Harvest 10/06/12

Here is a great harvest I picked this past Saturday. We have beets, chard, pumpkins, watermelon, bell peppers, tomatoes, jalapenos, spaghetti squash and butternut squash. The small red tomatoes are a variety bred to make sun dried tomatoes out of. A post of that process will be coming soon. We got some light frost last night, hopefully everything made it. I put some cardboard over a raised bed of lettuce to protect it. I realized I do not have any plastic for the rest of the garden. I will have to stop at the hardware store on the way home.

The garden keeps giving

We are getting some monster tomatoes. Its almost impossible to pick them all before they are over ripe. 

These are black Hungarian peppers. They are usually a dark purple / black but if you let them go to long they turn red. They are still good they just get a little bit hotter. 

We are still getting broccoli in September!

This is the first year trying to grow celery. It is doing very well. I think we will plant a lot more next spring.

Here we have beets in the foreground, red chard on the left and yellow chard in the back. The chard is going crazy this time of year. 

This kale was planted the spring before this past spring. It over-wintered, went to seed and is still  producing greens. You can see the dried out top from when it bolted. 

These spaghetti squash will keep for up to 6 months in the right conditions. I don't think they will make it that far. We will be planting a dozen or so vines next year. 

Garden Update Sept 2012

We are officially corn farmers! We have two kinds of sweet corn and a blue corn variety. 

This is one of many watermelons growing in between the corn stalks. We have two varieties growing this year. The ones we got last year were so sweet, best watermelon I have ever had.

We have been eating a lot of spaghetti squash since we started the Paleo diet. Now we are growing them. This is such an awesome squash, it really does mimic eating spaghetti, sweet spaghetti. 

We planted 4 of these Amish paste tomato plants in a raised bed. There are literally hundreds of tomatoes on them. We will be canning paste soon. It seems they all ripen at the same time, perfect for canning.

This is a volunteer ground cherry from last year. I will make some salsa with these and the corn. 

The peppers are going crazy now. The problem is I always forget to write down where I put the red, yellow and orange peppers so I tend to eat all of them green. One day I will remember to keep a better garden journal.

I don't like many fresh tomatoes but these orange cherry tomatoes called Blondkopfchen are very good. It is also a very prolific producer. You have to pick everyday to keep up with these. 

Here are some more tomatoes going crazy. There are thousands of tomatoes in the garden right now. We will be picking a ton tonight after being gone on vacation for a week. 

I think these are the mortgage lifter tomatoes. I will know for sure if they turn red. They may be dr wyche's yellow tomato. Again, one day I will properly plot the garden out, I just get so excited when I plant I forget to write it down.

These are Jerusalem artichokes. I can't wait to dig these in the fall. I will do a whole post on it when I harvest.

Here are the Cascade hops. I need to harvest and dry these out this weekend. 

Here are the Catawba grapes. They are so good. I eat a couple or five every time I go to the garden. It will be a few years until I get enough for wine.

Here is a pic looking out at the main garden. It sure is nice to swing after a hot day in the garden. 

Operation "kill a bunch of grass and plant corn"

Disclaimer: I have been lazy with the pics lately. 

I have been using my cell phone camera mostly because I keep forgetting to grab my good camera. So the pics recently have not been edited in Photoshop like normal. =) 

I put this tarp down with mike's help about a month and a half, almost two months ago. 

This appears to be the perfect amount of time to kill everything under it. I never checked the progress so I am not sure if I could have pulled it earlier. The next time I do this I will check more frequently. 

At first I tried to rake the dead grass but that took to much time and energy. I decided to pull the weed-whacker out and make short work of the grass. 

Here is what it looked like after I weed-whacked it. I raked all the dead grass into a pile and put it back down as mulch after we planted everything.

This complex system consisted of two sticks and a piece of string. I used a tape measure and a drum stick to make the holes for the corn at the correct depth and spacing. We planted marigolds at the ends of each row to mark the rows. Dara planted butternut squash, spaghetti squash and two varieties of watermelon in between the rows. This allows us to grow more food in a smaller footprint while the squash and watermelon leaves will keep the weeds at bay. I will post more pics as the plants come up.