A lot has happened since our July garden update. It’s weird that I don’t feel like we’ve gotten a ton to harvest, but when I was collecting pictures for this post, I realized that really, while we haven’t had an abundance of anything in particular, we have indeed eaten a lot of different things that we’ve grown!
I’ll start with the potato patch. When harvesting potatoes, you basically wait until the greenery above the ground looks dead, and then start digging around. We learned that you have to dig wider and deeper than you think in order to find all the potatoes. We’ve harvested about half the bed, and have gotten a couple dozen potatoes! Haven’t eaten many of them yet because they’re curing (and we had just bought a peck of potatoes from a farmer’s market of course), but I’m looking forward to some baked potatoes and maybe even a small batch of mashed potatoes. We’ve planted some cauliflower and broccoli seedlings in the front half of the bed for our upcoming fall garden, and the back half of the bed will be spinach once the rest of the potatoes are out.
The tomato plants are really popping off, but none have begun to ripen enough to be picked yet. I’m on the edge of my seat for that, of course. Our trellis is some twine tied between some fence posts that my mom donated to us. Reduce, reuse, recycle, I guess 🙂
The peppers have been disappointing. The plants we bought are starting to produce a little… However, the biggest poblano we’ve gotten was eaten by something (hence the upside down tomato cage circled with tulle below) and the “bell pepper” plants are looking suspiciously like jalapeños. I’m not complaining, I just want a pepper. The ones we started from seed are just not growing well. I’ll have to do some research on proper pepper production for next year.
I think I may have mentioned in a previous post, but the squash vine borer got to all 4 of our pumpkin plants. However, the borers are done laying their eggs for the season, so we’re taking a chance and started a few more pumpkins in large containers. So far so good (although, pro tip, do NOT drizzle Tabasco sauce on your plants when you run out of red chili flakes. It will burn the leaves! Anywhere you see dead spots on the leaves in these pictures, chances are, that’s what happened).
We’ve also continued to be creative with containers. Just drilled some holes in a garbage can and am still trying to grow a zucchini before it’s too late (the area next to our driveway that we dubbed the “pumpkin patch” has not produced a single bit of food. I think the soil is too much clay, and we’ll be amending it for next year). We planted radishes, rainbow chard, and mustard greens in the bed after we harvested the carrots, and have broccoli and/or cauliflower growing in that orange storage tote above.
The hill in the front yard has continued to produce for us. Several yellow squashes, some nice cucumbers, and we have a whole bunch of watermelons going! We tried to harvest one, but when we cut into it, it was white throughout. We learned to wait until the stem has turned brown and dried out. Otherwise, it’s not done ripening. Can’t wait to try again. And on the right above, we have our first spaghetti squash growing (planted some of those and butternut squashes for the fall garden)!
And above are some of the other things we’ve picked and eaten recently! What we thought was the last of the spring lettuce and kale (we’re still getting a little bit of lettuce growth, and just started a few more seeds for the fall), some fridge pickles made with our very own cucumbers, and the first of our radishes and green beans!
So yeah, I guess it’s more than it feels like when there’s so much waiting in between. But we’re having so much fun learning what we can grow and how to do it. And I really think that the end of August and the whole month of September are going to be awesome gardening months for us. Thanks for being here!
Mark & Beth's Homegrown Adventure 