Summer's End

I know this post is a little late - it's the middle of Sept., but I wanted to show off some of my garden........again.
Cheddar Cauliflower

Squash

Royal Golden Melon - It grew twice as big as this and turned bright orangy-gold. Mmmm and so sweet too!

Veronica Broccoli

Lincoln Peas with clotted cream

Purple Cauliflower

Kale, Cucumbers, ect.

Watermelon-growing


Watermelon- ripe

Strawberry Jam

I made strawberry jam last week. The strawberries were from my own garden! This was a great year for strawberries. There were tons! Too bad the season is already over. Now the black raspberries have started!

Fresh strawberries.
Crushed strawberries.
Adding the pectin, butter, and sugar.

Jars sealing.
All done! Every jar sealed!

Garden Again

More Pictures of my garden on Thursday 6-12-08

Garden Update

My square foot garden is growing!





Sad little tomato plants :(
Melons
Squash

More melons
More melons

More melons :)

Boxed Up

Pictures of my
Square Foot Garden!

Peas-Golden Sweet, Tall Telephone, Sugar Snap, Lincoln
Radishes: Zlata,Helios, Easter Egg II, Red Meat
Carrots: White Satin, Nantaise
Beets:Touchstone Gold, Chioggia
Cabbage, Broccoli, Kale, Swiss Chard, Cauliflower, Onions, Basil, Sage





Blueberry and Lingon Berry bed.

Potato Garden

My cats love to eat and roll on this pretty flower's leaves.


Black raspberry bushes- I finally finished pruning them!


The Great Potato Bin Experiment: Different types of potatoes- early, mid and late season. Three different ways of growing them-build as they grow wooden box, plastic garbage can (left over from another experiment), and a plastic tote bin.

May the best potato win.






I'll update these pics when (and if) anything sprouts.

Gardening Square

I love, love, love square foot gardening! It's so simple and it makes perfect sense. I'm turning my entire backyard into a square foot garden. So far I have 6 beds with 5 more in progress (I'm not that great at carpentry).

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I have 4 3x3 beds, 2 3x2 potato bed/bins and 1 8x2 trellis bed.

The trellis bed is for tomatos. I have indeterminate varieties. They like to grow crazy all over the place, but with the trellis I (hopefully) can keep them under control.

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I bought my tomato plants from Territorial Seeds. They let you buy single plants at a time (as opposed to other catalogs that make you buy at least three), so you can try a bunch of different varieties without an out of control garden.

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Next year I'll ask to have my plants delivered in early May, instead of late April, because one of the plants arrived frosted and wilted.

As you can see in the picture to the right. The tomato on the far left looks a little dead.

They also had aphids!!! I'm NOT happy about that, because they spread to all my other seedlings. But a quick spray of neem and they're dead green pin heads.

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The picture to the right is a pepper plant post neem spray. The little white dots are the dead aphids. Take that plant suckers!

I hope to build another 2 trellis boxes for my melons. I'm trying a bunch of crazy Asian melons and one from Iraq. I bought the seeds from Bakers Creek Heirloom Seeds.
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The lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, kale and cauliflower seedlings that I planted out last week did not appreciate the 5 inches of snow that fell on Saturday. They are dead. Dead. Dead. It's OK, I have about a hundred more. I'm growing the broccoli, lettuce, ect. for my pet chickens. Broccoli is $2.00 a bunch at the grocery store and they can eat a bunch in about....um....60 seconds.
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The chickies are loving the grass and weeds, that I'm pulling up from my garden. I weed for a few minutes every day and feed them the weeds. Then they lay me some delicious, nutritious eggs!
I'm starting to love weeding.
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I'll try to take some pics of my garden soon.