2014 Spiral Garden Garlic Onion Pea Corn Squash Cuke Beet

[applestar]

I've decided that the rambling monster squash with huge leaves are probably Seminole rather than Thai Kang Kob. Since the corn has more or less finished and presumably stopped taking up nutrients, these vines have correspondingly accelerated in growth.

I thought I have been keeping them from climbing the corn stalks, but today, I noticed this.

...I have no idea HOW I missed this vine making it's way up the corn, but it has already reached the top of these corn

[applestar]

I pulled the cucumbers in the Kitchen Garden last week. They were just getting too hard hit by mildew, which was affecting the fruit quality, and they'd produced enough anyway. I took down all the vines and pulled them out when the ground was dry and hard so the roots broke off nearly at the surface with hardly any soil disturbance.

Faced with a pile of diseased vines, I normally would have put them in a large garbage bag, but this time I was too tired to even think about stuffing them all in the bag, let alone dragging it around the house to the trash bin in the driveway, so I did something I never did before -- stuffed them all in the plastic compost bin in the middle of the Kitchen Garden. Last two deposits of kitchen scraps included lobster remains, so I mixed the cuke vines in with those, then brought out a paper grocery bag of saved toilet paper tubes to mix in. Added a 5 gal bucket of dry leaves from the wind drift pile by the back fence.

Since then, I have been harvesting dry and fresh shelling beans so today, I dumped in a paper grocery bag full of shelled bean pods with the rest of the kitchen scraps and just used the plunging compost aerator to poke a bunch of holes.

A little while later, I had to lean by the compost bin and put my hand down on the lid to support myself -- it was HOT ! So hot to the touch that I involuntarily jerked my hand back.

...I hope it runs hot for a couple of days. That would help me feel better about the diseased vines.

[applestar]

Couple of SVB resistant squash from the center of the Spiral Garden:

Since Thai Kang Kob is supposed to be flat, ribbed, and warty, I guess this latest green one isn't it either, though it doesn't look exactly like Seminole....

I made myself open the SVB protection tunnel and see what's going on in there, and there was a female Kakai!

So I hand pollinated it. Counting the green fruit developing, there are/will be two left in the tunnel. This one may turn out to be the last of the lot.

[applestar]

BUMMER! I should have taken a BEFORE picture before removing the dried corn stalks. But done is done. I wanted to open up and let more sunlight through when there IS direct sun, since this area is fast becoming swallowed up by the lengthening house shadow,

Here's an update with the window view of the Spiral Garden:

[applestar]

Update on these two squashes.

Couple of SVB resistant squash from the center of the Spiral Garden:

Since Thai Kang Kob is supposed to be flat, ribbed, and warty, I guess this latest green one isn't it either, though it doesn't look exactly like Seminole....

The Seminole is just about ready to harvest. I'm waiting for the stem to dry up (unless heavy rain pass through but we seem to be in the drought before the fall rains -- good for ripening and maturing).

The green one has started developing the requisite pleats and warty skin to qualify for a Thai Pumpkin. Still doesn't match the few photos I've been able to locate on the internet for Thai Kang Kob except one or two, but I won't quibble.

[applestar]

Just HAD to show how much that Thai Kang Kob squash / Thai pumpkin has changed:

[applestar]

I harvested the TKK today since there' s a good chance we will get frost by morning.

...there's one more softball sized in the garden but I'm going to chance leaving it out.

[applestar]

I moved the compost bin from the Kitchen Garden to the Sunflower & House for the winter

DD raked up the Green Ash leaves which are the first to fall and bagged them as well as filling the bin and spreading them around the garden paths.

[applestar]

Fore some reason, my parents' garden seem to have been spared from the SVB's and they have been harvesting these squash which I believe are Uncle Davids's Dakota Dessert Squash -- C. maxima type which are susceptible to SVB's.

I picked up three of these squash today, just sitting on the ground with their stems dried out.

It's rather funny (especially if you re-read all the effort that went into growing MY squash in MY garden.... ) because they completely neglected their garden and out of all the seedlings and seeds of various crops I planted for them, the squash and Matt's Wild Cherry were the only ones to survive, and the squash essentially took over their entire garden with the squash vines and cherry tomato vines competing to climb the surrounding fence. There is even a squash vine that escaped the vegetable garden, grew through the other half which is supposed to be the flower garden, OVER THE FENCE AT THE OTHER END and about 10 feet beyond.... There is a squash growing on the end of it under a shrub.

There are SIX more still green and growing squash of various sizes in their garden (including the errant escapee) that I believe are Seminole pumpkins. I put them all on brick risers, off the ground.

[applestar]

These are probably the last harvest from the outside garden this season -- maybe a few more carrots and green onions, ...maybe some leeks... before the forecasted temperature plummet to 25°F arrives on Tuesday.

(Sunchokes from the Front Yard Edible Landscaping, and ....Beans, beans, and more beans! LOL)

[applestar]

Those frosted purple Red Russian Kale are very sweet

[applestar]

One last show of the pile of squash in the kitchen (with the surrounding mess cropped out )

We've been eating them since late summer, and will be enjoying these as well

[KitchenGardener]

Now this is my idea of great, absorbing reading - like a good bedtime story! Bowing down before the amazing Applestar! So impressed and love your pictorial narrative. I want to play in your garden. I'd be curious to know how you've changed it/what you've learned in the intervening years and whether you've conquered the SVB Moths? We don't get them here, but we get other yucky and unwelcome insects...