Garden Log - Fruiting Vegetables

We've had a lot of sun and rain over the past few weeks, which has been great for the garden. It's been exciting seeing everything grow for the first time, and I'm particularly enjoying watching the fruit form on some of the plants.


Shortly before this picture was taken, I purged my beds of most of my brassicas. Cabbage moths were just eating them up. The mostly empty area seen in Raised Bed #1, here, formerly contained broccoli, cabbage, and kohlrabi. Of all my brassicas, the only kind I left was red cabbage. I haven't seen any caterpillars on these cabbages, probably because the more regular, green brassicas provide camouflage for the caterpillars, while the red cabbage does not. In the future, I intent to plant my brassicas together under netting to prevent the moths from getting to them.


This tiny King of the North pepper plant was the first to start producing peppers. A larger plant I have of the same variety has now surpassed this little guy in production.


Have I mentioned yet that I really like these Peruvian Purple Chile plants from Seeds of Change? They have purplish leaves to go with their purple flowers and the deep purple fruits. The peppers supposedly turn red when ripe. I'll be saving at least one of these plants as a houseplant for the winter.


Near the peppers in Raised Bed #2 is my lone Purple Tomatillo plant. It's huge and has been flowering for awhile, and is now producing some very cool fruit that look like little lanterns.



Of the three varieties of cucumber that I planted, these pickling cukes are the farthest along. The many yellow flowers growing on them hold the future promise of many delicious, homemade pickles.


My tomato plants in this bed are just starting to fruit, and the corn is beginning to form as well. Much of this bed, however, belongs to the zucchini plants.



I was shocked when I saw the zucchini in the second of these pictures. How did it get so big without my seeing it? Then I looked at some of the younger ones. It's really interesting how these form right out of the stalk at the base of the flower. I should plant more squash. Here's a full shot of the plant, crowding out my poor corn.


I have one more picture to share. This one shows one of the three mini red bell pepper plants that I have in pots. I'm a huge pepper fan, so I'm looking forward to these.


There has been a lot of growth so far during the summer months. I've been harvesting lettuce for some time now. I've had an abundance, and have therefor been able to share with friends and family, and also to bring some to Food Gatherers. I've been harvesting bunching onions, snap beans, and nasturtium flowers and leaves as well. Now I'm really looking forward to the maturation of all these fruit-vegetables that I've shown in this post, and also to this same time next year, when I expect to be noticably farther along.

This past week, I've planted some of the root crops that I've been a bit remiss with. Carrots, radishes, and bunching onions went into the spaces vacated by brassicas and lettuce, and I put in some garden cress and corn salad as well.

That's it for today. I've got a back-log of pretty pictures, which I'd like to post a steady stream of, one per day. I've also installed a new, small garden where some dieing bushes had been. The rain garden is still almost-but-not-quite complete, and I hope to put a post up about that in the near future as well.

A Little of What's New

I was glancing back over some of my old posts and, seeing some pictures from my last garden log update, it hit me how much has changed. Of course, I already knew that from the feeling of hauling all those compost bags around, but it was nice to actually see in the pictures.

I really enjoy going out every day and watching my garden, seeing how things have changed from one day to the next. I expect a lot from it, always looking for consistent new growth. Sometimes it feels like things are going too slowly. That's why it's nice to have this garden log. So that I can look back and see just how much has happened in a short time, at what hasn't happened since I last stopped to watch.

The last garden log update had a photo with one completed but empty raised bed. There are now three such beds built and planted. In Raised Bed #2, I have some greens I bought as starts, as well as a number of seed-grown plants. There are two kinds of hot peppers, two kinds of sweet peppers, basil, sunflowers, cucumbers, and beans. There is also a purple tomatillo plant. It's the only tomatillo seedling I had that made it, but it's also my largest plant right now. Here's a shot of the half of that bed without the mature greens, followed by a close-up of the greens.




In the other new bed, Raised Bed #3 (I'm kind of looking forward to naming the gardens), There are two kinds of tomatoes, basil, peas, beans, sweet peppers, nasturtiums, two kinds of corn, and zucchini plants growing. Here's a nice, if relatively unrevealing shot of that bed. The many tiny seedlings are courtesy of my cottonwood trees that were kind enough to seed my entire back yard.


Another big change can be seen in the herb garden. In my last post with pictures, it was just starting to come back in. Now it is overgrown and in need of serious harvesting. I want to tackle the winter savory, bottom middle, first. I would like to put cuttings in the food processor with water, and then freeze the solution into mini ice cube trays. I could then pop them into a plastic bag and have frozen herb nuggets ready whenever I need them.


I've also been working on a container garden. I like the flexibility of such a garden, and the possibility of splitting it up and putting certain plants where they are needed. This may be to act as a companion plant, as my carefully potted mint is now supposedly discouraging cabbage moths from some of my cabbage. Pots from the container garden can also just fill an empty space, as they do here...


The pot by itself on the left has some transplanted bronze fennel seedlings from last year's fennel that re-seeded. Of the three on the right, the green one has two bush beans and two cowpeas, the white one has a mini red bell pepper plant, and the large one has two different cherry tomatoes, some lemon basil, and one more bush bean plant. Here's another shot of them, cause I wanna...


And that's it for now!

Raise It Up

Here's my first raised bed. It's not perfect, but it's the first thing I've ever built and I'm pretty happy with how it came out. The side boards are cedar and the posts and supports are treated pine (once again courtesy of my friend, Dan.) Hopefully I'll have three more of these 4'x8' beds built and planted in by the time I leave for Mexico.


I'm going to run fencing, the same kind I used for the trellis, from the high posts down to somewhere around the mid-point of the beds. I'll grow cucumbers and the like up the fencing, and plant lettuce and other shade-lovers in the space beneath.


The hose is pointing to one of my Little Giant blueberries, planted in front of the bed. It's much more towards the 'little' than it is the 'giant' side at the moment, but I'm looking forward to the 15 pounds of berries it's supposed to ultimately produce each season!