The 2017 Garden

I have to start by admitting that I didn’t really do as much as I should have with the garden this summer. Perhaps since this is the third year, the novelty has worn off some for me. Or perhaps I’m just more generally lazy this year. I did put in the full garden but I neglected it some and my husband ended up doing a lot of the work that I usually do. With all that being said, it was a fairly successful season, even if my enthusiasm was lacking.

My last post here was in May, so there is a lot of catching up to do. Here’s how things went this summer.

May

The perennial plants in the garden came back quite well after the winter. I was picking thyme, marjoram, and chives in April. The horseradish came back strong and the rhubarb grew well enough to put some in the freezer. The asparagus was pretty good this year as well. The strawberries came back better than ever. I plan on doing a whole post just on them.

Thyme, marjoram, and chives

I planted the cool-weather seeds – carrots, beets, chard, pak choi, turnip greens, and peas on May 13^th. They all sprouted within a week. The beets were a bit spotty, however. That could have been because I got a mix of different types of seeds to try this year or maybe because of the steady rains we had this spring and early summer. The beets we did get were very good, though.

The garden on May 13th after planting cool-weather seeds

Peas two weeks after planting

I planted the rest of the garden on May 29^th. Much of the garden space was given to old standards – green beans, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, and peppers. We didn’t bother with corn and potatoes this year but added soy into the mix. We also tried out some different vegetables including parsnips, silver line melons, and okra. I also decided to try growing European cucumbers rather than the pickling ones I usually grew. I ended up being disappointed by that decision. The cucumbers had large seeds and didn’t produce that well. I’ll be going back to the smaller ones next year.

The garden on May 29th after everything was planted

All the plants that I transplanted into the garden at the end of May were ones that I had started earlier in the season. I started eggplant, Poblano pepper, Juliet tomato, and beefsteak tomato seeds. I transplanted the seedlings into peat pots at the end of March and then transplanted them again into larger pots in late April. I probably started them a little earlier than I need to but I was anxious to get things going in the depths of winter. The tomatoes, in particular, were a bit spindly when I finally got them into the garden but they adjusted well once in their permanent homes.

Thinned seedlings in early March

Lovely, strong tomato seedling at end of March

Tomato, eggplant and pepper seedlings transplanted into peat pots

Hardening off plants on the back porch in mid-May

June

It was a fairly wet start to the season but the garden didn’t seem to mind. By June, everything was coming along. At least a little bit of everything planted was growing. There was only one buttercup squash plant and that was attacked by stem borers before it got a chance to do much but otherwise things were going well. The pak choi was harvested and the few remaining plants were going to seed. The peppers and eggplants were setting fruit and I was taking fresh snap peas with me to work for lunch. I was pleasantly surprised by the turnip greens. They were a new addition to the garden. They grew fast and despite being quite prickly when picked, made for a very nice cooked green.

The garden on June 25th

July

In July, the garden really filled out. The peas were finishing up their run but everything else was going strong. The green beans were starting to produce as were the yellow squash and zucchini. Both the beefsteak and Juliets were covered in green tomatoes just waiting for some hot, sunny days to turn them red. 

Bright lights chard

Yellow Squash

Juliet tomato

Zucchini

As a special bonus, several plants sprouted from the composter. An abundance of Roma tomatoes and a strong acorn squash vine filled in around the base of the barrel.

 

"Wild" compost vegetables

The garden on July 29th

August

Harvest season was full upon us by August. The tomatoes had turned red and we almost had more than I knew what to do with. A week of rain made a lot of them split, however, and some of the large beefsteaks started to rot on the vine but another round of drier weather helped put a stop to that. The silver line melons ripened as did the cantaloupes. Both seemed watery and not as flavorful as we would have liked. Perhaps the soil wasn’t that good for melons.

Basket of produce

Beefsteak tomatoes

Silver line melon

Okra blossom

September

That finally brings us up to now, mid-September. The soy has grown well, despite the fact that a couple of young woodchucks managed to get into the garden and eat a good portion of the leaves. My husband just picked and processed it the other day and got almost two quart-size zip-lock bags of shelled beans.

Soybeans

There are still a lot of veggies in the garden that are ready and waiting to be picked – beets, carrots, chard, and turnip greens – and more still ripening – tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, onions, parsnips, cucumbers, and green beans. There is still plenty to do in the garden and lots of produce to harvested and put away for the winter.

The garden on September 10th

End of August Accounting

It’s been a good gardening season. Things have gone so well, in fact, that we plugged in the extra freezer in the basement to keep the surplus produce. 

One evening's produce gathering

 The zucchini and yellow squash produced very well. That shouldn’t be a surprise. The over-abundance of zucchini has become a well-worn cliché but we haven’t really had much luck with summer squash over the last couple of years. Last year the yellow squash did not produce at all and we only got a few zucchinis. This year, so far, we’ve picked 14 yellow squash and 21 zucchinis.

Squash plants in early July

Yellow squash and zucchini

 A couple weeks ago I realized the squash had a pretty bad infestation of squash vine borers. The poor plants looked terrible but they were and are still producing fruit.

Squash vine borer damage

We have eaten a lot of squash so far and given some away but we had way more than could be eaten fresh. So, into the freezer they went. I diced up the squashes, blanched them in boiling water for 3 minutes, dunked them in ice water, drained them, and then spread them out on towel-lined cookie sheets. After giving the squash pieces some time to dry, I removed the towels and put the sheets in the freezer. The next day, I broke up the pieces of frozen squash with a wooden spoon and put them in quart size zipper-top freezer bags. There are now six full bags in the freezer and a half dozen squash still in the fridge.

Frozen zucchini ready to be bagged

I made a double batch of zucchini muffins for the freezer too.

The green beans are not doing as well as they did last year but I’ve still manage to put away a quart size freezer bag full of them. The chard, on the other hand, has been doing very well since I managed to head off the leaf borers. I’ve put three full quart bags away in the freezer so far.

So much lovely, leafy goodness!

The cucumbers have also been very productive. They are sneaky, however. I’ll look at a cucumber and decide it’s slightly on the small size and decide to wait a day or two before picking it. A day or two later, it’s gotten huge! Fortunately, these cucumbers, no matter what the size, make great pickles. I will admit that I’m a lazy pickler. I’m a fan of making small batches whenever it is convenient. I don’t want to heat up the house with the canner or risk getting limp pickles if I screw up the process. So, I make freezer pickles. They are so simple and are delicious. So far this season we’ve picked 37 cucumbers and made 11 ½-pint jars of dill pickles, 7 of sweet pickles, and 5 of bread and butter pickles. I’ll probably be making some more this week as the collection of cucumbers in the fridge are starting to add up again.

Cool as a cucumber and ready to be pickles

Six 1/2-pink jars of dill freezer pickles

We’ve done a little fridge pickling as well. The beets and watermelon radishes are doing fairly well this year. We didn’t plant that many of either. The radishes are great on sandwiches but we worried we wouldn’t go through them quickly enough in their raw form. The solution was fridge pickles. Since we were doing the radishes, I figured we could pickle a few beets as well. We picked just enough for two ½-pint jars of radishes and one of beets. The radishes are crunch and taste good but I will say that they leave a definite funk in the air.

Just a few beets and radishes

Quick fridge pickled beets and radishes

We did do one bit of unplanned preserving as well. Early on when we first moved into this house, my husband built a trellis for wild grapes that were growing behind the garage. Last year, they didn’t do much but this year they produced enough that I thought I’d see if I could make a little jelly. Well, it did turn out to be a little jelly – just a ½-pint jar and a smaller jelly jar – but it turned out really tasty. The tartness of the wild grapes is really wonderful; not at all like the standard store-bought grape jelly. I only had one cup of juice so it took a little mathing to get the pectin measurement right but I’m calling this experiment a success.

Lots of grapevines on the trellis

Bunches of wild grapes

Draining the juice from the cooked grapes

Mmm...jelly!