Garden Update 6-20-15

Posting this just a *little* late. A week and a half later things are already so much bigger. The tomato plants have doubled in size and the pumpkins are about three times as big. Also most of the broccoli has since been harvested.

But for now. let's flash back to June 20th, Wayne's World style.

*dootlelootleloot dootledootleloot dootledoolteloot*

I love this view of the garden as you approach from the side yard.

Lots of stuff happening.

First off… we have broccoli!

This is my first time attempting broccoli. Last year they were growing it in the teaching garden where I volunteer, and it did really well there. It seems to be an easy vegetable and is ever-bearing all summer. When you chop off the head, more grow in its place (sounds like a creepy space alien!). I love anything that produces all summer, so I knew I had to try it.

Here’s that whole bed. It’s mostly broccoli with a few cabbages thrown in and lettuce at the end.

 
Next we have what is supposed to be three hills of cucumbers surrounded by circles of radishes. The radishes are thriving. The cucumbers not so much. I have a grand total of two cuke plants. I did have 4 but two were chomped down by cutworms (remember those gross things from last year?), which is why my remaining two have cardboard collars.

 
Last night I went out and planted all of my leftover cucumber seeds on top of the hills as a last ditch effort. I always have problems with cukes and was really hoping for an actual harvest this year. They like hot weather for germination, and also need very fertile soil… so I fertilized and am crossing my fingers we have a heat wave sometime soon!

I have two beds of tomatoes. Here’s one of ‘em.

'scuse the psychedelic camera angle

The cherry tomatoes are forming! I think these are Sungolds.

 My crazy bed of snow peas, finally starting to flower:

These are Oregon Sugar Pod, which is advertised as not needing a trellis because they only grow to be two feet tall. As you can see though, they still get tangled and out of control without supports. I still like the crazy, fill up an entire bed method. You get lots of peas in a small space, even if you have to search through the jumble to find all of them.

Oh, there’s arugula in the pea bed too! I was growing it there last year and let it go to seed, and had lots of volunteers pop up.

The fava beans are flowering!

The flowers basically look like pea flowers with a black patch. They’re prettier when the flower is open, but this was early morning and most of them were closed up (from what I can tell they close at night and open in the sunlight).

Here’s a shot of that whole area. Tomatoes, pumpkins, favas:

At the end of the pumpkin bed I tucked in some lavender and on the other side, a stevia plant.

Lavender:

 Stevia:

 
I have two lavender plants and want to go back to the nursery to get a lot more and plant them everywhere I can find room, then make lavender flavored cookies and ice cream all summer (and maybe see if I can sweeten it all with stevia!).

So far my habanero peppers are still pretty small and aren’t doing much, but I have high hopes for them.

On the other side of the house, away from the rest of the garden we have raspberries!

I attempted to stake them for the first time a few days ago, because their canes were out of control and the berries were on the ground.

Berries!

I planted them three years ago, and this looks like the first year we may get a decent harvest. There are a couple smaller plants next to these that have berries and could use staking too.

And speaking of fruit, back in the main garden area we have lots of mini grapes forming!

 
That’s about it! I just realized I didn’t take pictures of the strawberry bed, but they’re mostly getting eaten by the birds… must buy netting. I also have a blueberry bush in the front yard with berries that are starting to ripen.

Berries make me so happy.

I’ll leave with with a pic of the neighbor’s cat hanging out in the garden, after I went inside:

 
 She’s super friendly and if she sees me out there always comes over to say hello.

Veggie Garden May 2015

Finally took some pics of my garden this season!

Here we have the two remaining 4'x4' raised beds (one recently replaced and one that needs replacing!) and one of my big tilled beds, separated into three sections with walking boards. The round bed is Zach's garden... he hasn't decided what he wants to plant there this year yet. It's fun seeing what he does with that little space.



The raised bed to the left has Oregon Sugar Pod snow peas. They're a very cool variety that only grows two feet high, so in theory doesn't need to be trellised. I love filling up an entire bed with them!

Raised bed to the right is asparagus, which I'm continuing to harvest... I *think* it's about done for the season, but I have a few shoots ready to pick right now. The plan is to build a new bed (that will look just like the new pea bed) sometime in the next week or two. The picture below came out a little blurry, but if you look hard you might be able to spy a few harvestable asparagus.

The first section of the tilled bed is fava beans! I'm almost bursting with excitement about these. The plants look a lot different than standard green bean or shelling beans. I Googled pictures and they get 2-3  feet tall and have pretty white flowers with black patches and stripes... almost pansy like.

The middle section is still unplanted, but the bed is fertilized and ready! Planning on putting pumpkins there (hopefully will plant them by the end of the week!). The end section is two varieties of tomatoes (Sun Gold cherry tomatoes and an heirloom called Gold Medal) and habanero peppers. And that's grapes to the right of the tomato/pepper bed.

Then we have the other tilled bed.

Back section is more tomatoes. This time Sweet Million cherry tomatoes and Whopper big beef tomatoes, both from Park Seed. Planted these guys last year too and had the *best* and biggest tomato harvest ever. Bonus is that I had seeds left over from last year, so didn't even have to buy more!  There's another habanero pepper plant in this bed too - that teeny little plant in the middle!

And the front section is lettuce and broccoli and cabbage. I *think* I have room to tuck another cabbage or broccoli or two in there. I also want to interplant dill in all the blank spaces as kind of a natural weed deterrent/mulch. Going to do the same with marigolds in the tomato/pepper beds. I've never tried growing broccoli before, and for some reason I haven't had much luck with cabbage in the past, but so far they look happy and healthy!

Middle empty section will be cucumbers and nasturtiums. And maybe some radishes.

On the side of the house my strawberry bed is flowering and making strawberries!

My bleeding hearts are *almost* done blooming for the season.

This is sort of garden related I guess. We seem to have a resident cardinal. He loves hanging out on our front deck and on the big shrub that's right under our picture window.  We see him multiple times a day. His mate was around too for a while, but now it's just him. We're guessing she's sitting on their eggs somewhere. He keeps Ninja entertained. I took this a few minutes before posting this entry.

Oh, and one final picture of some broccoli  planted from seed (they're still fairly small) and some leftover cabbage plants I bought.

Like I said, think I have room to add a few more to the broc/cabbage bed, and maybe Z will want one for his little garden?

 I don't keep track of garden expenses, but pretty sure I've spent less than I usually do this year. There was my seed order from Territorial Seed back in February (always more $ than it seems like it should be!). I just added Garden Tone and Tomato Tone organic fertilizer to my beds this year instead of adding bags and bags of compost as usual. Planted my tomato and peppers from seed (some of which was left over from last year), and bought $8 worth of cabbage, broccoli and lettuce plants from the nursery. And that's it!

First Gardening Post of 2015!

 (Written 3/12/15)

There's not much to write about yet, but I *did* start my broccoli seeds!

That's actually my second attempt at starting broccoli this year. There's a "seedling heat mat" under the tray, and the cats like to scrunch in with the cups o' plants because it's nice and cozy warm. So yeah, Tuesday Ninja managed to tip over the entire tray. Dirt and baby broccoli plants everywhere! Grrr.  I think I was a little early starting the broccoli anyway, so I decided to just start from scratch again. The above little plants were planted Tuesday afternoon after the broccoli massacre and popped up earlier today. I screamed pretty loudly when the tray overturned (the seedlings are by a window in my office and I was sitting at my computer at the time), so I'm hoping that was enough to make the cats never want to hop up there again. Crossing fingers!

The broccoli seeds were from my local Ace Hardware store. I also placed a good sized order with Territorial Seed last week, which arrived today!

Their seed packets are so pretty!

I'm trying some new veggie varieties this year.

- Fava Beans.  I'm getting tired of green beans, and for the past few months Tom has been searching for fava beans in our local grocery stores to no avail. He found a recipe online claiming that favas make the best hummus ever. Also, one of the garden bloggers I follow grew them for the first time a few years ago and said they were delicious. They're good with liver and a nice Chianti. ;) I've seen them described as rich, creamy, sweet and succulent. They're shelling beans (also totally new to me) and can be eaten fresh or can be dried, stored and eaten later.  They like cool temperatures and are planted in the spring at the same time as peas, and grow on 2-4 feet tall bush-like plants. Anyhoo. Excited to try them!  Hope we love them!

- Habanero Peppers. One of my new pen pals was lamenting that she has trouble growing peppers, probably because she lives in a relatively cool climate (same here re: peppers and climate!). She went on to say that the only exception to that is habaneros. They grow like gangbusters for her,and she makes a pepper jelly out of them. Not sure what she *does* with this pepper jelly... those suckers are *hot*. I intend to ask her though! Maybe just puts a little bit in chili or Mexican dishes? Wonder if the jellying mellows the peppers enough to use as a rub on pork or other meats? Anyhoo... We *love* spicy. And I love the idea of *anything* growing like crazy, plus growing new things makes gardening fun. Woot.

- Sungold Tomatoes. They were growing in the teaching garden where I volunteered last year and  were SO yummy. I'll also be planting Park Seed's Whopper tomato and Sweet Million (have leftover seeds of both from last year).

- Diamont Cucumbers. One of my fellow teaching garden volunteers was saying she usually has trouble growing cucumbers (same here! Last year I ended up with a grand total of *two* cukes!) but she had strong healthy plants and lots of cukes with Diamont. Hope they grow for me!

- Pumpkins. It's been a long time since I've put much effort into growing pumpkins. Last year I planted two seeds that I got free at the seed exchange table at a gardening event, and we ended up with *one* pumpkin. This year I want a pumpkin *patch*, dang it.

I'll start the tomatoes and peppers in a few weeks.Yay gardening!

It'll be gardening season soon (right?!). In the meantime, Sam, Zach and "Mr. Jenkins" are enjoying the winter.