Tag: plants

Lazy gardening

The garden was totally nonproductive this summer. Horrible weather.

But so what. Throw the base of green onions in some water, even without roots, and they’re off and running in a couple days.

Here they are in dirt, between “recycled” bok choy in the foreground and a broccoli stem in the background (we’ll see). We may get a few green peppers, but meanwhile the only garden success are the very hot peppers on the left, called infierno negro (black hell) where they’re sold (they go from green to black to red), and otherwise known as puta parió, which sort of translates as “son of a whore.”

Not sure why they even grow them; generally anything spicier than black pepper is anathema to the Uruguayan palate.

The incredible Vivero Pacha Mama

 
The Mother Earth Nursery sells only food, medicinal, and a few entheogenic  plants. I went yesterday and spent about USD45 on plants and potting soil. I don’t know what I paid for this tomato “plant,” but here’s the thing: the container contains a couple liters of excellent compost, and this one yielded 26 seedlings.
That’s going to be a lot of tomatoes, regardless of what I paid….

 

It’s a gourd! It’s a squash! It’s zapallo!

squash

My volunteer garden gave us a zapallo like this for dinner last night. Deliciously smooth and sweet, unlike others that we thought were of the same variety.

On this plant, they start out looking (well, sort of) and tasting like zucchini, then they get big and long, and even bigger, and if you leave it until the stem dries out, they will keep all year in a dry place (except that they didn’t last year).

Do an image search for zapallo and you’ll see a boggling array of shapes and colors, including some that look like pumpkins, which is how the word translates. Those with very orange flesh are called zapallo cabutia. All very confusing.

Plus that word is pronounced sa-PAZH-o here.

Related: Monster squash

This year’s volunteers

Our country house, Uruguay

Our country property included two pig houses, one collapsing. When I took the latter apart, I discovered volunteer zapallos (I think; some kind of squash at any rate). You might recall my fascination with the volunteer zapallos last year.

At some point, I will take up the neighbor’s offer to plow the area between here and the house for a garden, in exchange for letting him graze cattle on our land. Meanwhile, I can be happy that part of my garden has already planted itself.

Monster Squash

Last year we had volunteer (we didn’t plant them) tomato plants, growing everywhere, even outside the living room window.

This year it’s zapallos, large green squash that turn yellow. Two or three plants occupy large swaths of the yard, and one growing on the neighboring lot goes 15 meters in several directions.

This morning I saw some beachgoers stop as Dad pointed to something in the leaves. I went out and discovered this specimen, actually visible from the street, though I would never have spotted it.

monstersquash