end of summer – In the Vintage Kitchen: Where History Comes To Eat

A visit from the deer we call Juna in June.

Before summer ends officially on September 23rd, I didn’t want the season to go by without a garden update on how the seedlings fared once they left the greenhouse in spring. Given the late date, this is sort of like a summer wrap-up post told mostly in images – a view of our New England garden from June to mid-September. Don’t miss the real garden surprise (visitor) all the way at the end!

Heirloom Flower: The Watchman Hollyhock grown from seed started last year.

The Watchman Hollyhock starts out with a bloom as black as night but slowly turns a deep purple the longer it says on the stalk.

From black to eggplant to deep plums and bright purples – the hollyhock came to symbolize the enture garden as it grew and changed over the summer months.

Brussels Sprouts with a companion planting of dill and volunteer tomatoes – stowaways from last year’s crop.

OUR 2023 BEST GROWERS

This year, we were most successful in growing the following list from seed. Everything here but the pole beans, zucchini, and peas were started in the greenhouse in winter or early spring. The rest were started from seeds sown directly in the raised beds. Further down in the post, you’ll find the list of flowers and vegetables that we struggled with along with the various reasons. Hopefully, other New England gardeners will be able to share their insights as to why or what may have caused the challenges. But for now, here is our list of winners this year…

Tomatoes (Brandywine, Sungold Cherry, Sweetie Pole Cherry and Pineapple)
Cucumbers (Marketmore)
Collard Greens (Georgia Southern)
Hot Peppers: Lemon Jalapenos, Santaka Chile, and Padron Peppers
Rapini
Pole Beans (Blue Lake)
Flowers: Foxglove, Snapdragons, Hollyhocks, Mexican Sunflowers, French Marigolds, Zinnia, Geraniums
Mint
Lettuce (Rouge D’Hiver, Farmers Market Blend, Arugula, Salad Bowl Blend)
Cascadia Peas
Mexican Sunflowers
Jarrahdale Pumpkins
Black Beauty Zucchini (partially successful, more on that further on in the post).
Cucamelons

The cucamelons were one of our most enthusiastic growers this year. If you are unfamiliar with these little charmers, they are native to Mexico and look like miniature watermelons but taste like lemony cucumbers.

Our cucamelon plant literally vined its way to double in size in less than a month. At mid-September, it’s now over 9′ feet tall and still climbing. Its current destination is the upper echelons of the crab apple tree above it.

Cucamelon on the vine. They dangle like plump pearl earrings when they are ready to be picked.

Cucamelons are tiny (about 1 inch in length) but full of fresh summer flavor.

We loved the cucamelons so much that they inspired a new 1750 House summer cocktail – the Cucamelon Gin and Tonic.

So much new information has been learned about how to proceed this fall. What worked, what didn’t, what we can improve on and what we can forget, what we can nurture now and what we can save for another day or another year. A lot of surprises ensued. What worked great last year didn’t necessarily work as well this year. One thing that drastically improved though was the soil (thanks to a year of composting and leaf mold, and we didn’t overwater thanks to the miracle moisture meter reader. The garden was definitely much more lush and vibrant and full this year.

One of the surprises of the season were the Black-Eyed Susan vines. We almost gave up on these guys completely since they grew so slowly for so long. We figured they weren’t happy in the bed or the inground mound where we planted them. It took five months from seed to first flower (and our forgetting about them), but once they got to the bloom stage they really took off and haven’t stopped since. Now they are happily climbing all over the sides of the rock-walled raised beds and are producing lots of pretty little flowers. I learned from our local nursery, that they have the best luck propagating these flowers from clippings, so we are going to try that method this fall.

Tomatoes and pole beans climbing their way to the sky. This top rung of the trellis is 9″feet tall. We have to get on a ladder to pick the top tier!

The moonflower vines were a placeholder and an experiment to see if we liked a living wall on one part of the back of 1750 House. As it turns out we do! Next year, that wall will be covered in English ivy, which has already been planted at the base of the moonflowers. The moonflower seedlings were purchased from our local nursery, but we will definitely grow them again somewhere else in the garden next spring, this time from seed. They are fast growers and produce big beautiful white flowers, the size of your hand.

Our Biggest 2023 Garden Challenge: SLUGS

Oh the slugs. They slithered, they slimed, they feasted their way through the broccoli patch, the herb garden, the marigolds, the nasturtiums, the lettuce, the pepper plants (leaves only), the colleus and the cosmos. We tried all sorts of ways to deter them – sand barriers, chili powder sprinklings, tin foil, beer traps, nightly hand-picking.

We were most successful with the beer traps – sinking a small container in the garden soil filled with about 1/4 cup of beer. The beer attracts them to take a swim and then they depart this life in one big vat of boozy revelry. The other thing that worked well was handpicking (we relocated all the slugs to the woods each evening to carry on life there), but this was a never-ending task – every single one we picked was replaced with a new slug the next night. Plus, this hand-picking was a pretty unappealing and slimy exercise. Our buckets each night were filled with at least 30-40 slugs. Interestingly, they left all other plants in the garden alone, which is why we had such great success with everything else. Next year, we are going to try growing all of these feast-worthy plants in the greenhouse over the summer to hopefully keep them slug-proof.

Impromptu bouquet – snapdragons and phlox

First summer gathering basket: nasturtiums, zucchini, cucamelons, mint, Mandeville flowers, cherry tomatoes, pineapple tomatoes, Santaka chile peppers

Things That Didn’t Grow Well in the Garden This Year…

Zucchini (Black Beauty) – while they did grow big and lovely and flowered every day pretty much throughout the summer, two plants only produced three zucchini. Three was a definite improvement from last year’s crop which was zero, so we are moving in the right direction but this was also the second year they eventually became overcome by powdery mildew, even though we tried two different treatments: baking soda and neem oil
French Melons (powdery mildew victim #2)
All the herbs – parsley, basil, chives, sage, and thyme (The work of the mighty slugs! The only herb they left alone was the rosemary).
Cosmos – our second year in a row trying to grow these. (They produce a few flowers but then the plants dry up and die off)
Bush Beans – we rotated them to a different bed this year underneath the tomato plants and they did not like it. Maybe it was not enough sun for them once the tomatoes really started growing.
Broccoli (DiCiceo) – we harvested one broccoli head harvest before the slugs arrived for the season
Straw mulch – The intention was to use this as mulch to help with the slug situation but, as you can see from the list above, it had no effect and turned out to look really messy in the garden. Aesthetically it wasn’t our favorite.
Sunflowers – also our second year trying to grow these. Starting them in the greenhouse this year helped but they were weak and spindly and mostly fell over before July started.

Back to happier stories…

Our first big pineapple tomato weighing in at 1.7lbs

The big goal for 2023 was to create a pollinator-friendly garden. Success!

Pole beans and cucumbers joined the weekly gathering basket in August.

This year, the tomato’s best friend was the pole bean. Both still growing strong, they’ve become their own support system at the top tier keeping everything nice and tidy all on their own.

Impromptu bouquet: mint, Mandevilla, marigolds, Mexican sunflowers, snapdragons

The first time the gathering basket weighed over 4 lbs with all its produce was the first of September.

One nasturtium plant managed to outsmart the slugs. How? We aren’t exactly sure, but for some reason, they left this one alone.

All things considered, this year’s garden was definitely an improvement upon last year’s just as far as soil health, pollination count and bird and frog activity. Last year we had more voles and chipmunks but this year we had more slugs. Last year we had more heat but this year more humidity. Last year we had barely any flowers, and this year, we enjoyed ample bouquets all summer long. That’s the joy of gardening though I think. It’s always changing. Always engaging us.

Although the temperatures are still in the 80s, and there are still a couple weeks of summer left to go, Autumn is definitely beginning to cast her spell over the garden. Our first pumpkin just formed, the paradise apples are falling and our first sighting of a Spotted Orbweaver joined us overhead on the patio chandelier one night at dinner. Fall is coming.

The pumpkin vines are making “S” curves all over the sideyard.

Spiders, slugs, birds, bees, and Juna aren’t the only things that came to visit the garden this summer. Recently, we installed an outdoor trail camera to see what sort of wildlife came to visit in the night. Our most frequent sightings so far have been the wild rabbits (hop over to Instagram to see our favorite little bunnies zooming around the yard), along with the occasional raccoon, and opossum, two coyotes and a pine marten not to mention a bevy of early morning birds and squirrels. But our most dramatic guest so far is this guy…

A bobcat! He passed right through the yard with no incidents and thank goodness no bunnies. It’s pretty magical that such an extensive amount of wildlife lives while we sleep, carries on while we dream, travels about while we stay put for hours on end. We can’t wait to see what shows up this winter.

Last, but not least in this highlight of summer pos , we have two exciting sneak peeks of two very big 1750 House outdoor projects about to be unveiled soon…

We can’t wait to share them with you! Stay tuned!

In the meantime, cheers to summer 2023, to all we learned and all we reveled in, and to Lady Nature for continuing to be our biggest mentor and our guide. We’d love to hear how your gardening adventures fared this year. Please tell us all about it in the comments section. It’s so important to share the highs and lows, regardless of what part of the world we live in so that we can all learn together. The more gardening joy the better.

Eight. That’s how many days there are to go. It’s almost here! Then one thing turns into another. We end and we begin. We change and we grow. This year, the day falls on a Monday. The exact date – September 23rd. Then it’s official. The first day of Autumn arrives. How exciting! To celebrate the season, I have a fun new gardening project for all you do-it-yourself-ers out there who like to keep your hands busy in the dirt in the off-season when summer turns to fall and fall turns to winter and the outdoor garden is at rest. It doesn’t require much effort, time or expense but it does call for a little imagination. It will last forever if you want it to and it will make you look at things in your cupboards in a whole new way. Most importantly, it gives new purpose to old items that sometimes get left behind on a shelf or forgotten about in storage.

I’m so excited to introduce the succulent set…

…real plants growing out of old china serving pieces. If you’ve inherited pieces of your family’s china and are not quite sure what to do with them or how to incorporate them into your daily life, or if you just want a planter with a little bit of one-of a-kind personality then designating a vintage sugar bowl or a creamer or a serving dish as your new garden vessel is a fun way to go. Let’s look…

This Japanese Majolica creamer is from the 1940’s. Due to some cracks on the bottom it no longer holds water (or cream!) so it makes an ideal container for varieties of succulents that prefer well draining soil. All it needs is a little water once a week and it’s ready to grow. Keep it in the sink for a few minutes and the water drips out through the cracks, then it is good to go until its next watering seven days later.

Vintage sugar bowls like this one above, made in England, fit perfectly into shelves or small spaces. Your very own unexpected mini garden greenspace place!

This vintage coffeepot from the 1940s lost its lid somewhere along its 75 years of travels. That makes it no longer the most suitable vessel for hot coffee but it certainly makes a pretty container for eye-catching flower power in the form of a petal shaped succulent.

With their long shape and roomy width, gravy boats make great table centerpieces. They can usually accommodate more than a couple of mini plants depending on size. For wedding reception decorations, they offer the symbolism and sentimentality of “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.”

Ideal plants for this type of pairing project, many succulents don’t require a lot of watering and come in a variety of sizes, colors and shapes. As they grow, the plants can be transferred to larger and larger containers like this one – a two-handled vegetable dish from Salem Pottery’s Commodore pattern which debuted in the 1940’s. Because of its larger size it can accommodate up to seven 2.5″ inch succulents or just a few bigger individuals that have outgrown their smaller holders…

Authentic crazing, staining and chippy details add interesting, quirky personality to your space that you can’t find in modern day planters. They also easily fit on window sills, ledges, mantles and counter top nooks. Choose one that matches your interior aesthetic, or the colors of your kitchen, or reminds you of a good memory and you’ll instantly add a bit of happy energy to your space. Old dishes love to remain useful helpers. Matching the old with the new creates balance and harmony and reminds us that imperfections are the stuff of life. Beautiful! This antique gravy boat below is over 100 years old but still looks as fresh and pretty as ever thanks to its classic shape.

The trio below have no cracks to worry about so they are ideal holders for succulents and cactus that prefer to be spritzed with water, rather than doused, every now and again. Add some some pea gravel to the bottom of each vessel before adding dirt and certain succulents will be happy with just a tiny bit of water every now and again.

Another possibility is to gather them all up and make a hanging wall display with the help of a crate…

That makes an instant collection and an engaging garden that you can cultivate and tend to all year round. Usually all that is required for succulents is bright natural light, a sunny alcove or close proximity to a window.

With all their color choices which range from light gray to soft pink, bright green to dusty blue there is great fun in matching plant to planter and then watching them grow and sprout new additions.

If you need a vintage serving piece to start your garden you can find the ones above in the garden section of the shop. Succulents are available at most garden centers, nurseries, farmers markets or sometimes even the floral section of the grocery store. I recommend getting your planter first, then your succulent second, so that you can determine the appropriate drainage condition, color and shape for plant and planter.

Hope this brings a little fun your way on our second to last Sunday of summer. Cheers to new gardens, old dishes and the joy they both provide:)