Seeing Green
October 14, 2009A cold front has moved in, and with it, cold rain. Last week, we had a windy day that blew quite a few leaves off of the oak trees. Seeing so many brown leaves atop our dying grass makes me realize that Summer is gone and the colder seasons really are fast approaching.
Earlier today, I picked the rest of the green tomatoes. Goodbye the tomatoes…
I also picked a bunch of Chard for this evening’s meal. We have been eating Chard 3-5 times a week and never tire of this green.
If it’s not too wet tomorrow morning, I will pick Kale to freeze and also eat fresh. Those evenings we don’t eat Chard, we eat Kale. We love greens…
Pak Choi isn’t ready yet but I can thin some and add them to a salad. I’m unsure of the discolored leaves and have never had this before. Is this a leafminer’s damage?
I was standing at the edge of the garden and I noticed how many peppers are trying to grow, despite the colder weather. Little green peppers and white blossoms cover the tops of our pepper plants. They will grow until the very end….
Seeing green in the garden is like a meal promised. I know a killing frost is mere days away. While some plants will wither and die, some will continue on under hoops.
For now I can enjoy the slower pace in the garden. And while it lasts, I can also enjoy seeing green.
Lynn- your chard is amazing! I love how neat and tidy it all looks. Maybe you could share some recipes that use chard as a main ingredient! I grew it this year but wasn’t too sure how to use it well.
Hi Lynn~~ Your greens rival any flower. Gorgeous!
wow the tomatoes are looking so fabulous. Seedlings are so healthy i must have been delight seeing and nourishing them.
Great looking greens. I don’t think you have leafminer damage on your Pak Choi. You would probabely notice it on the chard way before the pak choi. Leafminer’s tend to make much bigger tunnels inbetween the leaves and you can actually see the little worms if you look closely. Also they never seem to bother our plants in the fall, it’s just a late spring and summer issue.
Your chard looks really healthy and is also one of our favorite greens…when they don’t have worms. We just got over 4 days of below 20°weather so about the only good looking greens in our garden are the ones under cover…like chard.
You have so much chard! Im so jealous!
What are you going to do with all the green tomatoes?
Do you think that peppers will ripen?
Heather, it’s only tidy looking because I needed a few garden treats for the chickens so I gave them some bottom leaves! They look to us as the treat-givers and when we head down to the coop empty-handed, I know their little hearts ache….
I fix chard a few ways and use it in casseroles. One casserole I posted is made with cheeses and can be a main dish:
Cheese & Greens Casserole
Hi Grace. I love my flowers (and everyone else’s), but as a friend has always said, “You can’t eat flowers….”
Thanks, Khabbab. I do need to figure out why the Pak Choi seedlings have the discoloration. Perhaps a nutritional deficiency in the soil….Time to research!
I didn’t know a leafminer was a wormy-thing. DUH. I have had big problems with Harlequin bugs this year (they love Nasturtiums) and since we’ve not had them before, I’m guessing the cool and wet spring brought that bug into earning our Pest of the Year award. UGH, they are a destructive bug, but at least they’re easy to spot (red mottled roundish beetle) and pick. Easy to squish, too!
I will need to do some research with the Pak Choi because my initial thought was a soil deficiency, then I thought about the pests this year and figured it might be some little bug I can’t see. Time for a trip around the WWW to learn more!
What kind of worms bother your Chard?I’m so curious — I thought Chard was pretty much pest-free! Have you though of companion planting — maybe marigolds grown very close or interspersed with the Chard?
Vrtlarica, Some green tomatoes are wrapped to ripen slowly in the house. I am making a green tomato marmalade this morning. We use all of the food we grow and give the scraps or leftovers to animals or into the compost.
Our weather has gotten too cold for the peppers to grow much, but we’ll leave the plants growing until a hard frost or freeze destroys the plants. We might get a few more peppers, but certainly not all will grow to maturity.
We always have issues with leafminers on our chard, beet greens, and spinach in the late spring and summer…nasty little buggers. Besides that they do great. It doesn’t matter all that much with the spinach as we are pretty much done with it by the time they show up but we do like to keep various chard going all year. The only plant in this family that is not bothered all that much are Bull’s Blood beets…the leaves are too hard for them to tunnel into.
Our only measure of control is to pull the leaves and feed them to the chickens. The loss of leaves stunt the plants growth a bit but they seem to recover by fall. Check out my June 20th post “Lefminers” for pictures of the little monsters and hope that you never have to deal with them. Ours are manageable but some people can’t even grow chard because of them.
We went through the same thing with aphids as well and this year the preditor insects showed up in droves and really helped to control them. The same will happen with these worms I’m sure, all of these bugs seem to go through multi year cycles. I’ll take the bugs over chemicaly toxic produce anytime.
Leafminers, slugs, aphids, and root maggots are our primary garden pests and a great source of protein for the chickens.:)
I’m not fond of floating bugs in a kettle of water, but it bothers me more to think of toxins in my foods (or anyone else’s). About a week ago, I started seeing aphids on our kale. I’ve let it be at this point, knowing we were heading towards a cold snap. We had frost last night, but you know, it didn’t kill those aphids because I was out there today, checking. At least they’re too stupid to spread everywhere. Most bugs seem to stay on one or two plants. I can live with that. Can’t wait to turn the chickens loose on the garden….that’s coming up right after we slaughter the 2nd batch of broilers this coming weekend.