New Things in the Garden

So we've established that I like summer and autumn. Not so wild about the time of dying back, everything croaking. So I'm going to talk about what I like.

What I like is poblanos on the plant. Not storebought. I bought a single poblano plant, potted, for $6.95 this spring, just on a lark, and I bet I've gotten $60 worth of those exquisite big peppers off it this season. The plant is waist-high and about 5' across now. What a deal! Oh, how I hate to see it die. But I've saved its seeds...for it is a champion among pepper plants. The peppers are fairly hot when eaten raw, but they mellow out nicely when cooked, and add a distinct flavor and bite to everything. And I put them in almost everything. Sometimes I put too many of them in. Then everyone turns up their nose. I gamely eat it all.

Overkill, Poblano style. Each one the size of your hand!

There's a fine harvest of sweet snack peppers and fat firm tomatillos this year, too. YUM. From utter ignorance, I am now the world's biggest tomatillo fan. Who knew? 

Like little citrusy green tomatoes in paper husks. So tasty. They cook so well, and add special flavor to everything.

Only two of my six plants made it. Will definitely grow more next year. I throw them in all my soups, chilis, quiches, vegetable medleys, stir fries and lately on homemade pizza and sliced thin over salad. Tangily, citrusly delicious! Tomatillos are in the nightshade family, like tomatoes and eggplant. They're somewhere in between the two--pulpy, a little crispy, with a fresh tangy green tomato taste that adds so much, especially when cooked. Out of this world when sliced thin and put on homemade pizza like green pepperoni. You can use them in salsas, and I suppose that's what most people do, but since I quit eating chips I no longer make salsa. Sigh.

Another surprise find of the summer: the cucamelon, Melothria scabra. Native to Mexico, where it's called Sandiitas de raton or "mouse melon." Thought to have been cultivated long before colonial impact. It grows on a dainty little climbing vine with maple-shaped leaves. It tastes like a slightly limey cucumber, without a hint of sweetness, and has an impressive, nay, epic! crunch. Terrific on salads and in fresh salsas for texture, crunch and flavor. 

The vine takes no room at all--it just goes straight up, is tiny and delicate. You'd never think you'd get much off of it, so weak and spindly it is, but the yield is nice.

Cucamelons are not large. Grape-sized. Such fun to eat and give away.

 Probably the crunchiest thing I've ever grown, including sugar snap peas. And it would make a fabulous dollhouse watermelon. We call them Barbie watermelons around here. Because they're the perfect size to put in a Barbie doll's hands. I need to do that photo shoot. But I have no Barbie.  Phoebe wrapped her Barbie completely up in toilet paper and buried her I know not where when she was about seven. She said she was making a Barbie mummy. Yeah. You go, girl. High use for a Barbie. 

So I've grown a few things I've never grown, and they were all winners. I like plants. I like experimenting with them. I like giving them to friends, sharing seeds, getting and giving recommendations and sharing the results. 

The other huge success were the orange and red sweet snack peppers I grew from seed. Just took seed from the little grocery store ones that come in Ziploc bags and started it in the greenhouse. Next spring I'll start it earlier--maybe in March, because my plants were festooned with fruit at frost. And they grew true to type!! There are almost no seeds in them and you can eat three or four before you can stop yourself. But why stop? High in vitamins A and  C and a lot better for you than cookies. They're deliciously sweet and crispy, thick-walled and juicy. Highly recommended. Here's His Lordship Tim Appleton, MBE, exulting in the crunch of a sweet snack pepper while floating... temporarily... at North Bend.

and of course I love my little darling Sungold tomatoes. I throw them in all my soups, chilis, quiches and stir-fries, too.

The garden, she was very good to me this year. I loved every minute of harvesting and eating our own  lettuce, Swiss chard, snap peas, beans, tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and cucamelons.

I'm already looking forward to starting next spring's seeds. I'm going to start those snack peppers, tomatillos, cucamelons and poblanos EARLY this time. And I'm going to figure out where those dang chard-eating bunnehs are getting in. Right. 

Never Can Say Goodbye

As I write, there is snain coming down, kind of a sloppy mix of snow and rain, too big to be rain and too wet to be snow. Snain. Chet Baker talks about sneet but I've never seen it. It's 40, going for the mid-30's tonight, and I really don't like it much. What I like is autumn. And summer. 

So what I do is dig summer up and cram it into my little greenhouse. It's the hardest working 64 square feet in Ohio.

The red center support pole is new. The greenhouse had a sag in its spine. The floorjack fixed it. Tools told me what to get. This is the east corner.

 Bill's ancient crown of thorns is in the east corner. I keep trying to cut it back and it has never once stopped blooming since I took it from his office. It's as if it thinks it'll get its multiple heads cut off if it ever stops blooming. I kind of like it tall and lanky, like an ocotillo. It can stay.

 Here's the west corner. Mmm. Looking floriferous.

I absolutely adore Salvia greggii "Desert Blaze." It has such an airy, icy look about it with those white-edged leaves. I know it would die over the winter, being a tender plant to start with. Add variegation and you have a really tender plant. Can't let that happen. Dug two up, brought them in.

I tried something this fall that I've never done. I brought my tuberoses inside. The only reason I did it is that there were about 10 plants just starting to bloom in late October! I think it was the cool, rainy summer we had. I planted them in April, but the plants just kind of lolled around in the wet soil, enjoying making more and more leaves, and they remembered why I planted them a bit too late to make good on their promise to get it done before frost. 

It was really too cold at night for them to put out much in the way of fragrance. What a waste! So I dug them up. Plopped them in planters and put them in the cart and brought them in. 

Now that was a fine sight, tuberoses going to their reward...another month of summer!

The heat of the greenhouse brings out the most exquisite fragrance, and it absolutely fills the little room with heaven when night falls.

They're delighted to keep growing and blooming. I'll have a month more of fragrance and beauty.

Some are still in spike! My darling you will never know 20 degrees.

Joining the tuberoses is my night-blooming jessamine, Cestrum nocturnum. Another jewel of the Solanaceae, or nightshade family. What a family. Potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, tomatillos, Cestrum, to name just a few.

The New Guinea impatiens is so happy to come in out of the cold and unfurl its blazing perfect orange blossoms in welcome heat.

As is the mammilaria cactus, which has bloomed for me for 22 years.

And you have to love a mandevilla that's such a bright red it boggles the camera.

Color. Blazes and bushels of color. That's how we fight old man Winter here on Indigo Hill.