2016 Garden Update

As I mentioned, I have done a horrible job updating.  The 2016 garden is well under way.  We started mid-spring by planting some cold weather crops (lettuce, cabbage, spinach), so we have been eating that for about 8 weeks!  As usual we started many plants indoors in January, February and March.  On a side note the squirrels and birds had fun at the end of last year, spreading random seeds, berries, and garlic we planted to various other parts of the yard!

 Let’s start with the berry box.  Since we didn’t have any luck with seeds or bare root strawberries growing, we just sucked it up and bought about 8 strawberry plants.  We also added 2 blueberry plants, a goji berry bush and a blackberry bush.  Plus we have wild huckleberry plants growing this year.  And come to find out the cranberry bush is sprouting everywhere too.  I need to do more research when I plant these things. Because we have huckleberry and cranberry everywhere!  Oh and we have some wild sunflowers that are growing in this box as well. 

The herb box…..everything I planted last year (the Echinacea, Comfrey, Peppermint, and Feverfew) came back!  Originally I meant for this box to be medicinal herbs only.  This year I decided to add cooking herbs too.  I have added lemon balm this year, as well as oregano, basil, thyme, cilantro, dill, and chives.   We also have a random clove of garlic growing in this box that we did not plant there.  We are also finding huckleberry in this box too.  And a sunflower or two.

The random garden box….We planted 2 different kinds of garlic in this box last fall, and it came up fairly well!  It has been harvested and its currently hanging up to cure.  We also decided to try the broccoli out in the box this year too, since we haven’t had luck with it anywhere else.  We also planted more lettuce, cabbage, celery, kale, arugula, carrots, and a few tomatillo plants. 

The big thing we did this year was change the fence around so the small random garden now meets up with the big garden.  It just made sense to do this. In the small garden area, we just randomly threw down some rhubarb seed, just to see what will happen, with the expectation, likely nothing will happen.  We also planted onions there last fall that are coming up very well.

The big garden took a bit more methodical thinking this year, and the rain kept putting us behind in planting it, so it got into the ground about a week later than I would have liked.  We learned last year that things cross pollinate, of course I knew this, but didn’t expect it to happen with the different types of cucumber we planted.  We had some strange varieties last year!  In the big garden this year are:  3 different kinds of cucumber, 2 kinds of pumpkins, gourds, winter squash, 2 different kinds of corn, radishes, zucchini, green beans, peas, kale, swiss chard, and some sunflowers. I also just made a large spot next to the spearmint and rosemary, and added just some random other herbs.  Now for our random surprise here-We have one random little asparagus stalk.  We tried 2 different ways in the past to grow asparagus and neither worked, so I wasn’t going to attempt it this year.  But growing, of course, where we didn’t plant it, is a random asparagus stalk.  Now if only I could find the map of where I planted what, we would be golden! 

We are trying something different this year with the tomatoes and peppers.  Container gardening.  Thanks to our friend who works in the restaurant industry, we got about 20, 5-gallon buckets.  So I thought, let’s try it.  We have 7 kind of tomatoes, 7 kinds of peppers, and tomatillos in these buckets.  I am hoping for great things, at least from the tomatoes. 

As for other stuffs, the red grape plant we planted last year is growing great!  I do not think we will get grapes from it this year, but I bet next year we will.  The Concord grape is going to produce lots of grapes this year, more than it ever has in the past.  Enough that I am hoping I will be able to get a year’s supply of just grape jelly!  Which is good because, unfortunately I think we are losing our plum tree.  At a minimum, we are going to have to give it a big trim! 

Finally, our basil that keeps coming back every year, it coming back this year too!  Somehow added to the pot is some dill that we have never planted in that pot.  But we will take it!  And thanks to the birds and the squirrels we also have random sunflowers everywhere.  We also left a pumpkin on the table last year accidentally, and the squirrels or coons opened it up and seeds were everywhere, so we may eventually have random pumpkins popping up as well. 

Since we have so much randomness growing this year, I thought I would touch on why it is happening. It’s simply the seeds we buy. First and foremost all seeds we buy are GMO free, or non-GMO. Whenever possible we buy heirloom seeds.  Heirloom seeds are seeds that have been handed down for generations and basically never altered in anyway.  Simply, the fruits or vegetables from an heirloom seed remain the same year over year. Heirloom seeds are open pollinated as well.  So basically if we drop a seed or let anything we grow “go to seed”, or if the animals carry seeds off and drop them, it could potentially grow the next year wherever it was dropped.  Now there is also hybrid varieties, and we will purchase those seeds as well.  Hybrid is not to be confused with GMO.  GMO means, that those fruits or vegetables have had their DNA genetically altered for some reason, most commonly used to alter them to be able to withstand certain pesticides. Hybrid means that compatible plant types are cross bred to make a new variety, or a better hardier variety.  For example, I accidently created a hybrid cucumber last year by planting two different types of cucumber plants to close together. Hybrid seeds typically cannot be used year over year like heirlooms can.  Although we use natural fertilizers and pesticides on our food (we use only organic type pesticides) we cannot claim to have purely “organic” food.  There are a lot of steps one would have to do to make the claim of “certified organic” if I were to ever sell any of the good we grow.  Since it’s mainly us that eats the food it doesn’t matter if we can truly have that “label”. 

So there is the update on the garden thus far!  I will provide pictures soon!