Home > Relish Austin > Archives > 2011 > May > 12 > Entry
With flowers, eggs aplenty, is this the apex of the spring garden?
Even without today’s massive rainfall, I had a pretty hefty garden post lined up and ready to go.
I haven’t been home to see for my own eyes how the 2-3 inches of rain we got has impacted the chickens and vegetable garden (not to mention the rain barrel that my husband said filled up in a matter of minutes), but here’s how the garden was looking two days ago:
I’m amazed at how well the melon and cucumber plants are doing this year. Both are bursting with yellow flowers, and the melon has crawled all the way up a five foot tomato trelis. There are tiny melons on that plant, and I found a single but sizable cucumber hiding under the leaves, which went directly into…
a jar of Claussen pickle juice. The quickest of quick pickles.
I’ve been harvesting a few onions at a time and letting a couple of them bloom because the tiny white flowers are so fun to look at. I’m drying the onions in a plastic, netted sack that once held a few dozen Cuties, and although we like scallions/green onions as much as the next family, it’s almost impossible to use all the long green tops before they go wilty. That is, unless you make….
green onion chimichurri! I threw in a few bulbs of green garlic, as well, in the food processor with olive oil, salt, pepper and a splash of red wine vinegar. We’ve eaten this on fajita tacos, pork chops and even eggs. It’s a good alternative to its Italian cousin pesto for using up a lot of pungent greens.
Tiny summer squash and zucchini are popping out from under those spiky leaves.
And once again, the peppers are just teasing me with their healthy looking leaves and petite flowers. I haven’t had much luck with pepper plants delivering on their promise of fruit, but I plant them every year, just in case.
The chickens (you’ll read an update on them in a minute) have officially figured out how to breach the dainty fence around the garden, but it still keeps them out most of the time. When they do get in, they go straight for the shallots, right, which they’ve completely flattened. The garlic, left, doesn’t look so great, but I think it’s because they are just about ready to be harvest. They say to wait until they are halfway brown, so I imagine I’ll be pulling them up this weekend.
Nasturtium is an edible flower that I hadn’t previously grown, but I can’t remember a more vibrant color in my garden. Ever.
You find the craziest bugs in your yard when you have a garden and are spending a lot of time looking around closely at things. I found the discarded shell of some kind of spiky insect, but I have no idea what kind. Looks like a caterpillar that has morphed into something else.
The tomatoes will probably benefit the most from this heavy rainfall we just had. It’s been difficult to water them as deeply as they like, especially when the plants have already grown so huge and it’s been so hot. These little fruits will hopefully be getting a slight blush in the next week or so, and I’m going to try harvesting them when they just start to turn red instead of waiting until they are sandwich ready on the vine. They are just too susceptible to bugs, squirrels and birds when they get a lot of color, and I’ve read that they’ll ripening just fine on the window sill.
Now on to the birds.
Our yard really needed this quenching rain because the chickens have been giving her hell.
We’ll see how the grass responds in the next few weeks, but they are constantly combing the yard for new life — plant or bug — so this rain should help it grow back faster than they can peck it.
Cotton still hasn’t laid any eggs, but we’re giving her until soup weather returns in October.
Even with her missing her middle and “thumb” claws, Julia is just as charming and productive as ever. When the temperatures were in the upper 90s earlier this week, we thought she’d stopped laying eggs because the nest where she’d been laying them was empty day after day.
Just as my spirits were sinking at the thought of a whole summer with two chickens and no eggs, I peeked into these tall yard waste bags that were waiting on the outside of our fence to be taken to the curb.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I’m sure I said outloud to no one in particular. Julia had been sneaking under the wooden gate to get outside and lay eggs (Nos. 51, 52 and 53) in her new nest without anyone knowing she’d left the yard.
Just another delightful little surprise in a backyard project that seems to be full of them.
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