I’ve got a few posts rolling around in my head but, frankly, I just haven’t had much time recently. Midterms were a few weeks ago and I gave 3 exams last Friday, so now that I have a window of downtime, here’s the last bit of updating for the garden.
Brooke gave up on the tomatoes weeks ago, after she crossed the at least 40 pint line for tomato sauce. Seriously, that last batch of tomato sauce she made was a slog – I could tell she was totally done with tomatoes for the year.
But at the time, we still wanted to wait for the sweet potatoes. Finally, just after Halloween, Brooke pulled out the potato crop to see what we ended up with. Not too bad, but I don’t think we got as much as we did in Iowa. Still, for our purposes, it was still a pretty good haul.
…the potatoes in our garden basket…
We haven’t tried eating any yet, but have no reason to think they won’t be solid. Brooke’s busy processing pears from my aunt and uncle’s house, so these things aren’t exactly a priority.
Still, just wanted to post this for posterity’s sake. We’ll probably plant some again next year, so we want to remember how many we got this year!
This will be relatively short, but as I’ve been posting about this all summer (and now Fall), I figured I should present the aftermath of a relatively successful first year with the garden.
Clearly, the main garden is mostly dead. There’s some broccoli struggling to survive, but that’s about it. As you can see, though, the corn stalks have been pulled down (and re-ordered into decorations for our upcoming Oktoberfest party), and the pumpkins have all died off. We ended up with something around 12 pumpkins, but only 4 of them survived to be useful. The rest were chewed on by beetles, so we may need to do a bit more proactive spraying next year.
Slowly dying…still…
The tomatoes and peppers, on the other hand, are shockingly still producing! They’re looking a bit saggy, but that’s more because they’re still growing and I’m not trimming them or tying them up. There are absolutely some areas of death and destruction, however, as leaves continue to die off due to a lack of water.
Behold the death of the tomatoes.
The picture just above this one shows a little bit of the dying leaves in the middle of that dense forest, but still, there’s plenty of green still in there. As of today, we haven’t had a frost yet, so the tomatoes are still coming on and there are still flowers on some of the plants. Even some of the peppers we planted, that hadn’t made anything yet, have finally put on some full-size veggies for us to pluck.
Still harvesting!
I think Brooke’s generally tired of canning tomatoes already, so I haven’t bothered to pick the really tiny ones anymore. I’m still grabbing the larger ones as they slowly develop, and as you can see above, there are some pretty big ones in there that are finally turning red. I pick them when they’re starting to turn so we can keep them protected inside.
As of right now, Brooke’s canned about 24 pints of tomatoes, and there’s still quite a few bags left in the freezer to be canned (she thinks another 15 pints or so) after we’ve got more batches like these accumulated.
So ultimately, not too bad for our first year’s harvest! We still haven’t dug up the sweet potatoes, so I’ll likely do a post on that yet. Surely they’re done, but with the party coming up, we didn’t want to disturb that area of the yard with a ton of digging. Soon, though!
Yeah, I know, it’s technically September now. Whatever.
The main garden has looked like this for a few weeks now. Brooke pulled out the green beans a few weeks ago and the corn has been done for awhile (we ended up with 24 pint jars, a few quart-size bags we gave to others, and a decent amount we could eat on at dinner – not bad for a first year). We didn’t end up with much corn, sadly. Some of the ears were actually pretty good, while others were under-developed or pre-chewed by insects.
Corn!
In total, I’d say we had less than 15 ears out of our 3 rows of corn. Some of the plants never quite finished up. The ears we did get tasted sweet, yet the overall texture of the corn was a bit tougher than we’d prefer. Still, Brooke turned it into a corn casserole and it was absolutely edible. Not the greatest, but functional.
The pumpkins also finally did something. Brooke planted pie pumpkins, so they’re smaller than regular, Halloween-style carving pumpkins. So far, we’ve got 3, with at least a few more still green on the vine that we’re nursing along.
Pumpkins!
No word on how they taste, but we wanted to pick them because a). they looked done, and b). beetles have started showing up, so we were afraid they’d chew into the stem and ruin the pumpkins. We’re thinking pumpkins are a safe bet for future planting, and had we planted them sooner (and watered, like, at all), perhaps we’d have even more.
The tomatoes kinda took over…
We’ve had to keep trimming the tomatoes to limit their growth. I think our trellis system has worked pretty well, but putting the trellises close together has meant that it is kept pretty shady in between them. I’ve trimmed them since this picture was taken, so more tomatoes have started finally turning red. Not a ton yet, sadly.
That’s about it, so far…
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got a decent number, and we’ve had more than a few good slicing tomatoes. We just haven’t had a huge number of them develop all at once to make it worth Brooke fire up the oven to process and can them. We’ve got lots of little tiny ones still, too, which are great in salads and eating individually, but again, you don’t get much sauce from them. We’ve been trying to water them a bit more judiciously in hopes of keeping them alive long enough to keep developing.
One thing worth mentioning, for posterity, is that we were able to turn our A/C off for the last two weeks. You know, prime tomato-ripening weather? In August? Yeah, didn’t have much of it. Lots of green tomatoes and no hot weather to turn ’em red. Thankfully, it’s 90 F outside again, and it should remain that way at least through this week. I was just out there watering and saw quite a few more red tomatoes, so perhaps we’re finally getting to the point where we’ll get something out of it.
Lastly, the sweet potatoes are still truckin’ along. No actual sweet potatoes to show, but the plants have certainly gotten larger!
Vines that are hopefully attached to sweet potatoes…somewhere…
Hopefully the next post on this subject will be the last one until next year! Still some work to do…
We came back from our vacation and the garden was, shockingly, not destroyed. Definitely quite a few weeds in there that we need to take care of, but I bet it’d be worse if I hadn’t been putting grass clippings in open areas.
As you can see above (shaded, so perhaps not that easy to see…), the corn is tasseling and we’ve got a few other small rows of corn popping up. The stalks aren’t all that all, but we’ve got some ears showing up. Also, the green beans have some pickable veggies ready to go. We’ll probably pick those and eat some in the coming nights, though Brooke wants to wait on some until they get bigger before she cans some.
We picked some of the broccoli before we left and had some. Not bad! Kinda “gamey,” perhaps? Difficult to describe, but not quite what I would expect if I were picking up a head from the store. You can see another head in the picture above, but it’s flowering, so probably won’t taste all that good.
Also, you’ll notice the pumpkins proliferating and vining. We don’t see any buds on them yet, but they’re looking pretty good!
Mom was wondering about the soup beans, so here’s a picture… I don’t see many buds yet, but like the pumpkins, the vines are really taking off, so it shouldn’t be much longer!
Now that the sun has finally returned to Missouri and the rain clouds have slowed down a bit, the tomatoes are starting to take off. There are three plants in the foreground (that we thought were peppers…), and all the plants on the trellises. The three remaining pepper plants are still pretty tiny, so I’m not getting my hopes up for them, unfortunately.
The tomatoes, however, have quite a few flowers on them…
…and we even have some actual, legit, tomatoes on there! Totally green still, but they’re getting to a good size. Not very many yet, but we’re hopeful that the July heat (that, literally, started last weekend…as in, we hadn’t seen 90+ F temps until last week…which is crazy for July…) will start to move the tomatoes further.
Just a brief update about the garden, as it’s been a few weeks. We’re making more progress getting the concrete bricks lined around the plot(s) and hope to have most of them surrounded in the coming days. Brooke picked the peas and dug up the carrots a few weeks ago and planted more corn in its place. However, the rain over the past few weeks has been ridiculous. Literally, 4 in of rain fell in 2 hrs one night last week, leaving a lake where the new corn was just about to come up in the garden. Thankfully, it looks like at least some of the sprouts survived and we’ve got plants coming up…
Also, the green beans and soup beans are coming up well, with buds on the green beans already.
From left-to-right: green beans, pumpkins, broccoli. Soup beans in back.
In the middle of the shot above, Brooke’s got some pumpkins growing. After the massive rainfall, they actually took off surprisingly well. She’s got 6 pumpkin plants in right now, and obviously they won’t be making much for awhile.
Broccoli!
This is probably the most success we’ve had with broccoli. We tried it in Iowa and got a little out of it, but the heads we’ve got right now are already looking larger than we remember from before. It’s a bit late for broccoli, we think, so we aren’t sure we’ll actually end up with anything, but it looks good, at least…
Tomatoes!
The tomatoes are coming in pretty well, too. Really, the one side is taking off, while the other (in the back) is moving a bit more slowly. The ones in the forefront were in the ground sooner and were also larger when they went in, so it isn’t surprising.
More impressively, this is the first time we’ve successfully grown tomato plants from seeds. Brooke got them started on our back porch months ago and they’re doing pretty well! We’ve also got flowers on at least one plant. I suspect we’ll have them showing up on more soon.
Raspberries and blackberries
The berry bushes are moving slowly. We don’t expect to get much out of them this year, though at least one bush has already produced some berries. We put some mulch around them to make mowing a bit easier, as they’re taking their sweet time in betting big enough for me to see, but they’re moving along. Next year, perhaps…
Sweet potatoes
The sweet potatoes are also going a bit slowly. We don’t really remember how quickly they went last year, but by the time we moved from St. Louis, it was like they’d taken over our garden. It feels like they should be further along than they are, but oh well…they’re doing something…
Probably enough for now. Hopefully by the time we get back from our vacation, we’ll have something to harvest! …more likely, we’ll have tons of weeds…
It’s about time I updated everyone on how the garden’s going. Again, we bought this place with the intention of taking advantage of the extra lot next door to the house with growing some fruits and vegetables, so we’ve been busy trying to get that going.
I say “trying” because rain has been something of an issue. It seems like Marshall has been getting the brunt of the weather these past few weeks, with at least 10 inches falling since the last few weeks of May. It has slowed down this week, though, giving us a chance to get some work done and let the sun come out to do its thing.
In the picture above, you can see the green beans pretty plainly in the middle of the garden. Soup beans are planted in the bottom-left, and broccoli is slowly making headway in the upper-left. The far-right has peas that are ready for picking, so we’ve been working on those a bit recently. Our neighbors have been picking theirs for at least a week now, but they planted a bit earlier than we did. The carrots have been in the ground about as long as the peas, though they still seem a bit on the small side.
Brooke also planted a row of corn where the radishes used to be. I say “used to” because I pulled them up a few weeks ago. Of all the things we planted, they were the only ones to really adhere to their prescribed schedule. They grew pretty well, incidentally, as we got quite a few big ones!
Yes, that’s a radish.
That row of radishes turned out pretty well, so I suspect we’ll move forward with them again next year, even though I’m about the only one in the house that likes them (Brooke will eat them on salads…Calvin just spits them out…).
In the background of the picture far above, you’ll also see an A-frame of sorts, where Brooke planted some sweet potatoes. We haven’t grown any since we were up in Iowa, when Meg would eat them constantly. We’ll see if we’re as successful this time around – at least we can make fries out of them…
Tomatoes and berry bushes…
The other garden plot still needs some work, obviously. Lots of weeds growing in the front portion (where we still plan on putting some green pepper plants), but we finally got the tomatoes in a few weeks ago. Brooke started most of them as seeds on our back porch using a heating pad she picked up from Menard’s, but I supplemented with some plants I stole from students at school (they left for summer…oh well…). A few of those plants disappeared, likely due to rabbits or squirrels, so we’re having to keep them protected with milk jugs until they get big enough.
You’ll also notice the trellises we set up between rows of tomatoes. We’ve tried a few different methods in the past and have never been all that happy with any of them. Before we moved last year, we tried making A-frames using PVC pipes. That generally worked, but a). the middle of the A-frame got zero sun, so no tomatoes grew, and b). we moved before we actually got to harvest anything…grrrr… This time, we spaced things out a bit more and made two trellises, so we’ll see how they hold up.
In the background, you’ll also see a white frame where blackberries and raspberries have been planted. I suspect we’ve got critters munching on them as well, but we weren’t expecting to get much out of those plants this year, anyway. At least their root systems will get established this summer.
Lastly, in the top picture, you’ll notice we’re slowly surrounding the garden(s) with concrete blocks. We’ve been making them using disposable aluminum cooking trays with leftover Quickrete from our other long-term project:
The concrete path we’re making to the side of the house.
We debated how to handle this, exactly, and went back and forth between stone pavers, a mulch path, and everything in between. The problem with that spot is that grass doesn’t really grow there, tree roots are all over the place, and it gets really muddy after it rains at all. So, we needed some kind of pathway to get from our backyard down to the side area where the garden is.
Brooke eventually found a concrete form that lets you make individual stones from Quickrete, so we’ve been slowly grabbing (heavy) bags and making stones when we get a chance (or when the sun comes out…which, again, has been an issue…). It’s coming along alright, though the pathway isn’t exactly “uniform” in how each stone looks. Once we’re done, we’ll spread some sand around it and try to fill in some of the gaps to make it look like they’ve been there awhile, or so they’re more integrated into the dirt.
I think that’s plenty for now! I’m just hoping those tomatoes get going soon…getting hungry…
When we were looking for houses last summer, the building itself definitely caught our eye, but the extra lot next to the house was the real selling point. If we weren’t going to live further out in the countryside, we’d at least like to have the space to grow a metric ton of produce and still have chickens like we’d had in St. Louis and Iowa.
We tried killing off some of the grass over the winter by covering patches of the property with large tarps, yet all that seemed to do was store leaves, sticks and live grass for the spring. In the end, we ended up borrowing our neighbors front-tine tiller and renting a rear-tine tiller to get a bit deeper and pull all the sod off. Though we’re still dealing with some grass trying to reclaim their previous home, the tilling generally worked alright. We’ve currently put in two plots: one larger, the other smaller. Next year, we’ll add another plot that’s the same size as the larger one, but for now, we figured we should start with something manageable.
So far, Brooke has planted peas and carrots, with radishes yet to go in this weekend. We didn’t have much luck with peas up in Iowa, but we’re hopeful that planting them a bit earlier will make a difference.
Ultimately, we’ll put corn, green beans, soup beans, tomatoes, and peppers in the ground between the two plots currently dug out. A third plot will go in next year, but more on that in a bit…
Spinach and lettuce in the cold frame.
Brooke also set up the cold frame we picked up at an end-of-the-season sale in Iowa, this time with lettuce and spinach. We tried putting herbs in it in St. Louis, but didn’t find much success. I think we got a little lettuce out of it, but probably not much beyond the paltry salad or two. Based on our current trajectory, I think we’re off to a better start…
Blackberries and raspberries.
As I said, we’ve got two plots going right now: one larger, one smaller. The larger one will be replicated next year, giving us two of the same size. The smaller one, however, will live on its lonesome, and in its twin’s place, we’ll put in some bushes. That is, we already have put in some bushes, but more will likely grace that location in the future. Currently, raspberries and blackberries are already in, some of which we may already harvest by the end of this year, yet we suspect it won’t be until at least next year when we start getting enough to write home about. Ultimately, we’ll probably put some hops there and maybe some other bushes. Brooke also has some blueberry bushes to put in, but we haven’t decided if they’ll go in this plot, or if we’ll put them somewhere else.
We haven’t picked them up yet, but we’re also planning on putting some fruit trees closer to the road, at the far side of the first image posted above. Cherries, apples, and quince are currently on the docket, though we may add another (pears?). I’d never heard of quince until last year, but apparently they’re a fruit you wouldn’t necessarily want to take a bite out of, yet they have high concentrations of pectin, meaning that you could add quince to your preserves to somewhat naturally produce jellies and jams, among other things. Seems interesting, at least, and they should do fine in our climate.
Other than that, I’m all for adding more garden space. The more the merrier.
Last year, a lot of time was spent turning up sod in the back yard to make room for a garden. Thankfully this time, as the work was mostly done already, it was a bit easier to stay organized in turning over the soil every few days, pull weeds early and get the garden prepped for some vegetable growing.
One substantial difference from last year, though, is that we had grown chickens this time. And, by the way, chickens like to eat sprouts coming up out of gardens.
So while we got started pretty early with the garden, the chickens were making it difficult to get anything going. Thus, we spent a Sunday afternoon building a run for the coop, just in time for the green beans to pop up.
Can’t get my garden now, can you?
The coop has the side-benefit of allowing us to leave them loose on hot days. They can come out in the sun, they can stay in the coop, or they can go in the shady underneath. But, most importantly, they can’t get into the garden.
The green beans are probably looking the best out of everything we’re growing, though we’ve got some tomatoes starting to show up and some buds on the green peppers. We haven’t had the best of luck with peppers in the past, but I’m hopeful this year we may actually get something out of them. Our neighbor grows a metric ton of peppers each year in pots and his seem to work just fine…dunno what our problem is…
Green beans on the left, peppers and tomatoes on the right, and soup beans surrounding everything.
The soup beans are the ones the chickens kept going after. We had the fence up around the garden like last year, but the chickens simply laughed and jumped right on over…and ate every sprout that came up. These plants like vining, so it would have been nice to have a fence there for them to cling to. Now, they’ll probably just move out into the yard. Either way, at least we’ll still get some soup beans. They’re just a bit behind because of needing to re-plant multiple times…
I’ve been saving grass clippings and dumping them between the rows to help limit weed proliferation. For the most part, it seems to be working, but as our yard is pretty small, we only get enough grass to go on a single row each time I mow.
In another month, hopefully our little urban farm will start providing a bit. Eggs, green beans (ug…), green peppers, tomatoes, and soup beans (for the Winter…) sound pretty good for living in South City!
The midwest is still going through something of a drought, and while the weather has certainly improved since having 10 consecutive days over 100 F, we still haven’t gotten much rain.
That said, the garden and chickens have mostly survived. With regards to the garden, the peas stopped producing about a month ago. I think we ended up with more peas than we got in Iowa last year, but not by too much. We’ve been getting green beans for the past few weeks as well, likely getting somewhere between 10 and 12 pints-worth (Brooke has canned 8 pints thus far). There are still more coming on, but we can already tell we won’t get anywhere near the (proportional) amount we got last year in Iowa. Same goes for the tomatoes. You can see in the picture above that the plants on the left are considerably smaller than those on the right. The right-hand ones seem to be a “cherry tomato” variety, as they’re pretty small, but still taste pretty decent. The ones on the left are the romas, the variety Brooke prefers using for canning. Sadly, while we’ve got some on there, it sure doesn’t seem like we’ll get all that many.
Aside from beans and tomatoes, we’ve still got a good number of green peppers coming on, as well as some squash and cucumbers. Brooke’s having to water the garden somewhat often just to keep things alive, and we’ve got a good deal of weeding to take care of sometime. I guess, considering the weather this summer, we’re pleased with the amount of stuff we’ve gotten, but it’s still a difficult shift from last year’s bounty.
The chickens aren’t laying eggs yet, which is quite disappointing, though not terribly surprising. Last year, the surviving chicken didn’t start laying eggs until right around now, but it’s also worth noting that chickens generally don’t like laying eggs in crazy hot weather. I’m checking every morning to see if they’ve started laying, as the weather has cooled a little bit, but no dice yet. Believe you me, I’m ready for some fresh eggs!
They’re nice and fat now, though, and they enjoy running around our yard. We probably still need to clip their wings again, but aside from one (brief) escape attempt from the large, white chicken, they’ve been pretty content to stay in our yard. The extreme heat has kept them in shady spots, though, so they tend to stay put.
Regardless, it’s a far cry from last year’s haul, but we’re making do!
As Brooke is out of town most of the week, I’m generally left to my own devices, yet I still have to tend the garden. My Mom frequently reminds me that she finds this baffling and amusing, as I’m probably the last person she ever thought she’d see gardening.
Especially green beans.
I’m somewhat notorious for my dislike of green beans. To be fair, I have found them progressively more acceptable in my old age, but they are still the last vegetable I could ever want to see on my plate. That said, getting them fresh from the garden, and somewhat “crispy,” is probably the best way to have them.
Mom picked some beans last week, amassing not quite an ice cream bucket full of them. While she was picking, she pointed out which ones were probably good enough and which ones should stay on for another day or two before picking. Using her imparted wisdom, I picked green beans for the first time ever, so far as I know. We had some beans last year, but if I recall, Brooke picked them every time. As you can see above, I ended up with almost two buckets full this time, and we’ve got quite a few more ready to pick in another few days, depending on how much sun they get (it rained some last night and is supposed to again over the next few days).
Being the wonderful husband I am, I even cut them and bagged them. Now, this is definitely the first time I ever did this part of the job. Brooke usually processes and cans the beans, but that’s right about where I draw the line. I’ll stem them, since I can watch TV while I do it. I won’t be canning them, though, so these will remain in the refrigerator until someone comes up here to eat them.
Brooke will return on Thursday night, so I’ll probably go out again and try to pick some more that night and leave them for her to process on Friday. Considering how many beans were still on the plants, I think she’ll have more than enough to make it worth canning.
As a brief aside, the tomatoes are looking pretty awesome, with a few large ones turning a darker green color. I imagine we’ll have a pretty huge crop of them in the next few weeks!
