Ok, so I have been posting EVERY picture of the produce anymore. It was getting to the point of absurdity. This was the harvest from Wed 8/26. Since then I have been to the garden three more times and gotten similar amounts of produce. I figure since we have moved past 2000 individual pieces of produce, it was time to stop counting and just say that it was worth the money spent to grow my own vegetables.
Also, I am really unsure how many more tomatoes are going to come out of the garden. There is lots of green fruit growth in there, but the maturation process seems to have been stunted by the cool wet weather we have been having. I am actually seeing some new blooms lower on the plant, and I almost wonder if these plants have shifted gears, and are trying for new growth instead of ripening. The maturation is generally associated with warmer weather, and we have been woefully short of that over the past few weeks. It is supposed to warm up as the week goes on, so it will be interesting to see how quickly the ripening picks back up, or if it stagnates. I guess we could either have a large amount more tomatoes, or we could be done. Either way, I will live....
This is funny. The blueberry plant that had five blooms shortly after I planted it really never seemed to fully ripen. Well, it was pretty close to the edge of the Juliets, and as they got out of control, the blueberry plant eventually got swallowed up by the tomato plant. I was out in the garden yesterday working through the messy corner where the Juliets mesh with the one Heirloom and I pulled the plant back to find....One lone blueberry, fully ripe and ready to eat. Who knows how long it was actually in there, but it looked great, and Jen said it tasted good as well.
The great news is the bell peppers are amazing. They are incredibly sweet and firm if left on the plant long enough to ripen. Also, since I have taken down the broccoli, the southern most row of peppers have seemed to really go nuts, the peppers are HUGE. I find it very interesting that if you take these peppers off the vine when they are green, they never really change colors. However, if they are halfway or more to their pre-determined color, they will ripen very quickly once taken off the plant.
Quick shot of the garden without broccoli. Things seem much healthier with all of the peppers since they have stopped obscuring them.
Ok. Here is where it starts. Garden 2010. Its gonna be a whole different attitude. That big blob of brown there is where the cement parking pad used to be until I had it removed about 2 weeks ago. The plan is to remove ALL of the grass in the entire backyard, and turn the whole space into a garden. I think this will essentially be 5 times the size of the current garden. You might ask yourself why? Why Dave? Well, the answer is that this year was my testing ground both for the viability of the soil as well as my accord/discord with gardening. Well, I like gardening, and the soil seems to be :) SO, the goal will be to plant a very diverse (and well spaced) garden next year with many different types of vegetables, and some fruit that actually fruits :)
I started taking the grass off part of the yard over the weekend, and its going to take me most of the fall to get this done. My plan is to take the grass off, rototill everything, have some dirt brought in to fill the low spot where water collects, and to cover the gravel area where the cement was, and then rototill again adding peat etc to the mix.
I will update as things get closer to showing any sort of progress, as of right now, you cant even tell I did anything.
No comments:
Post a Comment