What's Cookin' This Fall

I decided not to go too overboard this fall and plant things I know we usually eat. Not trying anything fancy but I am trying my repeat failures again: Beets and Peas.

In the spring I planted ONE sweet potato that had started sprouting in my pantry. It was slow to do anything. I harvested all my russets and just let the plant grow. Now it's flowering and basically taking over my garden one box at a time.

It's overflowed the one 8'x4' box and is creeping into the adjacent one

Hopefully the peas can catch up before they're overrun from the sweet potatoes. I try peas again, these are mammoth melting sugar snap peas-edible pod. i haven't had luck with either variety. They look OK so far, not terribly vigorous but I think they're enjoying this cooler weather. One of these years I'll learn the secret to lots of peas!

Broccoli (back), brussel sprouts (center), kale (front) and a leftover bell pepper to the right that just won't quit.

Collard greens (border), beets (center). Looks like I'm gonna do well for collards, as I was hoping! I can't wait to eat them smothered with bacon for Thanksgiving.

I found two russet plants peeking through the mass of sweet potato. I must have missed them when I harvested this summer. If they make more potatoes that would be ok with me!

 I have a little hope for my navel orange tree. To the left, this is the picture I took back in March of this year. And to the right, I took this today. it has greened up A LOT, has plenty of new growth and some of the leaves are massive (see below). I guess it must have heard my threats of being cut down if it didn't produce. OK Orange tree, you get another chance. No flowers next spring and you're gone!!

You got anything good growing in your garden this fall? Maybe next year I'll be more adventurous. I'm happy for a big plate of collards and some broccoli leaf wrapped meatballs.

Summer Recap

There's something about having a baby that just sucks the time out of your life, so the garden blog has been a bit on hold, but I did take some pictures through the summer of the harvests so I figured I'd share that. This season was amazingly amazing! Nearly every plant did not only well but exceptional. The only ones that didn't was the squash, watermelon, and lima beans. Check out the rest:

A good panoramic shot of my 256 sq foot garden. Still space to expand.

These turned out to be volunteer mini pumpkins. I think I harvested about 10 little pumpkins, two are surviving this day, although they are edible, I've just used them as decoration.

Zucchini grows pretty fast. This one was neglected while I was in the hospital having a baby, but it was still tasty, it hadn't grown too big or tough yet.

 Wound up harvesting 40 ears of corn, many stalks produced two ears! I've never had that happen before. Some were picked a little early because the corn ear worms were really bad this year.

Just growing, before things grew out of hand. I had a hard time keeping my plants in the beds this year they got so big.

During peak growing, this is a pretty typical day to day harvest.

Corn ear worm. The kids had fun finding them, they came in quite an array of colors. Thankfully while it was gross finding them, they didn't decimate the corn and so I still had lots of yummy corn to put away in the freezer.

My sunflower got huge this year, look at what a hot mess the rest of the garden is, it was growing out of control and trying to recover from birth I could not get a handle on it.

This was the potato yield of three plants. I didn't think it was that great.

 Then I pulled up the rest of the plants and in total weighed 15 lbs from 3 lbs of seed, So I think I did ok despite not doing anything but just planting them in the ground.

The first cantaloupe of many. So many cantaloupe and they were all huge!

After I took out the russet potatoes and squash, the ONE sweet potato plant took over, It's still out there growing and I can't contain it anymore. I don't know anything about growing sweet potatoes but I think you're supposed to dig them up and cure them when the plant starts to die, so I've just let it be alone, maybe in November I'll harvest it.

I even got a couple of gigantic figs to eat! MMM These are brown turkey figs... coupled with the persimmons my mom brought back from my grandma's house in Louisiana, it's a southern treat for these fruits that are a very rare find in grocery stores.

The kids love to help shuck corn.

For a while I had handful after handful of asparagus to eat. Next year is going to be even more awesome. I finally just stopped picking asparagus because I was tired of eating it!!

I had so many tomatoes I canned in total more than 2 dozen pints of salsa and another half dozen of spaghetti sauce.

The brown marmorated stink bugs were HORRIFIC this year. I desperately wanted to give away tomatoes but they were basically decimated by those terrible bugs, so I had to can the tomatoes, they were ugly but still edible.

My biggest tomato was a Cherokee chocolate. It was so yummy. I produced my biggest tomatoes ever this year, lots of really large slicers and I wasn't even aggressive about pruning. See more tomatoes and the mini pumpkins on the table in the background. That was spillover tomatoes. My counters are FULL.

The cucumbers came on a bit later than the tomatoes, but they got eaten up, my kids love cucumbers.

Another sampling of cantaloupes. They were SO sweet and juicy. You just can't find em like that in the grocery store. I was pretty sad that the watermelons didn't work out. The cantaloupe plants choked them out they grew so much faster.

And there you have it, an amazing Spring/Summer garden. I never did get out and plant okra, I'm sure it would have been mind boggling how well they would have done, I was just too exhausted and sleep deprived from caring for a newborn, Keeping up with picking and eating/canning the existing produce was all I could do.

The Garden Starts to Produce

My garden is officially in production mode. The harvest is beginning for green beans. It's also officially out of control. I know I planted a lot of stuff close together this year, but i'm a little anxious and overwhelmed at how out of hand it has gotten. Based on years past I just didn't expect my plants to do as well as they are. There just might be something to this Back to Eden/Deep mulch/No till/Ruth Stout/Lasagna Gardening method.

DS is super excited to have green beans for dinner. If you're starting out, this is a must have crop, it's so prolific, easy, early and satisfying to grow and they just produce and produce and produce as long as you keep picking.

I've got tomatoes coming out of my ears. Every one of my 13 plants is just heavy laden. I've already lost a lot to blossom end rot. We had quite a dry spell and then a TON of rain so they didn't like that.

 The plants grew out of control so fast, it's just a giant mass of tomato plants. I wasn't able to prune them very effectively. I'm pretty sure I'll have disease and pest issues because they're growing so densely, there isn't a lot of airflow around the plants. They're in the sunniest spot though so that should help with excess moisture evaporation.

Corn is just starting to tassle. I really should have laid down newspaper in this bed, the weeds are pretty thick. When this crop is through and I chop down the stalks, I'm going to lay newspaper and a new layer of mulch, hopefully eradicate those deep rooted weeds. Despite my spotty planting job this year, the stalks are all very green and happy looking.

Best looking peppers I've ever grown. They are really surprising me at how lush and green and tall they are getting. I've never had such happy looking pepper plants. These I think are California Wonder and they feel very thick walled and meaty. So happy with these results.

I can taste the bacon wrapped jalapenos already. This is another super easy to grow, high yield plant for beginners.

Totally loving this white eggplant. I was reading up that this is the original color of eggplant and how it got its name. Of my three eggplant plants, this one is doing the best. I'm excited to fry these guys up.

Peppers, sunflower, cantaloupes (really taking off and flowering well)  There's also watermelon, a tomato, eggplant and some mystery squashes running around in here.

Green bean patch, eggplant and cucumbers are making their way up the trellis. Males flowers are going crazy, I expect to be seeing some cucumbers growing soon as the female flowers are usually not far behind. So happy to be having cukes this year after last years pitiful disappointment. Can't see the limas on the other side but they're FULL of flowers. I think I might get a decent harvest from them this year.

Yellow crookneck. It's doing pretty good. Although this and the zucchini just really aren't fruiting well. I don't think they like the spot I put them in, not sunny enough. I might not get much out of them this year, I'm ok with that though.

See, the potato plants are just totally crowding the squash out, and this bed gets the least sun due to the maturing of the neighbor's trees. I think i might take out this bed next year and put in a new one on the other side of the tomatoes where there's lots of sun.

Lots of basil, I think it's time for some pesto! Oregano and thyme are just out of control as usual. The whole garden just is overflowing and growing like nuts. Seriously, i just can't believe how well everything is just growing. I haven't fertilized since the very begging when I put down the organic fertilizer under the mulch and the one application I did when the garden was a few weeks old.

The fig tree has never been so huge and lush. It's finally living up to its potential.  I haven't spotted any baby figs yet, it might be too early, but I sure hope it makes some this year.

DD's garden, full of weeds but some things are growing. You can tell the soil is still quite depleted here by how stunted everything is compared to my garden I've babied and enriched the last few years. I'm happy that the blueberries I planted are taking well - they should be ready to produce a few berries next year. I've got to keep an eye on the soil acidity and nutritional content for them. The baby limas I put in are also doing good because they fix their own nitrogen from the air. I'm hoping that'll help out the soil. I should put a new application of chicken poo fertilizer here and cover with mulch. I think I'll do that when the plants expire. The remaining blackberry plant actually looks like it's making a come back with some new growth.

My mystery squash plant. I don't know what variety this is. I thought most pumpkins start out green but this is staying yellow from the start like a crookneck summer squash. I'm not even sure how big I should let it get before I pick it and examine it. What's interesting is this one popped up far from the worm tower and the plant itself is not gigantic but it is flowering and fruiting quite profusely. Another plant popped up right next to a worm tower and the leaves and plant itself are just enormous and growing and growing but the flowers and fruits are far and few between. So that tells me the areas near the worm towers are high in nitrogen and there's more phosphorous away from the towers. That makes sense because I don't throw many carbons into the worm towers, just lots of high nitrogen food scraps.

Happy garden. I hope it stays that way when the blazing heat pounds it and the bugs don't get too bad. I've noticed a slug and a cucumber beetle this morning, wasn't happy about that. I'm sure the good bugs will show up when they're needed, I had plenty of them last year.

What Three Weeks Will Give Ya

Just some updates to show how the plants have grown. I did a pretty poor job planting some things because they took a while to come up, some things are still trying to come up. I had to replant a couple. I don't think I kept the seeds moist enough or otherwise didn't plant them deep enough in the soil and they had trouble trying to sprout in the mulch. Overall, we'll looking pretty good.

The tomatoes have taken off. I'm surprised that so many of them already have flowers. For some reason it seemed like it took longer last year to get flowers, could have something to do with the age of my transplants. I'm happy to see that without any additional fertilizers, the leaves are all very green and healthy, the plants are strong and vigorous

The corn I did a really poor job of planting into the soil so they've come up really sporadically and I had to replant many of them. I guess this will end up being a good thing as the stalks mature at different rates I'll have available pollen for longer. The sprouts are struggling though, I've just given them a dose of blood meal. Hopefully the rains this evening will water that in good and I'll see some positive results next week. Hopefully I can take the bird netting off soon because the weeds are starting to get really bad. I need to pick them and add more mulch.

Considering I always have horrible results with peppers, I think my plants look pretty good. No additional fertilizers and the leaves are very green and the plants are sturdy. All good signs. There are some flower buds but I don't think any have opened yet. Won't be long.

The cantaloupe had to be replanted and the watermelons are really struggling to sprout. The sunflower had a slow start too. It's looking yellow so I gave it a good dose of blood meal also. I think once they get their roots down the small plants will take off.

The beans have all come up and the cucumbers are looking happy, much better than last year. I hope they take off soon and start climbing the trellis. Eggplant always does well, I've never had problems with eggplant.

You can see the potatoes here on the right have just exploded. I mulched around them, they could probably do a second mulching once the squashes get a little larger. The sweet potato has struggled though and the yellow squash had real issues sprouting but I think it's going to do alright now. The strawberries to the left seem happy enough, they have some small berries, but not much to speak of. I added some more cucumbers here but they have yet to sprout, I'm not sure what is going on with them, they're the same seeds as in the bean bed. Something happened to my parsley and the stem rotted and the whole plant died. It was very similar to squash vine borers but I didn't notice any larvae, just a mushy stem and root.

The fig tree looks so happy this year. It'll keep filling out pretty nicely and hopefully I get figs.

DD's garden space, she has 4 or so corn plants coming up and 1 green bean and several onions, including those that I planted. I managed to find two blueberry plants at Aldi in Atascocita. One is a Superblue and the other is an O'Neal, they are southern highbush varieties. I've never tried blueberries so I'm excited to see how they do. They are very small and twiggy, but I only paid $5 a piece for them. I dug each a nice big hole filled it with rabbit manure and potting mix, added the plants and then some topsoil. Then I mulched each one pretty good. I got a little worried about the soil ph, which I haven't tested but I'm pretty sure it's not acidic enough so I just went and pulled the mulch back and fluffed in some elemental sulfur I got from Ace Hardware. It's slow acting but I felt it would be thee safest way to go. Hopefully a few months down the road the plants won't be dead but surviving and hopefully thriving. I also planted some baby lima bean seeds here just cause there seemed to be some open space. Lots of weeds too but oh well, we'll see what happens.

Since we're expecting some rain tonight and tomorrow (and a cold snap, seriously possible lows in the high 30s!) I went out and gave several of the plants some booster doses of blood meal (for nitrogen and leaf growth) and bone meal (phosphorus for flowering and plant vigor). Once plants are well established and flowering and bearing fruit, I usually from then on just use cottonseed meal and fish emulsion to fertilize.

I love looking at my garden, I finally sewed a replacement canopy for our outdoor swing so I can sit out there and admire my plants.