Sunny days

It is such a treat to have sunny weather for more than a week now. There is not much going on in our backyard farm except the cleanup.

Three of the pole bean plants have been pulled down last week. One is still standing. Guess it'd better to leave it in the ground than having the beans sitting in the fridge. The cucumber plant is also down.

I also cleaned up all the garlics that were hanging under the patio (cut off the root and the stalk and brought the bulbs into the house). Meanwhile, since the weather is nice, I stuck 10 cloves somewhere in the front just for fun.

Today, Mark sowed some arugula seeds in the back and covered them in the coldframe.

The swiss chard is still growing strong and big since the summer. However, we haven't been eating them at all (besides the baby one that we use in salad). Is there a great recipe to cook swiss chard? I did some searches on the Internet but none of the recipes appeal to me. They look great in the ground, so maybe just let them be the decorative edible plant.

Get ready for the rain

The weather has been mild and sunny these few days. However, I heard on the radio on my way home that rain will arrive starting tomorrow. So after I got home, I grabbed a few containers and started picking the sungold: ripe or half ripe. The sungold tends to split quickly in rainy condition. I think I've picked about 6 pints (not shown in pic). As for the roma...well, I've picked about 10, and two of the red stripped roman. The rest are definitely started to change...at least they are a bit yellowish.

After picking the tomatoes, I moved onto the raspberries. The raspberries which grows in the fall are much bigger and sweeter than the summer version. I can't remember when and how did we end up having two varieties of the raspberry plants.

I was out of town last week and I can't believe that the pole beans are in such an abundance. We have been eating a couple pounds of pole beans each days: stir frying them in home-grown onion and Thai bird chili (yes, most of them have turned red). The pole beans are picked right before the dinne. Not only they taste fantastic, they provide a sensational month feel that is absolutely missing from the store bought beans. It is a lot of fun to pick them also (treasure hunting)!









The garlic have been curing under the patio and they seem to do fine. However, I notice that mould is growing on the two bundles that were hanged closer to the wall. I have no idea why these garlics got the mould but not the others. I was really disappointed as I remember that these are the two bundles that showed the most white-ish outer skin. Fortunately, the mould doesn't affect the interior yet, so I cleaned them up right away and took them into the kitchen. And yes, I use them in our stir fry pole beans :)

Pole bean & dinner

Sinfonian asked about our pole bean harvest, so I went to take a few more pictures.

Though we play with the idea of keeping track of how much veggies we produce, we decided it isn't practical to do so. We pull a carrot, pick a few sungold tomatos or snack on the peas whenever we walk by the plant. It will be impossible to know exactly how much we grow. (we did count how many heads of garlic we harvested though!)

Since this is our first time to grow pole bean, we are very happy with the result. We don't pick them everyday, but there are enough for the two of us.

So here's the dinner menu (except the fish, everything is picked from the garden):

• Mesclun green with sungold tomato, carrot, cucumber and chives
  
• Steamed pole beans with chili (see chili post), tarragon and butter on bbq
  
• Grilled eggplant
  
• Grilled sardines (bought from the fishmonger down the street)
  
• Homemade ice-cream

(oh, by the way, the ceramic platter is handmade also!)

The foil pouch (on the left of the pic) under the grill is our garden beets. We'll make a beet salad for the next day.

We watched the US Open (tennis) women's final during dinner and having sardines was a bad idea. There were so many bones to pick and I missed watching a lot of the great shots. However, sardines is good for you and I finished them all.

The eggplant on the menu is our first eggplant of the year. It takes much longer to grow than what the label says. The plant is also much shorter than I expected. It gets really bushy and there are a lot of flowers blooming but not many plants producing. Am I supposed to cut off some branches just like a tomato plant? Should I do some trimming? So far, they are a few of about 3 inches long. The mature size is 6 inches. Mark sliced the one that we picked into 4 slices. One slice fell into the grill, and now we got 3 small slices of homegrown eggplant. They surely taste good.

Pole bean

August is the month when we are busy eating the veggies growing in our backyard, thus there is not much blogging going on (what an excuse!). However, I haven't forgotten to document the growth of our urban farm via photographs. So here are a few pictures to capture the growth of our pole bean:

Aug 02, 08 (three plants climbing)

Aug 16, 08 (baby pole beans)

Sept 05, 08
The three plants have climbed to the top of the patio. The plants have formed a pole bean wall. We need to use a ladder to harvest the beans.

Sept 05, 08
Pole bean has climbed up to the top to meet with the hops

And did I mention that they are delicious? Mark wraps the pole beans, fresh tarragon (from our planter) and butter with foil and steams the pouch on the grill. Absolutely fantastic!

Leek -- 2nd planting

New spaces are available for more planting after we took down all the shelling pea and snow pea. So we decide to go for some winter crops: purple broccoli (transplanted, started seedlings indoor) and leek (seedlings brought from the local nursery). Pic shows the leeks that I just transplanted today. Some of the leeks that were planted in this late spring are ready to eat. We just had our first 2008 leek yesterday.

The tomato plants are getting a bit bushy now. Among the four roma tomato plants, the one closest to the house is the biggest. A lot of flowers but not many fruits...but they are coming!




Another excitement is to see the Red striped roman. The physical look of the plant is very unhealthy. The branches are soft with no strength. Water nor fertilizer helps to improve the look, and yet the plant keeps growing. We figure that maybe that's the way the plants look. I only saw two tomatoes growing (have to look really hard to find them as they are "hidden" in the middle of the plant), but that's enough to raise my heartbeat.

Just a quick report on the pole bean...the report: see pic ;)

pole beans etc

We decided to grow some pole beans this year. The seeds were started indoor and we planted 3 seedlings outside over the weekend.

Though many seeds have sprouted, the growth rate is very slow and some of the plants were severely attacked by some mysterious insects. The pic shows the damage of the bok choy seedlings. It seems that only radishes, onions and peas aren't affected by the bugs. We brought fish fertilizer and sprinkle it all over our seedlings to see if it makes an improvement.

The salad mix that we planted on the new planter is ready for harvesting. Lovely!