Monday, July 4, 2011

4th July 2011 Garden Progress

Everything is going along pretty well in the garden with the exception of the carrots.  I believe a bunny is eating the leaves but if that’s all that doesn’t succeed, I’ll feed the bunnies the carrot tops.  The soil is rather rocky so who knows how nice the carrots would look anyway. 

We’ve had salad from the garden on a few occasions as the lettuce is doing well in the pots and the spinach is so tasty and growing abundantly.  Unfortunately my husband is allergic to spinach we realized, so I’ll probably turn into Popeye and be giving a lot to my friends and neighbors.  These salads have lettuces and baby spinach leaves, feta cheese, sunflower seeds and wonderful dressings.  I absolutely love the Organic Provencal Dressing from Fosse Farms.

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The garden and blog have been a bit neglected.  I did water when it needed, removed the cages over the squash plants and weeded as necessary.  I was busy with a family health issue recently so forgive me for not posting.  I also put up a support for the beans and peas and added a tee pee for the peas today.  The peas and bean plants look healthy and are growing.  Even the bean plants that I thought had died are thriving so sometimes it’s good to just leave things alone and see if they come around, I guess.   

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Today I finished digging up the grass out of the back 14 feet of the garden, raked the soil flat and added some soil to the garden.  I was so happy when the ice cream truck drove by and my loving husband gave me money to purchase a cone.  This digging is really tough work and I am always grateful when my body manages to survive it.  We are going to build a rock wall along the bottom of the fence and build up the garden back there a bit more.  This back part of the garden only gets about 4 hours of hot sunshine a day so I need to figure out what to plant there.  I would like to grow some garlic and peppers but don’t think the amount of sun will be adequate for peppers and not sure about garlic.  I’ll research this and see what my options are. 

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This is the largest of the squash plants.  It’s actually 2 plants in one hill, and you can see one more plant behind it about 2 feet away.  There are 2 more hills to it’s right.  I haven’t seen any squash flowers yet but I’m hopeful we’ll see something this week. 

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On the right in the photo is the spinach which is something I will do next year for sure.  It grows easily and is very tasty.  I’ve even given some of it away.  The other 5 plants are Swiss Chard and I’m hopeful we will be able to eat them soon as well.  I have a fantastic recipe from All Recipes that includes garlic and vegetable stock.  I want to try this recipe however: Spinach Swiss Chard Quiche as it sounds so yummy and has such fantastic reviews. 

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For awhile I didn’t think I’d get tomatoes this year.  It’s been such a cold wet spring but alas I have a few 3/4” tomatoes on my Sweet Million plant and a few on the other plant which lost it’s label so it’s a Mystery Tomato now.  I guess I’ll just eat them when they turn red.  Next year I’ll be sure to be more careful when I purchase plants to get the label. 

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Strawberry plants, can’t wait!  They’re growing well and have lots of flowers – the strawberries probably won’t make it into the house but will be my sustenance while I work in the garden.  I will hope for enough to actually share with another human being however.

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How the garden looks today, celebrating the 4th.  I am happy to have survived the hot temperatures and the two hours digging and raking the remaining grass out. 

I hope you all had a wonderful 4th and have fresh food on your tables.

1 comment:

  1. Good job Peggy! Garden looks good. We've had lettuce and spinach also so far, had a few green onions and the radishes were really good. not too hot or "woody". I have "June" bearing strawberries and they were very tasty. Didn't get as many as we did last year but I got late on picking them and some of them spoiled. Darn! We've got 2 kinds of tomatoes, red, green and yellow peppers, jalapenoes, burpless cucumbers, carrots and beets. That it's for our garden, just enough to keep up in fresh vegtables for the summer.
    Jolene

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