In contrast to @Beth Gallagher's post, our gardening season is just beginning and the gardens aren't even completely planted yet. The "pasture garden" (old pasture) is complete as of yesterday, but only about half the "trailer garden" is planted. We have peas, beans, turnips, rutabaga, kohlrabi, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, buckwheat, radishes, carrots, celery, celeriac, fennel, parsley, zucchini, various herbs, and probably a few other things planted outside. The greenhouses have have tomatoes, cucumbers, some beans, and peppers, with the more fragile herbs and a few eggplants thrown in for good measure. Winter squashes and our mostly futile attempts at melons yet to be plants somewhere. Potatoes are also growing.
Good morning to all- Mr. Alaska- I find it very interesting to read about about the gardening in the far north. Down here on the Gulf Coast, we are already into summertime "dead zone" where most of our spring crops have been harvested and now won't grow. This morning I replanted late green beans and some winter squash, but to tell the truth, very few plants with vines- melons, squash, cucumbers- make it here. We have such very wet summers here, melons and tomatoes and such just take on so much water that they burst and rot. Most discouraging. Now, about the end of September I will be able to plant broccolli and snap peas and other spring stuff, because we won't get frost until January, and maybe not even then. And I am about to work up a small mess of green beans I picked last evening- just enough for lunch, I think. you all be safe and keep well- Ed
Yesterday I decided to dump my potato grow bags and see if I actually grew any 'taters. I harvested quite a few small new potatoes, enough for a few meals for the two of us. I think they would have done better in the ground than in the grow bags, but I still got a decent crop. I started them from seeds in my Aerogarden so it was a fun experiment. We had some of the little potatoes with supper, boiled with skin-on then tossed with parsley and butter. YUMMY.
Our experience with potatoes started from seed is that they yield smaller potatoes than those started from tubers too.
I couldn't get a picture to download before so I retook it with a different cell phone. Below is a photo of one of my tomato plants the Tiny Tim tomato.
I had two tiny Tim tomatoes come up in my garden last summer , ( I live in Australia) one climbed my plum tree so ended up 8-9 ft tall and the other partly climbed my apple so it ended up about the same height , one was still producing tomatoes in early June despite it being fairly cold ( our winter months ) they had nice flavour so I hope they self seed again , the mystery is I’ve never planted tiny Tim tomatoes , so they must have been transplanted from a bird @Tony Page
Since I cleaned out my raised garden beds, I have had a bunch of volunteers pop up. I've got three healthy cucumber vines that are beginning to climb the trellis, and several tomato plants (unknown varieties). I decided to keep them watered and see if anything develops.
Here are my volunteer cucumbers. They seem to be doing well despite the heat. There are lots of blooms and I notice several honeybees buzzing around, so hopefully I'll get a few cukes.
Looks really good. I'm sure you'll get some cukes. Could be interesting if the seeds were from a hybrid.
Our tomato plants are looking pretty healthy, but no ripe tomatoes yet. The lettuce has never done so well, however. My wife doesn't eat lettuce, but I've been cutting leaves off every day for salads and BLTs. Something chewed the heck out of the cabbage, but we don't do much of anything with cabbage anyhow. What else? Oh, the carrots. I plant carrots nearly every year but have never gotten a carrot larger than a stub pencil. The plants look good, but I'm not expecting much.
I would say to plant dome short-season determinate tomatoes next year. Carefully weed and side dress the carrots about once a month for better results there. Opposite for us on lettuce here. I seldom eat lettuce except for BLTs, but the wife eat lettuce in something almost every day. Coleslaw is one of my favorite things, and we eat sauerkraut in winter. We can also store the storage varieties of cabbage most of the winter.