8/22/2008

The Garden This Week

Even the Gourd People (left) are surprised at the continuing rains. This one's hiding in the malabar vining spinach, which is listed as edible, but has more oxalic acid than its all-green Asian cousin, which is the better tasting. Malabar spinach is from Africa, loves summer heat and thrives in dry conditions and produces leaves to cook all summer long. The two kinds cover an 8 ft. high arbor in the middle of the garden.

On the subject of arbors, Adam built several bentwood trellises out of native cedar, along with this very handsome arbor in mid-summer. It's already covered with Indian snake gourds and morning glories, which the goats have been standing up on their hind legs to nibble on. He has the trellises installed in the garden with beans growing on one, passion vine on another and morning glories on the third.

Here's what the garden looks like this week. We have a bounty of beans - 8 or 10 varieties of climbing beans and several bush types. I'll post photos of some soon as they have quite attractive flowers. The garden is a bit jungly, as the constant rains all season have causes everything to over grow their beds. The photo to the left was taken in early morning with a bit of light fog. And below, right is part of the culinary beds and pathway that leads to the Herb Shop.

Visitors to the garden this week and last have expressed surprise at the extremely sweet stevia plants, and the great numbers of butterflies in the garden. We saw the very first Monarch butterfly today, a harbinger of fall weather to come.

The red and white cucumbers are really producing rapidly, lots of Brandywine tomatoes and the Egyptian malokia is ready to start harvesting for greens.

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