Garden goodness

Gardeners who planted backyard plots with visions of a homegrown garden bounty might be a bit disappointed this year. It seems the spring and summer rains may have fed the weeds but not much else.
Certainly not tomatoes, according to The Garden Patch’s Susan Bianchi. When the soil has to soak up as much rain as we’ve had in Orange County lately, Bianchi said watermelons become mushy, tomatoes split on the vine before they even begin to ripen and peppers just don’t do anything. And of course there’s the blossom end rot. “That’s a big problem with this weather,“ Bianchi said.
On this day, customer Gerilee Hundt is trying to find potted pepper plants to replace the ones she planted earlier. They just refused to grow, she said.
“Everything I planted is still alive, but it’s not growing,“ Hundt explained.
“It needs food-we were just discussing that,“ Bianchi said, waving her watering wand over row after row of petite potted peppers. “Peppers like lime,“ she said. “Calcium nitrate and potassium will help your blossom end rot.“
Mother Nature’s April showers, and then the ones in May and then those in June can wash away the nutrients vegetable plants need to thrive, according to Bianchi. When the weather’s wet like it’s been around here lately, planted squash and cucumbers, tomatoes and beans need a little extra nourishment.
Hundt said she’s got big plans for the peppers she’ll pick today. She’s collecting a cardboard tray’s worth of the varieties Bianchi recommends.
“The Lady Bells are good. And the Alliance,“ she said. “The one you want to stay away from is the Cal Wonder.“
(That California Wonder is high maintenance-a bit of a diva among vegetables).
Hundt’s determined to have good old-fashioned, home grown produce of her own this year, she said. She’s a transplant herself, from Chicago. And now, settled in Orange County and fully acclimated to rural life, she’s ready and prepared for an abundant crop of her own vegetables. She’s got raised beds installed and made up for when she brings today’s baby vegetable plants home. And thanks to Bianchi’s advice, Hundt has a nutrition plan for them, too.
But it’s not all disappointing, unproductive produce this year. In fact, there are plenty of gardeners out there with more than they can handle. Some spread their embarrassment of vegetable riches around the neighborhood, leaving bundles of zucchini and green beans at their neighbors’ doorsteps anonymously.
Others are like Aesop’s ants, preserving, pureeing, reducing and freezing their harvest for leaner days.
“I do a lot of canning,“ Bianchi explained. “That is the old-fashioned tried and true and that’s what I like to do.“
That’s what Juanita Coates Garnett likes to do, too. Garnett’s got an acre or so of good-growing garden near Gordonsville. This year, the regular and plentiful rain spoiled much of what she planted. But not all of it.
She’s got a bumper crop of green beans, and she’s already busy slicing, boiling and sealing, she said.
“I’ve put up close to 50 quarts,“ she said proudly. And she’s only just started.
Cucumbers haven’t done well, but from that scant haul, she did manage to grow one about the size of a baseball bat. The squash came up well, she said, and she’s been busy making squash pickles. There are still 30 pints of dill pickles left over from last year, so this year’s pickles will be sweet.
Even with all those quart jars full of beans and pickles socked away in the pantry, in Garnett’s house they’ll all get used. Garnett points to her belly with an elfin grin and admits that by the time her three brothers, her husband, a nephew and she have cleaned their plates at dinner for a year, all those home canned, home grown vegetables will be accounted for.
She learned to garden from her father, and to can and preserve what she grew from her mother and her grandmother, who boiled the harvest’s heaps of tomatoes and beans in huge pots of water on an old wood-burning stove.
It’s easier now, she said gratefully. But even with the modern convenience of an electric stove, she’d rather be out in the garden plucking a red tomato off the vine with one hand, a salt shaker in the other as she moves along the rows. And once the sun sets, she’d rather sit on the porch with friends and family swapping stories and snapping heaping bowl after bowl of beans.