This year Drew has had absolutely no help from my end but he is still determined to get us a great garden going. By the time Baby Joel comes we should be able to just water and harvest. Here is an overview of the set up so far.
Moving in closer…
Cucumbers
Cherry Tomatoes
Roma Tomatoes
Hot peppers
Onions
New raspberry bush
Herbs
We counted 6 lemons forming on our lemon tree.
Lemon tree
Another year gone and time for a garden recap. Drew and I have been preoccupied with our baby news, so I’m a little behind on this. I also made a “Bump” tab to have a place for my baby bump pics. I believe my garden blog may have to share a bit with Baby Joel since he will be taking center stage of our lives.
Bell peppers– These were once again not abundant producers. Not even the starters we picked up. Now I understand why peppers are so dang expensive. I’m thinking it may be better to stick with buying them at the store or trying a mini variety.
Tabasco peppers– Great!
Cucumbers– Good producers and made great soups and salads
Tomatoes– The Roma and Cherry were fantastic. I’m going to stop planting Beefsteak.
Beets– Turns out we don’t like beets
Carrots– They did well, but too much trouble to peel and chop the stubby little carrots.
Squash– They did better than last year but I think they need a lot more sun. We will be moving to the main garden area. I use squash in cooking all the time so I am going to get this right. I want to try zucchini again, as well as butternut and spaghetti.
Corn– No dice. This gets one more shot, this time in full sun next year.
Beans– Great!
Peas– Great!
Lettuce– The spring crop was good and I actually did get some to grow this fall
Cabbage– Never did mature before it got too cold and wet
Brussels Sprouts- Started to see sprouts but not until late December and it is getting too cold
Cauliflower– Spring crop was a bust and only one mushy cauliflower was produced in the fall
Kale– Did very well, especially with the mild weather on into December. There is even edible kale out there right now.
Raspberries– Produced twice this season
Strawberries– We tried to pick off most of the flowers so they can get established. The birds did like to eat any fruit that developed. We need to net it next year.
Blueberries, pear trees, and currants– No sign of fruit yet but these do take a few years to get going
Lemon tree– Produced one lemon. It is looking healthy.
Onions– We used sets and ended up with a few small onions. They don’t seem to be that easy to grow. I’m wondering if I should try green onions instead.
Herbs– The basil, oregano, thyme, and dill all did well. I want to have a bunch of basil next year to make pesto. We just used our pesto on some shrimp and it was delightful.
For 2016 we are keeping it simple with just the main staples since we will be plenty busy with Baby Joel.
We thawed out our many jars of Roma tomatoes that we had pre-processed along the way in order to make tomato sauce.
It took a lot of onions and a few hours to get it cooked down to the right consistency.
We ended up with several jars to freeze. It’s amazing to see how many tomatoes it takes to make sauce.
I forgot to get pictures, but we also made salsa from our cherry tomato stash. I like it even better than last year’s. The cherry tomatoes make it very sweet, similar to a mango salsa. Drew gets to take all the credit for that one, as I only had the energy to peel the garlic. Thanks Drew!
We are back in action with the garden now that the kale is big enough to warrant harvesting.
The rest of the plants are looking pretty good and I’m seeing some peas forming.
Here’s to hoping I see some sign of cabbage, cauliflower, or Brussels Sprouts before snow fall.
We have a few new residents in the garden now that leaves are starting to drop. Peas,
kale,
and a mix of cabbage, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. Don’t ask me which is which.
Last year only the kale worked out. We planted earlier this time hoping to beat the snow.
One of the fun activities for our weekend was to shell all the beans that we had dried up in our loft. A throwback 90’s play list helped us pass the time (think Space Jam and Spice Girls). Last year we had issues with mold on our beans and only got one quesadilla worth of the little suckers. Not so this year.
Other than that, we have been slowly collecting cherry tomatoes for salsa, as well as a few other hold outs in the garden.
A few weekends ago Drew grilled ribs low and slow on the Big Green Egg. They were amazing. Thanks to my sister-in-law’s many troubles in procuring the BGE, we had complementary John Henry’s Honey Rib Rub to use on this fine meat.
We continue to get batches of tomatoes each week. The Roma are destined for sauce, while the Cherry will become an experimental salsa.
Can you believe it? While we were gone our lemon turned yellow, fell off, and turned squishy on one side as it sat in water for who knows how long. Here is the pretty side. Drew is telling me to be happy that it at least made a lemon.
I did make a couple batches of carrot soup with our large harvest of carrots. It was the consistency of a butternut squash soup and I great way to use the carrots. First you roast the carrots.
Then you boil them with chicken broth, butter, onion, ginger and spices. Very easy.
Here is the rest of the loot that was waiting for us after getting back from Washington D.C.
Roma Tomatoes
Huge Zucchini
Pepper and Onion
It was time to pull the carrots today. I’ll say that we ended up with plenty of them. The variety we chose was the short, stubby kind.
It has been good for us to experiment with growing different vegetables in order to determine what our favorites are. I think I’ve decided that root vegetables are too much of a pain to mess with. The beets had to be cooked and peeled all while trying not to dye everything in sight pink. The carrots took a lot of scrubbing and were difficult to peel without losing a lot of the carrot. I will try sweet potatoes one day, but I’m saying good bye to the rest of these underground babies. At least for now while real estate is limited.
Ugh! And tomorrow I still need to make something with these. I’m leaning towards carrot soup.
We tried another beet recipe that involved putting a layer of roasted beets in a baking dish, topped with shredded sweet potato and cracked eggs. Not bad but I’m still liking the beet salad best. Mostly I was trying to find creative ways to use all my eggs. This weekend we are pulling up the rest of the beets and pickling them.
Say hello to our first zucchini.
We also have a yellow squash forming that should be ready this weekend. I know gardeners tend to end up with excessive amounts of zucchini and squash, but I am going to be very disappointed if that doesn’t happen to me. Zucchini noodles anyone? Probably the best healthy thing ever and you need to try them immediately if you haven’t already. However, tonight it will be a zucchini quesadilla.
