Ahh. first while I am writing this my children have gone off with their grandparents for the afternoon and I tell you this quiet is beautiful!
I am sure you all can guess that the garden has had things happen since May. The weeds got out of control but we also got a lot of plant growth. This was a great trial year, We tested so many different types of seeds and have even made changes to the plans for next year.
First, all that pre planting we did was basically a waste. Even with carefully introducing them to the outdoors almost all of them died except for the tomatoes. The squash plants got too big, too fast. Next year we will just be starting the tomatoes early since they became a jungle. We planted four varieties of tomatoes, black, tumbler, beef steak, and yellow pear shaped. All the black variety died, along with the beef steak. The yellow pear shaped actually did the best! We will be planting more of them and less of the others next year.
Pictured below is 6 plants, not that you can easily see the different plants. There are also 2 pepper plants semi buried beneath the tomatoes.
Squash! We planted four variety of squash. I guess five if cucumber count as squash. We had to replant the seeds directly in the soil but most of it did well! The zucchini is growing very well. Unfortunately the midnight variety seeds were stolen by the birds. We will plant both kinds again next year despite the kids complaints about having to eat it. The pumpkins are coming along if the frost holds off for another few weeks we should get at least four! Cantaloupe did not work at all, sad but not shocking. We won't try planting next year. Cucumber is just flowering now. Not sure what happened there, we will try again next year because pickles.
Picture one: quick variety pumpkin, two: neon pumpkin, three: Neon pumpkin, four: zucchini!
Potatoes! Who doesn't love potatoes! Well our daughter doesn't but that just means more for the rest of us. We planted three varieties: red, yellow, and violet queen(purple). A few weeks before they were ready I was sad as I thought the purple variety never came up. It was ok as the other ones did great. The first ones ready were the red. Then last week the next patch was ready to harvest and it turned out to be the violet queens! And they did fantastic! They are also the most delicious potatoes! We will be planting more of both the red and purple, and maybe just one bag of the yellow again this year.
One: all the potatoes, two: cut open uncooked violet queen, three: cooked violet queen plus store bought.
Bulb growing! Onions and garlic! The garlic and onions did great so many harvested. We are giving away onions as there are too many for us to ever use. The garlic also did very well and I am looking forward to trying different preserving methods. For next year we will stick with this years plan but we will be moving the garlic to in front of the green house where our perennial plants are so we can convert the whole area we currently are using into boxes. I will add a blurb about that at the end. No pictures for these as we havested a lot all at different times sometimes weeks apart.
Carrots, radishes, lettuce mix, butterhead, spinach and kale! All did very well and mmm butterhead lettuce fresh from the garden is even better than store bought. We will have to narrow down the varieties we really want to grow for the carrots and radishes though as we have too many. We will have more boxes to grow them in! The lettuce mix and the like were great but when I got sick they all went to flower as I wasn't out picking very often and not at all for two weeks. We will be using them all next year though so hopefully I will stay well and can keep up.
The berry bushes! Well sadly one of the nan king cherries died and we were unable to find any for sale this year so we will be looking next year as we need two. The haskops had a few berries and they were tasty. We are looking forward to having more next year! The raspberries have tripled in size, but no berries yet. The strawberries also died so we had to buy all new plants. The kids love just eating them off the plants. We also discovered that two of the bushes in the rock garden (which is a disaster after so many weeks neglected) are cherry bushes! We got probably thirty cherries off!
Corn. Well it is time to officially give up on corn and chickpeas. The corn came up well but the cobs aren't forming like they should. The chickpeas got too much rain and the seeds dissolved. We have decided that the area we were going to expand into, for crops, will have some fruit trees instead! Hopefully these go better than the crops.
Peas and beans! All the varieties did very well! We won't be growing them in the potatoes next year as when the plants collapsed they took the bean and pea plants with them. The peas we planted among the corn are still going strong and producing many peas every few days!
Now to the boxes. This summer being a bad summer for getting into the garden for me, we realized that keeping up with the weeds which is hard enough when spending hours every day in the garden is impossible when I am sick all summer. So we are going to build a bunch of garden boxes in the large part of the garden. The only perennials staying in there are the roses, raspberries and the haskops. The rest will be boxes with enough space between to move through and get a mower in to mow the weeds! This will mean I only have to weed the boxes and the perennial part of the garden! I am very much looking forward to this between, yard, garden, house and running after the kids something is always getting missed and it will save me hours not having to weed so much space.
And that is the garden update. I will try to get a blog out again tomorrow. I start back to work Monday and am hoping to be caught up by then so I can blog about fall happenings around the acres. Talk to you all later! I hope you all are having a great day!
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