Pattypan Progress

Friday night, the first pattypan squash was nearly ready to pick. I already had a zucchini to eat with my dinner, so I left it to grow for one more day.

It's about 3" across and weighs almost 5 ounces.

This was my first pattypan (ever) and while I want to try it grilled, I was having some leftover steak and didn't want to fire up the grill just for the squash, so I decided to saute it the same way I cook zucchini.

Other than my dinner a bearing a strange resemblance to Lisa Simpson, it was pretty good (sorry, no finished photo, :-) I was hungry). I thought it had a little milder flavor than my zucchini. Something about the shape of this squash made me wonder if the skin would be noticeable or tough but it was very tender. I might slice it in a chunkier manner next time I saute it. I'll probably cut it into thicker whole slices when I try it on the grill.

I'm giving it a thumbs up!

August Update

It's been a pretty quiet week in the garden. I have harvested just a few zucchini, a half pound of beans and just under 2 pounds of small potatoes. A few of the pots of potatoes were looking dead and I was pretty sure it's too early for most of them to be ready. When I poked down around the "done" plants, I discovered that they were dry! With all the rain we had in July I was worried that they were too wet. Most of the straw was wet but the compost at the bottom was dry. I watered the pots and I plan to take the moisture meter out to check everything tomorrow as it has been several days since we've had any significant rainfall.

Early week harvest - zucchini, beans & potatoes.

I hand-pollinated the little pattypan when the bloom opened the other morning. There are a few more female blossoms starting to form now as well.

The Green Dragon Burpless finally has a little cucumber! I need to look up when these started producing last year, it feels like they have been very slow this year.

The yellow bell pepper is growing nicely. The other peppers are showing more blooms now too.

I did make this unpleasant discovery on my Roma tomato today (grrr...). I'm going to try adding some calcium (and checking their moisture) though from what I saw online today, Romas are very prone to BER, so it at least makes me feel a little better. :-)

To end on a more positive note, I've got a couple of these blooming...

The sunflowers are planted along the edges of the corn bed in an attempt to aid pollination by possibly acting as a windbreak so the pollen doesn't all get blown away in our winds. I honestly don't know if this will make a bit of difference. It was a suggestion I received over on GardenWeb and I figured it wouldn't hurt to try it. As a bonus, I plan to save the seeds- some for the birds and some to sprout for shoots to add to salads.

That's about all for right now. This week we're supposed to have temps in the 80's so I should be seeing a little more production in the garden soon (I hope!).

Pattypan Photos by Request

For loc the lurker :-)
This is my pattypan - the package says: Squash Calabaza, Flying Saucer Hybrid
If your leaves don't look the same, it may just be a difference in the variety. Hope this helps!
As soon as you have female blossoms though, you should be able to tell which they are.

Fresh from the Rain

After a few warm dry days, our stormy weather returned. We had temperatures near 90 at the end of last week then a cold front came through and dropped us to about 60. I think Colorado Springs had a record low for the high temperature yesterday. Today warmed back up to around 80 or so, at least until our afternoon storm arrived. We've gotten another 2 inches of rain this week! Last July was apparently one of the driest on record. This July is the total opposite!

Between rains, I went out for a few pictures.

The daikon seed pods are finally starting to dry.

My first blush of tomato color! Strangely, this is probably the smallest tomato plant I have.

Soon, I'll get to taste a Pattypan!

I don't think this is good... This potato plant (I think it's Yukon Gold, I forgot to check the tag) has black spots all over it's leaves. It doesn't look as healthy as it's neighbors. I'll have to look this up.

With all the hail that our area has had recently, I've been concerned about the garden. I've been covering what I can. The tomatoes have a chicken wire cover over the top (2 layers, overlapped to make the holes smaller) to hopefully protect them from any whopper hailstorms. Since I can't easily toss fabric over the top, I wrapped it around the sides. I don't think the fabric will stop huge hail but it should at least protect against smaller stones. Since I've covered plants, the hail has skipped us (thankfully). Of course, now I'm a little paranoid - I'm afraid the day I don't cover will be the day the hail comes...

I have one little bell pepper starting. This is a purchased plant though one of my seed starts looks like it might actually kick into gear and bloom soon.

The first borage bloom opened today.

My sugar snap peas have passed their prime. While I keep thinking I should cut them down, they still produce just a few peas. This is why I haven't cut them yet..

Ignore It and It will Grow?

Mom's gone back home from her visit, so "touristing" is over and there's gardening to be done! During her visit, we were gone most days, so the garden didn't get much attention. I usually had time to give it a once-over most days. I picked a few peas & cut some lettuce (and one actual head of broccoli - a small one, but still a head), and tried to keep the spaghetti squash contained.

Here's the photo overview...

Not much apparent change in the potato bin - hopefully that means something is happening underneath the straw.

I have two little zucchini that should be big enough to pick soon!

The flying saucer squash grew quite a lot this week. Only problem is, it seems to be a bush plant not a vine plant (like I THOUGHT it was). I guess it's good that I put it at the end of the bed. Since the watermelon don't look too promising, the Green Dragon cucumber will have plenty of space on the new trellis I built a couple weeks ago for these three!

When I saw the bush form, I thought I just wasn't paying attention to the seed packet (I did the same thing last year with the zucchini) but I looked at the package today and it actually doesn't say if it's bush or vine. If I had looked really closely at the picture on the package, I might have noticed it looked a bit like a bush plant, but it wasn't so obvious. This makes me feel a little better knowing it's not just that I didn't READ the package but that doesn't change anything. I hope there's going to be enough space for all the plants I have there. I wouldn't have planted so close if I had realized they wouldn't grow UP!

The spaghetti squash and corn both put on lots of growth while I wasn't looking. It's a little hard to see in the photo, but the squash has actually about reached the top of the ladder! The corn has fully recovered from it's hail damage it seems.

The green beans are looking much, much better. There's still some yellow in there, but there's lots more green now. I'm thinking they looked so bad because they were too wet. We had .7" of rain on Sunday, but it's been mostly dry since and we've had some hot, sunny weather. I did sprinkle some coffee grounds around the worst of the plants but I can't see that it made much difference since that spot isn't greener than the rest. I'm really leaning toward too much water having caused the problems.

Look under this very pale leaf and you'll even seem some blooms!!

I am a bit concerned about my potatoes though. I have a few batches that aren't looking so good right now. These are Red Pontiac which are a late variety. I tried to peek around the stems but I'm not seeing signs of tubers. The straw seems to stay really really wet, so I hope they don't just rot away. I will be so sad if none of my potatoes grow! Not all of them are looking bad though, so there's still hope. I'll just let these be and see what they end up doing.

To end on a positive note, look what appeared this week! These are Thessaloniki tomatoes. I do have baby toms on some of the other plants as well, but these are the largest ones I've found so far. You can see some of the hail damage from the earlier storms but other than making my plants less pretty, it doesn't seem to have caused any real harm.

That's all for now, but I'll be back soon!