two Gardens, community and home, are shaping up VERY nicely, here's an idea of how far they've come:

Early June:

 Late July:

Note the RIDICULOUS growth of the Purple Potatoes in the center, dwarfing the pole beans. The squash and tomatoes are gigantor, however all these large plants are keeping the four various pepper plants from leaping. Consequentially I've got 5-10 inch tall pepper plants in a time when they should be 1-2 feet tall.

 The first of a blue squash, with MANY more blossoms posed to blow up. 

 The first of the red squash.

 Mulberries on the outside of the community garden. My parent's had a mulberry tree in our backyard in Inver Grove Heights while I was growing up. Their taste is fleeting and sweet as the fruit is small, but I'm a fiend with them and was delighted to find a tree.

 The first of the turnips from the home garden. I bought the seeds for radishes, turnips, and carrots from a stand at the Maxwell Street Flea Market in Chicago. The turnips are the only ones that are actually taking off.

 Herbs hung to dry. From Left to right: Thyme, Sage, Triple-curled Parsley, Thai Basil, Rosemary, and Chocolate Mint.

Salad made with greens from the home garden, as well as homemade Falafel balls. 

And a crispy Stella.

Nom.

July Update - NE MPLS

So the hot weather is upon us. All of the mustard and arugula have bolted, as well as the fennel I so desperately wanted to eat.
Here's a little update on what's happening in the sweltering heat and humidity.

BURRIES!

The best part of gardening is the berries. They are so low maintenance except they just want to spread everywhere. The photo above was the first significant 1-day harvest of the season. That is about 1lb 2oz. worth and they were promptly washed, dried and put in the freezer. If you want to know how to freeze them properly, see here.
I think we are going to make a dark chocolate raspberry stout that would be ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We'll post a recipe if that is their final use.

We started getting Jalapenos a few weeks ago, just a few at a time. The rest of the peppers are a little slow moving at this point, but all have either flowered or started producing fruit by now. More photos of those ones later.

We planted fava beans (right photo) next to the peppers, tomatoes and cucumber to experiment with some nitrogen fixing. Basically these guys grow straight up and once they start to flower, you cut off the tops and they release nitrogen into the soil. I didn't get enough seeds to start with so next year these guys will be in higher concentrations all over the garden. I'll probably dedicate a whole blog post to natural fertilizer techniques next year because we plan to do more experimenting.

 Green beans took a while to sprout this year but we will soon be harvesting! Thankfully the bunnies left these guys alone so hopefully we'll have handfuls of very flavorful beans daily in the near future.

Snap peas came and went quickly. We only had about 3 surviving plants after the bunnies did their damage but we've been just eating them as snacks because there really isn't enough to pick daily to have a stir fry. I re-sowed some more seeds about 3 weeks ago so we'll have another round coming up soon! The red romaine seen in the photo on the right was actually a free seed packet I received this year. We've been doing the cut-and-come-again method and have had plenty of greens so far for salads and sandwiches. They are a bit delicate when they are cut during the hot weather, but they haven't bolted yet so I am a big fan.

Bunnies love chard so we had these hidden among other plants to keep them out of view. I am not a huge fan of sauteed chard but they are just too dang beautiful to leave out of the garden. Out of the 6 or so spots we planted chard only a few remain.

We got our first cucumber and immediately after we had 4 more flowers pop up. The fava plants are nestled in there and provided a bit of shade and protection from the hot sun after the cuke plant was being attacked by something after being planted. This bed receives the least amount of sunlight but the kale and leeks don't seem to mind. As you can probably see, we have a problem with weeds outside of our raised beds.

The rest of the leeks and fennel are planted in a sunnier spot in the garden. Unfortunately all of the fennel has gone to seed but we'll figure out something to do with them. They're pretty, so at least we have that going for us. We've been hilling up the soil around the leeks about every 3 weeks or so to ensure that we have a nice white stalk.

The tomatoes on the trellis netting has been a bit difficult. The leaves get tangled and they are getting very bushy but producing a lot of fruit. At this point we've just let the roma tomatoes grow out instead of up because every branch seems to be growing fruit. The coneflowers that I planted last year are HUGE and will be moved at the end of the season to provide better sunlight. The cherry tomatoes have been using the coneflowers on the right as an alternative support.
**PLEASE SHARE IF YOU HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS FOR TOMATOES** We have run in to over-pruning, not pruning enough, over watering, under watering and we can never seem to make them manageable AND productive at the same time. We are KIND of greenthumbs after all.

So that's all for now! If there is something you'd like us to write about in more detail, let us know in the comments!