Garden Update

This year of gardening has been much different than last year.

Last year, in the midst of a kitchen gut and remodel we decided to throw some seeds in the ground and see what happened.

Then we had lots and lots of rain making it difficult to stay on top of the weeds.

In spite of the weed takeover and limited time spent in the garden we still ended up with quite a harvest and were able to put up a lot of it for winter.

Since the kitchen is finished (and no major projects in the works) and we haven’t had the amount of rain we had last year we have been able to keep up with the gardens much better.

With the exception of the corn we tried to leave ample room between the rows this year.  It makes it much easier to walk between the rows when checking the plants or harvesting and it’s also easier to run the tiller between them to help with weed removal.

Pictured below are corn, beets, onions and lima beans.

We’ll be picking beets soon…

Mmmmm, I can’t wait to pickle them!

Soon, we should have some onions about ready…

Many will be put in a tomato, cucumber and onion salad and the rest dried for later use.

The corn is shooting on up…

with skinny ears of corn on the stalks…

The lima beans have a loooong way to go before they’ll be ready for harvesting…

I love, love, love home grown lima beans!  So naturally buttery tasting with just a tiny bit of salt needed as seasoning. mmmmm!

The potato and sweet potato plants look good so hopefully the potatoes are getting bigger as the days go on…

And, of course, the sweet potato vines want to head into the walkway rather then spreading out within the row so I nudge them along and encourage them to grow in the row.  yea, right!

Above, in the right corner, you can see a few of our many tomato plants.  These were some of 75 plus tomato starts gifted to us that were already a foot tall and looking kinda bleh.  We planted all of them thinking they wouldn’t amount to much if they survived at all and guess what?  Yea, all but a couple didn’t make it.  Woot!  (Gotta love neighbors that can get free plants from the feed store!  And, ya gotta love a store owner that gave them away because customers weren’t buying any more so he stopped watering them. They planted all they had room for and that’s how we ended up with the rest.  I’m thrilled that all this ‘food’ didn’t end up in the trash simply because they didn’t ‘look’ all that good.)

Oh, you’re wondering how we planted the tall, leggy things?  We dug a trench, laid the stem part and the roots in the trench and buried them almost up to the leaves.  Shortly after we planted them we had a nice rain which gave them a real boost.  And, today, they have grown to the point of needing to be staked.

The tomatoes I started from seeds are in the small garden and already have tomatoes on them…

We staked these up several weeks ago and just this week we needed to add another string to tie them to since they’ve grown so much.

I wanted to try the deep mulch method in the small garden and I have to say that I am pleased with the results.  It was a lot of work gathering it from the hillside there and spreading it but it was worth it.  I like the look of it and the few weeds (morning glories actually) that worked their way through the mulch were easy to pull up.  A few of them were relocated around the obelisk.  Over time, the mulch will break down further enriching the soil.  win-win!

On the trellises are the cucumbers…

We have a couple nice size ones that will be ready for picking soon…

Also, in this garden we planted jalapenos, green peppers, cantaloupe, Roma tomatoes and asparagus.  This is our first time growing asparagus and let me tell ya, it looks like dill!  It will be fun to watch them throughout the year and to see what they do next year.  Asparagus is a perennial and we have to wait a year before the first harvest.  We’ll see what happens!

More perennials are the grapes…

and the super tough rhubarb…

These rhubarbs came up last year out of the ashes of an old burn pile.  Can you believe it?!  I dug it up last Fall, split it into two plants, stuck them each in gallon pots then ‘ol man Winter came and buried them under snow.

These survivors came back once again and now they have a permanent place in the garden where they can do their thing!

That’s about it for the garden update.  Picture overload, I know, but I’d thought you’d enjoy looking at a bunch of photos rather than me droning on and on. Ha!

What’s in your garden?

Oh, by the way, I changed the size of the photos when I saved them so if you would be so kind to let me know if you are having any trouble viewing them or are they coming up too slow.  I tend to use a lot of photos in my posts and I want to make your viewing experience enjoyable rather than time consuming or frustrating.  So, if you’d let me know how they’re loading for you I’d really appreciate it!