Friday, March 4, 2011

February's Garden

Is it March? So soon? But i'm not ready!  I've finally worked my way through the dull up and downloading of pictures and find myself loitering in February still.  Join me for a quick stroll through last month's garden.


 Roselle, grown from seeds from Jane's garden.  Delicious simmered with lemongrass and ginger and sugar. Can't get enough of it. Love it, must plant more.  Rose beetles are fond of it too, can you see the telltale lace?


Volunteer broccoli, sprouting along the rough border of the garden. It's unamended territory and i'm curious to see how things will turn out.

Oregon Peas
Two flowers per node promise a generous harvest.

More Oregon peas.
Vertically challenged?


Isar
Butter yellow and crooked neck, they are his favorite.

Rainbow Lacinato Kale
After the storm. Good for kale chips.

Golden Sweet
A tallish vine with tumbles of shy, violet shaded flowers followed by glowing yellow pods. The pods are thin walled and crispy, good in salads or briefly singed in a wok.

Golden Sweet
The first harvest was just in time for Valentine's Day ; )

Brown Popping Chickpea
So far just a few flowers and one pod, can you see it all out of focus and to the right? Maybe a later planting, in drier weather, would do better. On warm, dry days the leaves are dusted with fine drops of a clear liquid.  My hand tastes sour after i brush it across the top of the plants. 

Perona
'A bush bean' the catalog said, but these vines easily scaled the five foot trellis and then wanted more. I nibbled on a few raw pods when they were small and i think they would make fine eating at that stage. They were OK as fresh shellies but the thick skins puckered and wrinkled in an unappealing way. They are still a few weeks away from dry beans, i think.

Chaco Canyon
The first few showy sprays of white flowers produced these but then the flowering stopped. I hope it's just a hiccup because the one pod i sampled was really good!

Crimson Flowered Favas
They were the first beans to flower. Aren't they pretty? But no beans, not one, still yet.  I found this great post that you can read if you'd like to learn more about their history. I wonder how much longer i should wait for beans?

Lacinato Kale
This is my much loved Lacinato Kale (in case you missed the caption).  I chopped the original plants down with a machete a few months ago, around the time they started to get taller than me. These are the pups, blown over in a wind storm and now growing straight up from where they fell. We mostly eat ours raw, in salads. How do you do kale?


That's all for now. Ahui hou!

7 comments:

Mr. H. said...

Thanks for the wonderful tour, everything is looking great...and I'm a bit envious of all those fresh off the vine peas you have access to.:) I'm going to have to look up those Perona beans and see what they are all about, they really look to have filled out nicely.

Jane said...

Your garden looks soooo wonderful! The fava flowers are beautiful! It'll be ineresting to see how your garbanzos progress. I bought garbanzo and lentil seeds last year but I haven't tried growing them - it seems they need the cooler weather to grow. The peronas look robust in their pods - what color are the beans?

Chacos appear to have unique growing habits. I'm glad your plants are producing some pods. They're such beautiful shell beans.

I've reached the limit with rose beetles...I'm going to try to make them go away. If I'm successful I'll let you know!

Bangchik and Kakdah said...

Beautiful... green and healthy! I envy peas growing nicely in your garden. I have trying sweet peas with limited success. I guess our place is just too hot!

Julie said...

Glad you enjoyed the tour Mr. H ;)) Let me know if you find anything good on the Peronas, i could find very little the last time i searched. The pods are quite thick and fleshy, i'm surprised they were labeled as dry beans?

Hi Jane ; ) Cool weather also = wet weather here and i read that abundant irrigation delays chick pea harvest. Could be a problem ; (

The Peronas were still green the last time i checked but the dry seeds were swirled with red.

I tried very hard to make the CRBs go away a few years ago with no luck. Let me know how that goes for you!

We are lucky to have good weather for peas around this time of year Bangchik. I just finished planting a small patch of two new-to-me varieties, Carouby de Maussane and Ho Lan Dow. Hope they have time to make peas before things start to warm up!

Susann said...

how DONT i do kale! lol. My fav is added to marinara about 3 mins before I toss it with pasta. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Julie said...

Sounds good Susann! Hmmm, bet i could sneak some into lasagna even...

Lavender and Vanilla Friends of the Gardens said...

Lovely Vegetable garden, lots of varieties. Favas always take so long to set beans, but once they start...wow...the purple flowers are glorious. I am sure they are edible as well! Mine have white flowers.