the garden

 some herbs

 peas and potatos

 more herbs - mint, oregano, chives, and some plants that the bees love

 we pulled out the rhubarb and planted carrots.  

onion, lettuce, corn, potatoes...

tomatos, blueberries

 

chamomile for the bees

 

strawbs!

 

 

 

the garden continues to provide

 

the harvest, she is plentiful this year

 

goodbye summer

 you were a weird one this year, and i don't think we enjoyed you very much.  see you next year and maybe we'll both be feeling better.

garden potion

by The Girl

garden and corn

 The Mister pruned one of our trees and while we were cutting up the branches into small pieces to fit in the car to take to the yard waste drop off, our neighbor very kindly offered to throw them and any other yard waste we had in his truck along with his stuff.  We took him up on the offer  and then went and pulled up a bunch of stuff in the garden to add to the pile

Our 2 cauliflower plants got huge, but didn't actually produce any cauliflowers, and our squash plant gave us a few yellow squashes before giving up.  The raspberries are doing poorly.  I think we need to find a new place in the yard to plant them.  We are giving the carrots more time - I'm hoping for a good harvest but realistically probably not.  We got one bug eaten cabbage, a handful of peppers and a meals worth of sprouts.  The tomatos are hanging in there - we've never had such a good year for cherry tomatos.

We bought some Chase corn this year to boil and freeze and I decided to try the boil in the husk method -boil in the husk for 5 minutes, cut off the end and the corn slides right out, with no silk on the cob.

Worked like a charm!

garden 2022

 Here is a big photo dump of the garden from the last month.  We planted everything in May/June and then really just let it do whatever it wanted.

We did a few herbs, zucchini, carrots, tomatos, bell peppers, lettuce, sunflowers..........I think that's it.  The rhubarb came in early again this year, and the raspberries have been struggling the last few years.  Maybe they need new dirt?

Everything got overgrown and tangled together

SO many zucchini flowers.  When we lived in Calgary I would buy these from the farmers market.  I did not pick any from our plants this year, I wanted them all to grow into zukes, which thank God they did not since we have too many anyway.  Next year I will pick some.

This area is full of flowers, plants, herbs and the rhubarb.  The bees came in full force this summer so we let everything go wild to keep them happy and coming back.  It looks messy but it's nicer in real life.

The carrots are still very wee, but I don't think we thinned them enough and I don't think they are getting enough sun because they are covered by the squash plants.

garden update

 If you have been sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for another garden update post, this is for you, bestie.  <3

Since my only other garden post this year at the beginning of July, the tomatos grew nicely.  This area is all cherry tomato plants, and then we have one roma tomato plant in a pot.  We have been very lucky and had a ton of cherry tomatos this year!  Probably our best tomato crop ever.

The potatos did ok..... I sort of expected more.  I think we need to add more dirt to this bed next year and make it deeper.  I forgot to weigh the tater haul, but we probably made our money back in what we paid for the bag of organic seed potatots that we planted.

Potatos above, potato plants before the kids ripped them up below.

The Mister planted some sweet peas for me.  When I was a kid my mom always planted a ton of these in our backyard, and when I was in grades 3 and 4 she would cut little bouquets for me to take to my teachers.  I'm sure that made me look like a sucky kid, but whatever!  Sweet peas make me think of my mom.

Here's what we harvested that day.  Lets see, what else  - the rhubarb went hard early in the season and then dramatically died off.  I know rhubarb is an early harvest, but our evil plant usually keeps giving and giving much longer than this year. I'm sure the heat and smoke did it no favors.  The blueberry plant only ever produced a couple of handfuls of berries, but it is new, so maybe that was to be expected.  The kale did not grow.  The zucchini did not grow.  We do have some pepper plants in a planter box with small peppers on them, maybe as long as your thumb?  I wanted to give them more time to grow, but it's getting cold at night, so we might pick them soon.  The lettuce bolted early.  We did get 2 small cucumbers that were pretty tasty.  The herbs were pretty stunted.  I'm sure it's mostly due to the terrible heat and fires we had this summer, but I think we will have to add some new dirt and fertilizer next year to try to boost things.  Maybe this winter I will become obsessed with garden tik toks to fill my time.

Snapshot - drying peppers

The Mister bought a pepper plant this Spring that he thought was bell pepper 

but it turned out to be chile peppers.  It's pretty much the only thing that's growing 

this summer - the tomato and zuke plants did nothing, 

same with the corn and peas.  

I came outside yesterday and discovered that he had picked all the peppers 

and strung them up to dry.

Sort of complements the broom, don't it?

Bay Tree

I impulse purchased a little bay tree this Spring and planted it in our garden. 

I've done no research into if it will survive the winter, but it was only $10. 

I am hoping it will survive, I've long envied European cooking books and shows that flaunt their fresh bay. 

 In other garden news, I added another type of mint, bringing my total to 3. 

The chives are trying to take over the garden, and for now I'm letting them. We've cooked with chives this year more than any other. 

The oregano has been neglected the past few years, and I'm thinking of pulling it out; we never use it. 

Peas and raspberries are our big crops again this year. 

They are the boys favorites; it's a fight for anyone else to get any if he's around.