Harvest Time

Boy have we had the veggies rolling in!  We've had so much that we spent most of Sunday freezing our produce!  We have another batch of pole beans to pick and a lot more turnips to get in as well, but it's been raining for two days.  Bad for harvesting, but the garden is loving the wet weather!

This is just part of the harvest!  We have really been enjoying the fresh veggies!  You can see we also have blackberries and another batch of strawberries is coming in as well!

The freezing went really well, too.

2 pots going - one for the blanching and one full of ice water

I used a basket for the blanching - it made it easy!

After they are blanched and cooled, they drain

We used our foodsaver to get all the air out of the bags

Ready for the freezer!

We did pole beans, bush beans and yellow squash! 

And the garden is just looking great!

I expect we'll have corn soon!

So the garden is doing just great!  I will keep you posted!

Another Batch!

As I said, we are getting swamped with squash!  Tonight I'm going to fry it (last night I boiled it) with onions and some bacon for flavor.  I'll make the turnips as well.  It also looks like we have enough beans for a small batch - I haven't picked those yet.  It's already hot and sticky out there.  We have several jalapenos ready to pick as well.  Lots of tiny green peppers, too!  Our cucumbers are blooming away so I hope to see some of those forming soon!

Our snap peas just didn't make this year.  We moved the box they were in and apparently they didn't like the new spot.  Disappointing.

The pole beans are covered in blooms, but no baby beans on them yet.  Our spinach is overgrown.  It sure was tasty when it was younger!

Here is today's batch of squash and turnips.  There are a lot more out there that are just about ready to pick!  Maybe I'll freeze some this year!  There is nothing like fresh garden veggies in the fall and winter!

Produce!

We have gotten some 8-ball zucchini squash and some yellow squash from the garden!

and

We have so many yellow squash coming in that we are going to be just swamped with it.  I'm actually excited about it! 

I made stuffed zucchini with the 8-ball zucchini and it was wonderful!  I will post the recipe and pictures as soon as I can.

Here is the garden on the 21st of May:

We have small bush beans ready soon as well!  I love it when the produce comes in!!

This Garden Grows!

Boy, we are just really coming along!  We picked turnips last night!  I hope to make some tonight if I have time (we have an awards ceremony for daughter number 3 to go to tonight).  I'll take pictures of the turnps if I get the chance!  They are small bulbs, but that's they way I like them.  The bigger they get, the more bitter they become.

So here is the garden today:

The deck cherry tomatoes

crook neck squash - about 6 on this plant

our cucumbers are blooming!

see the zucchini?

bush beans - lots of blooms!

Plums

Rain & Heat

We have had a lot of rain and heat this last week and my, what a difference!  The garden is just really zooming along!  Unfortunately for the garden, a cool front has now gone through and it's supposed to be in the 70's for the rest of the week.  The garden really wants the heat!

jalepenos - you cansee some growing on the bottom!

pole beans ... these could be doing better

Turnips!

Zucchini forming!  Cute little thing, isn't it??

Crook Neck Squash!

cucumbers - looking better

corn!

Doing Well!

The garden is growing along.  Hubby did a lot of work in it this weekend when I was out of town and we had some good rain on Friday.  He weeded, pulled the wire from around the strawberry bed (we had it up to keep the cats out).  He went and bought mulch but we haven't gotten it down yet.  He did put down Preen (preemergent product) which forms a gaseous barrier that weed seeds can't penetrate.  It's safe to use right up until harvest time.

We had run out of garden fabric and you can see weeds already coming up through the mulch - argh!

But the garden is just really going.  See the tomatoes in the back?  They went from growing like normal tomatoes to being jungle tomatoes!

This weekend I was up in Virginia visiting my folks.  My Dad's garden is pretty awesome, though they are behind us in weather so it's not all planted yet.  He's about ready to get his planted.  His garden is tiered in levels due to the slope of their yard, but it's pretty massive.

They have been getting alot of rain so it is been hard to get out and plant!  Soon, though!  Their asparagus is already done - their stalks are just gorgeous!  It will be years before ours gets to that point!

A Garden Poem

My six year old wrote a poem about our garden.  She named the dog Clark so it would rhyme, even though we don't have a dog named Clark ...

It says:

I have a large garden.  It's in my back yard.
I work very quickly.  I work very hard.
My garden grows slowly.  I work until dark.
My dog barks so loudly.  My dog's name is Clark.
At night Clark will take charge.  Clark does his own part.
He watches my garden.  Clark is very smart.

I thought it was very good for a six year old!  And the fact that she was even thinking about the garden to write about it was pretty cool! 

More Pictures

More from yesterday's photo fest:

turnips

We aren't sure what this is.  We planted artichokes in this bed and we've never grown them before.  This doesn't look like what artichoke plants look like on line, so it may just be a weed!  I will have to investigate and find out what it is.

Or deck tomatoes are really growing!  And we already have some baby cherry tomatoes!



Working in the Garden

Today was a day of pruning and watering.  We pruned back the tomatoes, helped the fledgling snap peas and pole beans get their runners on the trellis and watered everything.

bush beans, corn and squash



squash

turnips

eggplant and zucchini

spinach

pole beans

snap peas



Coming Along

The garden is growing nicely.  We still need to get some more mulch/wood chips to go down on the walkways in the top level of the garden.

The cold snap was a bit worrisome, but no frost, so I think we are good!  The weather is so strange this year!  We had April weather in March and are now having March weather in April!

This is from 4-21-12:

The bush beans are doing really well - they are the plants in the right front boxes.  The snap peas, which you really can't see well in this picture (back upper left) are also doing extremely well.

I hope to get out and get some pictures of each box to show just how well they are doing. 

Our deck tomatoes have also grown a bunch and I will get some pictures of those and do a "before" and progress pictures of those too!

Planting

We planted a lot from seed and a few things we bought as plants. 

We soak the seeds before planting them - no more than four hours:

The kids help to plant the crops, then water them in. 

Sugar Snap peas - 3-24-12

Watering in the zucchini 3-24-12:

Planting tomatoes - 3-28-12:

Planting bush beans - 3:30-12:

We had everything planted by 3-30-12 this year. We left two boxes open to do some more corn later as we want the crops to be staggered so we aren't inundated with corn all at one time.

This is the fun part of the gardening - the kids love to help, everything is pretty and neat and it's not so darn hot outside you feel worn out just standing there. 

It's full of promise!