Saturday, September 20, 2008

Garden update

How things look in the garden right this second:

This is the lettuce I planted in March that took forever to grow. It's chilly early life may have had something to do with it successfully withstanding bolting on our 100 degree days in August.
I used my other raised bed as a seed starting bed for some fall crops. Here are some different kinds of Swiss Chard and a weed.
One of the two apples on my columner apple tree. I'm hoping next year will be the year for the apple trees.
As the zucchini plant continued to grow (and grow and grow) it's main stem started reminding me of a dragon.
It just took over, that zucchini did.
I had a lot of problems with my pepper plants. They all developed holes in their sides and were very slow to change color. I will not grow peppers for a few more years until I am a more experienced gardener.
More troublesome peppers.
My five varieties of tomatoes had varying success rates. The ones in the front of this picture were my favorite.
I made sure to take a picture of their tag so I can get them again next year. They were so perfectly formed and I got a lot of them. Love-er-ly.
My Brandywines kept falling over and I eventually just let them be. I kept waiting for them to finish ripening and turn red before I figured out that they were yellow Brandywines.
These were good Romas, too.
My corn didn't survive the ravages of the pole beans very well but I had some very delicious beans. Next year: No corn. More pole beans.
I got some good collards started, but the bugs also are enjoying them. Hopefully they will leave something for me.
I'll plant herbs in the spring in my herb bed. Right now I've got four kinds of winter greens. The back row is kale and collards. The middle row (not super visible in this picture) is alternating red and yellow chard. The front row is alternating red and yellow beets. I also planted my sage plant in the corner of the bed. That poor sage plant has lived in a too-small pot for two years. After I put it in the ground I think it grew 6 inches in a week. It is much happier to be able to spread out.
Here was my attempt to put something green in the corner of the front porch. It didn't work out quite as planned. Winter squash goes crazy on the ground, but I think there wasn't enough direct sunlight for squash crazyness out front. I did get one little squash.
Here's the squash in the backyard. It was very productive in its growth, but not so in it's production of food. I had a lot of tennis ball sized green squash, but they would inexplicably wither away. More reading will be done on squash over the winter.
My squash and apple harvest.
Beets planted for winter.
Two more varieties of tomatoes. Oregon Spring gave me my first tomato then seemed to do nothing until recently.
These are the famed Early Girl tomatoes. They are very popular around here, but I didn't get one edible tomato off of them. Alas.
More pole beans strangling that corn.
Now to plan next year's garden...

1 comment:

Sara K. said...

Looks pretty good to me! Lots of hard work, though! The apple is VERY cool. I didn't remember that you planted that! And the pumpkins/squashes - nice! -S

PS-Nice posting frenzy! Your fans surely appreciate it!!!