Tuesday, July 11, 2006

More of My Garden....

Here are some pictures of the rest of our garden....in this first picture you see four raised beds. The one on the far left is my hot pepper bed - I have 110 Red Fresno Peppers plants along with jalapeno, habanero, and cayenne! I use the Red Fresno peppers to make a killer wing sauce! Needless to say we like spicy food :) These plants are now about a foot tall, bushy and blooming.
Last year I planted 1/2 bed in Fresnos and it wasn't enough so this year I doubled it. The other hot peppers are at the end of the bed that contains our regular peppers - green, red, yellow, sweet Italian frying peppers....yummmmm! We use fresh during the summer, slice and freeze for stir fry after the season and ddehydrate for salads during the winter! I even stuff some with a rice and cheese mixture and freeze for quick and easy dinners! The next bed over contains several varieties of dried beans - these are being pulled up this week and when dried we will have a shelling evening!

Next is carrots and onions - these have all been pulled and processed and the new plastic mulch is down and we are getting ready to plant pumpkins there.

The last bed has lettuce, snow peas, cucumbers, herbs and 2 varieties of cherry tomatoes. Both of our cherry tomatoes are hybrids - each year I try several heirlooms looking for a sweet cherry - this year I have tried Resintraube and Glacier....I'll let you know how they are and I would love suggestions from those of you who have found your favorite heirloom cherry tomato! I would love to eliminate another hybrid from my garden...the only hybrids I grow are the cherry tomatoes and a few Early Girl tomatoes each year - because I am impatient for those home grown tomatoes :)

This next picture is of my pole beans....I wish they still looked this good. This is the only thing that I grow that the Japanese Beetles destroy - I am thinking about tilling them in and replanting in hopes of a crop after the beetles have gone....I don't think I will get any from this planting. The beetles not only destroy the foliage...they eat the beans!

I grow Rattlesnake beans each year - very sweet and very prolific -it is an old southern heirloom.
This year I was also trying Fortex....hopefully I will get them replanted this week. What a disappointment...but thankfully we seem to have less and less problems with the beetles. A great suggestion to make your Milky Spore go a long way (it is very expensive)....pour it throughout your compost pile and let it inoculate the entire thing - then next year you can treat your whole garden for a fraction of the cost!

This picture is a shot down our lettuce aisle on one side and herbs on the other. We grow our lettuce under our peas and beans - this keeps it cool and protects it from the hot sun. We are still harvesting lettuce for salads and sandwiches....amazing considering we have had some very hot weather for weeks. The herbs on the right are in a border that rings the garden. We are still adding to that border and hopefully will have it completely full in a week or two.

On this side we have stevia, feverfew, calendula, lemon balm, Greek oregano, curry, high mallow, echinacea, comfrey, tansy and chamomile...my counters are full of colorful drying herbs and I have quite a few "bunches" hanging from the ceiling in my house drying...what a blessed bounty!

This last picture is of our squash and zucchini beds. They are still producing but not at the rate a few weeks ago - thank goodness! But they are succumbing to the squash vine borer as they do each year....if they are attacked too early in the season we inoculate with BT by using a hypodermic and injecting the base of each plant. This year it wasn't necessary - I may do another small planting of squash to take us through to the first frost - we love it for fresh eating and Mom dehydrates it for winter use - wonderful for soups, stews and we even dehydrate some with a light sprinkle of salt - better than potato chips!

Thank you for strolling through my garden with me! I wish you could join me for a cup of tea or some lavender lemonade.

My next post will have some fascinating pictures of a strange white spotted creature that I found in the garden this year - and it turns out to be beneficial :)

14 comments:

  1. Your gardens are beautiful. I love the raised bed idea. Thanks for sharing.

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  2. Wow! What a beautiful garden. Perhaps we should try raised beds next year. We are just starting out as we just got out of the military and have our "own" house now. After all the flooding out here, things have way too much water! Hopefully we will have some beans and tomatoes. Lavender lemonade sounds delicious!! How tall a fence would you recommend around a garden?

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  3. Thanks Farm Girl!

    Michelle,
    Depends on what you are trying to keep out - for us it is mainly chickens, rabbits and ground hogs - so our fence is typical chain link size...deer would require a lot more.
    Lavender Lemonade tastes wonderful...but not quite as good as raspberry lemonade :)

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  4. Hi Cheri! Your gardens are just beautiful, praises be to God. We have to be satisfied with but a miniscule harvest this year thanks to a late start and other issues but we have great hopes for next year. By the way, how high are the sides to your raised beds and what kind of lumber did you use?

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  5. Emily,
    I believe they are 6 inches...if I had to do it over I would make them 8 inches! We bought UNTREATED (very important!) lumber - I think the lumbermill called it end of the run....They were slightly irregular and less expensive because it was not suitable for building homes with...

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  6. I love your garden! Thanks for sharing it with us!

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  7. Favorite Heirloom Tomato: Matt's Wild Cherry. Going away, it's my summer love. Marble sized fruit, first to ripen, indeterminate bushy plant (can get BIG around), and will bear fruit until frost. Seeds are great to save and germination will be great from year to year. Let me know what you think!

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  8. Thanks Kimberly!

    Mrs. Burns,
    Thanks so much...I haven't heard of that one - don't recall seeing seed for it either but I will definitely be on the look out!

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  9. Look at all those beds! And the produce! How beautiful!

    I've started putting raised beds here. They seem to work better in our area. I purchased treated wood, but then put a black tarp to cover the ground and the wood and filled it with compost soil.

    I'm started a second crop this month. I'm only putting in plants that will tolerate the heat. I put eggplant and pepper seeds out, but they didn't germinate- not quite sure why! Any suggestions?

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  10. Just wanted to post that the peppers are germinating!! Patience is a virtue!!! Now we'll see if the eggplant decide to cooperate and germinate too!

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  11. Beautiful garden! Try shredding and freezing some of you squash for use in breads during the winter months. My mom would freeze it in 1, 2 or 3 cup portions (whatever her favorite recipe called for). There's nothing like hot-from-the-oven zuchinni bread with chopped nuts baked right in and a little melted butter. M-m-m-m. Of course, we had lots of pumpkin bread too. As a child I was given a small corner of the garden for my own little garden. One of the "crops" I grew were pumpkins (for jack-o-lanterns). After I used my two or three pumpkins for carving we were left with a plentiful bounty of pumpkins. They take over a garden a lot like the cucumbers you trimmed back. :) Baked and salted pumpkin seeds are a yummy snack too. I've enjoyed peeking into your blog. I came here by way of the KS Milkmaid.

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  12. Hmmmm...maybe I should have read your previous post before posting my comments. It looks as though great minds DO think alike. :)

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  13. I had never thought of planting the lettuce beneath the beans. I tiled all my rows horizontal this year with the exception of a vertical row for the beans. It serves as some much needed shade and wind break at that end of the garden. I am already thinking next year I will try the lettuce idea and if I get ambitious raised beds as well:) Thanks for sharing your life with us.

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  14. HH,
    Yeah for the peppers! Hope the eggplant is successful - it is the favorite food of flea beetles - the onlly way I can raise eggplant is to keep it under row cover until flowering - then I can harvest enough before the beetles devour the plants to make it worth the effort.

    Dreamer -
    I do shred my squash and zuchinni - I freeze it pre-measured to be able to make 2 loaves of bread at a time. Pumpling seeds are one of our favorite snacks also :)

    Mary Ellen,
    You are so welcome :)

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