It's Time For Another Photo

Things are getting less interesting around the garden - things are starting to ripen enough for harvest and other things are starting to die off...so I've spent less time outside and checking out what's happening.

My happy moment for the week was having a nice handful of Cherry Tomatoes to harvest. This is just the beginning too, there are so many little tomatoes that are at different stages of growing. All I know is that we will have all sorts of tomatoes for our dinners and to share with friends & neighbors.

Perfect little tomatoes

All 9 plants have something going on, even the little runt plant at the end of the row. I did figure out that the Dahlias are blocking the tomatoes somewhat. That will change next year for sure!

I will be very excited when the tomatoes in the hoop house are ready for harvest - those plants are getting full of delectable fruits! Can't wait!!!

It Feels Like a Friday

So I may as well post my Friday Foto! Oh and a bonus too. We were out pokin' around in the garden the other night and I took a look at my cabbage - there are a total of three. They are growing quite nicely - this is my first time growing them. I had a total of 4 plants, but one of them just didn't want to do anything. I'm happy that the 3 that were left behind actually grew into something!

This year we decided to go ahead and plant the potatoes in the traditional way - into the soil. Last year I tried a new method and it was just okay. I read in an Old Farmer's Almanac Magazine a method that didn't require a container or planting straight into the garden. Rather, just place each potato start on top of the soil or grass or wherever you want to grow them and cover with straw. So we did and we continued to cover the plants until they were at least a foot tall and then just let them go. In the end the yield wasn't that impressive and the potatoes were not that plentiful.

So when we went out a couple of nights ago we decided to do more uprooting and the clump that came up had all sorts of beautiful potatoes hanging off of it. We will never go back to the straw method....EVER.

CABBAGE!

Red Norland Potatoes

Baby It's HOT Outside!

If it's hot outside, then it's REALLY hot in the hoop house!

We have a weather station that we used to use in the house, but Tom decided to mount the sensor in the hoop house so that we would know what the temps are at any given moment. 

Early on, right after I got the little itty-bitty tomatoes planted in there the temps were high enough that the hoop house would be quite hot and I was afraid that the plants - as little as they were - would fry. They seemed to do fine...and continued to do fine. Here is the evidence...

This photo was taken on August 6

The plants are taller now than they were when I took the photo and VERY bushy. I spent a couple of evenings trimming the plants to give them some breathing room. Which really means they will explode with growth again. There are 5 Roma Tomato plants and the two tall ones on the left are Mortgage Lifters. The romas are doing great and each plant has many, many tomatoes and we should have a nice crop of them when the time to harvest comes. I was a little concerned that the two other plants wouldn't produce anything, but one has 5 little guys on it and they are growing very quickly. I'm hoping that there will be more of those. They will be nice slicing tomatoes for sandwiches and hamburgers or just slicing up for a side at dinner time.

All of the plants in the HH were grown from seed. This is a good thing. I would rather grow nice strong plants from seed at home rather than buy starts at the store and risk disappointment if they somehow don't workout. Which seems to be the case with the pie pumpkins that I bought from a local greenhouse. The plants are growing, but it's slow. I'm hopeful, but I'm going to remain realisitic about the whole thing. If I don't get an pie pumpkins there is always next year.

Next season we'll be able to start so much more way ahead of time - I'm excited about that! However, before next Spring we'll be trying to grow some fall crops. Hoping that will work out so we can still have fresh produce for the kitchen and for friends and neighbors if we end up with a surplus. 

Friday Fun Day Away From Work

Took a day of vacation today and thought I would do much more in the garden. Which really means I did NOTHING out there. We had other things to do, so the tasks that I have in mind will wait. Also, the mini rototiller/cultivator is in the process of being put back together. Something went south so it has been "in the shop" for a few days. Once that is all up and running again we'll get the space for the chinese cabbage and onions ready for seeds.

I DID get out to take a weekly pic of the groop house tomatoes and then upon further inspection spied the first Mortgage Lifter tomato!

This is the size of a pea right now!

I was not convinced that my hot house tomato plants would produce anything - it looks like I have been very mistaken. The Roma plants have many little tomatoes and I'm sure that there will be more before the summer season is over! Maybe I will be trying out canning this year after all.

Here is the weekly tomato plant update...

The Mortgage Lifters are about 4 feet tall!

The Experiment(s) Continue

I LOVE what's happening in the garden!

This gardening year has been filled with all sorts of experiments. Such as starting most things from seed, planting many plants of one variety of whatever and growing stuff in the hoop house.

Most of the things that I started from seed in trays worked - YAY. However, not all of them survived long enough to make it into the garden - BOO.

Most things that I sowed directly into the garden sprouted - YAY. The deer had an appetite for some of those items - BOO.

All of my tomato and pepper plants survived their transplant into the hoop house - YAY. It took forever to see them start to fruit - booooo (Yay)

Now I am starting to get some fall crops into the garden. This is a new thing for us. It never really occurred to me that gardening could actually happen during fall and winter. So we are giving it a try this year. Yesterday we did the carrots seeds (Johnny's Pelleted). I was a little surprised to see that those could take up to 3 weeks to germinate. This week I will be sowing the chinese cabbage and bunching onions. Maybe the onions will do better than the ones that I sowed a couple of months ago - they don't seem to be growing a whole lot.

For most of last week I was just itchin' to dig up some potatoes and see how those turned out...Tom decided it would be okay to do a plant on the end. We got 3 nice size Red Norlands. I'm looking forward to seeing how many Yukons and fingerlings we'll get. Everything went in a little later than usual and so things are finally harvestable. When other people are done with their harvest we'll still be getting a variety of veggies! Especially from the hoop house!

Things are going pretty well right now even with what I feel is a late start. Next year will certainly be much, much better!

Crazy growth in one week!