This Year’s Summer Garden
Despite planting this year’s veggies way later than we should have, I am really pleased with how the garden is growing at the moment.
The only thing we are eating is lettuce, herbs and the ever present rhubarb, but things are budding and beginning to fruit and flower so I am hopeful that there might be lots of food to come.
It looks like we will once again have a glut of zucchinis!
The kid-made bean support seems to be making the beans happy. Morgan is checking them every day for signs of his favourite snack to appear.
Can you see it? Right there! Hiding among the leaves… We have one, tiny, green tomato! I am still hopeful though!
We’ve never had much success with cucumbers and this year seems to be no different. The plants are still small but they are growing, ever so slowly, so maybe we’ll be able to make enough pickles for us to have one each? Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could boost them along?
We also planted a mixed cover crop over some of the bare soil that we aren’t using this year and it’s coming along great! That darn pretend cat freaks me out every time I go out there, but I don’t think the birds are remotely bothered by him!
I am always surprised what grows in our veggie garden, despite my ineptitude!
Are you growing things?
I love checking out other people’s gardens so if you blog about your garden make sure you leave me a link in the comments so I can pop on over and say hi!
Hi Kate your garden is looking great. Cucumbers need to be trained upwards so they get all possible sun rays. Pull them up and twist them around something and they should start to shoot up.
Oh thank you! I was thinking I had to wait till they were much bigger to add a trellis but will rig up something asap!
Funnily enough, we haven’t ever had that much success gardening but this year have a bumper crop of cucumbers! Haven’t done anything special with them, and they are just trailing along the ground! Just lucky I guess. We have a few green tomatoes but I think there might be some rascally possums getting to them before us!
Your garden looks delicious! I have sent you a link to a post I did on my blog about storytelling in the garden.
http://www.writeawaywithme.com/education/storytelling-in-your-garden/
Have you discovered Pinterest? Garden eye candy to feast upon…
Our garden is going full ball at the moment. We have so many zucchinis at the moment, that we have them every day. I made a big bunch of zucchini cakes to go in the freezer yesterday too.
Between the vegetable garden and all the fruit trees around the farm, I have almost a full time job just dealing with the produce.
My mother in law told me that if you grate zucchini and put it in a snap lock bag, you can freeze it for use later in the year (I have A LOT of zucchinis).
I can’t wait till we are at the ‘so many zucs!’ stage. We have a favourite zucchini and pineapple cake that we all LOVE. You can definitely freeze zucs… One year I cut strips and froze them and they were ok to cook with but sort of soft because of all the moisture. I’ve had much more success with grating them- squeeze out as much water as you can and pop them in snap lock bags.
Your garden looks great, especially the fake cat! I have parsley, chives, basil & dill, along with rhubarb, dwarf beans (take up less space and don’t need staking), zuchini, yellow squash (like zuch’s you have to watch them or they get too big! Just have to find ways to sneak squash into family dinners.
We have bush beans in among our climbing beans… hopefully they all do well!
You can grate the squash and put them in the same sorts of things you put grated zuc into. My lot love them in potato/veggie fritters.
lovely garden
I have loads of cherry tomatoes ripening at the moment, plus watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkin, zucchini, cucumber, capsicum, basil and chives. The beans and peas have finished off and the next crop of carrots are just taking off. Have just harvested apricots and nectarines and we now have plenty of chutney and jam from them. It’s so much fun!!
oooh watermelon and cantaloupe! I didn’t plant any of those this year as we were putting things in so late and they need a LOOOONG hot summer to do well here. Same with capsicum… I’ve never had much luck with those, we just don’t have a consistently hot enough spot. I am envious!
Hi Kate,
Seeing your lovely green garden pictures is brightening my day. It is winter here, so our garden is in hibernation. Last year, we had a huge turnover with our pumpkins and squash. It was our first year and we learned a lot.
Our beans didn’t grow, at all. Seeing your kid-made bean support system makes me think that maybe they didn’t grow because we didn’t provide them with anything like that!
We’ve already been thinking about what we want to grow this year once it’s time to plant in the Spring. I know my daughter wants to plant sugar snap peas. I wonder if they need to have a trellis to climb? I will need to research that.
Your zucchini looks great. Yum! I bet it will be ready soon to pick :)
That pre-planning time right before spring is the best… you can read seed catalogues and dream BIG without worrying too much about all the work!
We’ve not had much success with beans in the past, but this year they seem to be going ok… fingers crossed!
Looks fabulous, Kate. What a great space.
I really need to blog about our veggie patch.
We are terrible gardeners, but somehow manage an abundance of cucumbers and lettuces each year. Not sure what it is that makes our cucumbers grow so well though. We picked our first one today. They grow along the ground here and don’t seem to have a problem.
We also have zucchinis, beans (been picking these flat out, but really need to provide them with some better support), corn and one sad eggplant. Oh, and some strawberries, which the birds are just loving!
I love eating out of the garden.
I wish I could grow things but my parents neglected to pass their green thumbs on to me genetically. So while their garden flourishes and is all kinds of amazing, I try to stay away from growing things in case my mere presence causes them to wither.
The photo of your lovely zucchinis is a bit tempting, though. I love zucchinis. Maybe if I had minimal contact with them and sent someone else down to water them, they might just grow…
I blog about the garden every so often. We had a mad cropping of tomatoes before we went on holiday, didn’t see a lot of it as Tao would snaffle them every time he walked past (so was eating something like 10 tomatoes a day). Our zucchinis also went completely and utterly stupid, apparently they like sheep poo :)
Also have this psychotic pumpkin that appears to be trying to take over the entire yard, the vines escaped the vege patch (one even climbed the chicken wire around said vege patch) and have been inexorably crawling everywhere.
Isn’t it great when things grow despite our ineptitude :D (though in all honesty I don’t do a lot in the garden, just weeding as I’m remarkably good at killing things :S)
Oh wow! So pleased to have found your lovely blog and am now following along! :) Please come say hi at Just For Daisy!
We’re moving soon to a larger property and chickens and vege patches are on my mind! :) will be checking in here regularly! :)