Gardening Gardening

Nice start! I've been eating zucchini every day for the last couple weeks (mostly in veggie stir fries) and my cukes are coming in like crazy now. Lots of tomatoes growing but nothing is turning yet.

 

Pulled the garlic at the home garden, and will lay down an inch or two of compost, and then plant lettuces, spinach, and zucchini the newly open bed after dinner.

 

Picked some potatoes, peppers, and a few tomatoes. Some of the spuds are cut up are for dinner tonight. And the wife also made some cookies. Yum.

 

Tomatoes are full bore.

 

The vines died back a lot in the last month so I started digging out my potatoes this morning:

 

Leftover from last year? Looks like a good harvest.

 

These were from this year. IIRC I got them in the ground in late April. My rule of thumb is when the dandelions come out, it’s time for potatoes.

 

Showing my ignorance. I never knew potatoes had such a short grow time.

Learning every day here!

 

You know, I just found out recently myself that different varieties have different growth cycles. This particular kind is an early variety. Some years I've harvested in August, sometimes late September. All I've ever done is watch for the vines to die back, and let the plants go for a while after that before digging them up. Once the above ground portion starts to wilt, you know the plant is putting all it's energy into the root system (growing the actual tubers)

 

The sweet taters go all grow season.

 

Turned to latest compost pile this morning.

New strawberry bed transplants from other areas of the garden. I have several of these bed under my apple trees which are pruned to an open center to let sunlight through tot he understory. I get some of our best berries from this method.

Basil, cilantro, and some dill.

Zucchini and lettuces direct sowed after the garlic came out in mid July. These plants will produce abundant squash well into September with no powdery mildew problems. A frost will eventually take them out.

Those are my carrots directly behind this bed.

 

I’m glad I only planted 2 ghost pepper plants this year. Lots of fruit and the plants are still flowering. Not much longer and these will be ripe.

 

Sweet potato harvest should be epic.

 

My tomato bed has become one indiscernible mass of plants. The 4 spoon tomato plants in the middle turned out to be an indeterminate variety and smothered the entire area. They’re good, but I won’t be growing them again unless I put them by themselves next to a trellis.

 

That's crazy!! They do look tasty though.

 

Got in a little time in our garden at the old homestead.

 

Honeycrisp apples, zucchini, asparagus, and asters.

Dinosaur Kale

Second planting of zucchini is doing well…lots of flowers and small zucchini putting on.

 

hovlandhomestead how do you manage to keep animals out of the garden when you are not there? Out our way, the deer would have a banquet every time you would leave.

 

Here at the house we are in a suburb west of Minneapolis. We have squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, and possum. I have rabbit fencing where needed.

Up north at our old old homestead near the Ontario border we don’t have that many deer at the present time, but for the deer that do come around I use fencing around and over the top of the carrots and greens. We have had bear and moose come through as well but they haven’t caused many problems. The resident snowshoe hare don’t bother the garden at all up there.

 

I’ve got the first flush of ghost peppers picked and in the dehydrator. This is a job for outdoors, and definitely wearing nitrile gloves!

Beautiful, in an insidious way:

I ran an extension cord outside so that I could run the dehydrator in the open air.