The End of the Garden 2012

Well the garden is done for the year.  Hailey and I went out last weekend and picked the rest of what was left.  Not much out there except Hailey's cabbage and some jalapeno and green bell peppers.

 

Jalapeno & Green Bell Peppers

 

Hailey's cabbage

 

What was really exciting was Hailey's cabbage.

 

Hailey with her cabbage

 

Hailey got her cabbage as a little bitty plant from school in 3rd grade.  They were giving out cabbage plants to the 3rd graders to promote taking care of something.  She did super with her plant.  She took very good care of it making sure she watered it everyday.  For awhile we thought it was going to die.  Some type of bug kept eating holes in it.  It stayed alive and after a couple of months it was finally big and strong enough to move out into the garden.  Hailey still continued to check on it to make sure it was growing.

 

Our first hard frost was coming so Hailey and I went out into the garden and finally picked it.  She was super excited at how big it got.  She was really proud and said that she thinks she should grow cabbage again for our garden next year.

 

She took off the outside leaves and fed them to the goats for a treat. We have the cabbage in the fridge and Hailey wants to eat it with cornbeef.

 

I am already thinking about next years garden. For the past two years we have bought tomato and pepper plants.  I'm hoping to have enough time to start those plants from seeds for our garden next year.  We also should have enough compost for the whole garden come spring.  Hopefully we won't have such a drought next year and the garden will do better.



Garden - August & September

The garden has been doing great for the past month or so.

 

What's still going strong from our first planting?

 

From our original planting back in April, we still have tomatoes coming in. They have slowed down some but its still nice to get a few tomatoes each week for our salads. 

 

Peppers on the other hand are getting out of control.  We planted regular green bell peppers and they are doing well.  We just harvested a bunch and I diced them up and froze on a cookie sheet to have through the winter.

 

Diced Green Bell Peppers

 

We have lots of other peppers growing in the garden also.  Banana Peppers, Jalapeno Peppers, Cayenne Peppers & Thai Peppers.

 

We have shared some with our friends, frozen some whole and then I also have canned them cut up to use later on in the winter for pizza & nacho toppings.

 

Thai Pepper plants with lots of peppers still

 

We still have basil, parsley & green onions in the garden also that we are putting in our dehydrator to preserve.

 

We also have garlic that I planted.  Not sure if it's going to survive though.  It's not looking too well.  I've never grown garlic before so I'm not to sure what the tops are suppose to look like.  I just make sure to keep the area weeded and we'll see what happens.

 

Second Planting -Corn, Green Beans & Cantaloupe

 

The second planting of corn is coming along and we do actually have ears growing on it now. There isn't many stocks since some didn't grow and then some got mysteriously knocked down.  But there should be some that we can eat fresh.

 

 The second planting of green beans are doing exceptionally well.  I just did the first harvest of the plants and got 3 Walmart bags full.  Don'tcha just love my way of measuring?  LOL  I gave some to one of our friends and then I processed the rest for the freezer to eat over the winter.

 

Green Beans

 

We spread out compost from the goats that was ready before we did the second planting of the corn and green beans and oh my word did it help.  The green bean plants are huge this second time and have tons of beans on them!!!  I would never thought I would be excited about compost but I really can't wait to have enough to cover the whole garden next spring.

 

The cantaloupes are also doing well so far.  We have a bunch of little ones that are growing strong.  I just hope they get to "ready" size before it gets too cold around here.

 

Baby Cantaloupe

 

Third Planting -Zucchini, Garden Cucumbers, Pickling Cucumbers & Acorn Squash

 

The area we decided to do the 3rd planting in had our watermelons, onions, zucchini & squash in it.  The zucchini & squash plants have died off awhile ago.  The watermelon vines had started to die off so we decided to pick all of the watermelon. We got about 13 watermelons.  Some where ready and others were not but it didn't go to waste since we fed them to the chickens, who loved them.  We picked all of the onions also.  They could of grown much larger but I forgot to save some compost to cover the tops of the onions.  You see, as the onions get bigger they start to come out of the ground and you need to cover them with more dirt or they eventually stop growing.  I still think we got a very good harvest and we will use up all of the onions anyway. 

 

Red & White onions from our garden

 

So now with all the old stuff out of the way, in its place we tilled the area again and I decided to plant another set of zucchini, some garden cukes, pickling cukes and also some acorn squash.  It's kinda late in the season to be planting the cukes but I figured I had the seed so I would try.  All the plants have already sprouted, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that they will grow quickly.

 

Cucumbers

 

Hopefully they will grow and we will get some more harvest from the garden.  The days here are still nice as far as the temperatures go.  Still in the 80's during the day but getting down to the 60's at night.  If anything the night temps may kill them but we will just have to wait and see.



Garden -July

Well the garden this year has been a struggle.  We have had a serious drought here in TN and that combined with the fact we got the planting in 3 weeks late, some of our veggies haven't done so well and others are just plugging along.

2nd planting of green beans

Our first planting of green beans did really well.  We had lots to eat and also to freeze for the coming winter months.  Our second planting isn't as large as the first but is coming along well so far.

Some of the herbs are doing well also, including the parsley and basil which I will soon pick and dry.

Our pepper plants and tomato plants are doing great.  We are freezing the excess peppers we have left over that we haven't ate.  The tomatoes are so delicious that none of those get into the freezer.  We have just been eating them.  Not wanting to be without fresh tomato sauce, I have been going to the farmers market and buying some tomatoes in bulk.  1 box (60 tomatoes) for $10 that I have been turning into sauce and canning for the winter months.

Thai peppers - extremely hot!!

Chili peppers

Banana peppers

Cherry Tomatoes

Our watermelon is doing good also.

See the 2 little watermelons?

We also planted some cantaloupe when we did the 2nd planting of beans & corn.  They have sprouted and are growing so hopefully we will have cantaloupe too this year.

Some of our veggies haven't done so well.  Cucumbers completely died.  Thankfully we had lots of dill pickles left from last year.  I did go buy a 1/2 bushel of pickling cukes at the farmers market to make some dill chips and then also some Bread & Butter pickles since we were out of them.

Corn has done awful, our first planting went to seed which means it did grow but didn't get any ears on it.  So we did put in a second planting, they are about 7 inches high right now.  I also have picked up 3 dozen ears of corn at the farmers market that Jamie & I cut off the cob and froze.  I've found a local farm that will be harvesting their corn shortly and I'm hoping to get an additional 12 dozen ears to freeze for the rest of the year.

Zucchini's are doing okay.  Yellow squash has done awful, we haven't even gotten one yellow squash yet.

Gardening is definitely harder this year than lasts but hopefully next year will be better.  We will make sure the tiller is in working order before hand, this was our hold up for planting late this year.  We will also be able to compost the whole garden. 

In the meantime, we are enjoying what we are getting to eat and I'm loving going to the farmer's market every Saturday.  Lots of yummy things to see and try.  We go over to the large one in Cookeville so their are lots of people there selling.

Garden - 1st month

Garden all tilled and ready for planting

It seems as if updating this blog is getting harder and harder each day since this is such our busy time of year.  So I'm going to try not to do weekly updates anymore, especially on the garden.

So this will be my first update on our 2012 garden.  Hopefully I will do this monthly unless I get lots at harvest time and then I will post pictures of all the veggies.

This year we were a little late with planting the garden as our tiller wasn't working very well. So we needed to wait to get that fixed and then finally get the planting done.  We were able to get everything planted by May 1st.

We have planted this year:

Sweet Corn

Cucumbers

Pickling Cucumbers

Summer Squash

Zucchini

Watermelon

Green Beans

Radishes

White Onions

Red Onions

Green Onions

Garlic

6 types of Lettuce

Mesclun, Microgreens, Giant Caesar, Simpson Elite, Grand Rapids & Black Seeded Simpson

6 types of Tomatoes

Big Boy, Lemon Boy, Better Boy, Red Beafsteak, Huskey Cherry Red & Sweet 100

7 Types of Pepper

Green Bell, Red Bell, Yellow Bell, Jalapeno, Banana, Cayenne & Thai Hot

We also have planted some herbs including Cilantro, Basil, Parsley & Dill

Garden at about 5 weeks after planting

Here are some up close pictures

Zucchini

Banana Peppers

Tomatoes

Hopefully we will get a good harvest this year.  We have also gotten extra seeds to try to do a second planting on some things.

 

Garden Fresh Beans

Hailey with Yellow Beans

The garden is growing great and we have picked our first set of beans. Hailey and I picked the ones that were ready.  It was probably around 8lbs of beans.  Then all of us helped wash, dry and snap of the ends.

I kept out a pound to have for dinner this week and then decided to freeze the rest of this batch. I blanched them for 4 minutes in boiling water and then put directly into ice water to stop the cooking process.  We then went ahead and separated them into family size servings.  Jamie used his vacuum sealer and bagged them all up.

Now we will have fresh beans in the winter.  I'm hoping to can the next batch so we will have both ways of preserving and can decide which one we like better and do just that way next year.

 

6lbs of Yellow Beans

2lbs of Green Beans

Beans all packaged for freezing

The Garden is Growing!!

Garden 6-15-11

Just wanted to give an update on how well the garden is growing.  All the vegetables are growing well!!! I did pull out all of the old watermelon plantings and planted radishes and carrots in its place.  The radishes have already sprouted and have been thinned to promote larger growing.  We are still waiting for the carrot tops to show themselves.

We have now started getting some produce from the garden for us to eat.  We got quiet a quite a few cherry tomatoes but then the plants ended up dying.  I have also started cutting mixed salad greens and lettuce for our salads.

In the next few weeks the green and yellow beans should be ready to start picking and then the yellow squash and zucchini.  I'm hoping the get enough for us to eat some now but also to freeze/can some for the winter.

Below are some close up shots of the veggies growing.  All pictures were taken on 6-13-11.

Tomatoes

Pickling Cucumber

Banana Peppers

Green Bell Pepper

Mixed Salad Greens

Lettuce

Yellow Squash

Zucchini

Yellow Beans

Green Beans

The garden is growing well

My gardening gloves and hoe, my new best friends.

What I remember most about gardens is eating from them.  My father always had  what I would call a large garden when I was young, my favorite thing about that garden was the pole beans he grew. My brothers, friends and I would eat these beans in fistfuls.  Thinking back on it, he never once got mad that we were eating the beans either.  He always grew other veggies too.  My grandfather, Pappy also had a veggie garden every year.  He always grew the largest zucchini I ever saw.  With growing up with all this gardening you would think I would be an avid gardener but that is not so.  I tried one year and had a 4x4 garden when Drew was 2.  I bought plants, not seeds and barely anything grew and what did grow the deer ate, which I couldn't figure out until Jamie told me.

I have always had a "black" thumb, yes black not green.  I have always been known NOT to give plants and flowers to because I will kill them and very quickly I might add. I decided to prove to myself, no one else that I could grow something. Even better, something that I could eat.

So when we moved to our new home and had some land to plant a garden I started planning on what I wanted to grow.  I thought it best to grow things in large quantities just is case I did kill some.  This way I thought that at least some may make it through and actually grow and produce something.

Jamie tilled the garden area a few times and our friend Tim also tilled it for us when he came to visit.  The kids and I picked rock after rock to get the ground ready for planting.  By the way the goats love the pile of rocks they have now to play king of the hill on.

The kids and I took a Saturday and planted the whole garden in one day.  We planted everything in seeds except for the pepper and tomatoes plants.

I am happy to report that the garden is doing WONDERFULLY!!

Green Beans

Zucchini Plants

We currently have growing, 7 rows of corn, 2 rows of green beans, 3 rows of yellow beans, 2 rows of red onions, 1 row of yellow onions, 1 row of garlic, 1/2 row of green onions, 1/2 row of basil, 8 hills of zucchini, 8 hills of yellow squash, 10 hills of cucumbers, 1 row of 2 different types of lettuce, 3 hills of pickling cucumbers, 1 eggplant plant, approx 7 pepper plants, which include green peppers, red peppers, yellow peppers, jalapeno peppers and banana peppers and approx. 14 tomatoes plants including cherry tomatoes.  We also attempted watermelon, they started to grow but now are dying. I will be raking out that area soon and planting something new so the space won't be wasted on nothing.

I'm looking forward to tasting everything that comes from our garden and of course extras will be preserved either by freezing or canning for the winter months.

Gardening is a LOT of hard work but being able to see the plants grow from seeds and know that you had a hand in that is so satisfying.  We will definitely be growing a veggie garden every year from now on.  Maybe next year we will plan a little bit better and have more of a variety.

First bounty of the garden - Cherry Tomatoes