lets get to the garden porn shall we?
Finally got the potatoes topped off. This was the second time we'd hilled them up. We're doing it about once every three weeks. You can see there's no lack of vegetation!
These were the first set of potatoes we'd planted. As you can see, they're beginning to die off already. Won't be long now!
Finally have blooms on the pepper plants for our salsa peppers.
Homegrown stevia. I throw a few leaves in the tea cup when I'm brewing tea and it's makes for a great natural sweetener. Hubby almost killed them when I was visiting family with the kids. I came back and they were bone dry and brown. I cut them down to an inch and have given them plenty of water and they've come back just as strong.
Italian parsley. We use a LOT of parsley in our house. So I planted a lot. I'm thinking I might need double this amount next year though. Somehow, if you look closely, you can see there are a few green onions that ended up in the left side of the container, apparently I spilled some seeds :)
Black Seeded Simpson lettuce. This is our first year trying this variety and I'm in love. We had three days this week with 100ยบ temps and only three plants bolted (you can see I cut them down, on the right hand side at the bottom). This has to be the most heat resistant variety I've ever seen. The taste is lovely, very crisp and crunchy! This will continue to be a staple in our garden year after year.
California Bell peppers. It never ceases to amaze me how these plants grow such big fruit.
Early girl tomatoes.
Carrots are finally growing like weeds! Which you can see we have plenty of ;) We thinned them two weeks ago and ever since, they've taken off. We have another set of carrots going in along with peas for part of our fall crops.
Onions in the back. I haven't weeded since the tops fell over, and as you can see, the weeds grow super fast! I need to remember that because just a few days can mean the difference between "under control" and "crazy out of control!". The onions have done so well this year, it was so great watching them go from tiny sets to onions the size of baseballs. We will be pulling them and curing them, then storing them braided and hanging to dry in the root cellar (post will include all the details!).
Roman Candle Tomatoes. I had to have one tomato plant that was "cool" and chose this one. Check out these super cool tomatoes! I love it.
Onions up close. Aren't they just gorgeous?
Cucumbers have really taken off. Notice all the blooms. Next year to save space I will be trellising them. They're taking up valuable real estate.
We planted the straight eight variety for salads and eating. You can see one lone cuke back
there if you look hard.
Okra! We have two plants this year. We only use Okra for slicing and freezing or canning with our veggie soup and chicken soup mix as none of us are big okra fans. I do love how they grow upside down though.
Boston Pickling cukes. Can't wait to get a whole crop in so we can make some pickles. My kids will eat a jar of pickles in a sitting if you let them.
This. This is my pride and joy. I have my blood sweat and tears in this strawberry patch. We started out with 37 plants. We did a double hill system and spaced them a foot apart in all directions. Every single plant now has three runners, and you can see the rows certainly are being filled in. We have been pinching off all the blooms this year so that the root system will take as next year this means we'll likely have a bumper crop :)
Watermelon patch. Hard to see as it's gotten so large it's encroaching on the grass next to the garden, but we have about 8-10 main vines that are about 8 feet long now.
Baby watermelon! We planted Sangria and Sugar babies, not sure which
one this is yet, but I for one, can't wait to eat it.
Squash and potatoes in the back. We had to tear out one squash plant because it became infested with squash vine borers, but we were able to save the other two plants. We have one zucchini and one yellow straight neck. We also have three smaller plants in the back, that had been in containers which had stunted their growth a bit. So. Lesson learned. Squash in the ground, not in containers.
Beans! Can you believe all these beans! We've harvested about 5lbs of green beans thusly and the pinto, cranberry, montezuma red and great whites already have plenty of bean pods. The Cherokee Blacks and Lima's went in later, so I expect we'll have some of those soon. We have plans of picking the beans, drying them out, shelling them and then storing them. We might can some of the fresh beans as well.
We extended the garden a bit to accommodate the watermelon vines as they were trying to get through the fence. So, I decided to dig it up. We're going to put our fall peas and carrots over here. I have 250 carrots going in the ground and around 200 pea plants if they'll all fit.
Beans beans they're good for your heart!
Pinto beans.
Aren't squash flowers beautiful?
Potatoes. This was the last crop of potatoes that went in. They have been hilled twice and still have blooms. I imagine we will be harvesting them closer to fall.
So that's our garden news for this week. How is your garden doing?
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