Garden Update

Early August

Sunflowers! The garden is full of sunflowers, all of them volunteers. Peppers on the left, artichoke in the grass immediately behind, beans, then onions, carrots and tomatoes. [post too long for email, mostly pics]

I roasted three artichoke, according to a recipe I found online. They were underwhelming. The artichoke fruited well, the heart was tasty, but there was very little meat in the leaves. I surmise the plants, which can live for years, are young yet. Perhaps a more mature plant would produce better artichoke? The next artichoke experiment will be covering them in the fall, trying to overwinter them. The ground didn’t freeze last winter.

It is a tale of two landscapes, the lush garden and the burned out sheep pasture. I toss over-large cucumbers over the fence for them. One of the cabbages was sitting in water collecting in the leaves and partially rotted - they loved it.

It is a very productive jungle. I could harvest five pounds of potatoes every day for the rest of the growing season. It is a very different but not altogether different garden than the one recently profiled on Brunette Gardens.

It is peak summer color at the moment. The flower seed I planted in this back corner, around the pond and along the fence did very well. With pie pumpkins.

Acorn squash. All the squash and melons are doing well.

With the pond, the garden is full of birds all day. I see frogs and snakes every day. There is a garter snake living in the pond, and I’m pretty sure there aren’t any minnows left.

I’ve been weeding the edge of each bed. The potatoes on the left, I weeded around the bed and threw all the soil on top to build it up and keep the pototes produced out of the sun, and to produce more. I harvested one plant of a Red Nordlund recently and found ten potates for the one I planted. I expect a much higher rate of production by mid fall.

These raised beds were a mistake. Or rather, the soil I put in the beds was too hot and burned out the peas and beans I planted. So I removed all the boxes and covered them with soil I pulled from elsewhere. Then I planted peas for a fall crop, and as soon as they sprouted mice pulled every one of them out and ate them. I have lost a lot of food to predators, more than I ever did gardening in the city.

Those four cabbages turned into 18lbs of saurkraut.

Two types of salad green starts, with a line of pea seed in between, which the mice have not found yet.

There was a three foot path between these cabbages and potatoes. They killed off all the grass.

That one line of beans on the right, three different kinds produced enough beans to fill about two five gallon buckets. I have already harvested about 30lbs of carrots, on the left. There are beets sprouting in the bed next to that dual line of kale in the background center, to replace the beets some vermin I have not figured out yet, ate. The tomatoes have been crazy productive, there are tomatoes that weigh a couple of pounds - but hardly anything is ripening yet, not even very many cherry tomatoes. That seems an issue all throughout the region. It has been a very hot, dry summer. Watering regularly is definitely not the same as regular rain.

That said, it is very lush. Pictures do not do this garden justice. But I hope you appreciate it. if you want to see the progression you can see updates here, here, here and here.