Five Things Friday

The five little things that made my week…

1. A harvest of Mexican Sour Gherkin cucumbers. Sometimes I’ll trick friends into trying one by saying it’s a mini watermelon.

2. These Yellow Wonder alpine strawberries are very happy in their new strawberry pot.

3. Love the fuchsia flowers on the other strawberry plant. (These berries will become red.)

4. My Blue Filius pepper plant is nearly toppling over with peppers! For such a compact container plant (no more than 8 inches wide and 5 inches tall), I can barely keep up with picking them, eating them, gifting them, and drying them. (Here they are just a few months ago.)

5. Deep in a crazy cabbage bed that I let overwinter, overspring and even oversummer (and will soon clean out, finally), I found a baby cabbage among all the dead leaves!

five things

July 25, 2014

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Cassidy

I cannot seem to get our Mexican sour gherkin seeds to germinate. 🙁 Any tips on helping these cuties sprout?
- Linda Ly
  
  Warm soil is my only suggestion. Mine usually germinate within a week. (I actually haven’t planted any for a few years, as they’ve reseeded and volunteered in my garden every season.) As the seeds are so tiny, sow them close to the surface and make sure to keep them moist.
Andrea @Little Big Harvest

We grew Mexican sour gherkins for the first time this year, and I just noticed today that all the tiny yellow blossoms are becoming mini-cukes! I’m so excited!
- Linda Ly
  
  It never fails to amaze me how those tiny flowers turn into cukes!
Lisa

Those did look exactly like little watermelons! 🙂
April Mae

Your garden is an inspiration. I just started gardening this year and my tomatoes, zucs and crane melons have grown enormous–yay!! Anyway, are the sanditas good raw on salads? Also, have you grown fennel? I want to know if fennel is tricky or not?
- Linda Ly
  
  Yes, that’s how I usually eat them. As for fennel, I grew a patch this year and it did well — no problems with pests. I treated it like any other vegetable in my garden. (I grew the bulbing variety.) There’s a belief that fennel may have an allelopathic effect on neighboring crops, but since I grew them in a separate bed, I can’t say whether it’s true or not.
MaoMaoKitty

What a wonderfully diverse harvest! You’ve inspired me to try some new seeds next year. This year I grew the Chinese Red Noodle Beans and it’s such a crazy looking plant. And a very abundant crop!

What do those itty bitty cucs taste like?!
- Linda Ly
  
  They taste like a slightly tart cucumber. I love them as a wandering-the-garden sort of snack!
Elizabeth Dodge

How do you keep the critters from eating the strawberries?
- Linda Ly
  
  All of our strawberries grow in pots or boxes near the house (none out in the vegetable garden, where most of the critters roam). We also have lots of fruit trees, which seem to interest them more.