Peppers Today

Today is a pepper day. There are a lot of jalapeños on the plants still even after picking these today. Plus a lot of banana peppers and green peppers that should be ready in the next few days. I really have to freeze some of these since I have tossed more than I care to admit.

Beans, Beans ...

I planted Pole Beans in the spring and I have just been amazed at the quantity of beans produced! And the fact that here we are almost in October and I am still getting a handful of beans every few days. Even with the record level rainfall and lack of sun we have had this month (and last month for that matter). And judging from the flowers still there, I expect to get more beans until a frost finally does them in.

Today's Harvest

While the output from the garden has certainly been diminishing, I am still getting some peppers and tomatoes and the beans are still surprising me.

Yesterday The Boy and I picked all this:

Then today I went down and found even more beans! Plus a few more peppers that were ready. Where were these hiding yesterday?

Fall Lettuce

When the garden was built last year it was really too late to fully plant it. But It just looked so ready! So I decided to plant one section with lettuce, carrots and scallions.

The lettuce at least did beautifully! It was a little too late to plant the carrots and scallions but we had some great salads.

So a few weeks ago we planted our fall lettuce crop. We have had a ton of rain here so it is looking a little scraggly but in general it is coming in nicely. I can't wait for the first salad!

In the beginning...

So, I decided to start a blog about my garden.  I figured it would help me remember what worked and what didn't so I'm better prepared for next year (and the next year and the next...)


I didn't start out wanting a garden.  The Kids wanted a place to plant a tomato plant and maybe a pepper plant. They won't actually eat them.  They just like to watch them grow and pick the harvest.  Whenever they visited Nana and Papa's house they loved to go out and see what was growing, especially The Boy.  In the summertime, it was always the first thing he did when he got there (well, that and check the bird feeders to see if they needed seed).  They only had a few tomatoes and peppers growing in pots on the deck but that was enough to keep The Kids interested.


So, every time they asked me to plant a tomato I told them to ask daddy where we could plant something.  Since The Dad is The Landscaper and is quite particular about his yard, I didn't want to just stick a plant anywhere.  I figured he could give us approval for a small, out of the way corner of the yard where we could plant a few veggies and watch them grow.


So last summer (2010), after much pestering from The Kids, The Dad decided to build us a garden.  


This is what I ended up with:

Now, don't get me wrong.  It is a beautiful garden.  But is is a lot more than a little spot to plant a tomato or two.  I should have known that The Dad cannot do anything like this small scale.  Planting and taking care of this Garden became quite a job.  Sometimes I have hated it but most of the time I find I really enjoyed it.

This spring we planted 3 kinds of lettuce, carrots, scallions, green peppers, banana peppers, red peppers, jalapeno peppers, zucchini, 6 kinds of tomatoes, pole beans, cucumbers, snap peas, eggplant, broccoli, strawberries, dill, oregano, cilantro, basil and mint along with some marigolds (which are supposed to help keep the bugs away).  We had some successes and some failures.  And hopefully I will write about them all and then some!