Mystery Squash

It was a vegetable mystery.  It crawled under our fence from some neighbors yard and set up shop in an otherwise desolate area of our garden.  Somehow, despite the heat, despite the lack of rain and despite the hard packed cracked earth, this plant seemed to thrive.

That it was a vine there was no doubt.  It sprawled in abundant viney growth.  Its tri-pointed leaves were dark green with strange lighter almost silver spots.  It had plenty of blooms, but they all seemed to be male blooms without a single fruit to let me know just what it was.

Since it was the hot time of year and since the thing was far away from the part of the garden I was actively gardening in, I mainly ignored it.  I thought about it a little, especially when I first saw its strange silver dotted leaves because I initially worried it had some sort of powdery mildew that could bother my plants.  Closer inspection showed the lighter areas were just the nature of the plant.

Other than noticing it, I pretty much forgot about it.  Fall came and when the heat broke the mystery plant was quite entrenched in our yard.  It seemed to have multiple rooted areas so it did not matter if one part of the vine was cut or crushed.  The other parts being rooted still thrived.  I searched again for any sign of a female bloom.  Just what was it?  A squash?  A melon?  I figured it was something growing outside of its element and the conditions would just not let it reproduce. 

Then in late November I found some fruit.  The plant had been growing so vigorously that its leaves hid large patches of where it was growing.  I found three round fruit with dark green and mottled rinds.  They were all different sizes, but the largest was about seven inches across. 

It did not look like any squash I had seen before but it also did not look like a melon either.  I could not tell if the fruit was ready to harvest or not.  If it was a squash then was it a winter variety or an overgrown summer squash.  If it was a melon, just how big would it get and how would I know if it was ready to harvest.

I resolved to harvest the next weekend.  That day came and I forgot all about the mystery fruit.  In fact three or four weeks passed and here it was now December.  I went out again and this time harvested the now soccer ball sized fruit.

Melon or squash?  A few days later we cut into it and found out it was a squash.  It was very firm like a winter squash and very tasty as well.

But exactly what was it?  I searched the internet for green round squash and several candidates came forward, such as Eight Ball squash.  However, the description of that squash did not totally match the plant we had.  Still not quite sure what we had, but encouraged by its growth and taste we saved and dried the seeds to plant the next year.

Strangely enough, some parts of the 2012 plant were still growing in the garden as we prepared the bed for our spring 2013 garden.  We maneuvered these plants into a bed and planted seeds as well.  The seeds sprouted with near explosive vigor.  This plant was eager to be a part of our lives.

I just kept referring to it as mystery squash in all my journals, but today the mystery has been solved.

It is the Tatume (Calabacita) squash.  This open pollinated squash hails from Mexico and it is considered both a summer and winter squash.  This means you can harvest it when it is small and the skin thin or you can wait for it to grow into a pumpkin sized hard skinned squash.  It is very hardy and seems to be resistant to squash vine borers.  From our experience it thrives in the heat (although does not seem to produce fruit at that time) and does well with little water.

I am hoping that we will find it to be a robust producer as well as grower.  It is know for its crowding vine habit and each vine can grow ten to twelve feet.  We have placed it well back of our garden to give it plenty of room.

So, mystery solved.  Welcome Tatume to the 2013 garden.  May your vigorous growth make you the squash of my dreams.

Choices for the Fall

Okay, so now that the fall gardening bug has bitten me I am itching with anticipation of getting my garden started again, provided the horrific heat and humidity comply and go away - far, far away.  Yes, I admit it has come to this... most of my garden planning is based in a pure fantasy world where nature cooperates and provides reasonable temperatures, rainfall and insect control - nothing at all like the actual world surrounding me.  Yet, it is this naively, optimistic avoidance of reality that is the backbone of gardening on the Gulf Coast.

I am planting a fall garden because in other parts of the world there is this thing called Fall.  I know there is because I have seen the after school specials and movies depicting it even though I have never in my life experienced Fall as a season.   Oh sure, we sometimes have 'fall-like' weather, meaning the temperature gets reasonable, the humidity drops and human beings in this part of the world emerge from their air conditioned enclosures like groundhogs hoping to see (or is it not see) their shadows.  We make all sorts of resolutions (I will go for a walk every day!) and discoveries (Is that a cool breeze?) and then the next day it is either back up to 90 degrees with 90% humidity or down into the low 40s with driving rain.  Our regions bipolar weather disorder allows us to experience a years worth of climatic events over the course of a week and sometimes in a single day.  There is no 'season' except for summer and Mega-summer which fill up about 6 to 7 months of our year.

But, because other places have Fall and have fall gardens, I too feel the need to have a fall garden.  To do this all I have to do is ignore the weather.  So, with my fantasy life fully engaged, I plan my fall crops.

Here is what the guide regarding my planting zone 9a says to plant.   I always figure that little "a" attached to the 9 stands for 'approximate' or 'absurd' or maybe 'abandon all hope yea who plant here' - but I go on in spite of it.

For September it says I can plant:

Beans
 We had a great bush bean season from the spring/summer garden and so these will go into the center bed where we had the okra.  I will be planting them from seed, so I need to get hopping on this asap to maximize their productivity.

Broccoli
 I have never grown broccoli successfully, probably due to the fact I have never paid the slightest attention to things like 'when to plant the broccoli'.  I am going to pass on this one even though I love to eat broccoli - part of the problem actually.  Even if I got the broccoli to 'brock' I don't think my plantings could keep up with my consumption.

 Cabbage
 I was a novice to the world of cabbage until this last spring but now that I have had success, sign me up again.  I am pretty sure my success this spring was a fluke since I put it in at the very last possible planting date.  Maybe planting it now at the start of a season will yield even better results.

Carrots 
 This is really a toss up for me.  I have planted carrots before and sometimes have done rather well, but not the last two attempts.  I have put more into the last two tries than all the tries before with deeply dug, sandy soil and constant vigil bordering on cheer leading.  I feel sort of rejected by this root crop so I am putting it into the no category for now.

Celery
 Never tried it before.  It looks like it might be very simple to grow, much like parsley.  I guess I am hesitant because it is so cheap in the stores and quite frankly I can't remember the last time I ate celery.  Pass for now.

Collards
 My collard greens were big and beefy and quite frankly one of them is still surviving right now in the garden (if you count surviving as being somewhat smothered by sweet potato vines.  So, I can grow collards.  But I don't actually want to eat collards.  Ah the vegetable gardener's dilemma - being good at growing something you are not wanting to put in your mouth.  Pass for now.

Cucumbers
It was actually news to me a few years ago that cucumbers could be planted again in the fall.  I guess I associate them with spring and summer so much it never dawned on me that the temperate fall would be a good bet for them.  I planted some sort of wacky heat/humidity loving weird cucumber type whose actual plant name is eluding me.  If it grows great I will be kicking myself for forgetting what type it is.  If it is a dud, then I will never again try a wacky cucumber variety.

Kale
 It is a beautiful plant that grows very well for me and then I just leave it there because like collards, I am not a big fan of eating greens.  Maybe I will just to have its beautiful leaves gracing my garden.




 Lettuce
 There have been several great lettuce crops in my gardening life.  There have also been some beautiful patches that I have ignored.  It all has to do with the selection.  This spring I made the mistake of planting a mixture that was various greens as well as a few lettuces.  Not for me.  I will get some select either leaf or bib lettuces and try for this fall.  I am also going to try planting more each week to see if I can keep up with my consumption.

Mustard
I grow it every chance I get, even though, like the other greens I seldom eat it.  Never mind that, the leaves are beautiful and it grows wonderfully.

Onions
 My onions barely onioned this spring and I am not sure why.  Part of it is that I don't know exactly what I did that made my previous onion patch so successful.  I am not even sure if planting a fall onion bed will result in onion bulbs or just green onions, but damn the torpedoes - I am already in and going to plant some more as well.

Peas
 Okay, this might sound like I am not a true southerner, but I just am not a pea fan.  Except for snow peas which are great, but I am not sure they do well with our weather.  I also don't get the whole 'inoculate the soil' business regarding planting peas.  Probably why my previous earlier attempts have yielding nothing.

Peppers
 If peppers would let me I would plant them in the dead of winter.  I actually one mild winter kept a pepper plant alive to the next year.  I learned the hard lesson about this - the second year they barely produce.  I already have planted two peppers - a sweet banana and a mild tam Jalapeno.  That may be all I put in for the fall.

Radish
 Radishes are almost guaranteed to come up for you, but my first 3 years I had poor to no results.  Then I had incredible results, but the problem is that I don't actually like to eat as much radish as I am able to grow, so once they get going I just sort of ignore them.  I did learn that if you have neglected your radishes to the point they are as big as turnips, you can cook them like turnips and they taste like turnips.  So there is that.

Spinach
 I have never yet gotten spinach to a harvestable condition.  They sprout, they grow a bit and then they just seem to be stunted.  Maybe I am expecting too much from the type I am planting.  Maybe my expectation is that I will get a whole cooked can of spinach from one plant.  Not a reality.  I have some seed, so it is probably that I will throw it into the dirt this fall, but I am not excited about it.



  

Squash
 I am excited about squash.  Specifically the butternut squash that I discovered last fall.  Talk about making you feel like you have done something right.  The plants grow amazingly long vines and they produce about a billion of these large squash per plant, but best of all, nothing seems to want to eat them.  I found my seeds last night and I am putting them in asap.

Tomato
 Even though I am not always successful with the fall tomato plantings, there have been many times that I have had Christmas tomatoes.  The Better Boy, Early Girl and Rutgers that I have planted seem well on their way.

Turnips
 When we mad the beds for the ceder garden was the first time I ever tried growing turnips for anything other than the greens.  I still feel like a champ when I pull those purple topped beauties from the soil.  Definitely going to plant them this fall.






So with all my choices it looks like I will be having a bean/cabbage/lettuce/mustard/onion/pepper/squash/tomato/turnip fall garden.

I am sure that many other things will work their way into the garden as well, including several types of herbs.  So, it is a loose plan with room to grow.

Garden Check In

April has been bringing showers this year, which is a very welcome thing considering how badly nature treated us last year.  In fact it has been raining so much it really has made it difficult for me to install the rest of my watering system.  In the meantime of course my garden has been growing by leaps and bounds which made it a virtual flora wrestling match to install the last few soaker hoses.  Finally though the last one went in with a bunch of huffing and puffing and sweating on my part.  All that rain makes the low 80 degree weather seem like a sauna. 

I finally got the camera out this evening and decided to take you on a tour of the garden as I saw it today.

First stop is my newest bit of yard art.  I present to you Garden Koi.  He is lurking in the Herbie bed right now, but I will probably move him to a shadier spot to prevent him fading out from the sun.

Now here we are in the second of the ceder fence beds in what I am calling the Leeky-Creole bed.  Here are three of about a dozen Creole tomatoes growing on this plant.  This is my first year with this variety which is touted as being able to set fruit in hot humid weather.  I have only love for this plant - these tomatoes are huge!

Next door to Leeky-Creole is the Big Boy tomato who has some sort of tomato unhappiness going on.  Some of its leaves have died back and the stems look a little purplish as if there is a nutritional issue.  It has plenty of fruit but they are much smaller than the Creole.  Might just be a variety thing, but I swear if this plant pulls a late blight swan dive on me I will yank it from the garden faster than the Border Collie can tear up a new stuffed toy (30 seconds is her new record).  I am already removing the dead leaves as if they are a potential contaminate to my other plants and I use surgical gloves when I handle it in order not to spread any potential gunk. 

It's Bunny!  Lovely BN444 is neck and neck with the Creoles for humongous fruit.  But on a sadder note, Bunny's first fruit went boots up for some unknown reason.  I found it all withered like a tomato raisin on the vine.  No other problems though.  The fruit was so advanced in decay I could not tell what befell it, but I think it must have been some sort of fruit injury.

Here is the other Creole in the Corny-Creole bed.  It also is adorned with bunches of these clusters and barring the descent of tomato poaching insects we should have a great tomato harvest beginning soon.

Here is a representative of the pepper clan from the six plants in the first four beds.  This is a Gypsy variety and all of the peppers are already loaded with fruit.  One more day and we will pick these and many others.  That is one thing for sure about the peppers.  Harvest often or they will get to thinking that their work is done.  We are already in a race against the night time temperatures.  As soon as they climb into the high 70s our peppers will no longer be able to set fruit.

Here are the leeks from the Leeky-Creole bed.  They are a lovely blue-green color which contrasts nicely with the other greens.  Nobody is big enough to harvest yet, but with the rain and warm weather there should be some big stalks coming.

This is the best looking of all six cabbage.  We have had some issues with I guess cabbage worms.  I have found those little guys down in the leaves of the other plants and when I find them I evict them into the dog area.  The resident Border Collie makes quick work of them and then the Westie rolls on them.  A hardy one/two punch in pest control.

Not only is this picture showing you the fence trellis I finally erected today for these burpless hybrid cucumbers, it also is showing you the pathway that I finally finished between the beds.  Okay, I lie, I have only finished five of the between bed pathways and have another four to go.  Okay, another lie - they are not actually finished until I get the ceder mulch for between the stones and the black plastic to put down over the dirt so the damn weeds will stop making my life a constant weed pulling mess.  But other than all of that backbreaking labor to come - I am finished.

Why is it the onion bed always seems to need some sort of makeover.  It did have a hard start with the whole being dug up by opossums in its first few hours as a bed and I also disturbed it by putting in the hay mulch and just recently again by putting in the soaker hose - but still does it have to look so apathetic?  Lift up your fronds (stalks?). Have some pride or something.  Ahh well - as long as it continues to onion it does not have to look pretty.

Collard greens are sort of the emperors among greens.  Unlike turnip or mustard greens, collards have to have a lot of space between each plant.  They are robust and I am sure if they were not tied down by their roots they would be setting off on all sorts of vegetable adventures involving mountains and grizzly bears. 

This started out as just a photo of a sun blasted squash blossom but on further review it revealed one of the bug friends of the garden.  This is an assassin bug and he or she is on the lookout for other bugs.  What you don't see in this photo is the long saber like snout on this thing that it gleefully stabs into other bugs in order to suck out the sweet, sweet bug nectar.  I am very glad they are only about a half an inch long because I shudder to think of having to live in a world if these were Border Collie sized.

Here is a female bloom of the butternut squash.  It will be a couple of days before we know if this fruit set or not.  Meanwhile the rest of the plant is plotting the eventual take over of the entire garden.  I put in six of these into this bed and they are now moving into both beds next to them, the pathways and also eyeing the dog proof fence.  I think butternut squash may be the Kudzu of the squash kingdom.  I will let you know when it has covered our house.

Okay so these pickling cucumbers are looking a little upset and I must admit it is my fault.  They were perfectly happy and beautiful before I went and put in their soaker hose.  This involved me whipping the vines back and forth like some sort of slow vegetable monster rock dance.  I also put in their trellis fence and insisted they use it.  They haven't gotten over it yet.

Stepping out of the ceder fence garden we are met with the promise of things yet to come.  Here is the fig tree displaying three of what will be about a billion figs this year.  The abundant rain is making the fig growth lush and since we didn't trim the tree last year it means I will be doing advanced gymnastics atop the ladder this year in my quest to get my share of the figs from the birds and squirrels.  Stay tuned.

Another up and comer is the Meyer lemon.  This tree is the one I call Lazarus because we found it languishing in a pot that got buried within an enormous hedge of shrimp plant for about two years and was never watered.  Somehow even though it never grew through the pot it managed to survive.  We now have it in a place of honor in the garden and it has shown its thanks by tripling in size.  I always admire the plants I can't kill. 

It is a slow year in okra land, mostly because I decided to start them from saved seeds from last year.  This is Clemson Spinless and it is doing just fine although most are somewhat worm bitten.   No worries they will shake it off and in a couple of weeks they will put out their adult leaves and grow about six inches a day for a while.  This will soon be an okra forest.  On another note, next to this bed I put in about a half dozen Emerald Velvet okra which are supposed to be great.  I now have three of those plants remaining because something was biting the tops off the plants.  Now due to last years okra problems I vowed to blame the dogs for any okra problems this year.  I have done that officially, but just between you and me, it would be a little hard to get a doggie snout past my okra barriers.  I am almost certain this was the work of some little whiskered pest.  Specifically I am talking rodent especially because next to this bed I sprouted some cantaloupe seeds and each morning their tops had been eaten clean off.  I put the seed tray up on a table and yet again the tops were mowed off.  It seems some little critter was ecstatic that I was providing it with an abundant source of fresh sprouts.

Here is the outlier tomato known as Top gun.  He sounds all tough and stuff and I must admit he is sprouting a lot of fruit and has some rather attractive foliage, but just between you and me he doesn't hold a candle to the Creole twins in the ceder fence garden.  But who knows - this guy is supposed to handle the hot weather too, so he might just win the productivity game yet.

Now this plucky little guy is one of several tomato volunteers that applied to be the tomatoes for the Westie this year.  If it looks like it is behind bars that is because it is.  Although these are for the Westie, we must protect them from Big Foot the Border Collie who can make short work of any plant.

This is a view into the grapefruit garden and this is the single yellow squash plant that decided to come up from seed this year.  I do not have high hopes for it because you can almost hear the rumbling of the squash vine borers as they are about to pounce.  Just as soon as this plant sets fruit and that fruit almost gets ripe they will attack and that will be the end of this plant.  So far other than burying the vines I have found no cost effective organic solution to this pest.

Here we have the garden bed name-sake.  This is the first grapefruit that has set this year.  The tree is covered with fruit so far, but it remains to be seen if it will be able to bring any to ripeness.  The tree is still very young, but it is encouraging to see it trying this year.  Last year I don't even recall if it bloomed.

These are bush beans and they are loving life right now.  This year I gave them circular cages like I made for the okra and they are overjoyed. 

Their joy is my joy as is evidenced by the 15 or so incredible beans in my hand.  I had already picked about a dozen of the bush beans earlier this week which makes this enough for the first bean meal this garden season.  Yum.

Here we are at the strictly ornamental bed with the last of the amaryllis that have bloomed this year.  I am not sure of the type because these bulbs were given to me from someone who forces the blooms each year.  I consider all of the amaryllis to be nomadic because every year I move them thinking that this will be the best place for them.  So that is what I am telling them now -  this will be the best place for them...

This is a scented geranium that I managed to grow from cutting taken from one of the wildly abundant tribe growing in the ornamental garden.  These were the only successful ones I managed to grow from about a dozen clippings.  They probably all would have made it if I had managed to water them more.  They also had to survive a couple of freezes.  You need to be tough if you are going to survive in my potted plant area.

Here is a pink Pintas that managed to survive last years horrific drought.  I really love it when a plant not only survives natural disaster but also my on again, off again desire to water it.

And last but not least, another volunteer, this time a weed.  This is a wild morning glory along with  sorrelvine and snailseed.  What is not to love about April.  Even the weeds try harder.