Our garden is alive and well here at the Hayes Homestead! We've been busy keeping up with not only the garden, but all the other hundreds of projects we have going on :) I realized I haven't really posted a garden update in over a month so I figured I'd throw a few pictures in a blog post quick!
It's already the middle of July and harvesting has begun! So far we've been able to harvest radishes, peas, a few cucumbers, a zucchini, and pole beans. We just love this time of year!!!
Last weekend, we decided to pick up a couple bales of straw to see if it could help keep the weeds down in the garden. I put it around the potatoes, cabbage, brussels sprouts, pole beans, kale, broccoli, radishes, tomatoes, and peppers:
I'm curious to see how well the straw keeps weeds at bay. We left the rest of the garden as-is. We wanted to see just how well the straw does and, well, we only had two bales!
This is our first year growing potatoes and they seem to be doing well. The plants are growing well, no sign of flowers yet, but we're looking forward to harvesting our first potatoes this year!
We planted close to 10 cabbage starts this year, but only 3 took off. We also have one lone brussels sprout.
Jason made this awesome teepee for our pole beans to climb. Some of them are over 5 feet tall already!
Our tomatoes seem to be doing really well so far. We've got quite a few plants that are already housing tiny green tomatoes!
Our pepper plants are struggling this year. We started a total of 25 by seed and only a handful made it. I've since replaced some with plants I bought at a local greenhouse, but even those are slow growing. We're also having an issue with something eating the leaves off of our pepper plants, too :(
Both peas and cucumbers are doing well. We're picking a handful of peas everyday and have gotten at least once cucumber every other day for the past week.
Jason recently expanded our garden by an additional 700 feet(!). So far, we have a row of purple beans growing in there and I just planted nine more cucumbers that can grow up the corners of what used to be our gazebo on our deck.
Our corn was "knee high by the Fourth of July" and is mostly doing well. It seems that a couple stalks have succumbed to worms (ew!) and the roots have become intertwined with weeds on a few others. But, for the most part, we're hopeful for a bountiful corn harvest this fall!
We will soon have more spaghetti squash than we could ever possibly eat! We planted four, thinking that if one or two make it, we'd be good. Well, all four are alive and producing VERY well. The best part? Jason is the only one in our house that likes it. Ha! I see lots of Baked Spaghetti Squash in his future!
We only planted one zucchini plant this year, which will be PLENTY. We've already harvested one from our plant and have many babies starting to grow. We've also got three eggplants that, like the peppers, are taking their sweet time to grow.
We just planted pie pumpkins this year which I'm going to attempt to can once they're ripe. I'm not exactly sure what - other than pie - I'm going to make with them, but we'll find out!
Ready to see something super cute? Look at our watermelons!! If you look closely by my thumbnail in the second picture, you'll see a teeny tiny watermelon starting to grow. It's just amazing what one little, tiny seed can grow into.
I just harvested our garlic earlier this week! All 40 cloves I planted back in the fall grew into bulbs. Some are quite small, but I still call that a successful harvest!
Lastly, I'm excited to say that the Hayes Homestead Orchard is finally full. We had space for one more fruit tree and I was having a hard time deciding what to fill the spot in with. I finally settled on a nectarine tree. We picked one up last weekend and Jason put it in the ground.
And that, my friends, is my mid-summer garden update. This is, by far, our busiest, but most rewarding, time of the year.
~ Sara :)
No comments:
Post a Comment