Garden Update for May 22nd

May 22nd Garden Overview

Anyone remember my weekly garden updates from a couple years ago (or probably 3 years ago, actually)?  Well, with this being the beginning of our veggie growing season, I thought it was a perfect time to start the weekly updates again.  

This past Saturday we cleared the weeds, grass and remaining veggie plants from last year.  After working all day, we finally were able to top-dress the beds with organic compost from one of our local landscape supply businesses.  

34 Herb & Veggie Starts

Since I've been busy with other projects this year, I decided to buy the majority of my veggies & herbs as starts.  However, there are still a few things I'll start from seed directly in the garden such as green beans, pumpkins, and corn.  I feel like I'm running super late this year, but here in the PNW, we had such a long wet Winter & Spring this year.  It seems like late last week someone flipped a switch and turned off the rain and cold and turned on the sun and heat!  Now it's almost too hot to be outside.  Anyway, I'll be planting all of these plants and starting my seeds in the next couple of days.  Check back next Tuesday for another update.

A little snail (his shell was a little large than a quarter)

I saw this little guy this morning.  I've never actually seen one of these snails in my yard and almost stepped on him.  Being that he was "as slow as a snail" I was able to run and get my camera to snap a couple pictures. 

Chicken coop update is coming.  Just a couple years late, but it's going to happen!

Garden Update for October 29th

October 29th Garden Overview

Here is the last garden update for October.  Really?  October is almost over?  It seems like it just began!

Yesterday the sun finally came out and I went outside for a couple of hours to work in the garden.  I cut the remaining acorn squash and pulled out the vines and cleaned out their beds (front left).  I cleaned up the melon bed as well (trellis on right) and pulled out the bell pepper plants.  I cleaned up some marigolds in the broccoli bed as well as some old broccoli leaves and cleaned off another bean tepee.  Still more cleaning to do that I hope to have time for (& a dry day) this weekend.

October 29th- Brussels Sprouts

October 29th- Brussels Sprouts

October 29th- Habanero 

October 29th- Harvest
kale, eggplant, variety of peppers, acorn squash & celery

Check back next week for another garden update.  As long as there's something happening in the garden (& I'm able to take photos), I'll keep posting weekly or bi-weekly updates.  :-)

Garden Update for October 20th

October 20th- A little at a time the garden is being cleared out

October 20th- All of the winter squash have been harvested except for 13 acorn squash.

I cleaned the beds up a little and will clean them out completely once the acorns have been cut.

October 20th- The kale is still growing strong, as well as the brussels sprouts behind.  One bean tepee has been cleaned off and removed, 3 more to go. 

October 20th- Onion & herb bed was tidied up, melon vines were trimmed (trellis), tomato bed is empty, peppers are still growing 

October 19th- The harvest for today- broccoli, peppers, the last of the green beans, melons, Christmas pole lima beans, the last of the carrots and some collard greens

October 19th- The mystery plant we have growing beside the garage turned out to be a pumpkin.  It's still growing and turning a deeper orange every day. 

October 19th- spaghetti squash, acorn squash, butternut squash (only 3 the whole season?)

and our 3 little Cinderella pumpkins

We're into the rainy Fall weather here so clean up has been slow.  I still have lots of apples & pears to do something with.  Need to get busy with those.

Garden Update for October 15th

October 15th

It's been a few weeks since I posted a Garden Update.  In fact, it was September 23rd when I posted the last update!  I have a few harvest photos, but only of the few larger harvests.  I've been really busy trying to use up or preserve the harvests, that I haven't kept up with the photo-taking of everything.

As you can see in the photo above, there are a few "naked" beds.  The winter squash plants are dying back (front left) and I'll be cutting squash this weekend and may go ahead and pull the plants out and clean the bed up.  I think the pepper plants may be almost finished as well.  I'll give them another quick once-over to see if they're ready to be pulled.  The green beans and lima beans are just about finished.  Most of the garden will be cleaned up by the end of the month and will rest for the winter.

September 24th

September 24th

September 24th

October 4th-  I picked all of the remaining apples & pears on the trees.  They either went into the basket or into the compost.  About 45 pounds of apples and 18 pounds of pears.

October 4th- 18 pounds of pears

October 4th

October 6th

I'll keep the kale & collards going through the winter as long as I can.  I'm not sure if I'll try to start more seeds indoors for another harvest of lettuces & spinach or just wait till spring.  I've been so busy with everything else I never did get seeds started over the last couple of months for turnips, radishes, lettuce, spinach, etc.  

Anyone else out there still harvesting?

Garden Update for September 22nd

I've been very busy lately trying to keep up with house chores while keeping up with what the garden has been producing.  Here are pictures of the harvests from the past few weeks.  There's only the one garden picture from yesterday.  I've been doing a little cleaning out here and there in preparation for the big Fall clean-up.  I'll share more garden pictures next week.

September 22nd-Garden Overview

September 5th- The usual squash, beans tomatoes & broccoli 

along with basil & a few dropped apples

September 8th- More squash, tomatoes, beans & peas

September 11th- Parsnips & carrots, squash, beans, tomatoes and peppers

September 11th- The peppers on the left are an heirloom variety sweet pepper 

called Chervena Chushka and the peppers at the top are Paprika peppers

September 13th- A large harvest today including 20 pounds of apples

September 13th- We also cut a lot of kale, beans & tomatoes

September 13th- A few pears as well

September 16th- More green beans

September 17th- I picked 8 more Paprika peppers

September 17th- I finally cut some of the smaller sunflowers to enjoy indoors

September 17th- Poblano (or Ancho) Chile peppers & Jalapeno peppers for jam making

and a little more kale

September 19th- The squash have slowed down quite a bit (thankfully),

 more beans, peppers, tomatoes and a few more carrots

September 20th- A big harvest today.  24 lbs of apples, spaghetti squash, tomatoes, pears......

September 20th- acorn squash, green beans, paprika peppers, zucchini

I pulled out 2 zucchini plants and saved all the little baby zucchini for pickling

September 20th

I'll share more pictures of the food preservation I've been working on. This week I'm working on apples.....about 44 pounds and there's more on the tree!

Garden Update for September 2nd

It's September already?!
Here's a quick garden update.  I've been busy in the kitchen, but found a little bit of time on Monday to clean up a few areas of the garden.  Still have more sprucing up to do in some garden beds and will hopefully find a few minutes here and there to get the work done.

September 2nd

Sept 2nd- Melons are growing!

Sept 2nd- Hopefully it'll stay warm long enough to ripen these

Sept 2nd- Spaghetti Squash...The one on the right is HUGE!

Sept 2nd- Lots of yellow squash still growing...I've trimmed a lot of the leaves 

from the plants since we're starting to have a problem with powdery mildew

Sept 2nd- Tomatoes...Still waiting for the majority to ripen.  

I hope these cool nights (low 50's, upper 40's) don't affect them too much.  

Maybe I should put plastic over them?

Sept 2nd- Tomatoes....I trimmed up the bottom branches/leaves again

Sept 2nd- The pepper bed...I cut back a marigold that was beginning to overtake this end of the bed.

Sept 2nd- The other end of the pepper bed.  This poor little pepper plants was nearly smothered

by a marigold.  I doubt it will recover and produce any peppers.

Sept 2nd- Surprise, Surprise!  We DO have eggplants!  

They were completely covered by a marigold!  

Sept 2nd- The cabbage, cauliflower & broccoli bed was cleaned up

Sept 2nd- This cabbage bed still needs cleaning up & these 2 cabbages are almost ready to cut.

Sept 2nd- Celery...There are 3 plants here.  A 4th was just harvested on Monday.

That's a Brussels Sprout plant to the right

Sept 2nd- Baby Brussels Sprouts are growing a little more each day

Sept 2nd- The bean bed.  Spinach and lettuce was cleaned up from this bed

Sept 2nd-  The bean & pea bed....Endive was cleaned out of this bed

Sept 2nd- The apples...almost ripe....hope we get them before the deer do!

Sept 2nd- The gourd tepee

Sept 2nd- There a several nice sized gourds

~Harvests since the last update~

Besides a few small squash & tomato harvests, this is what came from the garden.

August 31st-  You can tell by the size of the zucchini that I was distracted by all the happenings in the kitchen and didn't check the garden as often as I should have.

Sept 1st-  Look at those parsnips!  I see soup in the near future.

That's this week's update.  I'm headed back to the kitchen!