Fava Bean Pasta

Here's one of the things I did with some of the harvest of nice green spring vegetables I got in April and May.

I didn't grow any hardneck garlics this time, but I did grow Elephant garlic, which makes some nice fat scapes.

Here is the Swiss chard before it started bolting. I like this "perpetual spinach" type variety with it's small, tender leaves.

But the star of this dish was the fava beans. I've never even eaten fava beans before, but they turned out to be really easy to grow over the winter, and they're really tasty. They are a little bit of a pain to prepare in the kitchen, though. First you have to get them out of their pods, then blanch them in boiling water for 2 minutes.

Next you need to peel them. The seed coats of fava beans are really tough and inedible, so you have to take each bean individually and pop them out of their skins. At least the beans are pretty big, about the size of a large lima bean, so you don't have to peel too many to get enough for a meal. In the picture you can see the peels on the left and the peeled beans on the right.

Then I sliced up the elephant garlic scapes into small pieces.

Sautéed the scapes in a pan with some prosciutto and olive oil. I wanted to use pancetta, but couldn't find any, so I used prosciutto instead, torn up into little pieces.

Meanwhile, I cooked some pasta.

The cooked pasta, peeled fava beans, and chard were added to the pan once the prosciutto was starting to get a little crispy. That was stirred around until the chard wilted.

To finish off the dish, I added some cracked black pepper, a little of the reserved pasta cooking water, some shredded parmesan cheese, and some heavy cream to make a nice sauce. A splash of white wine would have been nice too, but I was out. It was still really good without it.

So this dish used three ingredients from my garden. It can be tweaked too. Some fresh green peas would be good instead of or in addition to the fava beans. I would think any kind of green could work in place of the chard. Garlic cloves could be used instead of garlic scapes, but garlic scapes have such a nice mild flavor.

Next year I'm growing a lot more fava beans!

The Thunder Moon

Once again, the Thunder Moon is a good name for this month's full moon (which was about a week ago - oops), since we got a bit more rain. The Cenizo in the front is in full bloom with its beautiful lavender flowers. My husband has built a nice xeric garden around it with some agaves and prickly pear cactus.

In the back, the Tatume squash is doing very well. Usually C. pepo varieties are very susceptible to borers, but I haven't done anything to protect it from squash vine borers, and it's still producing some fruit. The borers have gotten some of the vines, but it has plenty more.

I have some fruits at various stages on the vines. Here's a little baby one with the flower still attached.

When they get bigger they turn a dark green, similar to a big round zucchini.

And here's one that's fully ripe. Even though Tatume is supposed to be a summer squash, I'm letting some ripen to collect seeds. I'm just excited to have found a summer squash that doesn't get killed by squash vine borers!

The Moon and Stars Watermelon had one little melon on it, but it ended up shriveling up and dying. Now it's just growing vines. I hope I get some melons from it eventually.

The okra are growing among the watermelon vines. I planted them a bit late, so no fruit yet, but the plants themselves are doing OK.

The peppers I planted in the back aren't doing too great. For some reason, they aren't making a lot of fruits, and the ones they have made either got sunburned or pecked by birds.

Some of the sweet potatoes are doing well, and some aren't. This variety, an orange one called Diane, is doing the best so far, making some long vines.

The Calico lima beans are growing into lush vines, but with hardly any bean pods. I've harvested maybe seven beans so far. I'm starting to wonder if they need bean inoculant. I've never used it before, but ever since I've been growing beans at this location, they just don't yield well, and the beans I do get are puny.

The Dr. Carolyn tomatoes are the last tomatoes I have still producing. Their flavor wasn't that impressive at first, but as it's gotten later in the year, they seem to be getting sweeter. Maybe the heat concentrates the flavor.

The rest of the tomatoes look like this. Still a few green leaves, but no more fruits.

The eggplant is still the only thing in the front garden the deer haven't munched, which is interesting. That's not what I expected.

The peppers in the front, which are the ones that survived last winter, are finally growing back after we put chicken wire around them to protect them from the chickens and deer.

I've got only two Waltham butternut plants left that might now get a chance to grow since we put chicken wire around them.

The Rattlesnake pole beans are still getting eaten like crazy by the deer. Well, now I know not to plant beans in the front without a lot of protection.

 

We actually aren't have too bad of a summer this year. We actually got a couple of good rainstorms, once of which dumped 4 inches of rain on us. The deer and chickens are causing a much bigger problem than the weather this year.

 

 



Greening Moon - belated full moon update

I'm back! Last week we went on vacation to the Big Bend area, and before that I was really busy with final exams and getting final grades in, so May's full moon post is about two weeks late.

May is supposed to be our wettest month, and we did get around 3 inches of rain, which isn't actually that much, but better than we have been getting.

Lots of things have been happening in the garden that probably deserve their own post. First the neighbor's chickens were causing a lot of damage digging up things in the front garden, then while we were on vacation the deer found it! I also got my sweet potato plants from Duck Creek Farms and planted them. I've been harvesting a few paste tomatoes, but I think the deer are eating a lot of them too. That makes comparing yields from the different varieties I planted difficult. I might have to leave out that bit of data this time around and just compare things like plant vigor and heat tolerance.

I knew I was risking things by planting my Rattlesnake beans in the front, and sure enough, the deer have been eating the leaves off of them. The funny thing is it looks like my deer are lazy, and are only eating the leaves in the middle of the vine, not bothering to bend down to eat the ones near the ground, or stand up to reach the higher ones.

The chickens dug up a lot of the beans, so in their place I planted the rest of my Waltham Butternut squash seeds. There were from Seed Savers Exchange in 2009, and I guess they were getting old because I was having trouble getting them to germinate. I went ahead and planted all the rest of my seeds in the ground before we left, and when we came back some of them were sprouting.

The deer are also eating the ends of the shoots on the tomatoes and peppers. I guess the new growth is more tender. Some of my peppers are getting fruit anyway, but I'm sure the deer have eaten a lot of the blossoms.

Weirdly, they don't seem to like the eggplants. The remaining eggplants I have that didn't get dug up by the chickens are making fruits now. This variety is Fengyuan Purple, and the eggplants growing on it are really long and skinny! The biggest one I have so far looks like it's over a foot long. Guess I need to make some more Thai Green Curry paste to make these into curry with.

The tomatillos aren't looking so good. I've harvested a lot of them, but now it looks like they're starting to die down. I don't know if it's because they aren't getting enough water or something else. The deer haven't bothered them either, even the ones outside the wire cage my husband made for them.

I should be harvesting lots of tomatoes now, but the deer have been mostly beating me to them. When I got back from vacation there were hardly any ripe ones to be found, except for a few that look like this. This is a nice big Red Brandywine with a big chomp out of it. Another annoying this is it appears deer don't know the difference between a ripe and an unripe tomato. Maybe because they're colorblind? I found lots of green tomatoes, including a really nice Opalka that was the size of a Poblano pepper with bites out of them.

The only thing I have left to plant is my okra. Some of them took a really long time to come up, which isn't that unusual with okra. I got three varieties from Native Seeds/SEARCH, all from Texas: Beck's Gardenville, Eagle Pass, and Hill Country Red. I know I'm a bit late on okra planting, but okra can really take the heat, so I think they'll be OK.

Taking a quick look at the herb garden, the Esperanza is starting to overwhelm things again, like I knew it would. The other plants aren't doing too bad though. Herbs really like being in the ground much more than in pots. Once I planted all my herbs in the ground, ones that had been in pots on my apartment balcony for years, they really took off. In the background here is the Mexican oregano flowering like crazy. To the gnome's right is marjoram, while to his left is thyme. Elsewhere in the herb garden I've got Greek oregano, rosemary, peppermint, orange mint, catmint, catnip, lemon balm, yarrow, skullcap, horehound, parsley, and now a few different kinds of basil.

I'm still waiting on the potatoes to die down. It's taking longer than I thought it would. I also haven't harvested the garlic or shallots yet. The garlic still doesn't look good, but the shallots are still pretty green.

This is Tatume squash, a Mexican heirloom that is in the C. pepo species but is supposed to be more resistant to squash vine borers. I planted five, and it looks like the borers already got one, but the others are doing pretty well, so we'll see.

The Moon and Stars watermelon plants are also doing well. I planted four of them. I also just planted three Melon de Castilla plants, a cantaloupe from Native Seeds/SEARCH. 

The Christmas Lima beans are in the back, so the deer aren't eating them, and they're doing great. They're just starting to get blossoms.

Here are my sweet potatoes I just planted right before we went on vacation. They probably deserve a post of their own. They've just gotten settled after transplanting and are starting to grow.

The fava beans just aren't doing too great though. It started getting hot just as they were making pods, so I think they just didn't have enough time. This fall I'll have to plant them much sooner.

OK, that's my update. By now I should be getting my summer crops in if it wasn't for the darn deer.

The Grackle Moon

Thursday was April's full moon, and I'd say that the warm-season crops are just about all planted. Finally time to relax a little bit after the frantic March and April planting season and watch things grow.

Here is the front garden. The only thing left to do is mulch that last bed, but I'm waiting until the pole beans get a bit bigger and start climbing the poles. Getting the front garden ready took up a lot of my time, so some of the planting was a little late this year.

I put sticks over the ground to keep the neighbor's chickens from digging up the sprouting beans. That seems to be working so far.

Most of the peppers that survived the winter are coming back nicely. I transplanted them to the front garden, but I'm afraid a few of them might not have survived the trip. Or maybe they're just taking their time.

The tomatillos already have lots of fruit on them. The husks grow first, and then the fruit grows into them (right now the fruits are about the size of marbles).  I got the seeds from an online trade, and they were supposed to be purple tomatillos, but they sure don't look like it to me.

In the back, the Tuscan kale is starting to bolt. I think I'll go ahead and let them and save seeds from them. I'm not going to plant anything in that spot anymore. It's too shady. Too close to an oak tree. The Elephant garlic is starting to make scapes, but it looks like the Romanian Red garlic is all dead now.

The potatoes are starting to turn a little yellow, and I can't tell if that means they're starting to finish up and get ready for harvest, or if they haven't been getting enough water.

The arugula seed pods are starting to dry and shatter. I've been going out there and clipping pods off to save seeds, but a lot of seed is ending up on the ground anyway. I guess I'll have lots of arugula volunteers.

I just planted some Calico lima beans around two bean tepees right next to this year's new pepper plants. I put these pepper plants in the back to isolate them from the peppers in the front for seed saving purposes.

I've started harvesting peas, but only enough to eat fresh right off the plant. The peas are turning out to be a disappointment this year. I think it's a combination of planting them late (after we moved here in March), a dry winter, and then the trellis I made for them keeps falling down and damaging the plants. I'll do better next time, when I will plant them in fall (like I usually do) so they can grow through the winter, and I'll be sure to build a much sturdier trellis for them.

The fava beans are starting to make pods. I'm not sure if I'll have enough to eat some, or if I should just let the seeds mature to increase my seed supply and plant more this fall.

The herb garden is doing great. The roses are finally starting to bloom, about a month later than they did last year. I trimmed back the esparanza and now it's coming back.

I planted watermelons, squash, cucumbers, cantelope, and okra seeds in pots to buy me a little more time to decide where I want to plant them, and to let some of my winter crops finish out before I plant them out. Also, some of the seeds were kind of old, so I wanted to make sure they were going to germinate. I also have basil plants in pots I need to plant out soon.

I've been getting lots of compliments from neighbors about my front yard vegetable garden. I'm really glad I did that. I think it might actually be a better spot than the one in the back (less shade, less rocky), and I'm feeling rebellious because a lot of neighborhoods don't allow front yard vegetable gardens at all. It's like I'm stickin' it to the Man!

New Year 2013

The holidays are over, so it's time to look back on the old year and think about what to do with the new one.

2012 was my first year gardening at our new house. I'm starting to think that this site is not as good as the old one, which is too bad (since the old one was rented and we own this house). I got a soil test done, and I'm deficient in both nitrogen and phosphorous, and I'm low on organic matter. The soil is still rocky, but the rocks are different. It's interesting how that can change in a distance of only 5 miles or so. The rocks at the old house were much harder, weathered to these interesting curvy shapes, some with Swiss cheese-like holes in them, some with interesting fossils. It was a lot of work to dig them up, but they made nice landscaping borders. It actually made the rock-digging more enjoyable, to see what cool rock I get this time. The rocks here are much softer, and tend to chip and fall apart easily. They don't erode into interesting shapes, instead they crumble into little shards of chalk-like material. That actually makes them much harder to dig out, and once they're out, they don't make nearly as nice of a hardscaping material.

I'm also afraid I'm going to have trouble with shade. I have the vegetable garden in one of the few sunny spots in the backyard, but it's still surrounded by large live oak trees. Live oaks also send out a lot of roots that sprout more trees, so I think I'm going to have to dig a lot of tree roots out every year to keep them from completely invading the garden.

Well, you're supposed to "bloom where you're planted" as they say. So how did 2012 go? We moved into the new house in February, but weren't able to get the landlord to end the lease early, so we had access to the old house until May (and had to pay for both, ugh). That gave my winter crops plenty of time to finish out and even go to seed. I got a good crop of turnips, and collected seed from the peas, mustard, and lettuce.

In March we rented a rototiller to till up the sunny spot. I had always hand-dug new gardens, but this time I was in a hurry, because it was about time to get the tomato and pepper transplants in. We learned that you need to be careful who you rent tillers from, because using this one was horrible backbreaking work! The tiller was this ancient, lurching contraption. It was nothing like the tillers advertised on TV with little old ladies pushing them. I hope they're not all like that. It got the garden tilled, but we were sore for days afterward. In April we got two cubic yards of manure compost from GardenVille and added it to the soil. I hope that made a difference. We'll see next time I do a soil test.

Weather-wise we're still in drought conditions (though I still wonder if this may be "the new normal" instead). We got good rain in spring and the beginning of fall, but in late fall and early winter we had this really dry spell. It didn't rain at all in November, which hasn't happened in a hundred years. At least the summer wasn't as bad as 2011, so I actually got to harvest some things. Can't wait until I can get some really big rainwater tanks for the garden.

The stand-out crop for 2012 was peppers! I was overwhelmed by peppers! I had such lousy peppers before that I probably over-planted this time to make up for it, and then all the peppers I planted did great. The tomatoes did OK, but not as well as they did in 2010. This time one big problem was that I didn't cage them. Now I know how important it is to cage your tomatoes, because so many of them rotted by sitting on the ground. It was also disappointing that I planted so many Spear's Tennessee Green tomatoes and then they turned out to be one of the worst tomatoes I've ever tasted.

I tried again to plant fall tomatoes. I planted Arkansas Traveler and Cherokee Purple, and the tomatoes never had a chance to ripen before frost, even though that came late this year. I got a lot of green tomatoes to eat, but in a normal year where we get our first frost in November, I probably wouldn't have gotten that. I'm just not sure if fall tomatoes are worth it.

Transplanting the garlic from the old garden to the new just didn't work out. Even though they seemed to recover on top, I guess it was too much of a shock for them to be able to catch up and make good bulbs. I hope I get better garlic this year. I had such a good harvest in 2010, but haven't had anything like that since.

I tried to control the dreaded squash vine borers by putting row covers over the squash, and then taking it off when it looked like the squash were ready to flower. It didn't seem to help. I still didn't get to harvest one squash. Maybe I took the covers off too early. The squash were also on the end of the garden where they might have gotten too much shade, which retarded their growth. Maybe the varieties I planted were just not good for this climate. I also didn't get to harvest any melons, and didn't really get any good cucumbers. Again, this might be a variety problem. The luffa gourds took too long, and didn't ripen before our first freeze killed them.

2013 Garden New Year's Resolutions:

1. Getting a new shed - This might happen in 2013 or it might not, depending on whether my husband gets time to do it or not. Eventually we would like to tear down the garden shed we have now and build a new one. The current shed wasn't very well made to begin with and is now rotting in several places. It's also taking up a good chunk of the sunny spot in our yard, which could be growing more vegetables! Why waste precious sun on a shed? So the new shed will be built in the shade, and the garden will be expanded into the place where the shed is now. Once that's done, my garden will be doubled in size, and will end up about the same size as the garden was at the old house. The only thing we're having trouble deciding is whether to build the shed ourselves or to just get one of those sheds from Lowe's delivered. The former would be a lot more work, but probably yield a better product than the latter.

2. Try growing potatoes again - I grew potatoes in 2010, but the results were very disappointing. My yields were hardly more than what I used for seed. I think it was because of lack of nitrogen in the soil. According to Texas A&M, potatoes need a pretty rich soil. I don't know why Carol Deppe thinks potatoes are so foolproof to grow. She must have naturally good potato growing soil, up there in the Pacific Northwest. The Texas Hill Country is just not a good potato region, with our alkaline, rocky, clay soils. However, I'm not giving up yet, because I did grow good potatoes years ago when I gardened at a community garden in Austin. That soil had been worked on and improved for many years, but that lets me know it is possible! If I do manage to get a decent crop of potatoes, it will at least let me know I've improved my soil quite a bit. To give them the best start possible, I set aside a planting bed in fall specifically for potatoes, and planted a cover crop of Austrian Winter Peas to add nitrogen. I just turned them under yesterday, and that will give them some time to break down before I plant the potatoes. Variety choice is also important. I'm going with Red Pontiac and Purple Viking. Red Pontiac is a variety from Florida, so hopefully that means it does well in the South. Purple Viking is the variety I grew in 2010 that did the best, and it's just really cool looking. I've also seen in recommended in other places for Texas, so I'm giving it another chance.

I'm also trying again at potato seedlings. Last year I tried planting some of the "Purple Potato Seeds" I got as a surprise in a trade, but they didn't make it. I went ahead and planted the rest of the packet this year. I'm not going to put a huge amount of effort into them, but it would be neat if any of them made it and formed some tubers. Who knows? Maybe I could start a whole new potato variety adapted to this very unnatural potato climate.

3. Grow sweet potatoes from Sand Hill Preservation Center - In 2010 I got a good crop of sweet potatoes from the heirloom sweet potato sampler I got from Shumway's. I planted their babies in 2011, but that drought was too much even for sweet potatoes. This year I would like to try again, but I think this time I will order from Sand Hill instead of Shumway's. The main problem with Sand Hill is they're a little mom and pop business in Iowa, so I'll get my slips much later in the year than from Shumway's. The advantage of Sand Hill is that they're a little mom and pop business from Iowa, and they have a much bigger selection of sweet potato varieties than a major catalog like Shumway's, which only stocks the most common, popular varieties. Now that I have experience from 2010 under my belt, I feel confident enough to risk some "wild card" varieties from Sand Hill, in the hopes I'll get something really interesting. I'll probably re-order my favorites from 2010, and then also order a sampler pack where I don't get to choose the varieties. They have so many varieties that I just can't choose anyway. I'm really looking forward to it.

4. Try again with row covers on the squash - I still didn't get a good crop of squash last year, but I'm not giving up on squash yet. This year I'm going to try leaving the covers on longer, and I'm going to try putting the squash in a sunnier spot, further away from the oak trees. I'm also growing two varieties that might do better in this climate. Tatume is a C. pepo that's an old Mexican variety used as a summer squash. Most pepos are very susceptible to squash vine borers, but those are the modern, bush varieties that are most popular with modern gardeners. Tatume is a vining variety (the few descriptions I've been able to find of it even call it "aggressive"), which really helps with the borers, since those short stems of bush squash just get eaten right up. Also if it's from Mexico, I'm pretty sure they also have squash vine borers in Mexico, so maybe it's adapted a resistance to them.

The other variety I'm trying is Waltham Butternut, which is your standard butternut everyone grows. I've never grown a butternut before, but I've heard they're supposed to be resistant to borers because they have solid stems like cushaws. The only other C. moschata I've tried to grow before was Tromboncino, and it didn't make it, but I think that's because I tried to grow it up a fence. If you trellis you squash, they can't root at the nodes, which make them less hardy. From now on, all my squash is going to sprawl on the ground.

5. Grow more beans - Last year the Rattlesnake beans did well, though I mostly let them go to seed. I'm replanting that seed this year. I also let my Pinkeye Purple Hull cowpeas go to seed, since I had very few seeds to begin with, and this year I'm planting them again to see if I can get enough to eat this time. I'm also going to try growing Christmas Lima beans. Lima beans are supposed to be one of the most heat-tolerant species of bean. I'd also like to grow some bush green beans in fall. By fall, spring-planted pole beans are usually worn out from the summer, but I think I would have enough time to grow a quick crop of bush green beans in fall before it freezes, to have green beans in time for Thanksgiving.

6. Finish my beet trial - The beet trial I started in September is still going on, but they aren't doing very well because we had such a dry fall. We're getting some rain again, so I planted another beet trial plot to give them a second chance. It's good to have repeats anyway.

7. Do a paste tomato trial - I have five varieties of paste tomatoes in my collection now: Amish Paste, Opalka, Rio Grande, Hawkins Plum, and Big Month. I've started seeds for all five of them and am going to do a trial to see which one is the best paste tomato. And I'll get a whole lot of tomatoes for canning out of that too (I hope). I'm also growing Red Brandywine, which isn't really a paste tomato, but when I grew it last year it was so prolific, I wonder if it would beat paste tomatoes in a trial.

8. Be more choosy about varieties - Looking back over my post, one more thing stands out to me. Varieties matter. I've had a lot of failures in the last few years that were probably due to growing the wrong varieties. Trying to grow squash varieties that are especially susceptible to squash vine borers, for example, or tomato varieties that don't do well in hot climates. Part of it is me buying the wrong varieties. If a catalog says a variety is from the Northeast or Pacific Northwest, it's probably not going to do well here, and I really shouldn't bother, no matter how many garden books or shows or websites go on about how great it is. Also, I like to do seed trades online through GardenWeb, but a lot of times with those people send me seeds I didn't really want. Then I go ahead and plant them anyway, because I think since I have the seeds, I need to go ahead and plant them. I really should just re-trade them, or donate them to one of those nonprofits that take seed donations. Growing seeds that I know aren't going to do well before I even plant them is just a waste of time, space, water, and emotional energy. I'm still learning about which varieties do best for me (a process that takes years), but I can try to make success more likely.

That's all I can think of right now. I heard a while ago that they were expecting 2013 to be an El Nino year, which got my hopes up because that means an end to the drought, but then just a few days ago I heard that they changed their minds, and expect it to be another La Nina instead. That's too bad. I just don't want another year like 2011 for a long, long time.

The Blue Moon

Last night was the Blue Moon, since it was the second full moon in one month. I tried to find out why it's called the blue moon, but with no luck. Last night during our evening walk I looked up at the moon and thought of Neil Armstrong, who died only a few days ago. He was a true hero. I can't imagine how terrifying and thrilling it must have been to be the first human ever to walk on the moon.

Back here on Earth, I'm glad August is finally over and that means it must be cooling down soon! Alas, it's still been in the high 90's most days. We had a weak cold front earlier in the month that made it more like the low 90's and even high 80's for a few days, but it went away quickly.

This Labor Day weekend is also the 1 year anniversary of the horrible Bastrop wildfires. It's a good reminder that at least this summer was not nearly as bad as last summer. No big wildfires this time around.

Out in the garden, the peppers are the healthiest looking plants. They quit setting fruit, but will probably start up again and give a second crop in fall. Which means I'm going to end up with a lot of peppers!

A few of the fall tomatoes didn't make it, and the ones that did are still small. It's just an experiment, so I'm not getting my hopes up too much. If they get some fruit, that would be great, but they might not have time before frost, with how slowly they're growing out there in the heat.

As for the spring tomatoes that I pruned back, it looks like about half of them died, and half of them are starting to grow back, like this one here. I think they're probably more likely to give another crop before frost than the fall tomatoes, since the plants already bigger.

The one honeydew melon I had rotted before I picked it. What a disappointment! The rest of the vines aren't looking too good either. I think maybe this isn't such a good variety after all. Even if the fruit hadn't rotted, it did only set one fruit among four plants. It's San Juan from Native Seeds/SEARCH, and I didn't notice this when I bought it, but the catalog says it's a variety for the "high desert". I'm not completely sure what they mean by high desert vs. low desert varieties, but I think the low desert ones are more heat tolerant than the high desert ones. Maybe from now on I should stick to low desert varieties when I buy seeds from there. They recommend runner beans for the high desert, and I know they don't do well here at all. I grew Scarlet Runner once and got one pod.

This is my tangle of cucumber, luffa gourd, and mustang grape vines, and they aren't looking too good either. The luffa vines look the best, though they still haven't set any fruit. I expect cucumbers to die in summer anyway, so no surprise there. I'd like to find a more heat tolerant cucumber variety that could actually survive a Texas summer, but so far no luck. I am a little worried about the wild mustang grape vine that was already growing there on its own.. It seems to have some sort of fungal infection, with rusty spots on the leaves. I wanted that grape vine to cover the fence, so I hope it recovers.

I was sure the Rattlesnake pole beans were all dead, but it looks like a few are starting to grow back. I found a few still-green vines mixed in with all the dead ones. Maybe I'll get a second batch of beans before frost.

Yes, the leeks are still here. I'm really surprised they haven't bolted yet. I've left them in the garden to see if they'll produce bulbils that can be planted next year. Those are little mini-bulbs that grow out the sides of old leeks, and can be replanted to propagate leeks asexually. I ought to dig some up to see if they have any yet. If it works out, this might be a better way for me to propagate leeks in the garden than from seed.

The basil I planted in the summer is still hanging in there, though in this picture it's very wilted. It's growing slowly, but should pick up in fall, hopefully well enough to make some batches of pesto to put in the freezer. Basil is very heat tolerant as long as it gets enough water. It bolts when it gets very hot, but I just pinch the flowers off (except for the basils I'm growing for seed). Bolting doesn't seem to adversely affect the flavor of basil like it does for some other herbs.

Here's a picture of what I plan on becoming an herb garden this fall. We have a nice patio in the back of the house, and I thought it would be neat to plant herbs along the brick ledge. That way the trailing herbs like thyme and mint will cascade over the bricks, and once we get a table and chairs and start having dinner parties out there, people can brush up against the herbs surrounding them and smell the fragrance. That's the idea, anyway. There's already esparanza there and a couple of rose bushes, but still plenty of room for herbs.  I've been piling leaves and grass clippings up to start improving the soil and choking out the grass and weeds.  On the patio you can see three of my potted herbs that I'm going to plant in the ground. They've been in these pots for a long time, but now that I have my own place they're going in the ground. Herbs always seem to do better in the ground anyway. I'll probably plant these pretty soon. It's a bit too hot and humid out there right now to make me feel much like digging holes, but the first cooler day we have when I have time, they're going in!

And then there's my fall vegetables. I've got mustard greens, collard greens, arugula, broccoli raabe, kale, chard, parsley, dill, and cilantro waiting for their turn in the garden too. Most of them are still small and can stay in the pots a bit longer, but it won't be too much longer before it's time for them to go in the ground too.