I'm sorry I am just not able to update the blog as regularly as before. I am trying to exercise more, and the time has to come from some where. I would prefer to cut out household chores, or breaking up fights between the girls, or cooking. However, blogging is where the time ends up coming from.
The okra is reaching for the stars. It is getting to the point where it is very hard to harvest. Too bad we don't have any tall people in this family.
We get about 10 pods a day, which is really more than enough okra for a family of 4! Luckily, I had an okra-loving friend visit on Monday and gave her a whole big bag so we had two okra free days. It's good stuff, but I am starting to run out of fresh and exciting okra ideas. Simmered okra, okra gomae, curried okra, okra pesto spaghetti, help?
The baby trees on the embankment are coming along nicely despite the occasional pumpkin vine attack.
Tomatoes in planters survived, barely, but are sad and pathetic. We get maybe two cherry tomatoes a week. All the ones in the ground rotted in the July rains.
Even sadder and more pathetic, but trying!
We have baby kinkans on our kinkan tree. They look like marble sized oranges and are eaten whole (except the seeds). We hope to have kinkans to harvest this winter!
Edamame plants are doing well.
Fall cucumbers are planted. The second generation of cucumbers have more or less fizzled out and we are going through cucumber withdrawal with only 2 or 3 a week. Okra just isn't the same...
And finally, cosmos on the embankment! Finally, after sowing seeds seeds and more seeds three plants have come up and two are doing really well.
The okra is reaching for the stars. It is getting to the point where it is very hard to harvest. Too bad we don't have any tall people in this family.
We get about 10 pods a day, which is really more than enough okra for a family of 4! Luckily, I had an okra-loving friend visit on Monday and gave her a whole big bag so we had two okra free days. It's good stuff, but I am starting to run out of fresh and exciting okra ideas. Simmered okra, okra gomae, curried okra, okra pesto spaghetti, help?
The baby trees on the embankment are coming along nicely despite the occasional pumpkin vine attack.
Tomatoes in planters survived, barely, but are sad and pathetic. We get maybe two cherry tomatoes a week. All the ones in the ground rotted in the July rains.
Even sadder and more pathetic, but trying!
We have baby kinkans on our kinkan tree. They look like marble sized oranges and are eaten whole (except the seeds). We hope to have kinkans to harvest this winter!
Edamame plants are doing well.
Fall cucumbers are planted. The second generation of cucumbers have more or less fizzled out and we are going through cucumber withdrawal with only 2 or 3 a week. Okra just isn't the same...
And finally, cosmos on the embankment! Finally, after sowing seeds seeds and more seeds three plants have come up and two are doing really well.
5 comments:
Have you tried eating the okra flowers? They're really good for you and yummy to boot. Good raw in salad or in osumono with myouga or (sob) cucumber. ;P
I thought you had to plant Autumn cucumber horizontally? I have a feling a lot of the 'you must...' info I get is really just someone's opinion...
Good for you on the exercise. I am kidding myself that gardening is exercise enough....
I have never tried okra flowers, I didn't even know they were edible. Okra flower salad will be on the menu soon. And okra flower/cucumber osunomono as soon as those autumn cucumbers grow up. Hopefully they never know that they are actually supposed to grow out. So, in your area they grow them on the ground like pumpkins? Interesting. Or on a mesh so the cukes dangle down but are off the ground? Cucumbers are my husband's realm, but I will ask him about it. I think this is just his second season of autumn cucumbers and last year he had trouble of some sort with them. Maybe they need to be horizontal.
Oh, and I forgot to say, you garden on a whole different level than I do. Between that and canning I'm sure you get plenty of exercise. After all, the kitchen ladies wanted you for your strong body, right?
Xana,
Have just checked out your blog by way of MIJ today. Amazing! How wonderful for you and your family to be able to eat all this healthy and delicious homegrown food. DH and I just started our first garden this year and we are hooked. Question: once you've picked the kabocha how long can you keep it for? Love the pumpkin stand in the genkan...looks very autumnal and harvesty :-)
As long as they are clean they can keep all winter if you find a relatively cool (but not frozen), dark, dry place to store them. Our genkan is one of the few north-facing spaces we have. The engawa would be more convenient for storage, but faces south. I wish we had a cellar! I have read that it helps to wipe them with diluted bleach right after picking to kill any bacteria that might cause rot. My husband has read that they taste better after "aging" for at least a month.
My advice (which we got from my stepmother) with a new garden is to take lots of photos in the beginning. After a few years, you will be so impressed with how far you have come! Here is our garden just over 2 years ago:
http://gardeningingifu.blogspot.com/2009/03/july-2007.html
Happy gardening!
Xana
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