OK - so for two years I had great hopes and expectations for my garden that turned to discouragement and despair....
2008 - The year of the GROUNDHOG - I had the best success ever in 2008 with seed starting...got my plants out, got the direct seeding done and was eating the best salads ever from my garden...the weather was good and the plants were growing strong...and then CHUCKY made an entrance and kept on breaking in all season. The plants were either eaten or stunted from his tunnels and I got next to no harvest of anything once the varmit got started around the begining of July.
2009 - The year of RAIN - I started out container gardening and eventually planted the garden mid-July after securing a 1/4 inch mesh fence at a right angle outward from the garden fence. I did harvest some beans and a squash or two, but because of the wet and lack of real heat most plants suffered. We had NO tomato harvest at home or at our CSA.
2010 was the year of perseverance and superstision. I was supersticious of posting ANYTHING about my garden here this year....but I persevered and did plant.
I started seeds...they did ok...not great...but ok. I planted in some containers.....and got seeds/plants in the garden by June.
I put out the surviving tomato, pepper and tomatillo plants, onion starts, planted beans (yellow, purple and chinese noodle, kholrabi, leaf cabbage, basil, yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers, broccoli raab and swiss chard. Then I crossed my fingers...
The swiss chard and broccoli raab never came up...
The kholrabi did...and I got some kale out of that row as well ( I guess that seed company doesn't have very good quality control)
I weeded and watered; and weeded and watered; and weeded...which really wasn't great for the onions, but they did OK...not great, but OK.
I replanted radishes when I harvested the onions.
The cucumbers and squash grew...the tomatoes and peppers and tomatillos grew...the cabbage and beans grew...the basil grew (with extremely frequent shavings!!!).
The cucumber plants looked healthy one day and were dead within a week...around mid-late July...I had harvested about 8-10 fruits.
I continuously harvested/thinned kholrabi and kale throughout the summer and fall. The largest were probably a couple of inches in diameter and made tasty sweet pickles.
I got a decent amount of squash both green and yellow, not what I would call an overabundance, but enough.
The tomato plants were ok. I got some from each plant, not a lot, but some. The exception was the Amish Salad tomatoes - largish cherrys - that were abundant and delicious.
The only surviving pepper plants were anchos and they were also fairly abundant. I got a decent harvest of tomatillos, enough for 1 nice sized green sauce.
My regular beans were one of the big successes this year. I planted late enough that they had not yet put out flowers when we got our first hellish heatwave, and they gave me abundant harvests for 6 weeks...until the stink bugs damaged the plants too much for further harvest.
The chinese noodle beans came up - I think I picked 3 beans and then the plants disappeared.
The cabbage leaf....did well, but was unharvestable due to bug dammage.
The radishes did better than I've seen before....I actually got some to grow roots as well as leaves this year...and had a small harvest.
At this point I've got some lessons learned, and some pesto, squash, kale and onions in the freezer (although the bean harvest was great, we managed to eat all of them!!!), and had some delightful fresh dishes from the garden all summer!
This weekend I pulled what remained out of the garden and left the gates open so that my husband can fill it up with the autumn leaves. Next spring I want to re-work the configuration of my very small space. (10X10) so that there is less garden path and more planting space.
The leaves should help renew the ground.
Hope you have had a reasonably good gardening year too!
It's Asparagus/Rhubarb Season!
It's early spring in NJ. The weather is unpredictable, and tomatoes are months away. What's a gardener to do to keep up their spirits?
Plant perrenial veggies of course!
Asparagus, Rhubarb and Egyption (walking) Onions are perrenial vegetables that you plant once and get YEARS of abundance out of.
In my case, I didn't even do the work of planting my asparagus and rhubarb patches, they were already there when I moved into my house. I did plant Egyption Onions that I received from a local freecycler.
After a couple of years of abundant asparagus harvests, the past two years have seen more sparce harvests. I think some of the local wildlife may have developed a tast for the tender shoots which I thought only appealed to the human population. But the patch is big and the stems are sparce with lots of space in between, so I think it may be time to re-plant some roots as well.
My favorite application for asparagus is broiling or grilling after tossing in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Cook until the shoots are starting to lightly caremelize...and STUFF yourself!
The rhubarb is always more prolific than I can get my family to consume...so I generally freeze some, make strawberry/rhubarb jam, and give it away to friends who are not as lucky as I.
This year, however, is the YEAR OF RHUBARB" and my patch is producing the biggest, most succulent stems I have ever seen! On saturday I harvested the first cutting - somewhere between 10-20 lbs of stems.
If you've never seen/used rhubarb, let me start by saying NEVER NEVER eat the leaves they are poisonous to humans. If you look for rhubarb in a store, it looks like reddish giant stalks of celery, because the leaves have been removed for your safety.
Rhubarb, although actually a vegetable (seeds outside the plant), is used almost exclusively like a fruit, and is sometimes referred to as "the fruit plant". It is tart - almost lemony - and although wonderful by itself, makes any fruit you pair it with taste more like itself.
The classic combo is of course, stawberry/rhubarb pie, which I have never made. The closest I've come to this is making jam...and it is WONDERFUL!
I have paired rhubarb with blueberries and peaches for dessert applications; made sauces with it; and made a lemonade variation with it.
Perennial veggies are the best part of being a gardener in the spring; when you're putting in all of the work for your mid- and late-summer reward and are feeling like you just can't wait for harvest time, you don't have to - you can enjoy the freshness of a spring harvest that comes to you year after year, with only a little nurturing in between!
Plant perrenial veggies of course!
Asparagus, Rhubarb and Egyption (walking) Onions are perrenial vegetables that you plant once and get YEARS of abundance out of.
In my case, I didn't even do the work of planting my asparagus and rhubarb patches, they were already there when I moved into my house. I did plant Egyption Onions that I received from a local freecycler.
After a couple of years of abundant asparagus harvests, the past two years have seen more sparce harvests. I think some of the local wildlife may have developed a tast for the tender shoots which I thought only appealed to the human population. But the patch is big and the stems are sparce with lots of space in between, so I think it may be time to re-plant some roots as well.
My favorite application for asparagus is broiling or grilling after tossing in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Cook until the shoots are starting to lightly caremelize...and STUFF yourself!
The rhubarb is always more prolific than I can get my family to consume...so I generally freeze some, make strawberry/rhubarb jam, and give it away to friends who are not as lucky as I.
This year, however, is the YEAR OF RHUBARB" and my patch is producing the biggest, most succulent stems I have ever seen! On saturday I harvested the first cutting - somewhere between 10-20 lbs of stems.
If you've never seen/used rhubarb, let me start by saying NEVER NEVER eat the leaves they are poisonous to humans. If you look for rhubarb in a store, it looks like reddish giant stalks of celery, because the leaves have been removed for your safety.
Rhubarb, although actually a vegetable (seeds outside the plant), is used almost exclusively like a fruit, and is sometimes referred to as "the fruit plant". It is tart - almost lemony - and although wonderful by itself, makes any fruit you pair it with taste more like itself.
The classic combo is of course, stawberry/rhubarb pie, which I have never made. The closest I've come to this is making jam...and it is WONDERFUL!
I have paired rhubarb with blueberries and peaches for dessert applications; made sauces with it; and made a lemonade variation with it.
Perennial veggies are the best part of being a gardener in the spring; when you're putting in all of the work for your mid- and late-summer reward and are feeling like you just can't wait for harvest time, you don't have to - you can enjoy the freshness of a spring harvest that comes to you year after year, with only a little nurturing in between!
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