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.

The Start of Garden Season 6.0

I've gotten quite a late start on my garden this year. Probably has something to do with the unrelenting cold wet weather and the fact I'm 30 weeks pregnant. Kinda puts a damper on things when you move at the pace of a snail and have the range of motion of an unjointed stick. So slowly over the last 4 weeks or so I've been cleaning out the remnants of the fall garden and pulling weeds. Due to the added mulch last year, I didn't have a lot of weeds to deal with except in the corn bed since that one only got an inch of mulch. It produced quite a flourish of weeds. They were so bad I actually was able to just pull and roll them up like a carpet.

I'm doing no till/lasagna/back to eden/deep mulch/Ruth Stout types of organic gardening. I started this last year and I was happy with the results so I will continue on in the hopes that it continues to just get better. I was really happy I didn't have to get out there and shovel up and turn all the dirt like I usually do, it's my most hated task. Despite that, I still had a lot that needed to be done.

First I sprinkled a healthy dose of organic poultry litter based organic fertilizer on my garden. In my 256 sq ft garden I spread about 30 lbs of the stuff. Maybe it was overkill but I wanted a good nitrogen layer to help break down the old mulch layer and seep down into the dirt below. Because it's organic, slow release and processed to pellet form, I'm not worried about burning any plants.

I didn't start any plants indoors this year, it's been hard enough keeping my household going while being pregnant as it is, I never got the motivation to start seedlings. I picked up a few things from the Mercer Arboretum March Mart plant sale. Usually it's at the end of March but this year it was earlier, which is great. I got the rest of my seedling stock from Lowes. They had a decent selection of tomatoes and peppers. I really wanted to plant some Ichiban eggplant but I couldn't find any. I guess I'll have to start my own next year. I did pick up an interesting looking white eggplant though, just for kicks and giggles.

One day I transplanted all the plants, the next day I sewed seeds, and then over the course of three days I put in the mulch. This year I was fortunate enough to get some free mulch from some family members. The kind that specifically reference by the Back to Eden film as whole tree chippings. The pile I got had been composting for at least 6 months so it was a very favorable mulch to put in, better than the stuff I had last year. Better still I have some leftover I stockpiled in the back yard that I'll use to mound up my potatoes and spread as needed to support the corn stalks and use for suppressing weeds should they pop up.

A view of the garden facing West. I moved around almost everything I usually plant. I thought it may be beneficial to move stuff around since different plants have different demands on the soil. It was really hard for me to do this because I'm a real creature of habit and don't like change much, but we'll see how it goes.

This first bed was strawberries, potatoes, and peppers last year. Okra later in the summer. This year it is all tomatoes. yep 100% tomatoes. i'm hoping for several more pints of spaghetti sauce this year. I have Cherokee Chocolate, Boxcar Willie, Celebrity, Early Girl, and Better Boys in here. I'm using large cages for those I'll let have 3-4 growth points, small cages for those that will have 2 or 3 growth points, and stakes for single growth point tomatoes. Just mixing it up and seeing how the results vary. I believe there are 12 tomato plants in here. I usually only have 4 tomato plants in half a bed. I planted extra heavy this year in some of my boxes as an experiment to see how much I can really support in each box with these new methods. I expect if the dirt is healthier and I use better organic fertilizers I can support more plant in a smaller space. It's the theory anyway.

This bed has always housed corn. Due the the mass of weeds, I first put down a layer of newspapers 4 or so papers thick and then piled on the mulch at 3-4 inches deep. Bye Bye weeds. Here I have Sweet peppers (3 varieties), one Jalapeno plant (strictly for bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos - YUM!) , a leftover Early Girl tomato plant, and a mini eggplant plant. On the opposite side is one Sunflower (Kong Hybrid) in the middle, cantaloupe and watermelon. i usually do three sunflowers but I opted for only one this year since the seeds we get have really yet to be much for eating. I mostly plant them as a stink bug distraction and a jab at the HOA (because the plants get so tall they tower over the fence) I think I'll plant a few more in DD's garden bed along the back fence just for pretty pretty. Corn has been relocated to the other 8x8 bed. I did 5 rows much more sparsely planted than in years past. I've been really bad about giving each corn plant enough room to really grow to it's potential so my goal is to space them really well this year and see how that improves production and fullness of the ears.

This is the only bed I didn't really mix it up too much. Here I have planted Green Beans (bush variety topcrop), lima beans, two eggplants (Black Beauty and White eggplant), and I did two planting of cucumbers in the middle. I purchased a new trellis to see how that works out, I'm skeptical, it seems flimsy. I just have yet to really work out a good trellis system for my cukes. I planted Straight Eight's this year under the direction of my massively green thumbed grandfather. I hope they do well, last year was such a bust it depressed me and the kids LOVE cucumbers. This is my most densely planted bed, we'll see how it does.

This bed is where I used to always do tomatoes and cucumbers. I pulled out and relocated the garlic chives from last year and here I planted one sweet potato (it was sprouted in the pantry so I thought why not give it a try), 3 lbs of seed russet potatoes, two zucchini, and one yellow squash. I only mulched around the squashes. I'm going to wait for the potatoes to make their way up and then mulch around the emerged plants. I planted quite densely here, so we'll see what happens.

The perennial/herb bed. The only major difference here is that I've moved any surviving strawberries into this bed and planted some new ones. I don't know what my deal is, but I cannot for the life of me grow strawberries. I think I need to do some more research. I culled back my oregano (that stuff likes to just take over) and trimmed back the thyme some. Added some sweet basil and dill on the other side. The parsley is still going strong at the far left, I thought that stuff was supposed to be annual but it just barely makes it through the summers and comes back full force in the fall. I did cut it back some. There's an open space here I'm going to plant some more cucumbers in a tomato cage and see how well that works out. I'd love to find some more Stevia and plant it in here.

View of the garden facing East, you can see my stockpile of mulch in the corner. There's more stuff I need to mulch around the yard so some of that is spoken for but the rest will go to the potatoes when they come up and garden as needed. I think I'm probably going to try and sell my rotating compost bins, I just don't use them anymore since I added in the worm towers, which I like much better for composting.

The fig tree is most promising this year. It has some real height to it and has already started putting out leaves and some baby figs. I desperately just want to sit down with a giant bowl of figs and eat my heart out. I hope this is the year.

The most successful asparagus has come back with some nice thick stalks. I don't get a lot at once, maybe 2 or three stalks per day but there's perfect for snapping and grazing on as I do my rounds around the yard. They're so tender and sweet right off the plant. When it starts heating up I'll let them grow up to ferns and feed the roots for next year. I might plant some more next year if I actually want a harvest, until then, I just like grazing. I put a few yellow onion bulbs in just to the right there just kinda to see what happens.

Orange tree. I'm conflicted on what to do, I have yet to get anything from this tree and it still doesn't look great. I kind of want to dig it out and try a new tree after I prepare the dirt better, but on the other hand I keep holding out hope that it will make it and start producing. I highly doubt I'll get anything from it this year again. If it doesn't look amazingly green next year, it's getting the ax.

This is my shame bed, that started out with some great thornless blackberries that did great for a few years and then just died. It's been barren for a year or two. I wanted to plant some blueberries here but I haven't been able to find any plants decently priced so I decided to let this be DD's garden. She has some marigolds (which I also put all around my garden, great pest repellent and they're pretty too), a purple bluebell, she also planted some onions, green beans, corn, some wildflower seeds, and 4 o'clocks. She also "planted" some of the old stuff I ripped out of my garden, like that bolted collard plant, lol. She waters fervently every day. I'll put a thin layer of mulch here as well just for good measure. I went back and planted a row of onions myself and I'll probably put a giant sunflower or two here also if none of her flowers/plants come up.

So that's the garden this year. It wasn't really that much work but I am totally spent. It's hard to garden for a pregnant lady but the effort will be worth it when I have a newborn (Late May/Early June) and lots of fresh produce in my back yard. Check back in a week or two to see seed sprouts!

Do Worm Towers Work?

As a second installment from my original post where I began my journey to improve my garden soil. I took a leap of faith in building some worm towers into my garden. It's been one year since I've put them in and here's what I have to say about it.

Short Answer: Yes.

Long Answer: For the purpose of composting, worm towers do work, all year long I've been able to throw in kitchen scraps into my towers and it composts away. The majority of the time however it may have only been a small percentage of worms actually were doing the eating, most of the time it was Black Soldier Fly larvae. I'm ok with that because they make quick work of it in the summer and they're inert bugs that don't have ill effect on my garden and I don't have to stay on top of carbon addition to the towers. Which means I can be lazy and still enjoy good results.

I did not "prime" my towers with any species of worms hoping they'd multiply and inhabit the dirt. I built on the premise of If-you-build-it-they-will-come. While planting my spring garden this past week, it became a common sight to shovel a spade or two full of dirt and have 1 to 3 worms in the dirt I removed. Two observations: populations were larger near the towers, most of the worms were small babies or juveniles. I didn't find many large adults, but they did show up occasionally. the fact that there were babies, the adult had to be around somewhere.

See, worms!

Was the new populations a direct result of the worm towers? I would say they helped, but they were not the sole reason worms came. Last year I had also trucked in and added about 3 inches of humus and manure composts to each bed. Then a few weeks later I added another 2-3 inches of wood mulch. I think all things combined provided for my success in creating habitable environment for native earth worms. Many eggs may have come to me in the compost to begin with that could have jump started my populations. In any case, they are here now and I am totally thrilled. The overall texture of my dirt is much improved from last year, it is moist and at least 50% more loamy than last year. Some beds are still a little dense, but I think they'll only continue to improve. All critter activity (meaning I found plenty of other bug and larvae types in the dirt in addition to the worms) is also up quite a bit from last year. I hope many of the others aren't pests, but they're sightings were only a 1/4 or less of those of the worms, so they're a minority.

To keep my populations happy, I did not till or turn my dirt this year. I've decided to add a nice layer of organic fertilizer and then another layer of mulch, about 3 inches. Last year's mulch and compost had decomposed and sunk down to the level of my beds, as I expected.

So that's how it has worked out for me. I plan to keep all my towers. Next year when I'm not 7 months pregnant, I'll probably move the towers to the corners of the beds instead of centered on the ends, I feel like there's wasted space trying to plant around them. The kids still love "feeding the worms"

Spring is Coming for REAL!

After having quite a chilly and abnormal winter this year, this past week has been downright lovely. I haven't posted much about the garden over the winter...or really anything because I don't like going out in the cold. So basically, I throw a few seeds out there and check back right before spring gets here. It didn't help that I became pregnant right about planting time for fall gardening and I get very sick in my first trimester so I'm pretty lucky I got anything but weeds out of the fall garden.

Got a decent crop of carrots. Not as many as I usually do since I didn't do a very good job planting them under the mulch and then thinning, but what did come up, grew exceptionally well, much better than years past, minimal tops and all root. Very sweet and crisp. Good for freezing and canning but doesn't keep too long in the fridge, it goes rubbery.

Danvers 126 variety

I just pulled up my turnips too. We've been eating on them here and there over the winter, but I'm the only one that likes turnips/turnip greens, and one person can only eat so much. The ones I left be got pretty large.

These were just the largest ones, between softball and double softball size. I also have a good armful of regular sized turnips and leaves I will probably blanch and freeze. All but the one DS is holding (while he munches on raw collard leaves) turned out very firm and good flesh. The largest one got pithy and spongy in the center, so it's going to the worms as compost. Also notice the yellow blooming broccoli behind DS. I like to always let some broccoli go to flower because the bees LOVE them. I wait until I'm ready to plant for spring to take them out. Gotta make sure the bees know where to come that way I don't have pollination issues.

With the turnips, a friend suggested I pickle them, and being pregnant and not sick anymore, I want to eat lots of pickles so I obliged. I also planted beets this year, but they did very poorly. I only got a handful of very tiny beets. Just enough to color the turnip brine. Every time I try beets they just don't do the best, but I'll keep trying because I do love beets.

I canned 4 pints of carrots and 6 pints of turnips (only the largest turnips, still have lots more greens to put in the freezer). I still have a decent portion of kale and a healthy bit of collard greens to put away in the freezer.

Since I'm doing no till gardening now, I will just spread a good dose of organic fertilizer on top of my beds (I am using this stuff, I had good results with it on my lawn last year and it says you can use it in the garden also), lay down newspaper 3-4 papers thick and cover with 2 inches of mulch. When it comes to planting time, I will punch down through the newspaper, add rabbit manure and cottonseed meal and plant in the soil. This should work really good for controlling weeds this year. Over the winter the weeds weren't bad either, only in the corn bed because I didn't mulch very heavily last spring.

Here's to a new season of gardening and many more posts!