Growing Vietnamese Mint

A beautiful, fragrant and useful addition to any garden is Vietnamese mint, Kinh Gioi.  Unlike other mints, such as spearmint and peppermint, this mint has a very mild fresh scent with a hint of lemon.

It grows easily from seed and in fact, once you have this plant one year, expect to see it cropping up in years to come since it reseeds itself freely.  Even with this in mind, it is not anywhere near as invasive as the spearmint in my garden.  Spearmint sends out runners that takes it all over the place.  Vietnamese mint may sprout up in multiple areas, but once there it does not form runners.

The plant grows much taller than either spearmint or peppermint.  Untrimmed stalks can grow as high as three or four feet.  If you trim it back it will make a bushy plant.  You will want to be trimming it back often because this mint is excellent for culinary purposes.  It is often included in spring rolls and salads, combining its soft mint flavor with a lemony taste.

Fresh picked Kinh Gioi, Vietnamese mint 

I tried it recently in a tincture recipe and after just 5 days of steeping it produced a wonderful result that lets me impart its wonderful taste to my chilled water (if you would like instructions about making an herbal tincture with this mint, check out my blog post here).  Of course its fresh leaves are a great addition to chilled drinks as well.

This is a tender perennial in frost-free areas, and an annual herb elsewhere.  You plant it in late spring or summer.  It seems to thrive in hot weather and mine is still growing strong in mid-august.  It seems to tolerate dry conditions very well.  It does however die back if you get a freeze.  This is my second year with it and I feared it was gone for good after last winters hard freeze.  It delighted me by sprouting up in multiple locations so I just transplanted the volunteer seedlings where I wanted them and they took off and never looked back.

Last year I didn't know how to use it very well so it ended up going to seed fairly quickly.  Like most mints if it is not cut back it will flower and make seeds.  This year I have cut it back about three times and it has not gone to seed yet.  I will make sure to let at least one of the volunteers go to seed to make sure I will have plenty of returning players next year.

Summer Gardening

It may not be officially summer yet, but already I am full force into the summer garden.  Oh sure, the cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers are starting to yield what will be a great crop and I am picking pounds of produce every couple of days.

Already I harvested the Yukon Gold potatoes I tried for the first time this year.  I planted about a dozen seed potatoes and harvested about 10 pounds of potatoes.  This is not a stellar production, but since I got them in late and harvested a little early, it is enough for me to try again next season.

Although the weather has been very nice compared to years past, I know the heat is only going to go up and by the middle of July it will be all over for almost everything I planted in the spring.  Over, except for three summer survivors: eggplant, okra, and sweet potatoes.

I have resisted counting the numbers of tomatoes that are on our 7 plants, but if I had to guess
I would say there are 50 to 60 or more per plant.

Now I learned two years ago that if you plant sweet potatoes you can ignore them throughout the summer and you will have this verdant green vine smothering your garden beds all summer long.  In the fall you get to dig up these great sweet potatoes.  Last year I didn't plant any sweet potatoes, but because I could not find all the tubers I had an enormous crop of volunteers.  I dug those up last fall and set some aside.  Those tubers sprouted some sets and this year I already have my vines growing in the beds.  Sweet potato plants will make it look like you are an incredible gardener when the reality is you don't have to do anything from August through October to get a great yield.

They will deliver Eggplant
plants to your door!

Last year I also put in a couple of eggplants which produced a large crop.  I did not however make the most of them, but this year I came up with a tasty eggplant recipe, so bring it on eggplants.  My eggplant fandom has also been assisted by a local nursery having an eggplant sale.  For some reason they did not sell out of their eggplants this year and had dozens left which they wisely put on sale as two for one.  One of the dedicated nursery workers did an excellent job of keeping these plants watered and healthy even though they were root bound.  As a result I now have over a dozen eggplant plants growing in the garden.

I spy with my little eye
a cookbook I need
'Totally Eggplant Cookbook'

I would not have had room for these extra eggplants if my squash plants had not just up and died.  It is not clear to me what exactly did them in.  Not only did the vines die out, but even the small fruit rotted on the vine.  This makes two years in a row that my butternut squash and other winter squash varieties have failed me.  I am starting to take this personally.  I might try again with a fall squash planting, but quite frankly I am feeling a little rejected at this point.  Sniff.

We finally relocated our okra bed behind the dog proof fence.  Last year like the years before we were afflicted with the okra pest caninus chompinski - border collie and westie forms.  I am not sure why okra amnesia causes me to forget how ruthless our canine duo can be on the okra pods.  Granted the extra cold weather for spring 2013 made the plants grow slowly, but once again I was scratching my head on just what kind of bug was eating the okra pods.  Cue border collie skulking guiltily in the background.

This year I put in some plants early and they have just given us our first pods.  I planted a second batch about a month after the first and they are growing well.  I just this weekend put in another half dozen.  In all I have about two dozen plants which will go into full swing soon and provide weekly okra batches.  I love them freshly steamed.  Later in the year when the temperatures soar and you cannot under threat of pain get me to go out into the mosquito laden, humid and MegaSummer garden, these okra pods will grow to about a foot in length where they will become the much sought after dog toys.

So, while I admire and relish the garden of today, I am looking forward to a great summer garden as well.

Spring harvest so far

It's about time I started posting about my organic garden again, so I will start chronicling the harvest so far to begin with.

Today I picked a half pound of blue lake green beans.  I will be adding this to the half pound I previously picked on two different days last week.  Total beans = 1 lb.  I can tell that the sequential planting of seeds every two weeks is going to give me great dividends.  This part of the harvest so far has been from the initial 6 plants.  The other 15 plants are in various stages of development with the next row of 4 ready to start harvest by the end of this week.  I predict about a pound or more a week for some time to come.

Cajun Belle Pepper

Last week I picked 2 pounds of sweet peppers from four of our six plants.  The other two plants are a little slower in maturing their fruit, but should be ready by next weekend.  Since pepper fruits are slow to set and mature, I see these producing about 2 - 3 pounds per month.

I have harvested 3 pounds of the yukon gold potatoes.  This was my first real effort with this type of potato in a garden bed.  I have had previous random success with volunteer potatoes found in the compost pile and enormous success with sweet potatoes.  I think there is another 3 to 6 pounds left to harvest and I have set the date for that as June 1st.

The cucumbers are vining like mad but as yet I have only seen one or two female blooms.  No fruit set, but if the 40 plants of various types start to produce this year I think we will be buried in cucumbers this spring.

Creole Tomatoes

The tomatoes are brewing with multiple fruit set on all the plants, but no ripeness yet.  This year is well behind the past two years in fruit development which I blame on the cool and pleasant spring.  The varieties I am growing this year are - Creole, Homestead, Arkansas Traveler, Grape, Roma and Early Girl.

Butternut Squash

We have butternut squash on the vine, but already I had to dig out a squash vine borer from two of the vines.  If they make it we have at least a dozen butternut squash.  The Tatume squash is growing but no signs of female blooms.  I wish I knew what that volunteer squash needed in terms of conditions to set fruit.  We always get something from it - last year 3 pumpkin sized, but it also is touted as a summer squash if you pick the fruit early.

My technique for squash vine borer removal

1. Look for a disturbed part of the vine.  It will look like the vine has split in multiple lengths along the vine and the area will look a little pulpy.
2. Use scissors and cut parallel to the vine from the start of the disturbance to the fresh vine part.  This part of the vine will be hollow since the borer is eating the pulp.
3. Use your scissors to dispatch the borer.  Sometimes you don't even see the critter, just its nasty guts as you 'unbore' your vine.  Sometimes if the borer is more developed and the vine larger you will be able to pluck the little grub out.  Show no mercy.
4. Cover the cut part of the vine with sand or compost.
5. Hope like crazy the vine will recover.

This technique has worked for me in the past if  I got to the plant in time.  This year I was alerted to the threat when I saw one of the very pretty squash vine borers flying around.  Ah - if only I had some amazing speed I could have snatched that beautiful, nasty bug from the air.  "I'll get you my pretty and your little grubs too..."  As you can tell, my years of organic gardening have left me calloused to the plight of the garden pests.

And oh yeah, onions too...

Okay, I think that about covers it - except for the eggplant and okra... and sweet potatoes... and do you want to know about the dill, mint and stevia?  Well, there is always next post.

... and lots of pretty, pretty flowers... 

- back to the dirt pile...