Extra Garden Update
I have been asked to do an extra update of the garden.
Before I start - our garden is actually separated from the house by the road. It is a triangle shape where I put almost all of the vegetables except the tomatoes and the sugar peas which are closer to the house.
This first photo is of the garden which is across from our house - and next to the busy road. The county ?? sometimes mows the side of the road. If so, I will lose a pumpkin which is hiding in all that foliage.
This is on the back side of the triangle garden plot and the road here is gravel and this area is NOT mowed by the county. Neighbors or even my husband sometimes mow this area.
Here you can see the road. This shows a couple of pumpkins determined to escape the confines of the fence.
Since I’ve been spending so much time on the charity quilts, I’ve not been doing a lot of other kinds of things. That will soon change, I hope.
Anyway, because of another report.
Side note - flowers get my focus in late spring/early to mid summer, but then they take a back seat, and the garden and veggies take front stage.
It’s as if I really don’t care anymore about the flowers. They start to look a little old, but I don’t mind. I suppose I could buy some mums in September - maybe I will do that and spruce up that part of my flowers. I do think next year I will buy some little sticks of plant food and put one in each pot of flowers. I’ve never done that before and I’ve seen this at Lidl - and I think it would be helpful.
But I am now turning to think about harvest and getting the vegetables. It’s the best time of the year for a vegetable gardener!
So, let’s see. My vegetables I’m growing this year are
Corn - so far we are getting ready to harvest - soon. But not quite yet.
Sunflowers - not really veggies - but they were volunteers from last year and I love them!
Zucchini- Yellow and Green
My first planting is totally overgrown now and has serious wilt issues, however, they are still producing some. I’ve not cut them down or gotten rid of them yet.
But I did plant some seeds on July 3. The picture below shows those plants. These are also planted in a sunnier spot than the first planting.
This is my second planting of zucchini and yellow crookneck squash - they are just now starting to produce ! They are fresh plantings and look great.
Crookneck squash
Extra long green beans - I had despaired that these beans would even give me some beans as I hadn’t seen what I thought were beans. Then today I examined the plants a little closer and wow - I found some of these long things! I had no idea! They weren’t up high on the plant - but rather, low - which make sense. I kept looking up on the fence for beans.
Oh - these green beans are long - some as long as 14-15” !!
Hot cherry peppers - I hope they turn out for me - as it is my first year trying to grow these. With one more month (maybe) I hope that they do get bigger and maybe even turn red. No matter— I can use them - at least some of them - in the salsa I want to make this year.
Tomatoes - mostly cherry or pear shaped (small ones). One plant is a large fruit type.
Pumpkins - several different kinds: Some of the vines are kind of dying down, but some are going like nobody’s business!
Jack Be Little - little orange
Baby Boo - little white
Multi color - green/yellow - I really hope these are edible. I have NO idea where these came from as I don’t remember planting anything that looks like these.
Sugar pie - small - supposed to be very tasty, dense and flavorful
I’ve started picking them because these vines have died back and I don’t want them to get taken by marauding thieves! I’ve moved them close to the house.
Green ribbed
Long/green - I am pretty sure there are more in the garden but I can’t see them very well as they hide well among the leaves.
Not sure - some classic orange round and others
A flat kind that looks like a Cinderella type - there are more than this -
These have excellent flesh on the inside…a nice dark orange.
Now there are vines all over the garden. I try to stay out of wandering among them. I have made a few paths so that I can get in and out of the garden but try to stay in the same spots. Because of trying not to wander among the plants, I don’t know what is all in there. It will be a treasure hunt!
The weeds really got ahead of me once again. At this point, I’m considering it a lost cause, except for around the hot cherry peppers. I plan on trying to keep those 9 plants weeded in the area around them.
You can see yellowing of the leaves. Some of the plants are starting to die back. I’m not fertilizing the pumpkins this late in the season as if all goes well, we have only one more month of growing season - if the weather holds out.
You can see the big tree right in the middle of the garden that causes me problems. It is too big to cut down without special permission as that is what they require here in Poland. Anyway, it is a beautiful oak tree.
Hopefully in the next couple of days we will be able to start eating corn!! It is our favorite thing to eat from the garden - while squash and pumpkins are my favorite things to grow!
I hope you have enjoyed this update!
When it comes to harvesting the pumpkins - at first I hope to use the pumpkins to decorate with in the fall, but before they go bad, I will cook up as many as I can and freeze it. Then I will give the rest to area friends and neighbors and people in the church. If I still have too many, I can offer them to other people here in our area as we have a freecycle group. I’ve offered them before on the group when a freeze was coming up and I didn’t want to have to cover them up and I gave them all away within a few hours.
Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store here!
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