One’s Closer….

The garden is a bit weird this year. The weather hasn’t helped at all, given it’s been really hot and humid, with very little sun or rain. As I’ve mentioned before, Matt has taken over gardening duties, which has left me feeling kind of out place in the garden. It’s not like there’s not enough work for two people or that Matt would have some issue with my doing stuff. I think it doesn’t help that any time I  go outside I get eaten alive by mosquitoes…another reason why I prefer Fall/Winter.

The garden is well on it’s way at this point. We’ve gotten some of our own lettuce out, I’ll be cutting some beet greens for supper tonight, and we’ve been eating garlic scapes for the past few weeks.

I’m thinking by the end of the month our garlic will be ready to pull. I guess the garlic is the thing I’ve had the most to do with. Now I just have to figure out how to braid some of the softneck varieties that I planted.

Fortunately for Tangled Basket Farms, which is where I got some of my newest garlic stock from, I actually know when it’s ready to be pulled. Some is ready now.

I think part of my hesitance with the garden is that it seems daunting. Matt planted so much stuff, all over our yard, that I’m a bit overwhelmed by it. I’ve always just stuck with the garden space and that was it, but because Matt had started a lot of things from seeds we ended up having a lot of plants. I think we have around 25 tomato plants alone.

In the raised beds, a first for this year, we have Kale, Spinach, Broccoli, Carrots, Beets, and Salad Greens, as well as tomatoes. The tomatoes are a vine growing tomato, rather than a bush tomato. Supposedly they grow to be 10’ or so, but they’re only about 4’ right now, with not even 1 bud on them (bottom left).

Henry and Avelyn took it upon themselves last week to pull up some of the carrots. We replanted them, but I don’t know if they’ll do anything more or not now…they were only about 2” long (bottom right). The potatoes are Matt’s own (top left) invention. He found something about hay and a wire basket-thing to grow them in. We’ll see.



In the lower part of our yard, near the bees, Matt planted an entire section of squashes and pumpkins (bottom right). I keep thinking they should be doing more, but then need to remind myself, that it is only the beginning of July. He also planted a row of climbing beans of some sort, near the bees. We actually have a few bunches of grapes (top right) growing as well. There were a lot more but I think birds and a little girl have been picking at them.



The pear trees that Matthew planted seem to be growing really well. We have a few years before they’ll have anything to harvest, but it gives you a bit of hope when you see them growing up and branching out. Our apple trees are loaded with apples.

We had about a week or so, when the apples were drop so much that if you sat under the tree for even a minute you could hear several falling. Even so, we still have quite a few on the trees. Supposedly trees do that when they have more fruit than the tree can support.

Hopefully in the next month or so we’ll see a lot more going on in the garden, because I’m getting a bit excited to see SOMETHING going on.

How are things in your garden this summer?