That is my bean tipi - I got the idea from my dear friend, Dana, who promised she would come visit if I did it. She hasn't visited, but the tipi is pretty fun anyway. I made it using PVC piping that I spray painted yellow. Each length was 8 feet and I tied them together at the top with kitchen twine and made a few "support" strings around the pipes at about 2 feet and 5 feet so the bean tendrils had something to take hold of. Not that you can see the tipi, seeing as the beans have gone insane. What I have learned this year is NEXT year, don't plant so many plants. I planted six or seven at the base of each pole and now they're so dense it's hard to pick the beans!
The kids like it, though, since they fit inside. Ha.
This is broccoli. Something is eating my broccoli plants, as you can see, but I have been unable to find the culprit. I haven't pulled them out yet, even though they look terrible, because they are trying to actually produce vegetables and I want to give them a chance. Next year, I may stick with the broccoli I buy in the store.
My cauliflower, however, is amazing. This particular type is called "Cheddar Cheese" because it is a nice orange color. It is fantastically tasty and I am so excited that five of the six plants decided to give me something. This, I will do again. Next year I am going to look for purple!!
My cucumbers have become a viney wonderland, overtaking their trellis in the past few weeks. The cukes are great this year (last year they tasted like soap) and I was trying to NOT can pickles, but it appears I'm not going to have a choice. I may try something different, though. I did refrigerator pickles and they were awesome, so maybe there's a few other recipes out there that I can take a stab at.
These pictures are the corners of my deck - the above picture is my small herb garden which grew dill, chives, parsley, and basil this year. Not the ones I probably would have chosen, but the only ones I had access to in Pipestone when I was planting. they grew okay and I ended up freezing small cubes of parsley and chives and drying the dill. I'm actually trying to dry dill SEED at the moment with dill plants in my kitchen bundled in paper bags. Pretty entertaining. The basil has just been used fresh most of the time and is really good.
The tall plants you can see are my salsa peppers. They are HOT this year and are a hybrid I haven't tried before. I think next year I will only plant two plants instead of six.
I planted gladiolus last year and dug the bulbs out in the winter, storing them downstairs on a cookie sheet after they dried out. I wasn't expecting plants this year, but ALL of them bloomed. I have yellow, dark purple, light purple, and a lime green. I could take pictures of all of them, but it would be a little crazy to post them all here, so here's a yellow one in full bloom.
Those tiny plants are my second planting of radishes. I LOVE radish relish and my dark red radishes were awesome this year. These are WHITE radishes and we'll see how they turn out - they're supposed to be a little spicy, so that should be fun!
For some reason, my tomato plants are rotting. This happened a few years ago, too. The plants rot from the bottom up, but the tomatoes are still turning red and are really tasty. I guess we'll just keep trying, since fresh tomatoes are so very tasty - we did one cherry tomato plant, one roma plant, and three regular tomatoes. I have frozen tomatoes twice already and will probably have to do more this weekend. Marc has been making salad with the fresh tomatoes (cherry and roma) and some of our cucumbers and vinegar every week since they got ripe and it is delicious!!
We also have wildlife in the garden:
Mr. Toad, who is probably a Mrs. Toad since we have baby toads in the yard now... Here she is caught in a frisbee by my children. What a patient toad. We think we've had the same toad living in our yard for a few years now, she just keeps getting bigger. Probably digs down between the air conditioner and the house in the winter and lives under the hose reel in the summer. My hose leaks, so it's probably a lovely place for a toad to live. It also might be the reason why I haven't fixed the hose.
And baby bunnies! Dagny was actually fast enough to catch one under the bean tipi last night, which I thought was impressive. Unfortunately, I think Mommy got shot on Saturday morning by Marc. Hopefully, him mowing yesterday just disturbed them and they're not out trying to find food at such a tender age. They might not last long. Dagny just about went ballistic when the dog went after one of them. He's a dog, what does she expect? We did NOT bring them in the house, though it was hard not to. They are very cute.
So that's my garden this year. I don't think I could ever live anywhere where I couldn't grow veggies now that I've done it for seven years now. I get better every year, learn new things, and completely enjoy it. Gardening is therapy after a long day and picking my own vegetables and preserving them makes me feel like a provider, not to mention I know my veggies are healthy since we grew them ourselves!!
No comments:
Post a Comment