Friday, July 10, 2009

My garden this year and its harvest




This year I feel it is important to become a little more self sufficient, less dependant, and it never hurts to be prepared for an unknown future. People think I am a bit loony but, if it is good enough for the boy scouts.....

Well, we expanded the size of our backyard garden. I should have blogged this whole time about what we did and when so we could do what worked again next year and don't make the same mistakes that we made last year.

our biggest mistake was planting too late this year. The rain has been fabulous though,we haven't had to do any extra watering, excepting about 3 days.

we plan on continuing the garden into the fall and winter to keep a year round garden going, and saving the seeds from our crops so we don't have to spend money on seeds all the time.

we planted. tomatoes, squash, carrots, beets, onions, zucchini, green beans, peas, corn, cucumber, 4 different types of hot pepper and cantaloupe.

we have had varying success with the different veggies.

the worst producer was the peas, they formed into ugly little plants with few ugly pea pods

the carrots, beets, onion haven't matured yet (these we planted too late)
well we do have itty bittly carrots right now, hopefully they will continue to grow into something substantial.

zucchini did absolutely nothing but made large space taking non fruiting plants, i think I saw one rotten baby zuc.

peppers have fruited well but isn't vine reddening, they taste nice and hot, but I like red peppers.

the tomatoes have yet to produce well. One plant has given us a modest harvest, we planted probably 10 other tomato plants who just now have little green tomatoes on them but are taking their time ripening. After pickling the squash, we had some liquid left over so we decided to pickle the tomatoes on the counter, don't know how they will taste, but they are in vinegar so the acidity level is high enough for us to jar this way, without a pressure cooker.


green beans are doing fantastic, they have given us so many green beans, we need a pressure cooker to can them properly as if you do the boil method you run the risk of botulism, they are not high enough in acidity without adding lemon juice or vinegar - then you would have pickled green beans, not sure I want jars and jars of pickled green beans.

Cantaloupe have vines and flowers, I have yet to see a melon forming though. Last year we had decent size melons only to wake up one day to find them eaten by worms overnight.
our lesson there, is use some sort of pesticide, damn bugs. I would rather not have to use pesticide, but I also don't want my garden devastated after all that work.

our Squish, are monsters of the garden. we had a very great year with the squash. We pickled them and they taste fabulous. they are wonderful on salads and sandwiches. I would eat them plain or on rice too.

first pickling harvest


second pickled harvest
and lastly but not leastly :), corn - they are small and not so pretty but so sweet and yummy! They are not a large crop to feed for a long time, but a very yummy garden treat!

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