Reflections

I can't believe this class it over. It seems like just yesterday I was planning my plot and sowing the seeds (half of which never sprouted, but I'm not bitter). Now, my plot is kind of starting to look like it did at the beginning (desolate, barren, etc.), but there was a fruitful period somewhere in between.

We were asked about what we learned over the course of the class (and no, the answer "how to garden" is not an option). I thought about this for a while before coming to any conclusion. Before this class started, I was genuinely certain that nothing would grow. I thought that I would mess it all up somehow. But you should have seen how excited I was the first time I brought a harvest home. Parading it around to each of my roommates rooms, I felt like I had struck gold. So I would say that I picked up a few invaluable gardening skills, but more than that I proved to myself that I could do something that I once thought impossible. That's a success in my book.

Plus I learned that I could make some kick-ass chocolate chip zucchini bread. So, there's that.


Here are some of my favorite pictures from the class to wrap things up. Hope at least one person enjoyed this blog/experience as much as I did.

The Zucchini Houdini

Well, the class is winding down to the end now. My beans are drooping, and my cucumber plans is all shriveled. I'm choosing to blame the time of year and not my skills as a gardener, even though other plots look as fertile as ever. Regardless, I've had a good run. This week's harvest was still pretty sizable considering the majority of my plot looks like death. I got 2 zucchinis (one as a gift), a bunch of radishes, 3 monster carrots (only 2 made it home...), 2 eggplants, 1 measly cucumber, 3 not-hot Anaheim Joe peppers, 2 GIANT sunflowers, 3 lovely zinnias, and one Ladybug pepper that I somehow lost along the journey home. The sunflowers were by far my favorite thing to take home this week.

My sunflowers! I gifted one to my roommate, and the other is still on the counter.

We did the usual weeding and harvesting this week. Libby told us that we're no longer being graded based on weeding, but I still did a little bit of maintenance out of habit. We got our final assignment, and it doesn't look too bad.

In terms of cooking my vegetables, I admit that I've been eating a lot of them raw. I did, however, make some zucchini bread. Warning, this is NOT healthy zucchini bread, but it sure is tasty. Here is the recipe I used:

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/zucchini_bread/

And here is the final product!

Until next week!

Lettuce get to cookin'!

This week we didn't have regular class. Instead, we were asked to visit the garden on our own time to harvest some of our wonderful vegetables. I was surprised by how much was waiting for me. I harvested 1 GIANT zucchini (oops...), 4 cucumbers, 1 GIANT squash (double oops), 4 radishes, 1 head of lettuce, and 3 eggplants. I picked those (and more than a few weeds) before retreating back to my warm car.

So far, I've gone saute-crazy with one of my friends. We sauteed zucchini, tomatoes (not mine), beans, and squash. After that, we threw it on top of a bed of pasta and, with the help of my ravenous roomies, devoured the whole pan-full. We even roasted the squash seeds in the oven (accompanied by some oil, salt, and craisins!

Last night, I made the world's best friendship salad (we were having a roomie love kind of night). I used my head of lettuce, radishes, beans, and cucumbers. The rest I bought from the store (but if you ask anyone, my veggies were surely superior).

I have a plan for my giant zucchini. Currently I have a few tabs open with various zucchini bread recipes. Does anyone have a recommendations? I've never attempted such an undertaking before. Wish me luck!

College Collage

Zuchinni, Eggplant, Beans--Oh No!

This week in the garden was one for the books. While I was excited to see that my vegetables really seemed to be taking off, I am sad to report that I had to compost my veggies. I'm personally convinced that nothing will grow back in their places, but Libby assured me that this will not be the case. Anyways, after the usual weeding, spraying of BT/Neem, fertilizing, and unfortunate composting of my vegetables, I set up some trellises for my bean plants (poor things fell over with the weight of the beans). Final order of business--took some pictures (see below) and called it a day.

Bell peppers!

AJ Pepper

My veggies to compost :(

Eggplants!

I brought home a few of the sacrifices to show my roommates. We didn't touch them though, promise!

This week in class we talked about the different plant parts. We discussed what classifications many of the plants in our garden fall into. My root crops are beets, carrots, and turnips. The only bud crop that I have is my lone cabbage plant. My leaf crops are lettuce, onions, and (if it ever emerges) basil. My flower crops are the cauliflowers and squash plants. For fruit crops, we have tomatoes, cucumber, eggplants, peppers, beans, and peas.

The Hungry Caterpillar

This week in class we talked all about pests, focusing primarily on insect pests. This is extremely relevant because I've been noticing all of these little (and sometimes not so little) holes appearing in my plant leaves. It looks like we have a few hungry caterpillars in the garden (I actually caught on in the act--see pictures above).

This week was the last week to plant! I gave up on my kohlrabi and put a few cauliflower down instead. I had to replace one of my beet plans as well as a lettuce plant. They looked more than a little sad (I'm afraid that I might have used too much fertilizer last week). I did a fair amount of weeding, as usual, but it wasn't as bad because I visited my garden the Friday before and did some light weeding then, too. No fertilizer this week, which means next week I'll have to do it and be a little more conscious about the amount that I'm using. But I did spray A LOT of neem and BT in light of the many In terms of change, everything seems to be getting HUGE. I spotted two baby eggplants, in addition to more bell peppers (my original pepper is getting huge!). I almost don't recognize the squash and cucumber because of how huge the leaves are. My peas and beans are coming along nicely, although I noticed that something was chomping away at my beans as well.  The few carrots that I do have are looking more promising by the week, but the tomato plants seem to be at sort of a stand-still. I'll have to give them some extra attention on Monday. 

We have a fair amount of insect damages and pressures in the garden right now. I turned over some leaves on Monday and found critters hiding in the shade, in addition to the very large hungry caterpillar making itself comfortable in my tomato plant. We have a variety of pests in the garden, ranging from white flies, ants, aphids, leaf miners, caterpillar, and grasshoppers. Damages are mostly coming in the form of holes in the leaves (chewing and sucking), injury cause by female reproductive eggs, and damage caused by living inside crop leaves or fruits. The pressure then becomes what kind of action we should take to preserve the crops--do we spray something that isn't organic or do we let them get eaten? With this in mind, Libby decided to spray a pesticide that is approved but not organic (a response to the pressure put on our crops by insects). Hopefully the bugs go away!