Category : Gardening

July Garden Update-2013

July Garden Update

It’s already July and I haven’t told you anything about our garden this year. Shame on me! So here is my July garden update. Come take a tour with me!

July Garden Update

We planted five Zucchini plants, this being the largest of them! Thus far we’ve harvested 5 zucchinis and I can’t wait to use them!

July Garden Update

We planted 7 potato plants and they are doing great! I’ve never had potato plants look so healthy. It will be interesting to see how the potatoes turn out.

July Garden Update

These are our bell pepper plants. They aren’t very big and has only produced a funny shaped bell pepper. We did get them planted late and I saw quite a few blooms today so I still have hope for them. They haven’t withered away yet so that’s something!

July Garden Update

These are our cantaloupe. They are looking healthy as can be though they haven’t produced anything let, though when they do I think its going to be great! We are training them to grow towards the corn so they are all going one direction.

July Garden Update

Our corn isn’t as far as everyone else’s but it’s doing ok. This was the last to be planted and we had “help from Emma so a couple of the places have two stalks coming up instead of one. I also think the squirrels helped themselves to a few kernels as well as we had at least five spots where nothing came up. It will be a late harvest but I’m still excited to be growing corn. There is sweet corn and popcorn shown in the picture.

July Garden Update

This is our yellow summer squash. I harvested our first  one yesterday morning and there are several growing. I think they are not going to disappoint!

July Garden Update

These are our green beans. We didn’t order enough netting and keep forgetting to order more so they are all over the place. Every time I go in to weed the girls seem to create some crisis and I have to stop. You can’t get much weeding done when you’re only at it less then 10 minutes. We’re working on it though and despite the way they look they are healthy!

July Garden Update

These are our cucumbers. They are just starting to grow babies, so give it another week and I think we’ll be harvesting cucumbers. I believe I planted pickling cucumbers so I guess I better get on finding a good recipe for pickles!

July Garden Update

These are our Pinto beans. They are doing amazing! It’s been wonderful watching them grow and yesterday when I was watering them I found beans growing along the bottom! These are experimental. We use a lot of pinto beans in our house so we are curious to see how many beans we get and figure out if it’s worth it for us to grow our own right now with out limited space or if we should just buy for now.

July Garden Update

And finally the tomatoes. We are growing three kinds of tomatoes, though don’t ask me specifically what since I don’t remember at this moment. We didn’t get tomatoes or peppers started in the house this year and due to the weather staying cold longer this spring it was too late for us to start them from seed outside. So we hit up the farmer’s market and got some plant at a pretty good price. I prefer putting our money into the local farmer’s whenever I can. You can’t see them very well but they are doing pretty good. The tomatoes in the center are paste tomatoes and are determinate, though when we bought them we thought the were indeterminate. The tomatoes and either side are determinate and are vining up the twine we ran for them. I didn’t do a great job of suckering or wrapping them around the twine in the beginning so some of them got a little unruly, but over all they are doing good. There are several tomatoes starting and yesterday I found our first ripening tomato!

There you have it folks, our garden in all it’s glory. We are using the Back to Eden method which I will get around to blogging about one of these days. In the mean time you can go here to learn more.

I’m linking this to Homestead Barn Hop!

2013 Seeds for the Garden

2013 Seeds for the Garden

We purchased our seeds for the garden quite a while ago, but I’m just now getting to sharing with you just what we got!

We ordered from two places-Annie’s Heirloom Seeds and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. It may seem like a lot but some we purchased for the fall so we could guarantee that we would be able to get them, and so we could save on shipping. Below is the list of seeds for our garden.

From Annie’s:

SPRING

Danver’s Half Long Carrots

SUMMER

Kentucky Blue Pole Beans

Golden Bantam Sweet Corn

Early Prolific Straight Neck Squash

Chicago Pickling Cucumber

Black Beauty Zuccini

Pinto Bush Beans

Strawberry Popcorn

California Wonder Pepper

Amish Paste Tomatoes

St. Pierre Tomatoes

Victoria Rhubarb

Tropeana Tonda Onions

FALL

Heshiko Bunching Onions

Giant Winter Spinach

Endive di Rufec

Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach

Vit Corn Salad (Mache)

Rocket Salat Arugula

Red Russian Kale

Tom Thumb Lettuce

Romaine Lettuce Blend

From Baker’s:

SPRING

Snap Peas

SUMMER

Tomato Riesentraube “Giant Bunch of Grapes)

Bonus: They also sent me a packet of melon seeds that we may or may not plant this year, we’ll see.

 

We’re trying the back to Eden method for our first year out. We’re very excited to try this out. I believe it’s a very viable and practical method. I’ll share more about that later. For now, if you’re interested you can check them out here!

 

 

I’m linking this to Monday Barn Hop!

Resting Beds

 

So like I said last week, I didn’t get anything planted this year. So we are making the most of it and are piling the grass clippings to prep the beds for late summer. I’m hoping to put in some radishes, onions, lettuce, turnips and the like.

I also put grass around the asparagus, rhubarb, and the strawberries that managed to live through grandpa tilling them under. Plus I think that I found a blueberry plant. Grandpa transplanted the bush last year but apparently he didn’t get everything.

Sorry for the poor quality of the photos. I took the camera outside and it was so hot out that it fogged up the lens. I had to wipe them off and take the pictures as quickly as possible before it fogged up again.

I am linking to Homestead Barn Hop!

2011 Summer Garden Update

    Well, something’s go as planned, and others, like my garden, don’t go as planned. And when I say not as planned, I mean in the worst way possible. It all started out when my seedlings died while I was gone over Easter, then it kept snowing. The ground had thawed enough to plant, but me, being a newbie gardener, was too afraid to plant seeds in snow. I then had the great idea that I’d wait until my mom was done with school for the summer so that she could watch the girls for a couple of days while I hit it hard. That would have been great had it not started raining the same week and just kept raining and raining. The ground was so soaked for so long that by the time it dried enough, the weeds were half my size and it was too late to plant seed.

    So now I have scaled way down. This year my garden has been reduced to planting pots. I ended up planting 2 roma tomato plants, 1 large tomato plant, 6 pepper plants, and 1 dill. I did manage to plant some lettuce from seed. It wasn’t much though, only enough for 1 salad.

  

  For now we are tilling under the planting beds and laying grass clippings on top to kill the weeds and put nutrients back into the ground. I am hoping to plant another round of lettuce in late summer in a bed as well as onions, radishes and turnips. We shall see.

Anybody else singing the garden blues this year?

I am linking up with Homestead Barn Hop over at New Life on a Homestead!