This Time of year in the Garden

This time of year in the garden things are slow, but will be picking up soon.  This weekend, if, and that is a big "if," things dry up just a little bit, I will be planting all of my tomato seedlings into the garden rows.  Additionally, if things are dry enough, I will transplant all of my broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and cabbage seedlings as well.

We are still picking okra and some peppers everyday, along with some eggplant, but as soon as the heat lets up just a tad, the peppers' production will get better.  The sweet potato crop looks to be a bumper crop and we will be harvesting in another month, I figure.  Here is a colander of various bell peppers and okra, both the clemson spineless and burgundy varieties.  We have been eating LOTS of okra!

You can see some of the darned stink bugs on the peppers and okra.  They give us fits!

During the lull that the garden is in, I wanted to show you something we grow that you can't eat. Here is a trellis of luffa and birdhouse gourds:

As I pull back some of the large leaves so you can see the fruit, a brilliant ray of sun shines through. I have a bunch of seeds for both luffa gourds and bird house gourds.  If anyone is interested, I'll gladly share.  These things make copious amounts of seeds.

Here is a birdhouse gourd on the same trellis.  I liked the loooong neck of this one and thought it would make a nice bird house, but a marauding rat ate it before I could dry it.  I got vengeance on the rat and you can read about his demise HERE.  There is still time for other ones to mature for bird house making.

These luffas are about the right age to be converted into bath sponges.  They are about two feet long. If I get all the seedlings planted this weekend, I'll pick these and skin them so they can dry out. Luffas can actually be eaten when they are less than 4 inches long.  They are in the cucumber family.  I cannot vouch for how they taste as I've never tried them.  I will put that on my list of things to do!

Here is another bird house gourd.  Although it doesn't have the long, skinny neck like the other one did, it will make a fine bird house.

It is kind of boring in the garden right now due to being between seasons and with all the rain.  That will be changing soon and I look forward to it.

As Green as a Gourd

I've heard the idiom, "As Green as a Gourd" many times growing up.  It is always used to describe something that is not ripe or not ready for use.  It just so happens in this case the saying is literal.  My gourds are green, unripe and not ready for use. Somehow I acquired a small packet of birdhouse gourd seeds. Now that I think about it, I think it was at a seed swap at a sustainable agriculture conference I attended.

In the very last row of the garden, I planted a few seeds thinking that it might be neat to grow some birdhouse gourds, dry them and make birdhouses to hang from the trees.  I'm normally all about growing things that are edible, but I made an exception!  I built a crude trellis for the vines to grow on and looking back, I can now see that I highly underestimated the vigor with which birdhouse gourd vines grow. The vines promptly weighed down the trellis and collapsed it and now I'm doing everything I can do to keep it from using the okra plants as a trellis.  It has started to grow on the perimeter fence and the cows and goats don't even eat the vine.

It's like a jungle!

They do make beautiful flowers, though, that open in the morning sun and brighten the back side of the garden.  My yellow squash and zucchini squash have been attacked by some green worms that have really put a dent in our squash harvest, but the worms have left the gourd foliage alone.  Wow, the plant doesn't seem to have predators.

Yellow blooms of the birdhouse gourd

Now underneath the collapsed trellis, you can get a look at one of the actual 'birdhouses.'  There are several in that jungle along with one that has rotted on the ground.  I will try to get out there tomorrow after church and see what I can do to lift these off the ground so that they don't rot.  We have had a lot of rain, so they are in danger of rotting, if I delay doing anything about it.

One of the 'birdhouses'

According to what I've read, you are to leave them growing until the vine turns brown.  Then you hang them and allow them to dry.  Once you can shake the gourd and hear all the seeds shaking inside, you can drill a hole in it and make your birdhouse.  The vines are very far from turning brown and in fact are the healthiest thing in my garden right now.  

Next year, I'll be better prepared and will build a sturdier trellis, but for now I'll try to do something to salvage the green gourds I have.  If I'm successful, it will be a neat project to try my hand at making some birdhouses out of them.  As you can see they have some interesting shapes.  Right now I'll wait as my gourds are still green (as a gourd).