Vegetable gardens in Portland

Garden Update September 2024

Dear Liza,

Our time in the vegetable is just about over for this year. The weather is cooler, the rain is more insistant, and the plants know it is time.

The zucchinis were the first to go. The plant looked so sad that I pulled it out by the roots and hung it up on the trellis to dry. It was only then I noticed a small, late-season zuke hanging on. It will get pan-fried with some garlic, as is the destiny of all zucchini.

Tha dahlias have just about given up the ghost, and the heavy rains knock their large blooms around. I’ll go pick the last of them this week.

And the tomatoes! The three plants have grown well, but just started bearing a month ago. There are still dozens and dozens of green fruit, and none of them are ripening. Our wet Fall seems to have signaled their demise, as well.

Finally, the lettuces. My end-of-season gamble to get more salad didn’t pay off, and they just sit there getting muddy. So sad.

So once things are a little less goopy, I will take my wagon over and pull the plants up. I do love Fall, but endings are always a little melancholy.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Update, August 2024

Dear Liza,

We are getting near the end of summer, but our weather is still warm and I’m not ready to give up my free salads yet, so we picked up 12 new starts at the Portland Nursery and put them in a week ago.

You can see them here, the short new ones among the tall, spindly older ones.

For now, I am only harvesting from the old ones, and pulling them out when they have done all they can do. In a week or so, the new ones will be ready.

In the meantime, I have another zucchini (this makes five, I think) almost ready to come home and get pan fried with lots of garlic and topped with parmesean.

The tomatoes have started bearing, turning red, and generally running amok. I keep having to re-tie their supports and say encouraging things. The neighbors are enjoying second hand fruit!

And, of course, Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, and getting their second wind. We now have about a dozen blooms and buds.

School is starting next week, but summer isn’t over yet!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Update July 2024

Dear Liza,

My veggie garden grew like crazy while we were visiting you! Auntie Bridgett kept it watered and weeded and Mother Nature did the rest.

Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, are as tall as I am and have a couple dozen blooms. The bright yellow blossoms are fat and ruffled and almost as big as our dinner plates. I cut some to decorate our table and left some others for the bees.

And speaking of bees, they have been busy pollinating my zucchinis! We picked one, cooked and ate it before I remembered to take a picture of it. But I did paint a picture of the dinner for my garden journal! The corn on the cob was from the Hollywood farmer’s market and the chicken meatballs were from Trader Joe’s.
Yummy!

And last but not least, my tomatoes are beginning to think about, maybe, someday, getting ripe soon. The Chocolate Cherry tomato plant is slowly getting red!

And that’s all the news from my plot at the Blair Community Gardrn.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Update, June 2024

Dear Liza,

Wouldn’t you know it, just as I am coming to visit you for a few weeks, my garden is getting into high gear! Fortunately, Auntie Bridgett will be staying in town, so she can water and harvest.

The 24 lettuce starts I out in have all done well, giving us enough lettuce to have big salads every day. I only pick a few leaves from each plant every few days, so they just keep making more!

The Black Beauty zucchini plants are coming up, and may be bearing baby Zukes by the time I get back.

Our three cherry tomato plants, (Chocolate Cherry, Sweet Millions and Isis Candy) have doubled in size, and the Chocolate Cherry has three blossoms!

Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, are two feet high and very fat and bunchy. They are going to give us some big blooms later in the summer.

And, of course, the lavender is big and blooming, smelling fabulous, and trying to take over the joint.

I hope Auntie Bridgett will enjoy watching the garden grow as much as I do, and share our harvest with our lovely neighbors!

Love,

Grandma Judy

August Garden Update

Dear Liza,

It is still very warm most days, but Fall is coming. Some leaves are turning annd falling, and the mornings are cool.

The garden is showing signs of summer ending, as well. The lettuces, which have been giving us free salads every day since May 26th are finally done, pulled, and composted. We will miss them!

All four varieties of tomatoes are bearing fruit, enough to eat, share with the neighbors, and make tasty relish. Isis Candy is the biggest cherry tomato, and bright yellow and orange. Purple bumblebee is purple with orange flecks. Chocolate cherry is almost brown, and Sweet Millions are bright red and tiny.

Our dahlias, Laverne and Shirley, continue blooming giants.

And Ribsy and Picky-Picky (named after the pets in Beverly Cleary’s stories) are still with us. Ribsy is turning orange and seems to have stopped growing, but Picky-Picky just keeps getting bigger. I love this time of year!

Love,

Grandma Judy

July Garden Update

Dear Liza,

It has been such a busy summer, I feel like I am squeezing gardening in between everything else! But veggie plots are relentless, both in the care they require and the joys they give.

This week, I have good news and bad news. Some of my yellow squash are being hit with a blossom end rot. I have looked it up and the solution seems to be ‘maintaining a consistent moisture level’ in the soil. Easier said than done, but we’ll try. We have harvested several of the tasty squash and want more!

The good news is that we are having free salads every day from the curly lettuces and raddichio, which we combined with that lovely squash and some basil from M.J. down the way. The currents and anise are from the community plots of the Blair Community Garden.

Our first tomato, “Isis Candy” by name, came ripe and was delicious.

We are finally seeing success in pumpkins, with “Ribsy”, our fourth named pumpkin. His predecessors (Beezus, Ramona and Henry) shriveled, but this fellow is resting on a step of the ladder and seems happy. The newest pumpkin, “PickyPicky”, had started forming four feet off the ground and needed shifting to the top of the ladder. We’ll see how he adjusts.

And finally, the two gigantic dahlias, Laverne and Shirley, are ready to pop! They are both nearly four feet high and were threatening to topple over last week, until we improvised a support from an old tomato cage.

Now, it looks like they will stay vertical long enough to bloom, feed some bees, and recharge their roots for next year.

And that’s the news from the garden!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Update

Dear Liza,

I have been distracted by all sorts of activities since the beginning of the month, but my garden has been growing like crazy anyway. I went over Tuesday and had a good time getting my hands in the dirt and pulling a box full of weeds.

It sure cleans up pretty, doesn’t it?

The yellow summer squash are getting tall, and I put a loop of yarn on the pumpkin to encourage it to climb on the ladder rather than the tomato cages.

All the tomatoes are above their cages and in need of extra support.

We are eating lettuce and radicchio everyday from the plot, laughing at the cost of organic greens in the market.

Auntie Bridgett has named our two dahlias Laverne and Shirley, and they are both doing well! No buds yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

So Huckleberry Finn and I are spending some quality time in the garden. All in all, summer is here and the gardening is lovely!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Warming Up!

Dear Liza,

We are predicted to have a heat wave in all the western states this coming week, so I headed down to Portland Nursery to gear up! The whole place was very full of happy people. I hunted for a tiny Japanese maple for my bonsai Hundred Acre Wood, but the ones they had were way too big. They did have this extra-large bonsai, called a Penjing. But still no tiny maple for me.

I did find five cherry tomato plants and six lettuce starts, and walked them home. I put them on our balcony to be safe from the predicted thunderstorms.

By then it was noon, so Auntie Bridgett and I had the first-of-many lunches on the balcony, sharing our space with Mouse, the veggies, and whatever neighbors strolled by. When the storms were taken out of the forecast, I hauled the new plants to the Blair Community Garden and put them in.

It was a happy, sweaty, exhausting hour, for sure. But it was what I have been waiting for since March! Getting my hands in dirt is always so satisfying.

Now I need to rig some sort of sun shade to protect my baby lettuces from the upcoming 90 degree heat.

It’ll work out. It always does.
Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Catch-Up

Dear Liza,

Our trip to Los Angeles was sad, wonderful, and busy. It also kept me away from my veggie garden for a whole week! Auntie Bridgett did a wonderful job keeping everything watered through some of our hottest weather, and boy, did the plants appreciate it!

Here was my pumpkin growing ladder set up just before I left. Healthy, right?

And here it is now, as tall as the ladder I have for it to climb on, and using its little tendrils out to anything available for support, including the nearby tomato plants. You can see the tiny yellow tomato blossoms trapped by the pumpkin tendrils. These plants mean business.

The zucchinis are growing too, and the cucumber even has a blossom on it. Since cucumbers aren’t squash, their blossoms are very different from zukes and pumpkins.

The tomatoes are now officially taller than me and ripening up nicely. We had a half dozen on our salad last night. Fresh veg!! Hooray!!

Going to be eating well this summer!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Chasing Summer

Dear Liza,

My veggie garden got a late start this year because of a cold, wet spring, including a snowfall on April 11. But now that it has gotten started, I am having trouble keeping up! This week’s heat wave has been upping the ante.

I planted my pumpkins by a ladder so they can climb up instead of spreading out and taking up a lot of space. They are now almost up to the second rung, and I have tied them to encourage their progress.

The oak leaf lettuce starts I planted in March have given us dozens of salads over the months, but are starting to bolt and go to seed in the hot weather. I pulled them up and managed to harvest several days worth of lettuce before tossing the stalks out. I even used some of it in a batch of pesto, since I was short on basil.

My five cherry tomato plants have gotten almost as tall as me, and have formed a lacy vertical screen that gives my garden some dappled afternoon shade during these hot days.

I have stopped watering the tomatoes, since there is a lot of fruit set, and today I was rewarded two tiny, perfect, ripening tomatoes! Stay tuned for lots more!

Auntie Bridgett’s sunflowers are short, as we planned, but are still making neat blooms! These are called Pompoms.

I have sewn a few more rows of peppery arugula lettuce and some Danvers carrots, making sure to go over every morning and give them water.

I will be chasing summer until fall. Should be a fun ride.

Love,

Grandma Judy