Garden

2016.

September 2016. 

August 19, 2016.

 

 

2015.    

August 31, 2015.

Harvested all the winter squash! Quite a lot. I am exited for the winter months. Visions of delicious squash soups floating before my eyes, roasted squash as a side dish, mashed root veg with squash added for sweetness…ahhh! 😉

This year we planted

Delicata, Sweet dumpling, Butter Cup, Butternut, Acorn.

There is also something else, that I don’t remember planting, but it looks pretty and is definitely a winter squash 😉  It is two toned, striped and slightly pear shaped.

Oh, and Spaghetti Squash, of course. I had leftover seeds that I saved from some organic   squash twoo years ago. Produced loads of smaller yellow tasty squashes. I also had seeds from Now Seeds , this one gave large greenish fruit. Hope it tastes good 😉

And three types of pumpkins : Howden, Tripple Treat and Jack be Little (this one did not do so great, I have been trying three times already, I am bound to get it right one of these days!).

From the summer squash family we planted

Astia Zucchini (will plant again, produces longer that Dark star) , Dark Star zucchini (unremarkable) , Yellow UFO (aka pattison or pattipan) and Yellow Crookneck (rather more tender that zucchini, but hardens faster, making it less useful, too many seeds) .

Cucumbers:

Sumter (definitely favorite),

Lemon (comes in later and produces long after the others stopped, while not my favorite as far as flavor, too seedy and skin is t it is nice to have fresh cukes after the season is almost over. One of Alice’s favorites),

Russian pickling and Russian Bush ( will not plant again, grow fast and black spines look untidy) .

Tomatoes: Red Horizon(huge, red with orange , tasty), Northern Lights (also huge, orange with red, sweet), Currant ( very tasty, however, a bugger to harvest, they are teeny, don’t ripen all at once, so you have to pick one by one, too labor intensive, Elfin (my favorite grape tomato, sweet and flavorful), Early Annie(early, otherwise meh), Silez (meh…bland), Orange Roma (ok, orange, sweet) , Peppermint, Bumblebee( cute and sweet, unexpectedly rather thick skin, Alice’s favorite, keeper) and Stupice (really good, especially surprised after I read that people don’t like the flavor, will definitely plant again, despite of the strange name).

Our tomatoes got early blight pretty bad this year, even though we stayed on top of picking sick leaves and they were planted in a new spot. Many had to be picked not too ripe and finish ripening in the house. Oh well, some years are like that. I would like to try milk spray next year for prevention. It works great for powdery mildew on cucurbits and I’ve read that it is good for tomatoes too.

Potatoes: All Blue, Superior, Nothland Red, Kennebec. Russian Banana and Rosefinn, these ones I threw in large pots and they did not do well. 

There were sunflowers of all sorts, some grew over 10 feet tall! Marigolds, Black Eye Susan, Shasta daisies. Some other flowers, that I just threw seeds out and don’t remember what they were, but pretty 😉

Dill, Parsley, Mint and Basil. Rosemary, Lavender and a little bit of Cilantro, I should have planted more of it…

    Cabage: I bought seedlings. Didn’t have time to start them this year and they are pretty inexpensive at Green Barn Garden Center. Stonehead, Bravo and some purple variety. Stonehead is the early one, I liked it a lot. One of the good things about it is that it ripened fairly early and did not give time to the bugs to start eating it.  A lot of the late cabbages got damaged by bugs, as I don’t spray with chemicals, and had no time to make the homemade brew.

                                                                                                                                                    

                                                    

    

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October 22, 2014.

Last weekend Husband and I took a break from the Porch Saga and worked in the garden. We bought one of those Shelter Logic 8×10 plastic covered sheds and put it up under the pines, where it won’t steal any sunlight from the garden beds. It is definitely not the prettiest of garden buildings, but it will have to work for now. I am hoping that when plastic deteriorates we could maybe frame it up, like some people did (I saw it on Pinterest! just need to find that link). Meanwhile it will house the tiller, tomato cages and some pots.

On Monday I also repotted oodles of little trees. We bought some River Birch and Poplars from Arboretum in spring. We also were given five Black Walnut trees and a few White pines. All no thicker than a pencil. They were tiny pitiful things, and it did not look like they had any chance of survival outside. So I stuck them in pots. And since I did not have enough pots, I put handfulls of trees in each large pot.

Well, they all made it. Surprise! Except I did not count on that. As a result, they got pretty crouded and I had to repot them more or less separately.

After repotting some of the trees even sprouted new leaves, in gratitude (;

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Spring 2014.

Our third season gardening. We decided that we liked it and expanded quite a bit. This year we added more raised beds and tilled a good size area, which I am planning to turn into a no till garden, as I don’t like extra work. Alice started some of her own flower beds and   tended them all through the season. They turned out beautiful!