Fava Fest

The fava bean plants are starting to look a little sad in this summer weather. I suspicion they lose their ability to fight off bugs and diseases in the heat, because their leaves are droopy and munched. Luckily, there was a pretty good crop of mature beans on them. I had been worried when I planted them that it was too late and I wouldn't get a harvest. I think the heat did cause some blossoms and small beans to drop, but those that were into their development already seem to still be maturing just fine.

I harvested about half of the beans that were on the plants. Any that looked like they could use a bit longer to mature stayed on the plants. I pulled about 3 & 3/4 pounds off the plants. My understanding (from an article about the Santa Monica Farmers Market) is that favas run for about $3/pound, so I definitely recouped my seed costs on this one, especially if a few more pounds are still out there growing.


The sad part about favas is the amount of effort that goes into making them edible. First, you have to shell the favas.


You might think these are edible, but in reality there is a thick, pale skin still on the beans. In order to peel this off, you have to boil them in salt water for ~1min. If you cook them any longer, the beans start to get mushy, so after their brief boil they get put right into an ice bath. This loosens the skin which you can then pierce with a fingernail and squeeze the bean out.


In the end, I ended up with about 1 & 1/4 pounds of edible favas. Boy are they delicious though! I put half into the freezer for later and half into the fridge (after I snacked on a few!) I'm hoping to make something with the ones in the fridge in the next few days.

Assorted Update

Lots of things have happened in the last couple days. Here's the breakdown.

Tomato Bed:
The Hawaiian Currant made the transition back into dirt well and is beginning to put on some height. Given how miserable it looked when I picked it up, broken and wilted, off the ground a few weeks ago, I am shocked that it made such a recovery.

Hawaiian Currant looking good!

Green Zebra is still looking a little sad. I hacked it pretty good to remove a bunch of wilting leaves. The good news is that the brown wilt seems to be gone. The bad news is that there is only one growing tip left (until it grows a few suckers) and its leaves are somewhat curled, as if to protect itself or reserve water. I think it will be fine eventually, but it's not recovering easily.

Green Zebra...not looking good

The other tomatoes all have yellow flowers, and several are working on making tomatoes. Black Plum and Sun Gold both have lots of little green fruits. I'm curious to see who ripens first. Considering how well Black Plum did last year on neglect, and how well it's doing again this year, I suspect it will cement its position as favorite tomato.

Sun Gold tomatoes


Black Plum tomatoes

I put about 1 lb of E.B. Stone’s All-Purpose Fertilizer into the tomato bed. I also sprayed the bed with Neem Oil and sprinkled some Sluggo in the area. The tomato plants don’t seem too bug infested, but my poor pepper plants are just getting munched (except the Dulcettas, which somehow seem immune), I suspect by slugs & snails.

I bought a replacement Cayenne pepper to replace the one that got munched. It came in a 4-pack, so the others will probably go in pots. I also bought an Anaheim pepper. The one in the garden got so munched that I’m not sure it’ll make it, so I thought it best to have a plant on reserve just in case.

Anaheim Pepper might recover if the slugs stay away


Dulcetta Pepper looking awesome


Shallots (and one shallot that is probably not a shallot)


Garlic (Borage in upper left corner)

Legumes:
The pea plants look great. It’s going to break my heart when I have to pull them out in a couple more weeks. I’ve harvested about a dozen peas and there’s at least that many left on the vine for a salad or stir fry this week.

Very tall Pea plants


Peas

The fava beans are also doing well. There are several pods growing, and lots of flowers that should lead to bean pods soon.

Fava plants


Fava Beans

Leafy Greens:
Chard has taken over the garden. I really need to eat more chard. Lettuce looks fantastic. I think I’ll try to nurse it to the end of June for a BBQ on the 26^th, and then I’ll pull it out to give more room to the melon and strawberry plants. The Asian greens have also outgrown their welcome. I think they will become Chinese Chicken Salad this week. Mmmmm.

Red Chard


Asian Greens

Fruit:
A few of the melons have finally taken hold and appear to be growing. The ones closer to the back get much less sun, so they will take longer to get going, but I’m not sure having a delay between the plants will be a bad thing later this summer.

Charentais Melon

I finally got the 4 Chandler strawberry plants in the ground. Two of them already have strawberries trying to grow. Hopefully the others will get going soon.

Chandler Strawberry

Squash:
The zucchini plants are GIANT. I will have to hack it back a bit to get the corn in, but I doubt the plants would even notice. There are a couple zukes on it that will have to get eaten soon before they get huge. The other squash plants are doing well too. There are acorn squashes forming on one plant and the other squashes seem to have finally sunk their roots in and started growing.

Zuchinni growing


Acorn Squash

Other:
Radish seeds have sprouted out in the garden. Hopefully they’ll also be ready for salad for my BBQ in 3 weeks.

Radish sprout

The sunflowers have also grown quickly. I don't think I've mentioned them much in earlier posts, but the tallest is now taller than me.

Sunflower corner

My corn seeds have sprouted (all but one) in their little newspaper pots. When they reach ~6 inches tall, I’ll move them out to the garden.

Corn sprouts

More New Beginnings

I spent a chunk of my morning making small newspaper pots to start my corn seeds! Corn is always exciting to me because it was the flagship in my family's garden as a child. I will be planting corn along with beans between my already planted squash in a Three Sisters Garden. In this arrangement, the corn provides support for the beans, the beans provide nitrogen fixing for the heavy feeding corn and squash, and the squash grows around the base of the corn and beans providing shade (and therefore more moisture) for their roots and protecting them from animals with their prickly leaves and stems. This arrangement also allows for an efficient spacing of plants; I hope to have about 30 corn and bean plants planted by mid summer. The newspaper pots should provide a good nursery for my corn plants that will break down once I transplant the sprouts into the garden. The corn seeds are soaking as I right (and have been since this morning) and they'll go into their little pots this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

Other new beginnings are everywhere. My pea plants have just started to blossom, the fava beans have blossoms EVERYWHERE, almost every tomato plants has little yellow flowers, and even my boysenberries have a few white flowers to show off for summer. The carrot seeds I planted a few weeks back have finally started to sprout. The asian greens and mesclun I planted with them didn't fare so well, with only a half dozen or so mustard greens sprouting. But summer is fast approaching and the greens will get bitter with the heat, so it's not much loss. Perhaps I didn't water enough, or the seeds were too old (I bought them in 2009).

Plans for this week are to put in the pepper and strawberry plants I bought last week, seed the corn, seed more radishes and beets, and tie up the tomatoes and fava beans which have outgrown their last set training ties.

Happy Day!

Today is turning out to be pretty fantastic, not only did I get into my first choice school for the fall (Yes, I agree that is completely unrelated, but I don't care. I'm excited!) but I also discovered as I tied up a few of my tomatoes today that I have a BABY TOMATO!



Baby Black Plum Tomatoes, Weeeeee!
Actually there are two, and to make it even better they are on my black plum plant, which means they will not only ripen faster since they are little grape tomatoes, but they are my favorite kind of tomato so they will probably be delicious. I am so excited.

Three of my tomato plants are now tall enough that they need some tying. The Yellow Submarine and Paul Robeson are lagging behind everyone else, especially the Yellow Submarine which seems to have some really odd leaf shapes and not only because it is a potato leaf.

The Blood Gulch, I am pleased to report, has made a full recovery and is catching up with all its might. It has surpassed the Paul Robeson in size already and is looking very robust.



Blood Gulch



Blood Gulch looks tiny next to its neighbor
The Hawaiian Currant is still alive, somehow, but is looking a little crisp around the edges due to the intense heat we've had the last few days. I've not given up all hope for it yet, but I am certainly not holding my breath for it either.


Hawaiian "I'm not dead yet!" Currant
I also tied up my fava beans today as they were starting to crowd the chard and the sweet peas are just not getting enough light. Hopefully this doesn't negatively affect my yield from the favas, though I think the benefit to the chard and sweet peas should more than make up for it.



Favas & Chard
The chard is looking amazing. Earlier this week I was thinking about pulling a few leaves to put on a sandwich, but now I think there's enough for a side dish of sauteed chard. I will definitely be eating chard with my dinner tomorrow. That'll be the first harvest of the season. How exciting!!!!


Red Chard



Yellow Chard
I also discovered a little strawberry flower bud yesterday afternoon that today was open and smiling. Only 10 of the 36 strawberry starts I planted ever grew anything, but perhaps I will still still get some strawberries this season :)



Hello there!

Elliott didn't kill any plants!

Last Wednesday I put my tomatoes, garlic, and shallots in in a hurry so that I could leave town for a visit with my mother. I was rather nervous about leaving my garden because many of the seeds I put in over the last few weeks are just now sprouting, others have been up for awhile but are still small and tender, and the process of transplanting tomatoes is pretty brutal for the poor guys and they're very fragile for the first week or two afterwards.

Well, I couldn't be happier to see my tomatoes are for the most part looking no worse than the day I put them in. Elliott reports that they were pretty wilted while I was gone, but they seem to look fine now. I put E.B. Stone Planting Compost on them today as a mulch because the ground is a bit cracked in some places. Hopefully a little mulch will hold the moisture in (and makes the bed look much prettier).

Several garlics have already broken through the surface. I suspect the others will all be up in the next week or so. No shallots or elephant garlic yet, but it has only been 5 days.

My fava beans look FANTASTIC! Many of the plants are 6+ inches tall now and growing second and third stalks. The peas (sweet, snap, and snow) are all popping up. They vary in height from 1/2"-3" right now and a few sweet peas have started growing tendrils.

More strawberry starts have grown leaves. Maybe 8 or 10 have a leaf or two on them now, and a couple of those already have multiple leaves. The larger of my two rhubarb starts also has a beautiful green leaf that grew while I was away.

Seeds are sprouting all over the strawberry/flower/vegetable bed. My sunflower seeds are up and working on their first true leaves. I have a nice row of chard developing and a number of other seeds that I don't yet recognize. Many of these seeds are probably weeds, but I won't really know until they've developed a little further. I won't pull anything for awhile for fear of pulling out something I planted on purpose.

My potted Roma tomato is looking suprisingly stocky. It is close to a foot tall now and has an impressively thick stem with dense branches. I suspect I will have a very productive plant....hopefully in contrast with my tomatoes from last year which ended up long and somewhat spindly.

Today I went to Armstrong Garden Center to spend one of my Groupons from a couple weeks back. I spent it on three bags of compost and a variety of herbs (trailing rosemary, English thyme, chocolate mint, stevia, Italian oregano), an Artichoke plant, and a half dozen seed packets. Most of these (except the seeds) will end up in pots on my porch or driveway window sill. I'm looking forward to getting those all in over the next few days!

More plants!

Finished double digging the north vegetable bed today! It was late in the day but I convinced myself I needed to get the peas in...and now I'm glad I did. There's a roughly 20 foot row of peas with 3" spacing, alternating one snap pea to every two snow peas. This is partly because there were more snow pea seeds in a packet and partly because the plants only grow half as tall so I figure I'll need more of them to get roughly equal yields. the peas should be up in no time. They were all sprouting roots and stems already (from being between wet paper towels for 5 days) and I didn't bury them very deep.

I also planted a dozen or more sunflower seeds and two rhubarb starts.

If I have time tomorrow I'm hoping to get tomatoes, scallions, garlic, and shallots in...or at least dig a bed for them and plant on Monday or Tuesday.

Almost all the Favas have sprouted and sweet peas are pushing through here and there. Three strawberry starts have green in them and the seeds I planted among the strawberries may be starting to germinate as well! They could just be weed seeds, but at least some of the look like beet or chard seedlings. Only time will tell.


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Show Me the Green

My first strawberry leaves have started to pop up along with the first sweet pea, and many of the fava beans are breaking ground as well!

Strawberry Start (Sequoia?)

Fava Bean and Sweet Pea Shoots

I spent the afternoon double digging the vegetable bed. I got halfway done, so hopefully I'll finish that up tomorrow. It won't be a minute too soon either. I put peas in wet paper towels on Monday and they're already trying to sprout. The sooner I can get those off my kitchen counter and into the ground, the better!

Squash/Melon Flat

Pepper Seedlings

My seedlings are coming along. Many of the herbs died, but the squash, melons, and peppers are all putting up their first true leaves.

Dead Herbs (except one Cilantro)

I reseeded a few pots in my squash/melon seedling flat today. The first seeds sprouted promptly and then wilted. I was afraid I'd lose the whole flat that way, but they seem fine.
Hopefully these seeds catch up soon.

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Plants in the Ground!

I spent several hours this afternoon finally putting plants in the ground instead of just digging the place up! Along the eastern wall of my garden there is now a row of ~27 fava beans (I forgot to count before some of them got buried) with 3-4 sweet pea seeds in between them.

Strawberry starts were placed in an intensive pattern with 12 inch spacing. On the south end of the bed there are 12 Ozark Beauty starts, on the north end are 12 Sequoia starts, and in between there are 12 Quinalt starts. Because these form a pretty diamond pattern due to their spacing I planted seeds between them. Inside each diamond there are now three beet seeds around two globe amaranth seeds with mesclun seeds sprinkled randomly throughout. In each front triangle along the wood partition there are lobelia seeds with poppy seeds at the top of each triangle. Towards the back, just in front of the fava/sweet pea row, there is a row of swiss chard planted between the strawberries sprinkled with dual colored caesar romaine and patches of three bachelor's button seeds just in front to fill out the triangle.

I expect to see favas and sweet peas pop up in only a few days since most of them were already sticking their little roots out and a few were working on their stems. It's so exciting to finally have something in the ground!

Nasturtiums in Bloom

The nasturtiums have started blooming the last couple days. Maybe there will be enough next weekend to do some experimenting with them in the kitchen. All three varieties are starting to bloom, though the Vanilla Berry variety is not nearly as all over the place as the other two. They're still flowering though, so maybe next year I should stick with this smaller plant.

Vanilla Berry

Fava bean plants are growing strong and have loads of flowers on them. Some of the flowers towards the bottom are beginning to wilt and show signs that they'll produce a pod. Should have loads of fava beans in another few weeks to put in the freezer. Alas, some sort of bug has also taking a liking to the fava bean plants. It doesn't seem to be hurting the plants at all, but there's these little not quite sesame seed sized black bugs that are clinging to a couple of the stalks. They're so numerous that the whole stalk in that area looks black. Those areas also seem to have quite a few ants crawling around...not sure how the black sesame seeds are related to the ants but until the fava beans start to show some discomfort with the situation, I think I'll leave them be.

Strange little black bugs

All my leafy greens have been getting munched on by something over the last few weeks. I've got several holes in each leaf of my Asian mixed greens, Swiss chard, and the beet greens so I spritzed everything with some neem oil. If that doesn't work I'll dig up the bottle of Bt I have laying around somewhere.