Two Yards of Organic Mushroom Compost..

got dumped in our driveway last week. We spent the weekend hauling it to the garden and our containers and side gardens. It looks and smells great.

Bear tilled it into the beds, and we started with our tomatoes and our peppers and some cucumber and Gourd seeds. Only about 30 more variety of seeds to go!

What are y'all growing this year?

We've got just the vegetables listed here today, I'd crash the site if I listed all the flowers, But I do a red white and blue barrel out by the road (red white and red and white single and double petunias and some Verbena for the blue. Tried some Flax, but the petunias overgrew them.)

• Tomatoes (about 8 varieties, I didn't start from seed this year, so I need to find some Mortgage Lifter)
• Peppers, sweet, bell and hot (not too many)
• carrrots
• leeks
• radishes
• parsnip
• melons
• cucumbers
• zuchinnis
• sunflowers
• Green pole beans
• Purple pole beans
• mesclun lettuce mixture
• cabbage
• potato, yellow, white, red and fingerlings. Maybe some blue ones, too
• corn (keep trying, the racoons always get them before we get to eat them)
• Pumpkins

The asparagus have not done well. Only about 4 came up this year. I may do it again, but it is a long wait. I like INSTANT food!

We also have blackberry and raspberry bushes, apple trees and cherry trees

 

wow i bet you save a lot of cash on groceries, thats awesome you have an apple tree. i saw a peach tree the other day but i knew my mom wouldnt be cool with buying it, im pretty sure the people who live behind me have a green apple tree that overgrows into our backyard which should be cool cuz they dont seem to be too interested in the tree to begin with...
i am still relatively new to gardening and very new to vegetable gardening but ive taken on a pretty decent sized project for this year.... we have about 8 tomatoe plants and 6 pepper plants, a ton of cucumber vines and zuchinnis after stumbling across an AWESOME deal the other day at a new gardening center. about half of all the cucumber vines were dying in each 6 pack and same with the zuchinnis so i asked the lady for a deal and she was busy and rushing trying to close up so she gave us them all for a buck, there was a LOT of living and growable plants in there. i found the PERFECT fence to grow them on too, gonna have so many cucumbers, a lot of them already have yellow flowers which means they might be forming fruit soon once they get female flowers i would think... we also have about 3 bush varieties of them growing and about 10 lettuce plants intercropped with all the tomatoes and peppers, then 2 strawberry plants im not really optimistic about planting since the birds seem to keep eating the berries everytime they begin to bloom.....also have a pretty small blueberry bush that probably has a couple years before its starts bringing in a decent yield or any yield at all....oh and a bunch of morning glory and radish seeds are germinating right now .......

 

It must be alot of work to dig out beds for all them cucumbers and pumpkins, not too mention everything else....

 

I want to grow asparagus too,but I feel the same basically...I hate planting anything,knowing it will be ages before it yields. I'm just too impatient for that and I like results

Let's see,what do we have here....

Tomatoes
Sweet potatoes
White potatoes
Carrots
Peas
Corn~Silver and Yellow and one ornimental variety
Broccoli
Yellow Summer Squash
Half Runner Beans
Peppers(several varieties)
Cucumbers
Beets
Lettuce
Onions

Watermelons
Cantelopes
Pumpkins
Apples
Grapes
Blueberries

Basil
Thyme
Dill
Lavender
Rosemary
Parsley

Phew...I think that's all of it

 

Yeah, Floyd, it's a lot of work. We have a gas powered tiller, though, and that helps. But when my dh, Bear, was building the boxes, it was a lot of work. (But he built them over a period of years, as the garden got bigger.) Also about two years ago, it was too wet to till, (you can ruin your soil, if you till it too wet, especially the clay we have here) and he did the entire garden, all the beds, and the beds around the house by hand, with a pitchfork! He was in pain for days.

Raised beds are great, once you have them. The soil stays nice, and they are easier to weed, it is just starting them that is the rough work. And Bear says getting the tiller in and out of the beds is a hassle. I am not strong enough to run the tiller on my own, it's a big Briggs and Stranton something or other.

Wondergirl, your garden sounds yummy.

 

Fractal, it does save some money on groceries in the summer (I am almost embarrassed to go to the store and buy NO vegetables in the summer.) The apple trees are really labor intensive. We've been trying some organic remedies for the apple maggots (yum) but we still get lots of bugs in the apples. You can cut them out and make sauce though.

I freeze and put up a lot of things, so it is nice, in the winter to be eating beans that were grown in July. I also have a dehydrator. Dehydrated apples are great! Better than "fruit snacks" for the kids.

About your cukes, if you don't can, you can make "refrigerator pickles." I used to can pickles, but you have to cook them forever, and they get mushy, so I use half vinegar and half distilled water, boil it, clean the cukes very well, santize a big half gallon cannig jar and the lid and the rings, then put the cukes, in spears or slices in the jar, placing some Kosher salt every few layers and some well cleaned dill add about a teaspoon or a little more of sugar. Then cover with the boiled water and vinegar. You can put in some garlic, if you like, or pickling spices. They stay good for several months in the fridge. If they are too salty or vinegary, just rinse them before you eat them.

 

So far we've got Sweet and Snow Peas, Radishes, Onions, Carrots, Tomatoes, Green, Red, and Yellow Bell Peppers, and Cayanne Peppers, and Basil and Cellantro, and Leaf Lettuce and Garlic. I wanted to start an Asperagus bed too, but I just didn't have time. When the peas are done, I'll have room for beans, probably Blue Lakes or Bush. We also have fruit trees (Cherry, Pear, Apple, Plum, Peach, and Apricot), and Grapes, Blackberries, and Red and Black Raspberries. Tonight we made our first salad with the lettuce, radishes, and onions. Not a lot of variety, but enough. And the kids were so into eating something they helped raise.

 

what a wonderful sounding garden!

This year we're sharing my garden with my parents, and sadly, mostly filled with flowers rather than veggies - I've a handful of heads of lettuce, some tomato plants, a few pea plants, and a sweet pepper plant that I'm hoping will survive. My inlaws have left behind a zillion bulbs that have continued to grow again this year (this was their house) so even more flowers...

not that I don't appreciate the colour, but I'd much rather grow veggies than flowers. Next year for sure....

 

I love perenials of almost all kinds, including asparagus. Much as fast results are nice, high return on labor is even better. And that's what perenials provid. Asparagus requires almost no labor at all. Just mulch it heavily, weed it when things get severe, and water it in severe droubts. The yield compared to the land space taken up is very small, though. It gets better every year, I believe.