Since Knut just caught me up with weeds in the garden and it’s all pretty, I thought I’d post some pictures.
I’ll start with the bad news. Our peas are having a bad year. For some reason, only half of them came up, and we picked a few and halfway through our normal season, they are now all looking like this. There is no lack of rain lately, and I don’t see evidence of any bug taking over. Normally we eat what we like fresh and then freeze about an ice cream bucket full for winter. Last year we ate what we liked fresh and had 2 ice cream buckets and 1 full gallon Ziploc bag frozen for winter. This year we ate some fresh and have none left to freeze. We’re pretty bummed.
You’re looking at our huge lettuce and spinach row on the right. We’ve been planting some more of those every few weeks so we have a constant supply. Further down the row you’ll see smaller plants that are coming up. To the left of that a row of edamame plants that Knut squeezed between 2 rows already planted after the fact because he wanted to try it. It seems to be growing fine. Squeezed right next to it is our green bean row which is on the ridge of a huge harvest. Pretty soon I’ll be bringing bucketfuls in every day.
Do you remember our monstrous pie pumpkin vine last year? I still have about 60 cups of frozen pumpkin in the freezer. The vine took over every part of the garden as we fought it back. This year I planted squash and cucumber. Both died. So I went to the nursery to pick up some already started vines and they were out of squash so I was left with just cucumber. So what you’re seeing here is the huge space I set aside for vines and the tiny little cucumber plant that is already flowering and is close to as big as it’s going to get. I’m just disgusted with the wasted garden space here. Urgh!
Here is the beautiful pinot noir bell peppers that we’re growing this year. They are so beautiful cut up. We’re also growing green and red peppers but these ones are showing up first.
Here is the flowering green beans. It will be a huge harvest this year!
Here are the broccoli plants. Last year was our first year doing broccoli and I did not know what I was doing and did not harvest them early enough. Why do I have to learn by messing up so often? This year I planted twice as many and am excited to harvest the heads right away! Broccoli is the vegetable that my kids eat the most and if I can wipe it off of my grocery list for the year it will be our biggest money saver in the garden.
Here’s our strawberry patch that blew us away this year. It was so delightful! Each year I’ve been trying to figure out how to handle the weeds. Last year I tried dried grass and it kept blowing away. This year I tried wood chips and it worked amazingly well. I’ll be doing that again! I asked a friend of mine in the homeschool group who gets really good strawberries what she does. She said that each spring she moves them into rows, lays down landscape cloth over them and then covers them with wood chips. So this next Spring I plan to organize this patch into rows, and do the cloth and chips.
This has been our best strawberry year, though and that was a big treat for us.
This is what asparagus plants look like when they are past their season. Our asparagus patch has been growing steadily every year and is the most fought over vegetable at the table. We harvested every stock we could this year and ate it for supper several nights in a row and had to count out pieces for the kids as they were sure they were going to be swindled from their share. Right now it’s gathering seeds and nutrients for the next year and when it turns brown this fall we’ll cut it down for the winter.
Between the strawberries and asparagus I’ve added raspberries this year, which probably won’t do much this year at all. Knut wonders if we planted it in the best spot this year so we’ll see. Besides the peas, it will be a good year. The tomatoes are getting close, the peppers and green beans are on the cusp of a huge harvest. It will keep us busy for some weeks to come still.
CJ Olson says
July 24, 2011 at 9:22 amI am so jealous of your peppers!! I was never successful with growing the colored peppers while we were living the states.
I am so jealous of your garden and the space you have…..makes me long for being back in ND with John’s big garden and with all his experimenting with fruits and veggies.
We would always have a bunch of different variety of Tomatoes, peas, strawberries, raspberries (one of the ladies from our church had a HUGE patch that we could always pick from), spinach, lettuce….we tried squash, watermelon, cucumber, peppers, corn and then never were much good!!
I wish you good luck with your garden!! I hope you can freeze alot!!