Spring spring spring

I haven't been writing in this blog much, but I have been gardening a lot. I have 2 new 8' x 4' beds up and running, and my 3 new Earth Boxes just came today! I know have eight 8' x 4' beds and 4 Earth Boxes total.

Outside, we I have growing: asparagus, 2 tomato plants and 1 pepper plant (in Wall O Waters), radishes, arugula, kale, collards, mustard greens, red cabbage, white cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, and spinach.

Indoors, I have started seeds for prarie sunflowers, bachelor's button, cockscomb, peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplants, more lettuces, plus three butterfly bushes.

We had our first little asparagus harvest tonight, and it was heavenly. Really. Like you imagine vegetables would taste in heaven. The asparagus tasted unbelievable. It was so tender. We all had a piece fresh, and then my husband steamed the rest. We only got a little each, but it was wonderful. My 6-year-old was sad there wasn't more. Hopefully, over the next couple of weeks or so, we'll get a few more side dishes out of our asparagus bed. And next year, six weeks of delicious asparagus!

Both children are obsessed with eating kale. I have 4 kale plants that I planted in the fall, and they love to munch on it. Next year, I'm going to plant a whole lot more of them! They wintered over beautifully. I planted them so late that they hardly grew at all since I planted them. Fresh kale from the garden is delicious.

One big difference this year is that I don't have a problem with buying plants at the garden center (the locally owned one) and plugging them into my garden, although I have been starting quite a few seeds. Not so interested in starting cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower from seed anymore!

Tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce, however, are easy and fun to start from seed. And, of course, there really isn't any other way to grow radishes or carrots. And, then, beans, cucumbers, melons, and squash will all be started from seeds.

Another big difference is that I'm much more product oriented. I expect that the garden this year will provide most of our produce, and I have plans to preserve it, by freezing and canning. (Although I'm a little afraid of canning, and will do only pickling and high acid foods.) I'm very glad that we have a chest freezer--we make good use of it anyway, and I hope to make even better use of it this year in the garden.

I have very much enjoyed the peppers (variety Ancho from Park Seed) that I grew last year. I froze a whole lot of them at the end of the season, just whole, and continue to use them in any recipe that calls for hot pepper seasoning. I put one in a chili that I made on Sunday, and I was very pleased. I've also used them in quesadillas, scrambled eggs, and my pumpkin soup.

Last year, I was all about trying a greater variety of plants. This year, I am probably growing less variety and sticking to the things that will be more useful.

My goals for this season:

• grow most of our produce
• preserve hot peppers, sweet peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers for winter in various forms
• by fall, construct some sort of cold frame to keep spinach and arugula growing longer
• plant more kale, collards, cabbage in late fall to winter over

growing season overview

All in all, it was a good year for the garden. We got lots of tasty tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, radishes, lettuce, arugula, and a little bit of several other vegetables and fruits, including green beans, melons, carrots, cabbages, broccoli, eggplants, and squash. Also grew some tasty herbs including dill, basil, borage, and cilantro.

Things to work on next year:

• Harvesting in a more timely fashion.
• Being prepared to preserve the harvest as it comes in (can tomatoes, make pickles, make prepared foods to freeze)
  
• Adding six new beds.
• Growing more of the things that we like best.
• Paying more attention to fall planting (we had a vacation in October, so that threw things off).
• planting more flowers and herbs among my vegetables.
• if my own seedings are not working out, then I will buy seedlings from the local nursery.
• two more earthboxes for my front porch. Plan on growing lettuce, tomatoes, eggplants, and possibly a small squash.
• More hybrids!
• More perrenial flowers.
• Pole beans.
  

Things I grew last year that I will not grow again:

• Okra
• Canteloupe

Things I learned;

• I need to water more.
• For many plants, the particular varieties do not taste all that different.

Reviews of some of the varieties of vegetables:

• Beefsteak tomatoes: I had great success with Early girl. My other beefsteaks did not fare so well, and I intend to concentrate on hybrids for next year, as well as open pollitated varieties that are specifically noted to be heat tolerant. My hybrids were far, far tastier than grocery store tomatoes. I love them and still have a few left.
• I loved all three cherry tomatoes I grew (Ladybug, Jenny, and Snowberry). I'd like to grow them all again and try some others.
  
• Cucumbers: I loved cucumber pepino from Ferry Morse. They were wonderful, and I am definitely growing them again. The lemon cucumbers were cool too. A white cucumber I grew was fine but not worth growing again. I plan to try a variety known for making good gherkins next year.
  
• Eggplant: I tried growing Black Beauty. They were tasty, but very low yields. Next year I plan to try two hybrid varieties from Park.
• Cabbage: Tasty red cabbage Cairo hybrid. Broccoli Packman was good too.
• Melons: I grew several, hated all the canteloupes, thought watermelon Everglade was pretty good. LOVED Amy hybrid, a canary melon.
• Beans: bean festina did great again--only wish I had planted more of it. Next year, I plan to grow it in addition to bush beans. Not so fond of mon petit cheri--kind of bland.
• Greens/lettuce: I love, love, love arugula. It tastes massively better grown at home in cool weather than it does when bought in the grocery store. I also loved my red lettuce mixes, and my heat tolerant mixes, and I have some ideas for extending the lettuce season further by growing it on my back porch during the summer, since it gets only morning sunlight.
  

I may update this as I think of more things...

Garden Update

• Tomatoes not doing so well. I think it's the heat, humidity, and that they need to be watered more. The snowberry cherry tomatoes have done the best, but the orange ones (Jenny) were the tastiest of the three I grew.
  
• Cucumbers continue to produce well. So tasty, and they've been so easy to grow. I have started 3 more regular cucumber vines (can't remember the variety I'm growing) and 3 more lemon cucumbers. I really want to make fresh pack pickles.
• Peppers are holding up to the heat well.
  
• Got more beans on the way. I was surprised by the difference in taste between the two types of bush beans I've tried. I've been saving bean seeds for next year.
  
• We harvested a single eggplant. I'm hoping for a few more, as it was tasty. (Black beauty).
  
• I have 2 canary melons (Amy) almost ripe.
• A couple of watermelons have set fruit!
• My volunteer pumpkin plant is producing a pumpkin, and a volunteer gourd plant is making some gourds.
  
• We harvested some okra, and we both tried to deep fry it, but it was spiney and gross. I should post on a garden forum about that and try and figure it out.
  
• I started about a week or 2 ago 4 broccolis, 4 cauliflower, 2 red cabbage, and 2 white cabbage. They should be ready to go in the garden in September. I hope that will not be too early, especially for the cauliflower.
  
• Things are coming out, and I'm mulching, making space for new plants.
  
• My husband said we definitely need more garden space next year!
• I bought a sprinkler, which I know is not environmentally friendly, but it was taking me over an hour to water the entire garden by hand. Maybe a drip system will be an option for next year, but the sprinkler has been a great source of fun for the children, and I only need to use it for the garden during dry spells, which are not too frequent here.
  

Things I plan to do differently next year:

• Water more when the weather gets hot.
• Forget about growing corn.
  
• Grow melons as mulch around my tomatoes.
  
• Try purple tomatoes.
• Plant more tomatoes.
  
• Try pole beans.
  
• Plant more cucumbers, more varieties, and more of them.
  
• Learn to pickle and can.

More later.

summer planting

Well, I planted more cucumbers and bush beans. I harvested cilantro seeds. I am very confused about how I am going to plant all that I want to plant for fall, when so many plants will probably be going strong until frost. I decided to pull up the corn. It was only supposed to get about 3 ft. high and produce baby corns, but it got much taller than that, only ended up being 3 rows when I had intended for it to be 4, and had just started to flower. I don't want to grow corn--it takes up too much space. I also pulled the malabar spinach. I think it got set back by a cold spell in April or May because it did not seem to be getting any bigger. I put lemon cucumbers in its place.

Update

I haven't updated because I've been busy... gardening.

So, here are a few important things that have happened in the last month or so, especially related to HARVEST...

• Green beans! I still love the festina, not crazy so far about the mon petit cheri.
• Lots of tomatoes! Unfortunately, my green zebra tomatoes are not... I'm not sure if the error is on my end or on the seed company's end! They are red. We've had tasty fried green tomatoes, got early girls, brandywines, the non-green-zebras, and red, yellow, and white cherries. The only problem is that I'm definitely allergic to fresh tomatoes. I get a terrible oral allergy and had to go on prednisone the pain was so bad. So, I'm still trying cooked tomatoes and hoping I can continue to tolerate them!
• We had 3 red cabbages. They were great.
• We did get some broccoli!
  
• Had some sweet peppers, but only green ones so far. We keep needing to eat them before they turn red! Well, we did get a couple of little orange ones.
• Cucumbers, tons of cucumbers. I have really enjoyed these.
• I have a few little melons developing, and I'm very happy about that. Not sure how long it will be before we can eat them.
• Winter squashes and pumpkins are all planted and sprouted.
• I'm starting to think more about fall now--already. I have plans to put in more beds.
  

Update

Here's an update:

Tomatoes: Huge, fruiting like mad. Pulled Glory out because it looked sickly. Have been pruning suckers constantly. Can't wait to eat them!
Borage: blooming!
Cilantro: tasty, letting one flower so I can save seeds
Arugula: trying to figure out how to save seeds from my one huge flowering plant that I have left.
Sweet potatoes: planted
Basil: Thriving
Cucumbers: Growing, starting to get big.
Peppers: Some starting to flower
Green beans: flowering like crazy, at least the first batch
Lettuce: Delicious, delicious
Broccoli: Tasty, but the worms are annoying to pick off
Malabar spinach: Still small
Melons: all varieties planted, with Amy and both watermelons sprouted. Minnesota Midget never grew. Crane, Hale's Best, and Banana seeds just planted a couple of days ago.
Squash: Scallop and spaghetti planted and sprouted.
Cabbages: Huge, forming heads.
Carrots: also tasty, harvested all but the tiny ones, getting too hot. I can't believe I finally grew some carrots!

All trees and bushes planted are going strong, including that raspberry bush I was worried about. I am happy Oliver didn't kill them by pulling them up.

I love eating fresh salad greens. LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

I am really anticipating my tomatoes and peppers and can't wait to taste them.

Broccoli heads!

Well, my broccolis have really started making heads. I don't know if its too late for them, if they'll be ready to harvest in time... My heat-tolerant lettuce is growing in well. I'll just know from now on that I've got to constantly be making little plantings of lettuce. (Or starting it inside).

I did some major tomato pruning today, pruning off some rather large suckers. I hated to do it, but I planted my tomatoes so close together that I kind of had to. Hopefully, I didn't damage the plants. It looks much less like a jungle there. I do wish I hadn't planted my tomatoes so close together, and had interplanted them with other crops, but next year I'll do it a little differently.

I started three types of basils very early (back in February) with the intention of setting them outside on warm days and bringing them in at night. Well, it was annoying to bring them in. The purple basil is doing great, but the other two basils (long-leaf Italian and cinnamon) seem to be permanently stunted. I'm going to replace them with flowers (zinnias or bachelors button probably). Basil does great out in the garden beds, so I doubt I'll do too much container basil growing after the purple flowers.

My sage flowered on the back porch, and the purple flowers were absolutely gorgeous. Didn't get a lot of blooms, but the ones we've had so far have been very impressive.

Did I write about how I almost killed my Greek Oregano plant by leaving it on the front porch in its peat pot and not watering it one day? It looked horribly wilted and dead, but after I brought it in and watered it, it perked up over the next hours and days, and I only lost a couple of stems. I potted it in the largest container I had and then got a 12" clay pot (when they came back in stock in the stores) and put it in that, to be its permanent home.

My nasturtium hanging baskets have enough growth that I'm ready to get them hung on our front porch.