Thursday, October 8, 2009

The accidental gardener

After a dismal finish to the spring/summer garden (Nothing grows with 45 days of 100+ weather!) my fall garden is looking pretty good. Last night we ate pattypan squash, jalapenos and okra from the new crop. Delish.

As a relative gardening newbie, I am still not confident enough to start anything from seed; the only exception being green beans. That seems to be the only thing I can just poke into the ground and expect success. For everything else, I buy transplants and hope that the head start will make up for my inexperience and any future neglect.

Our pigs do not have this lack of confidence.

We move the pigs around frequently to give them pasture to eat. This plus whey is almost their entire diet. ...though they do get occasional veggies and other treats from our garden or from some of the farmers at the market who have excess items on the brink of going unsalable. Yesterday I went out to identify all of the amazing things growing in their former pen. Those little buggers have green thumbs. Or more accurately, green butts, I suppose. Here is what I found:

Watermelon

Cow Peas or Purple Hull Peas

Tomatoes

Sunflowers

And an unknown plant that I hope you can help me ID.

I don't know if any of these things will come to harvest before it gets cold, but we will keep an eye on them all. It would be awesome to have wild field tomatoes.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

that last one looks like my tomatillo plants.

Katherine Seger Weber said...

So cool and funny!

Christian S. said...

Ok-- the last thing is either gooseberries or ground cherries. ...they look just like tomatillos as they grow, only smaller. We've had them grow wild before, but did not know what they were. We'll try them when they ripen. Stay tubed