The Protein Power Garden

[Gaelen]

Okay, after a week of 60s and 70s, today we're back to 50s and the full onslaught of April showers. But there were five new seed and/or garden catalogs in my PO Box, and it occurs to me that in between laundry and errands, today will be the perfect day to start planning my PP garden.

Growing my own -- no, not THAT! ;) -- and putting garden bounty by during and at the end of the too-short central NY growing season is one of the ways that I can be sure I have on-plan things like berries land pesto ong after they're out of season. I'm also looking at those catalogs with an eye to what I can grow that will be easy to transform with my Magic Bullet and/or food processor into something that will perk up menus all winter long. One of the garden catalogs features several varieties of dehydrators, and the small Walmart about five miles away had a few on clearance last week, so this may be the year I buy myself a food dehydrator to take care of some of the garden bounty.

I have sage, thyme, savory, chives and dill that come back annually; this year I'll be putting in annuals basil and cilantro (as always) and adding perennial tarragon and flat leaf parsley which I somehow never managed to get in the ground last year. It's time to rotate my tomato plant to another area of my 30" wide by eight food long bed, and chard was so successful last year that I'm going to put some in now, along with spinach (we've got to start early here in the northeast.) I also need to put in a selection of hot peppers (usually only one or two plants of each one) to use fresh and to dry for chile and curry powders. I've been thinking about putting a spaghetti squash or zucchini plant on my back patio near the bulb garden, and experimenting with shallots...something I like, but don't ever buy because they're three times more expensive than onions. I also have to go to the edge of the property and see how the wild raspberries are faring...they're another candidate for making some cuttings and setting up a controlled growth area on my back patio.

The front part of my garden is a mixed perennial bed, and this year I want to put in a half-dozen mini roses if I can get the black-eyed susans and coneflower under control. ;) And last year I planted what were supposed to be annual pinks in the border of that bed, and in cement blocks that border my sidewalk. I'd planned to put in pansies and nasturtiums this year, but many of the pinks wintered over, so I may only be filling in with a few pansies. And I need to replace my clematis vine; after five valiant years attempting to make it in the wrong location, it looks like it may have given up trying before I could move it to a sunnier place.

What's in your garden this year, and how will it help you PP in and out of season.

[Billie]

I am itching to get out there. Since we moved we are starting from scratch and starting small. Mint and Dill for sure and maybe some pots of basil etc., and a few tomato and pepepr plants.

My real love is flowers, got pansies in the planters over the weekend, just makes such a difference to me to see things growing and blooming. I have a map drawn out of what I want to plant, it is just waiting to make sure that we get cleared of frost, which in Central Illinois can happen until early May without too much problem.

We have lots o' bunnies around, not to mention ducks, foxes, squirrels etc., so it will be interesting to see how everything fares.

[Always]

Bunnies???? Did someone say bunnies????? Where are the rascally wabbits???? Are they eating my crocus greens again???? Get out the chicken wire....call out the dogs....THEY MUST BE STOPPED!!!!!!!!!

[Gaelen]

If bunnies are a problem (they are around here, for sure) plant a border of short marigolds around your veggies. ;)

[Thedabara]

We are doing square foot gardening this year. Besides flowers, we are planting, broccoli, cabbage, swiss chard, tomatoes ,cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins, green beans, wax beans, and my daughter insists on planting corn! it is a very scaled back garden this year....More because of my pregnancy though than anything else. We already have seedlings in our sun room. We started the tomatoes and lettuce just yesterday. oh yes, i also have a perenial asparagus patch, and herbs growing here there and everywhere! I can't wait... I always love my garden! and as far as bunnies....we live on a mountain but have very noisy dogs, so the rabbits and the deer seem to stay away.
jenny

[Gaelen]

Thedabara, I do a modification of square foot gardening, too...my garden is an L-shaped created bed that wraps around my front patio outside the fence. The veggie patch is the long thin side of the L, about 30" wide by 12 feet long. The herb patch is a wedge in at the end of the 12 foot length and then the bed hangs a left and deepens to three foot wide by about nine feet long. That wide, foot of the L, section is the perennials...hollyhocks, black-eyed susan, coreopsis, coneflower, daylilies, a poor struggling clematis, columbines and coral bells and pinks and a hosta that started small when the entire front patch was shady, and thrived in the dappled shade at the far end of the L.

I've got dogs, and cats, but our bunnies are kamikaze rabbits. They will actually sit just outside the patio door and wiggle their ears enticingly at the dogs inside, or hold their positions in the grass when we pass (hoping that the dogs don't see them, I guess.) The babies are just being born right now, and we'll have a whole clan of them out munching soon, I'm sure.

Actually, the bunnies I can take; even the deer are fine. It's the black and white 'kitties' that come scavenging around the front and back patios in the condos that I'd just as soon not meet up with (or have the dogs meet up with) in the dark. ;)

[protein-girl]

I only have a small veggie garden and after getting though the summer with copious amounts of lettuce, stawberries, tomatoes, basil, capsicum I have just planted cauliflower, broccoli, and lettuce. I'm looking to expanding my herbs as I only have basil and mint at the moment.
no bunnies here only two dogs!
PG

[Gaelen]

Protein-girl...unless you want a full garden of mint, make sure it's in some sort of container within your garden, and prune/divide/give away ruthlessly. I planted a single container of mint, and the container is even in another larger container lined with big pebbles--but if I don't prune, weed and otherwise control, along with leaving it outdoors unprotected all winter to fend for itself, I'll have a lot more than my six-inch-pot of mint every year. And central New York winters last for 5-6 months out of the year. :rolleyes:

Any form of mint, like oregano, lemon balm and cockroaches, will inherit the earth. I think it would even survive a a nuclear blast...heck, that just might make it stronger.

Don't leave out swiss chard, btw. I had a wonderful chard crop last year, from May right through killing frost in November!

[Billie]

Mint can be a menace but I don't mind it for some reason, I love the scent it brings in a rain or as it is cut. We have a wooded area that I am thinking about putting it in, but it seems to me it needs a little more sun than I think it will get there. I guess that is part of it, the gardening and the planting, making sure I understand what soil and conditions work for plants, for me that is also just fun to do!

[Gaelen]

Billie, I also love and recommend herbs for exactly those kinds of places, because they will thrive, even when the chances are less than optimal.

If the mint will get dappled shade (filtered sunlight) in the wooded area, it should do okay. Oregano, lemon balm and common thyme will also do well there...every year I scatter my garden cut-downs, dig-ups, prunings, etc. in spots in the wooded hilly area between the condo property and the back yards of the houses on the next street up. These leavings get NO care; this is essentially my living plant composting area. But there are now thriving wild patches of mint, oregano, lemon balm, thyme, and yes...even black eyed susans, which just went NUTS one summer.

I also have sidewalks, and I've given up trying to seal the cracks in them. I just planted creeping thyme (which only gets about 1-2" tall) in the cracks. When ever you walk on it, it smells so wonderful, and walking on it doesn't kill it. Last year I planted a particularly tough area on my back (grass) patio, where the rain drips down off the roof, with some more creeping thyme plugs that I hope will start spreading this year, and with some small lemon balm sections along the edge of the fence. The grounds crew weed-whacks that part a couple times a week in summer, so I should have the scent of lemon and thyme drifting in through my windows if I'm lucky. If they come up and survive their second summer, I may try some sage transplants out there, too...sage is really hardy, sends up lovely purple flowers, and heaven knows the GRASS seed thing isn't working out. After nearly 8 years, the spot is STILL mostly weeds!

[Thedabara]

We moved here 8 years ago, and I have yet to see one of those black and white "kitties":) We do get large black bears, moose, coyotes, fox, owls, wild turkeys, deer and manner of other things...oh yes, porcupines! That is more of a problem for the dog, not the garden!
I love mint, but have to agree if you don't want it to take over...plant it in a container or some metal ring. I bought a small spreamint plant in 3rd grade, and it has taken over many gardens since then. I am now 41 and some of that plant is in my yard...away from any flower bed or veggie patch!
2 years ago we had 15 acres cleared. We left all of the old sugar maple trees. Now I seem to be ithcing to fill in. There is a spot on the property with well over 50 lilacs (my favorite flower). They are all lined up in a row, and I am thinking of digging them up and transplating them to different places on the property. That should be a good use for DH's back hoe! We have moved a few successfully, i just cannot decide where to put everything!
Oh yes, I am planting strawberries too, but not until next year....too many gardening projects, and not nearly enough time, or energy!:)
jenny

[protein-girl]

wow thanks for the advice re the Mint. Who would have thought it could be such a menace! I'll keep an eye on it. My basil has been thriving - I cut it and it just keep growing and growing. I'm only new to growing veggies and I keep thinking it must be going to die or taste terrible after a while but no it keeps going. How long will basil last before it needs replanting?

[protein-girl]

We do get large black bears, moose, coyotes, fox, owls, wild turkeys, deer and manner of other things...oh yes, porcupines!

:eek: Oh my god!!! bears freak me out!:eek: people worry about sharks snakes and spiders here in OZ but oh my ... they have nothing on bears!!! I guess the wildlife you live with in your own country is never as scarey as someone elses!

PG

[Thedabara]

As a teenager I lived in the Snowy Mountain region of Victoria Australia. We had a farm that was nice and all, but we had an outhouse.....everynight when I went out there I thought of that song..."A Redback bit me on the toilet seat last night", I think thats how it went...that was well over 20 years ago... I still hate spiders! lol!:)
Jenny

[protein-girl]

LOL. .. :) yeah not a great song to have in your head on the way to an outhouse. Give me spiders over bears any day! :) At least I can defend myself with a shoe!

[Thedabara]

The bears we have around here are black bears, the adults can weigh up to 1,000 pounds but they only come around houses in april and early May. They are just looking for food after a long winters hibernation. We just make sure that all our bird feeders are down and put away by mid March or so. Last year a mother and her cub (all of 300 pounds) circled our house a few times...that was a little scary.:eek: ..but then they went off down the mountain in search of easier food! They never touch my garden, but they do occasionally eat my blueberries!:mad:
jenny

[protein-girl]

wow you grow blueberries! I heard they are quite difficult to grow because they need certain conditions with climate and so on... how do you find them.

what an amazing experience with the bear...

[SherryJ]

Oh! HA! We didn't have running water in the house until I was about 12... there were MANY times six kids would roll laughing at the 7th when that one came running out, pants down, due to a SNAKE in the, uh, "facilities"! :D

Sherry

[Thedabara]

Sherry, that was funny!:D

as for the blueberries, they grow wild around here...We have about 5 bushes of them (not wild). They are rather large so they are great for eating off the bushes, but not so great in muffins etc... Every August we go to a nearby blueberry farm and purchase 30 pounds of small blueberries. I go through them to weed out any leaves or small sticks and in the freezer they go. That way, I have a one year's supply of blueberries for yogurt, muffins, shakes etc...

as for how they grow wild around here...I live in New England USA, climate is perfect and those black bears do have a use! They eat berries, and (excuse this) poop. The seeds come out in the poop and get automatically fertilized. see, those bears are very beneficial!:)
Jenny

[Gaelen]

My basil has been thriving - I cut it and it just keep growing and growing. I'm only new to growing veggies and I keep thinking it must be going to die or taste terrible after a while but no it keeps going. How long will basil last before it needs replanting?

Protein-girl, last year I had six basil 'harvests' that were big enough to make a batch of pesto (got about 4 cups of leaves each time) -- all of that in addition to daily pickings. If your weather holds, and you keep at the plants and don't let the little straight spikes of flowers form, you can keep basil sending out new sprigs and new leaves for 6-8 months. Since I mainly do mine outdoors, and we've got serious cold weather here, I've never gotten it to the old and bitter stage, but you might be able to keep it giving you fresh leaves for a very long time if you can be rigorous about keeping it from flowering, and keeping the old leaves picked off.

Herbs are great to start off with; they tolerate mistakes, lousy weather, and complete lack of care, and still produce amazing quantities of taste!

[protein-girl]

thanks for the advice Gaelen, I love pesto even more now I can make it myself.

PG

[Gaelen]

Garden Update: Central NY is finally over night time frosts (I think.) I made the mistake of putting my small potted Norfolk Island Pine tree outside too soon, and lost about half of it to frost, but repotted and the remaining stems seem to be doing okay. It's really just a baby, I didn't catch that it was going to dip to the low 30s, and the rest is compost history, I'm afraid. :rolleyes:

That said, my front garden is making a LOT of progress. We've had a few days of heavy rain (not as heavy as New England, but good soakings), so I was able to dig up my entire front patch of lemon balm, and remove several clumps of black-eyed susans that had volunteered outside of their assigned seats. ;) It's become a tradition for me to give my excess garden volunteers to my sister and and SIL for Mother's day, so I split the lemon balm into three clumps (one for each of us; mine is going into the new back patio patch still in development.) I also usually give them lily of the valley and coreopsis, but I kept most of those this year and just rearranged them in my own patch. I also thinned out my perennial herbs and gave them their picks of the of the thyme, savory and chives thinnings.

The volunteer dill has become a full-fledged patch; the thyme, chives, savory and sage all made it through the winter along with two re-sprouted chard plants. So I thinned out the herbs, moved the chard closer to the house, and took stock.

Home Depot has their $1 pots out in full force, so I picked up one each of grapefruit mint, rosemary, cherry tomato, cilantro and two strawberry plants, and one pack of purple pansies to fill in the annual cement block planters where I lost a few pinks dianthus. I also found a beautiful two-tone dark purple clematis that I put in the front--and it's doing so well I think I want another for the new back patio bed. I'd still like a roma tomato plant, that second clematis and I've started spaghetti and roly poly squash seeds for the back patio patch. I also need to pick up some cilantro and basil seeds to try to move them to inside pots to winter over.

I'm going to try the strawberries in either a hanging style strawberry planter, or a strawberry jar...something that I can cover and winter over better than the space they'll have in the bed. I also might have space for them in the back garden, but they'll be more vulnerable there to scavengers.

Everything in the ground is doing really well, but I was so successful in thinning and moving that I've started some stuff I didn't think I'd have room to plant. I moved the two swiss chard volunteers to the part of the vegetable bed that's closest to the kitchen door--and discovered that chard has a seriously long root that looks like a carrot. I put in the tomato plant and set up the tomato cages farthest away from the kitchen door (they were closest last year, so that's my crop rotation project for this year!)

I planted some snow peas along the back row where they can twine up around a section of 4' picket fence that I staked against the thread for a visual but functional trellis, a few more chard seeds and some spinach in the greens patch, and some sunflowers in the herb garden corner where I need something tall. I don't think my hollyhocks wintered over well, but I'm trading some of my black-eyed susan volunteers for her hollyhock volunteers. I moved my short columbine to a better spot in the front of the perennial border, and now I want another daylily to fill in that hole in the back, and I'm trying to decide if my two tall columbines should be moved farther back or stay where they are; have to see how the surrounding plants work out after the columbines stop blooming.

Now it's time to start building the back bed, and populate it. It's a scavenger area (those little black kitties, and bunnies), so I was thinking very hardy and invasive herbs like the lemon balm, oregano, and maybe that's where the mint will end up. I saw chocolate mint at one of the specialty garden centers, and I'd like to put that back there, away from the grapefruit mint in the front patch. That will also be a perfect place to put the squashes if the seeds sprout in time. So I've put down a layer of wet newspaper as the weed barrier, and now have to start the rock collecting to build up the barrier so that the guys who weed-whack and mow know where to stop. ;) After I get the rocks in, I'll add in the contents of my compost barrel, topped with a few bags of topsoil (five ought to do it) and hopefully get it all in the ground within a couple weeks. I should be able to finish the bed next week or the week after, so that it's done by Memorial day and the new plants can move out of their holding areas and into the ground.

How is everyone else's garden progressing?

[Missy]

So much for bed rest, eh?!? lol ~ very inspirational Gaelen...I've enjoyed reading this whole thread. I need to "get busy" myself and get my stuff planted and..heck, BOUGHT!!! :eek:

[SherryJ]

You can plant CHOCOLATE mint?!?!?!? WOW... I thought that was something one had to concoct in the kitchen!

LOL, I got a great laugh out of your wording about the plants "volunteering outside of their assigned seats"! :D

Sherry

[Donna7]

I would love to see a picture of your garden, Gaelen! It sounds beautiful! We're also starting over from scratch after building a new house...everything around the house is nothing but construction dirt. My husband got some shrubs at Lowe's the other day, and my son planted them yesterday; my daughter and I picked up a few annual bedding plants and some fresh herbs and she started a little herb garden beside the kitchen door. I'm planning to post a question in the kitchen forum about using fresh herbs...it's new to me and I don't know how! But we now have basil, flat leaf parsley, onion chives, rosemary, and thyme growing happily. My husband keeps asking when we're going to get the tomato plants...I'm looking at the future garden area covered with gravel and sighing...but I suddenly got inspired to grow zucchini for myself, after paying an outrageous price to make the zucchini risotto, and remembering how prolific it is and how much I love it! So now he's going to have to do some scraping, plowing, moving dirt, and fertilizing so we can get our veggies going. We've got a tractor and backhoe, thankfully, so he can do a lot of it with equipment (we're getting a little too old for such heavy manual labor:o!) Now if only we had a little time...speaking of thyme, I'll head over to "Kitchen" and watch for advice on using all these things I've planted!

[Shadow]

Wow - so many great things growing :D!

Jenny - I want to come raid your garden for some of the things you've planted that I didn't :p!

Hopefully we will get our last frost this coming week and I can plant over the holiday weekend. I've scaled down a lot this year and gave up some of the more "labor intensive" things like lettuces & spinach. Yes, they're good - but keeping them harvested and washing the dirt off is a bit more time-consuming than I want ;).

Thanks to a gift certificate from my boss to the local nursery, I will be using bedding plants this year. So hopefully I'll actually get things to grow in time before the snow/frost hits in September :p. The plants I chose were all hardy ones that take little tending and I can easily pawn off the extras on co-employees :). There are eggplant, spaghetti squash, crookneck squash, yellow pear tomatoes, another small tomato that I'm not familiar with (they were out of grape tomatoes :( ), and raspberry bushes.

I also splurged on some bedding plants for the porch and flower beds and transplanted 22 violas just this morning :D. I also got 3 supertunias for the porch hanging baskets. It's starting to look like spring at my place ;).

[Billie]

How lovely Lita!
We just have flowers at this point, some rosemary and mint in containers. Since the lawn service just mowed over part of my inpatients...:( I will be doing another trip to the garden center...oh darn I hate that!:p

[Mitra]

You're inspiring me to get out and see if I can clear a space for some edible plants in our garden. All I have at the moment is sage (because I've been making pork and sage sausages, and the little packets of fresh sage from the supermarket were costing nearly as much as the pork!!) and dandelions, oh and there's a plant we call wild garlic, though I don't think it's related to garlic, and I don't know its real name. It's got pretty green sword shaped leaves, and white flowers - and a garlicky scent. You can eat the leaves in salads or add them with the dandelion leaves to spinach &c.

[Shadow]

Shucks, Billie, just gotta go, huh :p? Actually, how rude of them to mow your flowers off :eek: but at least it makes for a good excuse to get some more :D!

Mitra - I don't know what it is, but it sounds good :lol:! I didn't plant any herbs because I'm mostly just a salt & pepper kinda gal ;). I do use garlic but never thought to get any - duh! And I like onion too, but since they come in bags of 50 - 100, I thought that might be a bit overkill for just me :rolleyes:...

[Gaelen]

Billie, I usually have a hard time on my back (grass) patio with the guys who mow--they regularly took down my not-bloomed-yet bulbs until I started picking up stones and laid them out as a little barrier. They will just turn in circles if I put more stuff back there, but I'm gonna. Although I have thought it through more, and won't be putting anything intended to be edible back there, since the entire grounds are chem-lawned three times a year, and I don't want that stuff on things I plan to cook with. Ohhh...that means more space for flowers and fragrant herbs I don't cook with. ;)

Missy--bed rest is over-rated. ;) Seriously, I can lay down layers of newspaper and get back in bed pretty fast! And I'm going to hoodwink my younger nephews into hauling the 40 lb. bags of topsoil to the backyard for a free lunch over the holiday weekend.

Shadow--try a little common thyme. It's winter hardy, a perennial that takes NO care, and the leaves are just wonderful on vegetables and poultry. It's an awesome first herb. And while I've never successfully grown onions or garlic in my miniature garden patch, chives give you that same wonderful flavor, but in a manageable, winter hardy perennial package that requires no attention at all except to enjoy it.

After all my plans, we had SNOW yesterday. Only for a few minutes, and it hasn't happened in a long time, but I've lived here my whole life. What was I thinking, having the garden in before Memorial Day? I quickly covered up the poor tomato plant with a spare planter so it wouldn't get frozen. Last night it went down to 33 degrees, and tonight they're calling for the 40s. Best of all, 80s by the weekend.

Welcome to CNY. Don't like the weather? Hang on, it'll change in a minute!

[Missy]

You all have been so inspiring!!!

This coming weekend on Sunday our local Farmer's Market has it's annual "Flower Day"...and all the stalls are flower related instead of veggies. It's so beautiful!! I plan to make it there and pick up several flats of annuals..and plant several herbs. I'm in Ohio, and we are well past frost....or so I thought...it frosted lightly here too last night! :eek: But, by next Sunday, we should be fine. I'm going to container garden this year...and I have the container's bought, and dirt in em!! :D

[Niobe]

This thread makes me wish I had anywhere to plant ... I've never really been the gardening type, between overheating easily (probably to do with my weight), my allergies, and weeding the GIGANTIC garden having been my "chores" at home. But lately ... well, it's just another reason I'll be glad when I can move into my own house. :)

[Mitra]

You've even got me giving serious thought to doing some gardening! I normally try to avoid any activity that involves fresh air ;).

[Gaelen]

While I was working on my back patio's pots and new raised bed, I emptied the compost bin into that area and started this year's compost with my endless supply of fallen leaves, some eggshells and coffee grounds, and a small bucketfull of grass clippings I'd saved from before the groundskeepers chem-lawned the place.

I was thinking that I actually have enough 'browns' (yard waste) to maybe add another small bin to my patio. My 'bin' is very low maintenance--just a dark-colored flip-top plastic hamper (made by Sterilite) with a couple tie-downs to keep the lid secure. It's small--about 18" in diameter and just under three feet tall; I got it about 10 years ago in the KMart housewares aisle. It holds a garbage can full of dried leaves (browns), into which I layer kitchen waste (greens): veggie peels, fruit skins, eggshells, coffee grounds (got plenty of them!) and some compost activator. Since it's fully ventilated, I don't turn it often...just clamp down the top and roll it around the patio once or twice a season.

After filling it all spring, summer and fall, and then letting it sit though the winter, I have a barrel full of compost the following spring...but I sure could use another one! I also use two open rectangular plastic laundry baskets to dry the garden and yard waste. I've thought about converting them to a second bin, but they're also pretty handy when I'm cleaning up things in the garden. They were Dollar Store baskets, so it might be time to check out that out for new compost bin candidates.

Does anyone else compost? What kinds of bins do you use, or do you just compost directly into the ground?

[Gaelen]

The first herb harvest is in...baby dill, chives, cilantro, and some parsley. I used the baby dill and chives to make a batch of Elle's Magic Sauce (http://www.proteinpower.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27) (see the "Savory Sauces" thread in the PP Kitchen: Appetizers, Salads and Small Bites forum.

I need to move the basil, though, or put in another patch, because patch #1 isn't doing too well...it got overshadowed by the chives, which took off after the early rains. I also have to keep resisting the urge to pick the baby chard leaves from last year's two volunteer plants...they're only about 3 inches long right now, and after another week of sunshine and rain, they'll be palm-sized and stuffable. This year's chard crop is only to the four-leaf stage, so it won't be providing much chard for a few more weeks.

I've also still got some bare spots in my perennials...I dug out or cut down spots of the black-eyed susans, but I've still got two coneflowers in pots looking for a home, several empty large pots in the back waiting for the tall tree-shrubs that will create a privacy screen between my back patio and my summertime-only neighbor, and I'm trying to figure out a way to get the front clematis to a spot where it can thrive. And this year, a wonderful surprise...since I put in a few stones to mark off my raised bed on the back patio, the mowing guys have been a little more careful, allowing the heirloom climbing rose that's never gotten a decent chance to send out canes and start vining. No roses yet, but I've got four canes that are three feet high, with vines training on the patio fence.

How's your Protein Power garden coming along?

[Always]

We ate the first of our annual raspberry crop yesterday and they were juicy and sweet, especially the golden rasberries. Even though we lost many canes because we didn't get our fence up to protect them during the winter from those evil long-earred rodents, the ones they pruned without our permission are still bearing fruit. Can't wait for enough to fill a bowl with cream poured over them. They were great over our pancakes on Sunday. See ya!

[Gaelen]

Mm, the black raspberries are coming in here in CNY, too...and this year, I managed to isolate half a dozen canes that I'm going to try to move to a protected spot in my new back patio garden. Right now, it's just enough berries for a batch of berry pancakes, or a couple of smoothies, but by this weekend, there will be at least one volume harvest that I can freeze...if they make it back to the kitchen, that is!

[bigdawg_SLC]

Just love the fresh vegetables....mmmm mmmm good. Zucchini, Tomatoes, peppers, and egg plant. I've been able to harvest a bunch of all them already.

[Gaelen]

I got the first of the cherry tomatoes off the vine this week, and the red swiss chard is now producing one-two servings every other day. I've actually been eating herb 'salads' of combinations of thyme, Italian parsley, chives, cilantro, tarragon, dill, basil and summer savory--wonderful steamed and buttered with lemon, or mixed raw and dressed with evoo and the vinegar du jour. It will be a week or so more before the Roma tomatoes ripen enough to bring inside. The strawberries and wild raspberries are done for the year, but the blueberries are coming into the farmer's market, along with the zucchini, summer squash and stone fruits. The market...where I should be right now. ;)

Unfortunately, I've only gotten one lonely jalapeno from my various pepper plants--our rainstorms really hit that section of my bed hard and knocked off all of the early blossoms. Maybe there will be more blossoms later, but for now it looks like I'll be buying my fresh hot peppers at the farmer's market, too. Every gardening day is a new experience. ;)

[Gaelen]

The rainy summer blues...
jalapeno count to date: 3 harvested, 3 on the vine with three plants in the ground :( Hot peppers do MUCH better in hot, dry summers than in wet, rainy summers! I don't feel like my gardening skills are so bad...even the farmer's market stalls are light on hot peppers this year, although the sweet peppers are doing fine.

The cherry tomatoes are producting regularly, although their skins seem tougher. The romas have great flavor, but they're not the perfect raindrop globes romas can be because of the unevenness of hot/dry cool/rainy weather we've had. They are making some awesome salsa, though. ;)

The red swiss chard is producing nicely, and the single volunteer white-stemmed swiss chard is also producing, although not at the same rate as the six red swiss chard plants.

The basil was a victim of being planted too close together (my usual practice, but deadly in rainy summers when it won't get enough light if planted that way.) So there's been lots of basil for salads but not enough of a harvest at one time for pesto...may need to actually buy several bunches to put some pesto in the freezer for the fall.

I've been making a lot of herb salads--basil, parsley, thyme, savory, sage, chives and tarragon mixed into spinach or chard and then steamed/wilted and dressed with the viniagrette du jour. The cilantro is done and the dill's gone to seed, but both produced a lot in their seasons. The others (all but the basil) have each needed to be cut back once a month--failing that, they'll take over. And this year, I got smart and planted the oregano and grapefruit mint in pots that will winter over inside, so THEY don't take over. ;)

Now I need to bring plugs from the chives and parsley indoors to winter over in the kitchen, find a basil seedling or two for the third indoor pot, and freeze the thyme, savory, sage and tarragon.

The three strawberry plants I planted in June produced two berries each (not unusual for just going in the ground this summer), and have now started a second crop--five or six berries each which I hope ripen before fall. I pinched off the suckers to make them stronger, and hopefully if well mulched and protected they'll winter over and have a stronger crop in the spring.

NONE of the squashes made the transition outdoors--caught either by frost or early rains, they just didn't make it.

OTOH, the annual pinks I planted in my walkway container aka a dozen two-holed concrete blocks bloomed up until the end of July on their second year. ;) I planted a lavender Rose of Sharon tree on the back patio in a huge pot, underplanted with portulaca which has been a riot of mixed color since a week after it went into the pot in June. The Rose of Sharon flowered early, had a foliage growth spurt and is now in its second flowering. The back clematis did very well for its first summer; the front clematis had a harder time because of the huge overgrowth of black-eyed susans. The climbing rose from my grandmother's backyard has sent up a dozen canes, and the leaves were ravaged by the rose beetles--so no blooms. This fall, I'm digging it up and transplanting it to a more light-filled spot.

All in all...it's been a good garden year, if wet, although I'll need to supplement some of the putting-by with stock from the farmer's market for the things that didn't do as well as I'd hoped. Every year is a new discovery. ;)

[Billie]

Thanks for the update Gaelen, your words let me visualize the lovely garden. We really have used the herbs a lot this summer, especially the rosemary, mint, dill and chives.

[momuvfour]

I think next year I'm going to do a raised garden bed garden, it won't be so rough on my back