Garden Update

While I do understand that this blog is mainly about my various crafts, I also have a very vibrant garden this year and want to brag a little about it.

This is the peas that are going to be ready to pick within the next week.  This is one of two arbors that I have chocked full of peas.  It is hard to see, but the pea vines are on the inside of the boxes and the outside of the boxes have things like beets, pepper plants, squash, cucumbers and carrots.  I also have a row a beans coming up right in front of the beans so they can grow on the arbor as soon a the peas are harvested.

Remember when I filled some large tubs with dirt, and planted potatoes.  They all have come up and are doing quite well.  Supposedly the 4 pounds of potatoes that I planted will give me about 200 pounds of harvested potatoes.  Need to learn and prepare for some cold winter storage for this crop.

The box is mostly full of roma tomato plants, about 26 plants,  I am hoping for a bumper crop to make things like tomato paste, sauce, salsa, spaghetti sauce, enchilada sauce, stewed tomatoes, and anything else that I can think of along the way of canning or drying them.  

If you look closely at the front end of the box, you will see some small plants.  They are not tomatoes, they are peanuts.  Yep, peanuts.  I am giving them a try this year just for kicks.

These three boxes are more tomatoes.  One box has a mixture of red pear tomatoes, regular slicing tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, and I think a purple heirloom one.  The other two are more roma types that are different varieties that will hopefully mix together with the long box and make some awesome tasting stuff.

The box to the front of the picture is the broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage plants.  Lots of leaves, still no produce yet.  Should be seeing results in a couple of week though.

Here we have the onion box.  I planted over 100 onions, I pick every other one for awhile for green onions then I leave the rest in the ground and pull one when I need an onion for my cooking.  I can cover the crop with straw and sawdust and overwinter them and pull them as needed all though the rest of the year.  How cool it that, having produce right out your back door whenever one needs something! 

The strawberries are producing, not at the rate I would like them to, but I am hoping since this is the first year the production will be low, and they will do better next year.

Thought I would throw in the picture of the climates that is growing over the fence from the flower bed on the other side.  It is really loaded with blooms this year.

The next two pictures are of the half wine barrels that are growing my herbs.  The first one has sage, thyme and oregano.  

This barrel has dill, basil, another kind of thyme, and coriander.

This picture shows how the herb barrels are positioned in front of the greenhouse.  I have already dried a batch of oregano (almost a quart jar of dried leaves) and a batch of dill.  I need to do some the thyme next.

Now that the initial part of gardening is done, it is now a waiting game until harvesting, then the next wave of work starts!

Warmest...

Starting today, at the end of every post, I am going to picture a new or several new cheddar blocks that I get done so I don't have to bore you with a complete post about them over and over again.