Its been a month since my last garden update, and things have really changed! We now have a bunch of empty beds, and are preparing for the planting of our first fall/winter garden! I just took a class on winter gardening at our local nursery, and I am really excited to extend our gardening season! As of now we are planning on planting more onions and carrots, some turnips, broccoli and romanesco, brussel sprouts, and I will be making a cold frame or covered tunnel for lettuces and spinach. Whatever beds we don't use for the winter garden will be planted with crimson clover, a cover crop that is used for replacing the nitrogen in the soil. It will help make a healthy and happy new home for our spring veggies!
So, back to the present garden. Here are beds #1, 2, and 3 - all that's left is a lonely jalapeno plant! All the brassicas are done, as well as the lettuces that were in bed #1. We currently have a small bed of lettuce growing near the peas, but its time to plant more. We have been eating a lot of salads lately!
Bed #4 has walla walla onions in it. A lot of the stems have fallen over, but I don't think they have to be harvested until the stems dry out. For a winter crop of onions, I am going to plant an onion that is better for storage, so that I can braid and store them for the coming year. Walla wallas are only good for fresh eating...guess we better start pulling some up!
Bed #5 is bell peppers and carrots. This year we have had some of the hottest weather on record, with one week seeing temps that were up to 107! Our poor peppers didn't have enough foliage to protect them, and got sun scald. Its been quite a bummer, as we really love big beautiful peppers, and had to toss half a dozen or more. This is what they look like after being burned:
I think next year we will plant them along the fence line, so that they will have a bit more shade, and so it will be easy to cover them if temps rise like that again. I am not sure what we will do with them as we rotate their spot through the garden. There are quite a few green ones on the plants that are still going strong though. I did read that if you wait for the peppers to turn the color they are when mature that you will get a significantly smaller pepper harvest than if you harvested most while they were green. I think some plants we will let mature all the way, and some we will start harvesting the green peppers. They are yummy at all stages, but they sure look pretty mature!
Here is another view of the pepper bed, from the other end so you can see the carrots. We have three types of carrots planted, and they are all thriving. We haven't been eating too many of them, except for the little finger carrots. The kids will pull these, rinse with the hose and eat right there in the garden. What an awesome thing for them to be able to do!
Bed #6 Sugar baby watermelon. There used to be a honeydew in here too, but we pulled it last weekend. Both it and the watermelon had been planted at the same time, but while the watermelon has at least 10 fruits on it, the honeydew didn't have any. And it was taking up 3 times the space!! Even if it fruited now, it wouldn't have time to mature before our first frost, so we pulled it up and cut our losses. The watermelons are doing great though, juicy and delicious - we ate our first one last week, and it looks like one more is almost ready. You can see two big ones in the picture, one at the very bottom right, and one at the almost top right. You can click the picture to make it bigger...
Bed # 7 - My favorite right now - the tomatoes. These have really taken off, they were green for what seemed like a month and a half, and just in the last two weeks we are really seeing some serious ripening happening. I cut most of the branches that did not have fruits or flowers off of the plants, to expose the fruit to sunlight - it made a huge difference in the amount of ripening fruit we have. I am always going to do this from now on! These are after I did the trimming, I forgot to take a before picture:
Other side:
As you can see, obviously our pretty little bamboo stakes were not enough to hold these heavy fruit laden plants up. We have tied them, and propped them, and tried many things to keep them upright the last few weeks, but its becoming clear that we need a permanent solution. Once the chickens leave in two days, I am going to tear down their run fence and use those t posts to hold up our maters. Next year we will start with t posts right when we plant! Here is one of my favorite tomatoes, its a German Heirloom, and its got wonderful stripes on it:
We have a couple of them ripening, I cant wait to taste them!
We also harvested our first Orange Valencia tomato the other day, and split it 4 ways between us. It was good - but I was really surprised at how tangy it was! It had some serious flavor - but we liked it. More of those next year - they are supposed to have the highest amounts of antioxidants of any tomato - and we all need lots of those! We also have some Roma's that have started ripening once I cut away the leaves hiding them - I see lots of sauces in my future!
Bed #8 Cherry tomatoes. Believe it or not, this is only 3 plants. They are going CRAZY. We have also had to tie these up to everything that doesn't move, and will be doing many things differently with them next year. These little tomatoes are worth all the effort though!
Behind them you can see bed #9, now with only 4 cucumber plants. The sugar snap peas were very late blooming, but we did end up getting quite a few peas off them before the plant got powdery mildew and we pulled it. It was near the end anyways, peas don't love like all this hot weather we have been getting! We also pulled the pickling cuc next to it, to try to prevent it spreading to the other cucumbers in the row. And also because we just have too many pickling cucumbers! The lemon cucumbers are finally starting to really produce, which is exciting because they are our favorites:
That just leaves the last bed - sweet corn! We planted two varieties this year, and the first plantings have already started forming ears. The second plantings have just tasseled in the last few days. I am so looking forward to putting some water on to boil, walking outside to harvest corn and enjoying fresher than fresh corn on the cob for dinner. Yum!
A few weeks ago, while I was pulling out the old brassica plants, I noticed that one was infested with white aphids...completely covered with the little things! I hadn't noticed an infestation on any other plants, but just in case, and because the kids wanted some, we bought a pack of ladybugs to release into the garden. They come in bags of 1500, which you keep in the refrigerator. That was sure a surprise for Matthew when he went looking for a snack! We released them at night, and we were all excited to hold some - but they just poured out of the sack and it got a little overwhelming having them crawling everywhere on us. So we pretty much just dumped and ran, but I managed to get a couple pictures:
And finally, the fruits (and veggies!) of our labor - our garden harvest from tonight (after we have some tomatoes and cucs to our neighbors):
So, back to the present garden. Here are beds #1, 2, and 3 - all that's left is a lonely jalapeno plant! All the brassicas are done, as well as the lettuces that were in bed #1. We currently have a small bed of lettuce growing near the peas, but its time to plant more. We have been eating a lot of salads lately!
Bed #4 has walla walla onions in it. A lot of the stems have fallen over, but I don't think they have to be harvested until the stems dry out. For a winter crop of onions, I am going to plant an onion that is better for storage, so that I can braid and store them for the coming year. Walla wallas are only good for fresh eating...guess we better start pulling some up!
Bed #5 is bell peppers and carrots. This year we have had some of the hottest weather on record, with one week seeing temps that were up to 107! Our poor peppers didn't have enough foliage to protect them, and got sun scald. Its been quite a bummer, as we really love big beautiful peppers, and had to toss half a dozen or more. This is what they look like after being burned:
I think next year we will plant them along the fence line, so that they will have a bit more shade, and so it will be easy to cover them if temps rise like that again. I am not sure what we will do with them as we rotate their spot through the garden. There are quite a few green ones on the plants that are still going strong though. I did read that if you wait for the peppers to turn the color they are when mature that you will get a significantly smaller pepper harvest than if you harvested most while they were green. I think some plants we will let mature all the way, and some we will start harvesting the green peppers. They are yummy at all stages, but they sure look pretty mature!
Here is another view of the pepper bed, from the other end so you can see the carrots. We have three types of carrots planted, and they are all thriving. We haven't been eating too many of them, except for the little finger carrots. The kids will pull these, rinse with the hose and eat right there in the garden. What an awesome thing for them to be able to do!
Bed #6 Sugar baby watermelon. There used to be a honeydew in here too, but we pulled it last weekend. Both it and the watermelon had been planted at the same time, but while the watermelon has at least 10 fruits on it, the honeydew didn't have any. And it was taking up 3 times the space!! Even if it fruited now, it wouldn't have time to mature before our first frost, so we pulled it up and cut our losses. The watermelons are doing great though, juicy and delicious - we ate our first one last week, and it looks like one more is almost ready. You can see two big ones in the picture, one at the very bottom right, and one at the almost top right. You can click the picture to make it bigger...
Bed # 7 - My favorite right now - the tomatoes. These have really taken off, they were green for what seemed like a month and a half, and just in the last two weeks we are really seeing some serious ripening happening. I cut most of the branches that did not have fruits or flowers off of the plants, to expose the fruit to sunlight - it made a huge difference in the amount of ripening fruit we have. I am always going to do this from now on! These are after I did the trimming, I forgot to take a before picture:
Other side:
As you can see, obviously our pretty little bamboo stakes were not enough to hold these heavy fruit laden plants up. We have tied them, and propped them, and tried many things to keep them upright the last few weeks, but its becoming clear that we need a permanent solution. Once the chickens leave in two days, I am going to tear down their run fence and use those t posts to hold up our maters. Next year we will start with t posts right when we plant! Here is one of my favorite tomatoes, its a German Heirloom, and its got wonderful stripes on it:
We have a couple of them ripening, I cant wait to taste them!
We also harvested our first Orange Valencia tomato the other day, and split it 4 ways between us. It was good - but I was really surprised at how tangy it was! It had some serious flavor - but we liked it. More of those next year - they are supposed to have the highest amounts of antioxidants of any tomato - and we all need lots of those! We also have some Roma's that have started ripening once I cut away the leaves hiding them - I see lots of sauces in my future!
Bed #8 Cherry tomatoes. Believe it or not, this is only 3 plants. They are going CRAZY. We have also had to tie these up to everything that doesn't move, and will be doing many things differently with them next year. These little tomatoes are worth all the effort though!
Behind them you can see bed #9, now with only 4 cucumber plants. The sugar snap peas were very late blooming, but we did end up getting quite a few peas off them before the plant got powdery mildew and we pulled it. It was near the end anyways, peas don't love like all this hot weather we have been getting! We also pulled the pickling cuc next to it, to try to prevent it spreading to the other cucumbers in the row. And also because we just have too many pickling cucumbers! The lemon cucumbers are finally starting to really produce, which is exciting because they are our favorites:
That just leaves the last bed - sweet corn! We planted two varieties this year, and the first plantings have already started forming ears. The second plantings have just tasseled in the last few days. I am so looking forward to putting some water on to boil, walking outside to harvest corn and enjoying fresher than fresh corn on the cob for dinner. Yum!
A few weeks ago, while I was pulling out the old brassica plants, I noticed that one was infested with white aphids...completely covered with the little things! I hadn't noticed an infestation on any other plants, but just in case, and because the kids wanted some, we bought a pack of ladybugs to release into the garden. They come in bags of 1500, which you keep in the refrigerator. That was sure a surprise for Matthew when he went looking for a snack! We released them at night, and we were all excited to hold some - but they just poured out of the sack and it got a little overwhelming having them crawling everywhere on us. So we pretty much just dumped and ran, but I managed to get a couple pictures:
And finally, the fruits (and veggies!) of our labor - our garden harvest from tonight (after we have some tomatoes and cucs to our neighbors):
