A new gardening season - 2012!!

A new year for experimenting with vegetable/flower seeds, new ways and places to plant them, new ways to evade the pesky deer/bunnies etc., I'm all ready for the gardening season of 2012!!

This year I received a very nice present from Daphne from Daphne's Dandelions - seeds!!  Thank you Daphne for Cherokee Purple tomato, Cilantro and Red Sails lettuce seeds. 

Seeds from Daphne!

I'm super excited to grow Cherokee Purple.  I've heard great things about this variety of tomato, but never seen them available locally in zone 4.  Both Red Sails and Cherokee Purple were planted a couple minutes ago:)

A new thing for this year is 3 brand new raised beds!  12 feet by 3.5 feet each!!  For the past few years, I was using a spot (minus sod), but the grass is always creeping into the garden and it was time consuming to shovel out the grass roots every couple months.  Hopefully, raised beds will keep the grass out of the garden.  I plan to mulch around it, once it is filled with dirt....

                     

3 new raised beds!!

So far most of the seeds are planted indoors by the window - tomatoes, peppers, eggplants etc., Red onions were first seeded in early March, two weeks later the rest of the veggies were seeded.  Some of them are sprouted already!! 

Seeds soaking in the sun

A view of the plum trees blossoming already!!  I don't think we have seen the last of the frost yet, so sadly, we won't have any plums later on.....

Harvest (Tuesday) - Oct 11, 2011

Garden produce is still trickling in.  We've had eight days of over 80's this past week.  Sadly, it didn't do much for the garden, as the earlier 2 days of low temps killed almost all vegetable plants.  Tomatoes are still ripening off of almost dry and brittle plants.  Last of butternut squashes were removed, although they weren't completely tan, but the vine is long dead.  Last of the apples and eggplants were picked off.  Pepper plants are all pulled off.  There may still be another small harvest of cilantro, fenugreek leaves and green onions for next week and ofcourse more tomatoes.....

Red bell peppers

More apples

Eggplants

Tomatoes

Mix of chillies, beans and 1 beet(for the entire season, rest eaten by pesky deer)

Tomatoes and 1 apple

Butternut squash

Last of the Thai peppers

more tomatoes

Harvest Monday - Oct 3, 2011

I did not post anything at Daphne's Dandelions last week, as I didn't have much to report gardenwise.  I will combine last week's one or two pics in this post.  We finally got around to picking apples from the trees for two reasons - wasps were having a field day eating up fragrant apples and plenty of ripe ones were falling off the tree!  There were approximately 50+ Honeycrisp and 60+Sweet 16s this year.  Our basement is now smelling heavenly!!  I have left just a few on the trees, as they didn't come off easily, guess they need more time.  We gave away some to neighbors and friends and will eat the rest as fresh apples.  When refrigerated, they will last several weeks and Honeycrisp will last about 6 months.  So that's where they are currently stored :)

Not pictured - yellow/red raspberries eaten off the bushes and white radishes, 2 of them over a feet long but nice and tender.

Tomatoes

chillies, bell peppers, beans, okra

Sweet 16

Honey Crisp

More apples(fell off trees) and a cucumber

Tomatoes

All of this year's carrots

Carrots (cleaned)

Last of the green(some red) bell peppers

green/red chillies

Banana Peppers

Harvests - Sept 20, 2011

Technically, it's tuesday, but I'll go ahead and add my Harvest Mondays post, at Daphne's Dandelions.  We had an early Frost last week, and as a result, I picked off almost anything that was close to harvest.  This will be the last major harvest of the season.  There will be smaller harvests for another week or two, then I will be done with the garden work for the year. 

I had to pick so many things that were getting closer, but not really ready.  This also meant picking green chillies, as they hadn't matured to red color yet!  I couldn't use that much green chillies, but after freezing a good amount, they were given off to neighbors and friends.  Apples are yet to be picked.  But I also didn't get pictures of everything that was picked, as it was too tiring to cover up plants, pick off harvests, store them and also photograph them.  I did the best I could, and there are more pictures than usual....

Tomatoes and 1 zucchini(hidden)

4 Butternut squash(2lb 13 oz - over 4 lbs)  This one 4lb 4oz!

More tomatoes

okra, eaten apples(not by us :), cantelopes, red chillies

Part of kung pao chillies

Some more tomatoes

Bell peppers and beans

More peppers

Some apples and cucumber

Eggplants

Cayenne Peppers

Banana peppers

Harvest Monday - Sept 12, 2011

This week's harvests are mostly tomatoes and eggplants.  Cantelopes all ripened at once and came off the stem when touched!!  Apples are not yet harvested, but seem to be ready.  I guess I'm not yet ready to do anything with them as my cantelopes and plums were all ripening at the same time.  Tomatoes are piling up and I need to do something to make space.  So this week, will be preserving week!

Daphne's dandelions hosts Harvest Mondays every week to showcase harvests from around the world.  Here's my entry for the week....

The larger ones are Roma

Blackberries

Multi colored eggplants

Tomatoes and some apples

Beans, cucumbers and okra

Another cantelope

4 more Cantelopes

Yellow squash(chewed by something)

More tomatoes

Harvest Monday - Sept 6th 2011

This blog is a day late for the Daphne's Harvest Monday Submission, due to the Labor Day weekend.  The past week has been wonderful for our garden harvests.  We have a couple firsts of the season - Rose Finn Fingerling potatoes were harvested, first okra was ready for picking, first harvest of Zestar Apples, the first ripe Sweet 'N Early Hybrid cantelope fell off its stem!!

Tomatoes are ripening almost daily :) Still picking beans and cukes.......We even had a couple nights where the temps dropped to 40s.  3 more blackberries were harvested and went right into our mouths :)

Zestar apples

Zucchini, 1 plum and tomatoes

Fenugreek(methi) leaves

Tomatoes, okra, plums, cukes

Bush beans, red chillies

Rose Finn - Fingerling potatoes

Tomatoes

Cantelope