Tag: Hopi Blue corn

Weekly Garden Update #20 – Tomatoes, Corn Silk, Beans & More

Tomatillo

In this week’s update, we have a lot of tomatoes ripening, but do we know the variety of each? It’s questionable. Our corn is starting to develop ears and silk. Along the same lines, we’re harvesting some beans, and there are a lot of blossoms on the other varieties. Finally, I’ll go over some general notes from the week, including pictures, and highlight this week’s Seed of the Week. Let’s dive in.

So Many Tomatoes

We have more than a dozen tomato plants, and the majority of them have fruit that is starting to ripen. Our paste tomatoes, which I originally thought were pear tomatoes, continue to grow and are now more than three inches long. Our actual pear tomatoes also have lots of fruit, and we harvested the first one on Saturday, immediately eating it. All of our pear and paste tomato plants have dozens of fruit on them. Then there are the Queen Aliquippa plants. These are the tallest tomato plants we have (more than three feet tall) and are growing lots of fruit. The problem we’re having is knowing when they’re ripe. Because they remain green when fully ripe, it’s not as obvious as red tomatoes. Thankfully, they develop a blushy red color on the bottom when they’re fully ripe, which will make it a bit easier to know when they’re ready.

That brings us to our Black Krim and Cherokee Purple tomatoes. These tomatoes look VERY similar to each other, growing to similar sizes when ripe and having similar colors and markings. Both are a deep red on the bottom with a dark blue/purple on the top. I think we bought two Cherokee Purple plants and four Black Krims, but it could be the other way around. The numbers could also be wrong. We kept the plant marker with the plants, but it’s currently buried under straw. If necessary, I’ll dig around to find it, but I’m hoping that we’ll be able to delineate between the two before that point.

Tomatoes
Black Krim or Cherokee Purple Tomatoes

Corn Silk Developing

Over the past week, our Butter & Sugar and Black Mexican-Sweet Iroquois sweet corn plants have grown to a point where they’re in tassel, with roughly half the plants now developing ears with silk showing. I think they’re still weeks away from being ready to be harvested, but they’re well on their way. The other variety, Hopi Blue, continues to grow and is close to five feet tall now. The three rows of Black Mexican-Sweet Iroquois that I planted a couple of weeks ago have germinated with nearly a 100 percent success rate. I’ll likely thin these seedlings as needed this week.

Corn
Corn Silk

Beans Are Finally Starting to Produce

We haven’t had the greatest success with growing beans this year. The late spring and overabundance of rain stunted their growth, and to this point, they’re still only about 18 inches tall. In the past, we’ve had bean plants reach 30 inches tall. That being said, we are starting to see some bean pods on the plants. We’ve been pulling Provider bush beans for about a week now, but only a few pods per plant. Although the pods are pretty small, they’re delicious eaten right out of the garden. Our Jamapa plants are also putting on pods, with at least one being five inches in length. This bean is a shelling variety, though, so we’re going to let it dry on the plant as much as possible before harvesting. Finally, we have the Kebarika beans. These can be harvested as snap beans or as shelling beans. Our plants have been flowering for about a week now, so the bean pods will be following.

Notes From the Garden

  • Last week, I weeded and thinned our carrot and beet bed. You may remember that we’ve had a lot of issues growing both this year; however, I’m refusing to give up. My hope is that by clearing the area around the plants and thinning them to only one root every four inches, they’ll be able to develop and be harvestable.
  • We now have four spaghetti squashes on our plant. The first two are about seven inches in length, the third one is now four inches in length but still green, and the newest one is still a baby with the blossom only recently falling off.
  • The mystery plant beside our spaghetti squash has started to put on fruit. After flowering, the fruit starts yellow and turns green.
  • We are beginning to become inundated with cucumbers. Our Boston Pickling cucumbers are rapidly growing. We’ve already harvested three, and there are at least a half-dozen more on the vine that will be ready in the next couple of days. Our burpless variety has produced two more full-size fruit, but we’ve had a pest getting to them. There have been little scrapes all over the fruit, and it’s the only variety with these, which is confusing. We’ve added some straw beneath the vines and fruit to help with any dampness problems, and I sprayed some insect killer on the plant.
  • Our tomatillos are coming on furiously. I understand why people say that you can quickly become overwhelmed by how many you’ll have. We have three plants, and each of them has more than two dozen husks.
  • The first White Scallop patty pan squash that we saw is now about four inches in diameter and two inches tall. Everything I’ve read has said that these will grow to six inches in diameter and three inches tall when fully ripe. They should be ready within a week.
Cucumbers
Damaged Cucumber
Paste Tomatoes
Paste Tomatoes
Tomatillo
Tomatillo
White Scallop
White Scallop

Seed of the Week

This week’s Seed of the Week is the White Scallop, mostly because it’s doing so well, and we’re close to harvesting our first one. The White Scallop is a patty pan summer squash that is rounder and flatter compared to a zucchini. It’s one of the oldest squash varieties and has been grown by Native Americans for hundreds of years. Baker Creek, which is where we bought the seeds, writes that these were first depicted by Europeans in 1591, so we have evidence of them being grown for at least 400 years. These are very easy to grow. The plants don’t vine out or sprawl, but instead grow vertically and stay compact. They’re supposed to be one of the best-tasting squashes. We’re very excited to eat these.

Up Next

We’ll harvest our first White Scallop squash this week. We’re also hoping to harvest more tomatoes, especially some of the larger varieties. We’ll also likely harvest more cucumbers and need to figure out how to preserve them. Happy gardening!

0

Weekly Garden Update #19 – Cucumbers, Eggplants, Starting More Corn & More

In this week’s update, we harvested and began eating from our garden. I’ll tell you what vegetables they were and how we ate them. We also started more corn for a late harvest and planted the last melons we’re growing this year. I’ll provide a general update on everything we’re growing as well. Finally, this edition of the Seed of the Week takes us to the American Southwest, where a variety of corn has been grown for over 800 years. Let’s dive in.

First Harvest

This week saw us achieve a goal we set at the start of the garden: Harvest something from our garden and eat it the same day. That included three cucumbers and two eggplants. Two of the cucumbers were from plants gifted to us by our neighbor, but one was a Boston Pickling that I started from seed, making it the first fruit harvested from this year’s garden that I started from seed. We ate the cucumbers raw by slicing them and eating them on the side with dinner. For the eggplants, Magz sliced them into coin shapes and roasted them in oil and seasoning. They were delicious. We’ve found that doing as little as possible with high-quality, fresh vegetables is the best thing for them. We have a lot more cucumbers coming on, and there are more eggplants that are close to being harvestable, so we’ll be eating a lot more of them moving forward.

Starting More Corn

We had some open areas of our garden beds where potatoes weren’t growing, which we think is the result of poor drainage and too much rain early on. In the open rows, we wanted to grow more of something that we’ve had great success with: corn. We still had some Hopi Blue and Sweet Mexican/Black Iroquois seeds left, but because the Hopi Blue corn takes a lot longer to reach maturity, we planted the rest of the Sweet Mexican/Black Iroquois seeds. All three varieties (the above two and Butter & Sugar) have done exceptionally well, and a late planting of corn could lead to us having sweet corn in September.

At the same time, we planted all the remaining melons and squashes that we’re growing this year. In a few more open spots, we dedicated two of them to the White Scallop Winter Squash, three of them to Ali Baba Watermelons, and four to the Noir de Carmes cantaloupes.

A General Update (With Pictures!)

  • Our tomatoes continue to put on fruit, with the Cherokee Blue, Black Krim, and Queen Aliquppa growing close to full size. Now, we just wait for them to ripen.
  • Our Cal Wonder pepper plants have quite a few fruit on them, but they haven’t reached full size or started to ripen yet. Our plants also haven’t grown to full height, which is weird. I read that peppers are one of the slowest-growing plants and require hot temperatures and full sun, which we’ve had lots of this summer. I’m still holding out hope for them.
  • Our melons, squash, and pumpkins are all doing well. We have spaghetti squash that are close to softball size and many cucumbers that are growing. Most of the other plants are producing blossoms.
  • The tomatillos have been growing their husks for more than a week now, with one of them larger than a golf ball. There are many husks starting and even more flowers coming on at the same time.
  • We are finally starting to see some progress with our beans. The first batch of Provider beans has a few beans on the plants, which is major progress, even if the pods are small. Our Kebarika and Jamapa plants have started to produce flowers.
Tomatillo
Bean blossom

Seed of the Week

Our Seed of the Week this time is the Hope Blue corn variety. It’s a very old type of corn that has been grown in Northern Arizona for over 800 years by the Hopi Native American tribe. This variety is a flint/flour type of corn and is milled down into cornmeal or flour. The Hopis use it to make a ceremonial type of bread called piki. But even though this variety is primarily used for flour, it can be eaten as sweet corn.

The kernels of Hopi Blue corn are dark blue, nearly black, and the stalks grow up to nine feet tall. We got our seeds from Fedco out of Maine, and on the listing, they quote one of their growers, who says that the corn is “crunchy, corny and wholesome.” We’ve had great success with our Hopi Blue seeds. They overcame torrential downpours within a week of being sown and have excelled. The stalks are currently taller than our fence (so about 4 1/2 feet) and are gorgeous. If you’re curious about growing different varieties of corn, give this one a try.

Up Next

This week, I’d love to see some of our tomatoes begin to ripen. Our cherry tomatoes are pretty much full size, so ripening is the next step. I also think we’ll harvest some of our beans. Beyond that, we’re enjoying how relaxing it is to watch our garden grow. Each day, something new happens or we can see measurable growth. For example, we had a cucumber grow multiple inches in one day. It’s unbelievable. I hope your garden is doing well. Happy gardening.

0

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑