Garden preparations

Last summer, Dale and I planted a modest garden. We had lots of vegetables, most of which produced a good amount of crop. We had so much fun with it last year that we decided to quintuple our garden this year!

The garden preparations have been ongoing for several months now, beginning with planting some seeds inside to get them a head start on our short growing season. We started the plants back in February, in a peat pellet tray. Within days, several of the plants had started growing!


Soon, we had a pellet tray full of green plants. We had planned on some of the seeds not germinating, so had planted three seeds in each pellet, and several pellets of each kind of plant. Surprisingly, every seed germinated, so we trimmed away the two weaker plants in each peat pellet, leaving only the strongest plant. The tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli were particularly strong, and we transferred them to larger pots after just two weeks in the pellet tray.

(A month after we started our plants inside, we got over a foot of snow! Those tiny little plants wouldn't have survived outside during this storm!)






The plants continued to thrive inside, and we began acclimating them to the outside by placing them outside in the shade for a few hours every day. The peppers always looked better after being outside, while the tomatoes started to look a little weaker.


This weekend, we rented a tiller and Dale tilled up our garden plot. After loosening the soil (and removing quite a bit of grass), Dale laid out bags of gypsum (to keep the clay-like soil loose), composted steer manure, and composted mulch, which he worked into the soil by running the tiller over it a few more times.

When he was finished, we had a nice, smooth garden plot full of rich organic matter and good loose soil.







The next step was to plant. You might not be able to see it in this picture, but the garden plot has several white plant markers that indicate what we planted in each area. We didn't plant everything yet -- some of the plants won't be planted until May or even June, and we are going to let the plants that we started inside grow a little longer inside before we transplant them -- but we laid out the garden and planted several seeds.

This year, we're planning on the following vegetables in our garden:
corn
sugar snap peas
green beans
spinach
carrots (multi-colored!)
radishes
green onions
tomatoes (four different kinds)
green bell peppers
red bell peppers
serrano chili peppers
sweet banana peppers
broccoli
adirondack blue potatoes
yukon gold potatoes
zucchini
yellow crookneck squash
pumpkin pie pumpkins
jack-o-lantern carving pumpkins
watermelon
honeydew
butternut squash
green hubbard squash
cucumbers
lemon cucumbers

We also planted some other edible plants outside the garden:
blueberries
blackberries
raspberries
strawberries
asparagus
hops (for brewing, of course!)

We are looking forward to a good harvest this year and can't wait to eat home-grown veggies from our garden all summer!

First Snow

We woke up Wednesday morning to find the world covered in a blanket of fluffy white stuff -- yes, snow! The first real snow of the season came early this year, and it stuck around for several days.

My once-flourishing garden is now covered by snow and dormant for the winter.


You can actually see the large snowflakes falling in this picture, against the cement step risers.

Orange Honeydew?

I think I've told most of my loyal followers about the garden that I've been growing this summer, but I love to talk about it, so wanted to post about the garden here. This is not the first time I've tilled a garden, but it is the first time I planted one (I decided to have a garden back in about 2004 and tilled space for one, but never got around to planting it that year or the next).

We got a bit of a late start this year and didn't plant until the first week in May. We planted almost everything from seed (with the exception of the eggplants and tomatoes). Here are the vegetables we planted, and how they've done:
1. sugar snap peas: the first vegetable to produce, and within a week we had way more peas than we knew what to do with. Eventually, the plants got brittle and yellow, so we pulled the peas up in early August.
2. carrots: we have multi-colored carrots (purple, red, orange, yellow, white) that are wonderful! Some of them come up oddly shaped, but they taste great roasted and the fun colors make a nice presentation. Our first batch of carrots did so well that we planted more carrots in the space vacated by the sugar snap peas.
3. zucchini: we have two zucchini plants and they are wonderful! We let the plants go for about two weeks without picking them while we were in Colorado; when we returned, we had two of the largest zucchinis I've ever seen. I think I made about ten loaves of zucchini bread this year.
4. yellow crookneck squash: three plants that produce extremely well. We've had a lot of sauteed zucchini and squash, and have prepared and frozen lots of squash for Adelaida.
5. butternut squash: we have two plants, one of which has produced a squash. These plants don't do particularly well because they don't get enough sunlight.
6. lemon cucumbers: these haven't done well. We have four plants, but none of them have produced any fruit. They are planted along the north side of the house and don't get enough sunlight.

7. broccoli: our six broccoli plants are very large and healthy looking, after a rocky start during which the broccoli plants were being eaten by rabbits almost every morning. We just found our first broccoli crowns on the plants this weekend.
8. green beans: very slow producers, possibly because they are too close to the house and don't get enough sun. They produce about enough green beans to keep Adelaida satisfied, but she only eats about three green beans a week.
9. tomatoes: wow! I never knew tomatoes could taste so wonderful! We have three tomato plants, although one of the plants has only produced one fruit that is still green. The other two plants have probably produced at least fifty fruits for us already, and we have another twenty or so fruits on the vines, ripening. They are the best tomatoes ever, and we're considering trying to grow them inside over the winter.
10. eggplant: we have four eggplant plants, all of which have stayed pretty small all growing season. We do have several fruits on one of the plants, so I'm hoping that we'll be able to enjoy eggplant later in the fall. We did get some home-grown eggplant from a friend that we cooked up a few weeks ago, and fed some to Adelaida.
11. red and green bell peppers: I'm not sure why the bell peppers aren't growing well, but they aren't. We have several plants, all of which have about four to six leaves, but no peppers yet. We're thinking of putting them in pots next year.
12. pumpkins: we planted one pumpkin plant, that has produced two large orange pumpkins and several more small green ones that are still ripening.
13. honeydew: the honeydew plant has been the real surprise of the garden this summer. I planted one honeydew plant and was encouraged to see it growing and vining out early in the summer. When I began producing several fruits I was really excited and started looking forward to eating ripe honeydew fresh out of the garden.

This is what my honeydew fruits looked like when the first started producing:


As the honeydew fruits got a little bigger, I started to be a little concerned. They were developing grooves and had the slightest hint of orange in the rind.


A week later, I was alternating between wonder that my honeydew fruit was orange, disappointment that somehow I had planted a second pumpkin rather than a honeydew plant, and amazement that my honeydew plant had produced a pumpkin.


For reference, this is what a honeydew fruit is supposed to look like:


I have finally come to accept the fact that we have two pumpkin plants and no honeydew plants. Other than that one disappointment, the garden has been a source of both vegetables and joy this summer, as I really love taking care of it and cooking fresh vegetables!