Category: Garden

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A Growing Garden Update

So here’s a garden update.

We’ve continued to have more rain than usual and in some cases I think it caused a little bit of problems. But with the warmer weather we’ve been having it’s not been too bad and things are beginning to get big.

A Garden Overview.

Let’s look at all the goodies and how well they’re growing. You’ll also note that the weeds and wheat are growing pretty well too.

An overview of the garden.
This picture was taken on 6/30. It’s amazing how fast this garden is growing.

You can go back and look at the garden in my first garden post here. This will give you an idea of how much everything has grown.

Here are the various tomatoes I’ve got planted in the garden.

Pink Brandywine

The Pink Brandywines I have planted are now tied to the trellis and they are actually growing in and around the trellis. I’ve even got some fruit growing, although in this picture you really can see them.

Pink Brandywine tomato plants growing in my garden.
My Pink Brandywine tomatoes. I can’t wait for them.

Mortgage Lifters

The Mortgage Lifters seem to be growing the best. I’ve been trying to keep it pruned, but it grows almost faster than I can keep up.

I’m really hoping to get a good sized mess of tomatoes canned this year. We are completely out of home canned tomatoes from our last crop a few years ago. I miss having them around the house.

A mortgage lifter tomato plant with tomatoes growing in my garden.
Look at all those tomatoes.
Mortgage lifter plant with tomatoes growing in my garden
Here’s another batch off the same plant.

Cherry Tomatoes

Large cherry tomato plant growing in my garden
My Large Cherry Tomato plant

There’s about 3 bunches of these cherry tomatoes on the plant. I don’t think you can see them all, but trust me they are there. Can’t wait for these either.

We’ll just put these in a bowl on the counter and eat them like snacks. I’m really hoping to get enough to dry them too.

The Surprise Compost Tomato

A roma type tomato plant growing in my compost pile
They look like a roma type tomato to me.

Now here’s the big surprise. Remember the tomato plant I found in the compost pile with the squash plant. Well, I think I’ve determined what kind of tomato it is and I’m real excited about it. This thing is COVERED in blooms and there are a LOT of small fruit on the plant. I’m so excited.

It looks like we are going to a huge crop of these. Since the roma type are usually a lot more meaty than your regular slicing tomato, I’m really hoping to have enough to make some good tomato sauces.

What you see here is just a small amount of what is really there. YAY!!!

It’s the small things that make me happy.

The Peppers

Next up we have some peppers. There’s really not a lot to show here so I’ve only included the one picture .

A Bell pepper plant growing in my garden
This is the bell pepper that almost wasn’t. Something ate this plant down to the stalk. Now it’s the best looking pepper I have.

We’ve gotten 2 banana peppers so far, but it looks like there’s only going to be, maybe, one more. The 2 we got were really good. We tasted the first one raw and the 2nd one we grilled with some pork chops we had for supper. It was was so good.

I’m not sure what happened here with the peppers, but that’s something we’ll have to work on to figure out. We really would like to have a lot more of the banana peppers.

We still have about 3 bell pepper plants growing, 1 with an actual pepper and the other 2 have a few blooms. I’m anxious to see what they do.

The baby radishes aren’t babies anymore, and you can see the carrots now.

My radishes aren’t babies anymore. I actually pulled one and grilled it with our pork chops along with the 1 remaining banana pepper. These radishes are going to be huge.

A row each of radishes and carrots growing in my garden.
Radishes and carrots.

One thing you’ll note when you look at this picture is the radishes in the back are way bigger than the ones nearer to the front of the picture. The only thing we can figure out is the amount of water that they got during that real wet period (called May). We think the ones at the back drained faster than the smaller ones up front. It’s just a guess, but there’s really no other differences.

We’re happy to say you can actually see the carrots now. They need to be thinned, and we’ll get to that, but we’ll give them just a bit more time.

My husband LOVES his carrots and doesn’t want to pull too many. I’ll let him do those honors.

Okra

Remember the tiny okra plants from before. Well they aren’t so tiny anymore.

A row of Okra plants growing in my garden.
The okra.

These are about a foot tall now. I just can’t wait to see the blooms. Okra has such pretty flowers when they bloom.

The burgundy ones have gotten redder so they’re really pretty now too.

The Chinese yard long beans are growing!!

The tiny little Chinese Yard Long Beans have grown. They’re now beginning to grow up the trellis. A few of them have a tentacle reaching up about 4 feet.

Chinese Yard Long Beans growing in my garden
Here are the beans climbing up the trellis.

I only had to tie one. It just kept reaching the opposite direction from the trellis. The rest found the trellis all by themselves.

The compost squash.

And remember that squash that was growing in the compost pile? Holy Smokes, I had to give up my compost pile for the year. It’s taken over. I’m also noticing there’s more than one kind of squash in that mass of plants.

So far I’ve found 3 fruit and none of them look alike.

This is the one we transplanted from the compost pile into the garden.

Looks like a pumpkin pie pumpkin growing in my garden.
Looks like small pie type pumpkin to me.

This fruit I found near the front side of the compost pile.

A young type of squash growing in the compost pile.
This one is about 4-5 inches in size right now.

And this one is growing on the outside of the back side of the compost pile.

A type of squash growing outside the compost pile.
This one is just a touch smaller than a soccer ball.

I’m having a terrible time with squash bugs too. I’d never seen those nasty little things before this year. They can decimate a plant pretty quick from what I’m seeing too.

Even with the squash bugs, this plant is taking over.

Large squash plant growing out of the compost pile.
The squash plant coming out the back side of the compost pile.
Large squash plant
The front of the compost pile. This thing is reaching out in all directions.

I’ve been mixing Neem oil and spraying the plant. I’m hoping to just hold them off as long as possible. I can’t get into the plant in the compost pile well enough to spray it completely so I think that’s going to be a problem in getting rid of them.

Lots of Weeds And Wheat In the Garden

The one thing you will note is that the wheat and weeds are growing rather well. We mulched with straw, so the wheat is growing like crazy. Since wheat is an annual, we’re not too worried about that as long as we don’t let it head.

The weeds are another story. We’ve been working at weeding and I’m going to have to get my Cobra Head in there and get some work done. It’s just too much for hand pulling.

We just got back from 3 days out of town and in those 3 days, everything exploded. We have a lot to do now.

What’s Next

I still want to plant some more for late summer and some other stuff for fall, so we still have a lot to do to get the other side of this garden ready. We’ll be using a weed barrier on the new parts of the garden, that I didn’t have when we started this side of the garden.

I’m interested to see how much easier it is to take care of with the weed barrier down.

Lessons Learned

One thing we learned with this garden is to not give up on a plant that doesn’t look good. A few of the plants I thought were toast, have come back to look really great and begin to produce.

I’m sure there will be more lessons. Like I said, this is an experiment, so I’m excited to learn a ton of lessons for next year.

Let me know what you planted in your garden and how it’s going. Leave a comment or a picture below. If you have any good advise, I’m all ears too.

Until Next Time – Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

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Growing A Garden

We’re growing a garden for the first time in several years. It’ll only be a small portion of the food we’ll eat this summer, but a little is better than none.

In the past, we’ve had a garden and grown tomatoes, a few peppers and some sweet potatoes, but it’s been a while, if ever, that we’ve actually made a full blown garden like the one we have now. I’m excited.

This is most of the garden.

When I was a kid my dad always had a garden and grew all kinds of vegetables that mom would freeze or can. I remember having to water and weed the garden during the summer. I think those jobs were mostly to keep me out of trouble during the weekday. But it was a way to make me responsible for something at a young age too. And while I hated having to do it, I’m glad they made me do. I did learn a thing or two, even if I would have never admitted it to them.

I also remember sitting on the back porch snapping bean and shelling peas with mom. While I wasn’t terribly fond of messing with the beans and peas, I did enjoy sitting out there with mom and dad on the porch. Those are good memories.

But, sadly, I didn’t appreciate the garden back then and missed the opportunity to learn a ton of lessons from my dad.

But, I’m learning now and I know that would make him happy.

My mortgage lifter tomato.

If you’ve ever eaten a homegrown tomato, you know how much better it is than a store bought tomato. It has so much more flavor, you can’t even compare the two.

That holds true for everything I’ve ever had out of a garden.

We have a compost pile too, but it’s not nearly big enough for the size of our garden. We’ve covered what we could with the compost we had and then bought some organic cotton burr to work into the rest.

Only half of this garden plot is being used because we haven’t been able to amend the soil in the other half yet.

We didn’t get the entire garden planted this year because we weren’t able to get the amendments we wanted worked into the soil over the whole garden before planting season and because we got 30 inches of rain last month. There was so much mud you just couldn’t get in it to do anything.

What We’re Growing In Our Garden

We did get several different kinds of vegetables planted, but not near as much as I’d like. But our ground is heavy clay and we have to get the rest of the ground amended in order to plant the rest. I hope to have that done in time to plant a fall garden.

Here’s what we have planted for this season.

Tomatoes

I started tomatoes from seed this year. That’s the first time I’ve ever done that. I actually only germinated them to see if they were good. The seeds were so old I really didn’t think they would be viable. Apparently, I was wrong. It was so cool.

I only have 1 mortgage lifter tomato, but it’s so pretty.
My Pink Brandywine tomatoes

Peppers

I did the same with peppers and it worked for them too. But then something ate them, completely. So, we had to buy new plant starts if we wanted peppers this year.

We have 5 pepper plants, but this is my first bloom.

Radishes

I remember as a kid mom and dad putting raw radishes on the table at every supper. I never liked them. Mom and dad loved them. But, recently we were watching a video on YouTube and a lady who grew them talked about roasting them being a game changer.

So, I thought why not, and we gave it a try. They were awesome!! So, needless to say, we’ve planted a couple of rows of radishes. Let me tell you roasted radishes are completely different than raw ones.

This one is about ready to pull.
My baby radishes

We started the bigger radishes quite a while ago and have been eating them already. So we decided to plant a few more rows for later.

We didn’t have a great germination rate in the first batch so we planted more of them the second round. Of course they all germinated this time.

Okra

We also planted a few kinds of okra. I’ve never been an okra fan but my daughter-in-law recently discovered she liked them, so I planted some for her. My husband and I decided we’d give them another try too.

Isn’t that burgundy okra stalk pretty? Can’t wait to see what it will look like when it grows up.

I planted two different kinds. One is the burgundy okra, shown above. The pictures I’ve seen show them to be very pretty plants. The other is the Crimson Spineless which is what I heard a lot of people talking about. Since I didn’t know anything about them, I decided I would start with what others liked best.

Most of the okra came up too. I’m pretty happy to see that. I really hope we like it too.

Cantaloupe

Several years ago a cantaloupe grew in an old compost pile we had. I got about 12 cantaloupes from that plant and they were so good and juicy. So I saved the seeds out of the last one I had. This year I planted three of those seeds. They are all growing. I’m so excited for those.

My compost cantaloupe. I have no idea what kind they are, but if they’re anything thing like last time, I’ll be a happy camper.

Green Beans

They have a ways to go yet, but they’ll get there. We have 7 of these.

We both like green beans and have recently discovered these new beans (to us, at least) called Chinese noodle beans. I found something a little different called Chinese Yard Long Beans.

The people who talk about them rave about the taste.

They’re pole beans, so we’ve planted them on a trellis. I can’t wait for them to grow up the trellis and give them a try when they’re ready.

After Thoughts

As an “after thought” we decided to try a few rows of corn and a row of carrots. My husband loves carrots and I wanted to try the baby corns, which he loves too. The corn has just begun to come up, but we only planted 2 rows, so I’m not real sure if they’ll pollinate correctly and actually produce ears. We’ll see.

Part of the corn crop.

My husband planted 3 different types of carrots. All the seeds were from 2013, so I wasn’t hopeful, but 2 of these 3 types have germinated and started to grow. We’re both pretty excited about those.

See those tiny pieces of green? Trust me, those are carrots.

We found this growing in the compost pile too. As you can see, it’s taken over and neither of us have it in us to kill these beautiful plants. We pulled one out and put it in the garden earlier. Our plan was to remove the rest of these once the one we took out started growing. But, the one we transplanted didn’t grow. It hasn’t died, but it just won’t grow. So, we decided to leave the these.

Most of that is squash.

There’s a couple of tomatoes in there too. Everything is volunteer, so we’ll let them go and see what happens. This means, of course, we won’t be turning the compost for a while. I guess, that’s okay too.

See that tomato up under that squash and what I think is a sunflower.
Here’s the other tomato, smack dab in the middle of all that squash, with a nice spread of lambs quarter right next to it. I think I’ll pull the lambs quarter out though.

Later in the year I’ll start planting for fall. We’ll plant things that like the cooler weather like leafy greens, peas and hopefully some broccoli. We’ll just see what grows.

My husband and I have decided to make this garden an experiment. We’ll try things and see what happens and next year we’ll adjust.

In my opinion, this is one of my best DIYs yet. I can’t wait for everything to begin producing. I love the taste of homegrown food. It’s funny how things change as you grow up and get older. I hope my grandkids learn it sooner than I did.

As our garden grows more, I’ll update with new posts. I hope you’ll come back later to see what it looks like.

Are you growing a garden this year? What did you plant? What’s coming up? Do you have pictures, post them below. I’d love to see what your garden looks like. If you’re not growing one, I hope I’ve inspired you to try. Experiment, see what you can grow. You can build on it more next year. Let’s share some ideas so we can all try something new next year.

Thanks for coming by. Until next time –

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey