Sunday, July 31, 2011

garden feedback / hindsight

record a little bit about what I liked in our garden this year, as it is winding down a little now and I plan to pull out some things in a few weeks and plant the 'cold crop' set at the end of August.

We chose heirloom tomatoes for most of them to begin with - but the seedlings failed. We picked one greenhouse Brandywine, Mr.Stripey, Cherokee Purple and a Black Prince, along with hybrid Romas and yellow pear varieties. The yellow pears have been NUMEROUS, so many tomatoes from every plant. Mr. Stripey was late to ripen - but well worth the wait, huge yellow fruits with red stripes on the bottom. The brandywine has proudced pretty pink fruits that were a good moderate taste. The Cherokee purple threw quite a few 'ugly' twisted tomatoes at first, then started producing a good run of large fruits that were green on top and purple on the bottom. I didn't want to buy the Black Prince because it was so leggy and limp at the store - with little rootlet hairs everywhere. The ticket said to 'bury as much of the plant as possible.' Mark talked me into it and I was VERY glad he did. The tomatoes from it are slow to ripen to usable but excellent flavor. I have to admit they are my favorite prizes out of the garden, whether to cook with or slice up with mayonnaise on a sandwich. The pepper plants were sad - I did like the pimento variety the best for eating fresh and putting in soup. They were good small when the bell peppers were quite bitter when small.

The cucumbers were numerous, TOO numerous, although we thought at the beginning that they were going to fail. They did exactly what cucumbers should do, and we put up a gallon pot of pickles out of them.

The zucchini was 'black beauty' variety, which also was late to start for me - but has produced almost exactly as much zucchini as I needed. There were a few times I wished I had put out one more plant - and then days later I would find huge zucchini that had been hiding from me. The yellow crookneck squash was sad - maybe there were too many in the hill because no plant produced a fruit longer than four inches. The white scallop squash was unintended (seed from Grandma) but a good producer and it has contributed to many meals. I might plant one hill (three to six plants) of them again another year, but not two.

The pumpkins have done their job, and may do even more. Our garden is technically too small for pumpkins - but they have found other places to crawl to and haven't killed anything else mostly because of our vigilant pruning and redirecting. The blue Jarrahdale only has produced one fruit (four plants?). The Turk's Turban (three plants?) produced two fruits but both rotted on the vines.. being winter squash these numbers may increase as the summer squash starts to die out and more resources become available to the remaining plants. I have already seen the space where the big pumpkin came out of the zucchini has exploded with more leaves and is reaching for the opposite fence.

Sunflowers were unintended (seed came with something else) but have been nice. We already have two or three full heads of seed to plant for next year. They are drying in the garage. I intend to plant a lot more zinnias next year - they have been a joy both for hummingbirds and to pluck a blossom to give to Esme when she is playing nearby. The basil has been plentiful and we could have used to plant more herbs with it. I am thinking of a real 'herb garden' next year that Grandma and I can enjoy together.

The pinto beans were a joy - the Provider green beans were a good provider. Both have added to my soups for work nicely. The lima beans were an experiment - odd, very long to produce anything but a few nice beans for soup when they did. And now they are half of them dying and the other half putting on another set of pods. The other beans and field peas are still coming along.

The corn was great - but we needed to wire it all up. I didn't help Mark when he wired up the first set because we never wired it in Minnesota. It did need it. The half that was blown over would have produced twice what we put in the freezer. The peaches and cream variety was just as good as we rememebered. The few pieces of ornamental we got are drying with the sunflower heads and are very beautiful - not very good for eating.

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