Sometimes laziness is good?!

I have not gone to my community garden for about 3 weeks or so. Since it has been raining periodically I figured the plants that are left in the garden will be alright. And it turn out, being lazy was good for my garden. One of the hot pepper plants died, but my eggplants (even the one battling the flea beetle) are thriving.  Other than these plants, I have chinese giant pepper, longhorn pepper, yellow pepper, snap peas, beets and lemongrass growing in the community garden.

Pablano pepper is dying, but other plants thriving

Ichiban eggplant

Italian eggplant - the plant that had the worst case of flea beetle attach

Black Beauty with many flowers

The lemongrass has gotten so much bigger. I need to start thinking of different ways to use it.

Bushy lemongrass

The first thing I tried was lemongrass tea. I made in the same way as mint tea, just cut up the whole lemongrass and boil it for 3 minutes. It made a beautiful and delicious tea.

Delicious lemongrass tea

Harvest Monday - August 6, 2012

It's Monday! Time to share my harvest from last week with Daphne for Harvest Monday.

Last week, I was able to harvest a little bit of various things: longhorn pepper, pablano peppers, roma tomatoes and ichiban eggplant. The meat of the pablano peppers are really thin. I have yet to try them...I'm thinking they may be good for stuffed peppers - or maybe a salad.

I also tried something new. I've been wanting to try making my own sprouts. Bean sprouts is one of those vegetables that if you buy and leave it in the fridge, it quickly goes bad. I usually don't want to use a whole package, so like the cilantro, it always rots in my fridge. I've been reading that it is really easy to sprout mung beans so I thought I'd give it try. After an overnight soak, the mung beans were already beginning to sprout.

After overnight soak

By day 4, they were already ready to eat. I let it go for couple more days and had it with a salad. It was really delicious! I think I will continue to make small portions of bean sprouts.

Day 4

Coffee and flea beetles

The flea beetles problem on the eggplant has subsided a little but it is still persisting. I can only conclude that the coffee treatment is not really working. I cannot even tell if it helped to reduce the flea beetle at all. But I continue treating it with coffee since it makes me feel better. I am starting to see sign of spider mites (definitely in the container ichiban eggplant). I am going to go look for some neem oil this weekend. The black beauty has 2 fruits that are so much bigger than the ichiban.

Black Beauty Eggplant

The classic eggplant that had the biggest black flea damage is starting to flower but it has not yet fruit. I am not sure if it too sick to produce any fruits. I'll continue to let it do its thing.

Classic eggplant still having problems with flea beetle

The little buggers on the leaves

The ichiban eggplant is starting to get yellow at the periphery. I am not sure what is causing it exactly - maybe some sort of deficiency or spider mites maybe some other disease. When I get the neem oil, I will try treating it and maybe give it a dose of bone meal. After harvesting the last of the eggplants, it produced some flowers so I should be harvesting some more eggplants.

Eggplant flea beetle coffee treatment update

It's been a little over a week since treating the eggplants with coffee to combat the flea beetle. There was never too many flea beetles (or I didn't spot them) but the damage to the leaves was pretty extensive. The coffee treatment seems to have gotten rid of beetles, after a couple of days of treatment I was only able to spot one beetle on the classic eggplant.  A couple of days after that, I found no beetle but the plants (classic and black beauty) was covered with ants.

This picture does not do it justice, there was even more ants on the plant

The first thing I did was sprayed the plant with water which washed away the ants. I noticed that there were little holes on the stem where it looked like the ants were digging. After doing a little searching, it appears that ants are secondary problem to flea beetles. If the beetles do enough damage to the plants, the ants come to feast on the dead tissue. To me, it looked like the ants were digging further, but perhaps the flea beetle dug the holes and the ants came after. I decided to just keep an eye on it. The black beauty plant, which was the bigger of the two, seemed to have recovered despite the damage.

You can see the flea beetle damage on the lower leaves (Black Beauty eggplant)

I don't think the classic eggplant will make it. The flea beetle and/or ants pretty much ate through the stem and the new growth looked like it was struggling. I decided to try cutting off the damage to see if it will promote more growth. I am not optimistic.

Chopped off the damage from the classic eggplant

The ichiban eggplant is doing great. I even see little baby eggplants forming already.

Ichiban eggplant lookin' good

Baby ichiban eggplant

The container ichiban is also doing really well, with lots of flowers and a baby eggplant forming quite nicely. It'll be interesting to compare the growth of this variety in ground versus container.

Ichiban in 5 gallon container

Baby ichiban growing in container

In the future, I think I will wait until the starter plants are big enough before transplanting to the garden. Also, I read that flea beetles are a problem mostly in April and May so I could also hold off transplanting into the garden until June.  I do think the coffee treatment worked, but it's difficult to say definitively because I didn't have a control group and it's possible that the decline in flea beetle just coincided with the end of their life cycle. I chose to be positive and believe that the coffee treatment worked!

New seedlings

I have new seedlings! Exciting. I started tomatoes, peppers, and summer squash 2 weeks ago. I also tried using the ichiban eggplant seeds that I harvested but I must have done something wrong while collecting the seeds because it is not germinating. I'll just keep waiting to see it just needs more time but I might just have to go buy starter plants. Oh well, I'll try seed saving again this year - this time I'll do a little more research so I have viable seeds. The tomatoes I started are supersweet 100, cherokee purple and pink champions (from Annie). The pepper seeds (Giant Chinese pepper) germinated a week after the tomatoes.

The empty ones are the ichiban seeds that did not germinate

I also started some cilantro (again from Annie - thanks so much!). I read somewhere that cilantro seeds (aka corriander) contain 2 seeds per pod so it should be cracked before sowing. I'm not sure if splitting the seeds helped but it only took about a week to germinate. Right now they are on the windowsill but I'm thinking once they are reasonably grown I'll transfer them to the pots in front on the house.

cilantro seedlings

Some more cilantro

Fall garden update

A quick update of the surviving plants @ charm city garden. I'm already thinking of next year's garden. The last ichiban eggplant. I'm letting it grow so that I can collect the seeds.

Red romaine is growing, one plant is starting to bolt. The lettuce itself is quite bitter but still pretty good.

Red Romaine Lettuce

I have 2 containers of bok choy. These are very good in stir fry. Next to the bok choy, I also have a container of romaine lettuce that I probably started too late because it is not growing very big.

Bok Choy and romaine lettuce (back)

Bok Choy

I have 2 containers of chinese kale...to be honest I don't know how big they are supposed to get. I should probably just harvest them and some point.

Two container of Chinese kale

The chinese pepper plant is getting bushy and still producing fruit.

Super bushy Chinese Giant pepper

Chinese pepper of varying size

The supersweet tomato still has many green tomatoes but I think it is too cold for it to ripen.

Both the jalapeno and thai pepper is starting to yellow but still has many peppers. The pickled peppers is so delicious! I definitely will make more pickled jalapeno with the remaining peppers. I'm not so sure what to do with all the thai peppers...

This plant fell over after the storm, so now is supported

The jalapeno is starting to turn red

Thai red pepper - so many peppers still!

Thai red pepper

Harvest Monday - September 12, 2011

The summer season has ended and the Fall vegetables are growing very nicely. I was able to harvest some (not so good looking) ichiban eggplants and a handful of lettuce and bok choi.

Ichiban Eggplant - scarred but delicious

Thai red pepper still producing many peppers

Pak choi used for stir fry

Red romaine for small side salad

Some more ichiban and a green homestead tomato

Linking to Daphne's Harvest Monday. It is so much fun to see what everyone is growing around the world!

Harvest Monday - August 15, 2011

It rained over the weekend and some of the tomatoes were starting to split so I quickly picked all the ripe tomatoes.

from left: Homestead, early girl 50, supersweet 100 (including the tiny tiny ones on the far right)

I think I will have a couple more harvest of tomatoes but most of the plants look like they are nearing the end. The supersweet 100 definitely do better in full sun - you can clearly see the difference in the size of the tomatoes from the plant growing on the balcony versus the plant up front in the shade. The taste of the tomatoes from the balcony is also better than the ones from the front of the house.
     Here are the first set of not so giant, Giant chinese sweet peppers. They are small but they are beautifully red.

The hot peppers (thai and jalapenos) are still going strong. I'm not sure if the jalapenos will produce more peppers after this harvest. But I'm really happy that I discovered pickled jalapeno. I'm really liking the salad dressing made using the jalapeno-infused vinegar.

I also had a small harvest of eggplants. So I used some tomatoes and thyme from the garden to make some pasta sauce.

Fairy tale, gretel, ichiban eggplants, thyme and early girl 50s

The gretel and fairytale eggplants just get very mushy. I have yet to discover the best way to use them....maybe fried. But unfortunately, I probably will not get any more harvest this year.
     I also made some oven-dried tomatoes using supersweet 100s.

I definitely over-dried them, but the ones that dried just right taste wonderful. I'm going to try to make one more batch.

I'm linking to Daphne's Harvest Monday and Wendy's garden to table challenge! Thank you both for hosting every week:)

Harvest Monday - August 8, 2011

Here is my harvest from last week. First for the red veggies:

There are actually more thai peppers, but I'm not sure what to do with them. I think I will try to dry them. I've been munching on the tomatoes (the larger 2 on top are early girl, and the rest are supersweet 100).

The first 2 homestead tomatoes - I haven't tasted them yet. I still have 3 more ripening on the plant. They just aren't doing well on the balcony. The supersweet 100 are doing well. If I can find time I would like to make oven-dried tomatoes. If not, i will probably try to snack on them or freeze them.

I'm not sure if the eggplants are almost done. I don't see any more flowers, but again, maybe it will have another go. I'll just see how it goes.

I'm linking to Daphne's Harvest Monday - farmers all around the world is harvesting many beautiful fruits and veggies.