This Year's Squash - Bu Yılın Kabakları

This will be mostly a photo entry to show what my squash are up to so far.

Bu kayıt, bu yıl ektiğim değişik balkabağı cinslerinin ilerlemesini göstermek için çoğunlukla fotoğraftan ibaret olacak...

The most unusual of the squashes this year is Triamble, an Australian C. maxima variety. Appropriately, I only have three fruit set but one is quite large. This is the medium-sized one.

Bu yılki kabakların en olağanüstüsü, Triamble adlı, Avustralya menşeli "üçgen" bir C. maxima cinsidir. Sadece üç tane oluşuyor fakat bir tanesi bayağı büyük.



Acorn squash are an old favorite of mine, my mom would always half them and bake them with butter and some orange juice. I've heard "Table Queen" is much better than the supermarket types, so I'm trying it.

Amerika'da eski bir favori olan Acorn (Palamut) kabaklarını ben de çok seviyorum. Annem yarıya kesip içlerine tereyağ ve biraz porakal suyu doldurup, fırında pişiriyordu. Birçok alt cinsi var, çok sebze gibi "Table Queen" ise süpermarketlerde bulunan cinsten kat kat daha iyiymiş, o yüzden onu ektim.



It's still setting new fruits despite the heat and the fact that many of the male flowers emerging now seem to have very little pollen. You can see this autumn's crop of borage seedlings already coming along around it...hard to believe they'll turn into meter-high hulks if I let them!

Sıcklak ve şimdi çıkan erkek çiçeklerin çok az polen üretmesine karşın hâlâ yeni meyveler oluşturuyor. Etrafindaki küçük yeşil yapraklar, bırakırsam ilkbahara kadar bir metreye ulaşacağını zor inandığım hodan bitkilerine ait...



It's also set several double fruits, which developed from two flowers emerging from a common ovary.

Hem de, tek bir tohumluktan çıkan iki çiçekten oluşan birçok çift meyve de oluşuyor. Bunları süpermarkette bulmayız!



Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck, a Butternut ancestor, is quite productive. Some of them seem to have an overly large seed cavity and thin neck, which makes me wonder about the purity of the seed. Time will tell. When taking the photos, I found one that had somehow become separated from the vine. It's still quite soft but I think it will be edible as a summer squash.

Migros gibi süpermarketlerde zaman zaman bulundurulan Butternut kabaklarının bir atası olan Pennsylavania Dutch Crookneck, çok üretken. Fakat bazılarının tohum kısmının çok büyük, "boyun"larının da nispetten küçük olması, aldığım tohumun saflığını düşündürüyor. Zaman gösterecek işte.



Fotoğrafları çekerken koçanından kopmuş bir tane buldum. Hâlâ olmamış tabii, belki yeşil kabak olarak kullanabileceğim.



The Futtsus don't seem to be overly productive this year, probably because they aren't getting as much sun as they should. They stand out from the rest with their gray dusty appearance.

Futtsu'lar bu yıl çok üretmiyor, büyük ihtimalle nispetten az güneş gördükleri için. Yine de birkaç tane oluşuyor. Gri tozlu görünüşüyle diğerlerden hemen ayırt ediliyor.



The Thai Bungkan squash is also a first this year. It's set lots of fruit but now that the weather has really warmed up (this is not news to the good people of Istanbul....), it's not setting any more.

Tayland'dan gelen Bungkan cinsini ilk kez deniyorum. Şimdiye kadar çok meyve tutmuş, hava artık iyice ısınmışken (İstanbullulara haber değil...). tutmuyor.



The semi-wild Seminole was late in setting fruit, but it finally started! Since it originates in Florida, it seems to like the heat. This one is hanging about 4 meters high; the plant has climbed up into a dead apricot tree and through the ivy covering a tall retaining wall.

Florida'dan kaynaklandığı ve dolayısıyla sıcaklıkta son derece mutlu olan yarı-yabani Seminoli kabağı, meyvelerini geç oluşturmaya başladı fakat başlamış işte. Tırmanıyor bunlar! Bu meyve, bitkinin içine girdiği sarmaşıkta 4 metre yükseklikte süs gibi asılıyor.



There were also two plants that I did not plant! I'm not sure where they came from, but they're almost certainly a maxima, and growing a large round ribbed fruits that look suspiciously like the local Adapazarı type, but the leaves aren't nearly so large. It could be Uşak; we did have seed around but it came up in a place where I wouldn't have considered planting squash! We have a squash fairy it seems!

Hem de hiç ekmediğim iki tane var! Nereden geldiğinden emin değilim fakat bir maxima cinsi hemen hemen kesin. Büyük tırtıllı meyveleri, yerel Adapazarı kabaklarına çok benziyor fakat yaprakları çok büyük değil. Uşak kabağı mı acaba? Onun tohumu vardı fakat kabak ekmeyi aklımdan bile geçirmeyeceğim bir yerde çıktılar! Bahçemizde bir kabak perisi mi var?

I Am the Groundhog

I finally got a good day of gardening in today! Since my last post, I've been leading a groundhog-like existence, vegetating in the house, trying to get back in shape musically and making (and eating) lots of kimchi. Which is better than sitting around eating cheesecake in the long run, but still the steadily greening view below kept reminding me that there was a lot to do before I could start planting!

And we still have March to get through... March is fickle; in Turkish there's a saying about March:

Kapıdan baktıran, kazma kürek yaktıran ay

The month that has you looking out the door, and burning your picks and shovels.

...the jist being that the warm weather encourages you to go out, but it could just as easily be wintery cold that has you burning whatever is left because your winter fuel has run out! And since you never know what's coming, it's best not to look out on the weed-filled expanse and say "I'll do it tomorrow..."

The snow was not the last of the things keeping me out of the garden. It was followed by several weeks of non-freezing but consistently wet weather -- I think three days was the most we had without rain at any given point. I did take advantage of that three-day spell to get the worst of the weeds out of the vegetable garden, and as the soil was marginally workable, I managed to get half of my cover crop of fava beans planted. I'd wanted to do that as soon as I got back from Seattle in November but well, it was late November, and winter had kicked in. Now I have a dense growth of favas an inch high covering half the garden. I'll leave a couple rows to fruit as I love fresh fava beans, but the rest will get dug into the soil that will support this year's expanse of squash, tatsoi, garlic chives, rainbow chard, amaranth and sunflowers. Oh, and big Korean radishes!

Today was devoted to other pursuits - I weeded my neighbors' garden. Now before you think "what a good neighbor, I wish he lived next to my garden," I should note that I weeded only very selectively, and with a clear ulterior motive.

I mentioned in a very old post that the yard had a plethora of borage in it. There's so much that it forms carpets in some areas, as in the photo above. And my neighbors are very much fair-weather gardeners; they won't be out tilling the soil till the warmth of April, which gives lots of weeds a glorious opportunity to reseed themselves abundantly, and grow big before they're hacked out.

They also tend to overfertilize. While this makes for astounding growth of their tomato plants, it also means that the weeds turn into a veritable forest. They can keep the mallow, the Arum (the arrowhead leaved clumps in the front), the dock, the poison hemlock, the mystery weed that smells so bad that even goats won't eat it, the chickweed and veronica, but the borage is mine! There was enough borage growing there, multi-branched with stems over an inch wide, to make several piles three feet high. And since the rain and mud had foiled my cover cropping plans, what better way to have a nice layer of green manure than to import it from 30 feet away?

Of course, growing a cover crop serves a dual purpose - not only does it provide organic matter and friability when dug into the soil, it also shades out weeds and makes it more difficult for them to grow. Since I missed the boat on that, I decided not to dig the borage in right away, but to spread it all over the non-planted side of the garden and let it break down, all the while covering the weeds. I'd already gone through and dug out all the buttercups and arum I could. I also pulled lamium (dead nettle) I could before it has a chance to set seed. It's all over the lower garden but there's relatively little of it in the middle section, and I'd like to keep it that way. It produces millions of seeds that lay dormant in the soil for years, just waiting for their chance in the sun. And when they get their chance, they come up in a dense green carpet that you can turn under repeatedly, only to watch it renew itself as ever more seeds are exposed to the sun. It's an effective evolutionary strategy used by plants that can't normally compete well with neighboring plants. When they are suddenly exposed to the sun it normally means disturbed soil and therefore the elimination of their immediate competition. This is the reason that plowed fields in Europe throw up a dense carpet of brilliant red poppies in the spring.

I'm not sure if borage concentrates potassium in its roots like its relative comfrey, but it certianly provides the bulk if its happy. Another plus is that it's an annual, where with comfrey you have to be careful or you'll turn your garden into a comfrey plantation...as long as you yank the borage (and even large plants are very easy to yank) before it sets seed you won't have an invasion the coming year.

But fortunately borage is also a beautiful plant, so I let it grow to its heart's content in the non-cultivated/cultivable parts of the garden, where it delights with its sky-blue flowers each spring. I also left several developing plants in the neighbors' garden so that I can raid it again next year....