2012 Garden Update

Some friends asked how the garden was doing and I realized how long it had been since I posted. This has been a busy year. I added a rain collection system.

I got the barrel from a local food distributor for twenty dollars, got some base and block from the local hardware spot, and the rain barrel installation kit from Rain Brothers. The kit had a great video on Youtube and after some investigation I decided it was the way to go. My wife knew I wanted to upgrade from my compost pile, so for my birthday I got a:

Already used a batch of it as mulch for my potatoes. It seems to really be working great. I love the fact that the heat kills the seeds. Some other pictures to entertain:

Some Seed Saving

Trying to work on some of the core gardenening skills and decided to save more seeds of my own this year. The seeds I saved from last year did pretty well. The watermelons in particular came out really tasty, although they were not very prolific. I am not sure that didn't have to do with weather, but.... .

Here we have three saved seeds. Those are Costoluto Genovese tomato seeds at the top, zinnia seeds on the lower left and Charantais melons on the lower right. We will have to wait to see, but I am tempted to drop some seeds in a pot to check viability.

Charantais Melons Surprise Me

Here we have a few of my Charantais melons. I got the seed from seedsavers and they were great. High germination rate, and very successful. What is odd is that I got 18 melons. I still have about ten out there (will have to bring them all in soon) and all but one of them are within an ounce of one pound each. They are between baseball and softball sized. Except one that got to almost three pounds. I have no idea why this one melon got so much bigger while all the others, including ones on the same vine, stayed smaller.

I cannot tell you how amazing the aroma of these melons are. One day I walk into the garden and a strong, heavenly smell just coats the garden. Its the Charantais. The entire garden smells magnificent. When I cut into them, the aroma just floods the room. Amazing.

The taste is identical to a top notch cantaloupe, but that aroma puts them over the top.

Pumpkins Uber Alles

Here are the five beds. Unfortunately I don't have this angle during the high point, but you can really see how they filled out. They have been so productive its ridiculous, and so enjoyable!

If you look over there on the left you will see the pumpkins and water melons which I put in that bed with the intent that they would over flow in the yard.

I guess I succeeded! as you can see below the pumpkins just exploded, they are also running into the neighbors yard, and thankfully they don't seem to mind.

There are two large flat pumpkins that have turned orange/red, two large flat ones that are still yellow, and two smaller ones that seem to be taking the rounder (almost egg like) shape. I had to harvest one of those when the vine it was on gave up the ghost.

The water melons over here seem to love hanging out and growing under the pumpkin vines. An interesting and unanticipated occurrence.

Late Garden Still Going!

Its been a while since an update. Sorry for the delay, but life has been demanding, some things needed to slide a little, and this has been one of those things.

Here is a pretty typical day these days. These are actually the last of the summer potatoes, a good sized carrot or two, some peppers (marconi, cayenne, and poblano here), some tomatoes (Brandywine, Costoluto Genovese, and a little Cherokee Purple), an onion or two, and a special addition today - a little Charantais!

We harvested the first two ripe ones today and have 14 more to go. Let me tell you, we must have the exact right soil or something because these things taste AWESOME!

Here we have one of our BIG Rouge Vif de Etempes pumpkins. He have eight of them, but these two, next to each other on the same vine, have gotten a lot bigger than the others. Anybody got an idea on average size of these normally? Also, as is my plan each year, I just let them sprawl into the yard.

A number of the little cabbages that I thought would just die in the August heat came around strongly in the streak of cool weather we have had of late. The advantage of this in particular seems to be a total lack of cabbage loopers. I had loopers on me early cabbages (and I spent a lot of time picking them off by hand, yucky!), but these seem totally uneffected.

And here we have HOT HOT HOT Thai peppers grown from seed from my dad. These things are tasty, but a couple of them will drop you to your knees.

Will try to make it a lot sooner to the next post!