If you are a gardener or grower of any sort, you should post your #gardenjournal with the other green thumbs here. What better way to journal your garden and swap stories & lessons with gardeners across the globe?
Another long sunny month since the last update so you can imagine how much growth you are in for in this edition. I kept taking pictures and not getting around to posting so here are my last 14 shots and what I am seeing this season.
On the Last Episode
Last episode, we had made it through spring and things were just starting to grow.
Since then, all hell has broken loose with plenty of hot sunshiny days and intermittent rain showers. Grasses and summer squash are up over the fence and everything battling for space again. What else is going on?
A month after everything starts growing, I do some pruning and add some fertilizer to help recover and get some fruiting done! Composte with peat, seaweed and crustaceans might fit the bill! I just spread it across the topsoil and try not to get any on the plant stems. Then water!
This horseradish is a gift and a challenge. Tough as nails and grows back every year. In past years I have never really done anything with it so this year I am determined to learn how to properly harvest it, and see how to use and preserve. Ideally, it will add a little zing to this year's hot sauce which I am REALLY looking forward to.
I am not sure why I bought celery for the first time this year but it is doing very well! I keep checking and it isn't as big as the ones in the store so I leave them. Another I have to research proper harvesting because I bet fresh celery is as superior to store-bought as all the other veggies.
This year, the lettuce is kicking ass. Bloomed early, harvested much more often than I would have thought, and is best picked in the morning before it gets hot. Crispy and awesome for sandwiches and salads.
The strawberries this year are a little challenging. There are plenty of them the returned form last year and we bought a dozen little ones to fill in the holes. When the local crops were starting to appear at the stands, we didn't have many worth eating yet. As the summer has progressed a month, they are many but little and stringy. somethi8ng else I will have to research and report on for the next Garden Hive journal.
I harvested the first of the green peppers early to encourage the plant to grow the others. This is actually a candy cane variety which will have some neat white stripes on them. It had thinner walls than the store-bought ones, almost like the thickness of a jalapeno with no spice. I sliced some up in a sandwich with plenty of other competing flavours and they held their own! Makes normal peppers seem watery and boring. Can't wait for the next ones!
Speaking of jalapenos, we are already harvesting. The first one seemed a little mild but I was not concerned as the ones that get a little cracked and distressed seem to carry the heat. Probably a dozen harvested so far and the other ones were not shy on the heat!
The tomatoes are doing very well across the board. These ones are champion vine tomatoes and I again knocked off the first row of them to convince the plant to grow many more. A couple have ripened on the counter after harvest and have fantastic texture and meatiness. Can't wait til I am pulling red ones off the vine for sandwiches!
The beefsteak are probably my favourite but they normally take so long to grow to harvest. These ones are doing just fine and are maybe a week or 2 from ready. Eagerly anticipating these ones too.
It must have been the lack of sun because of the tree we took down that caused pickle and cucumber challenges in past seasons. This year, I spammed packets of 4 different kinds of cucumbers right into the garden bed to see which might come up. Turns out they all did and I am so hopeful I can have varieties to slice for salads and more sandwiches, snackers for the girls and for pickling along with pickle cucumbers. someone with my handle can't grow a garden and not have pickles!
I am not a squash guy but a couple of my chicks are. That's the only way I would plant these for how big they grow and how much room they take up. There are already a dozen summer squash this size so I encourage them to search out recipes or suckers they can gift the bumper crop to because I am not eating the filthy things. ;)
The flowers are growing nicely too. Not as ridiculous a number as I had last year because the local nursery hasn't had their clearance blowout sale and I am too cheap to pay full price for flowers. Still the perennials including these lilies are back and looking wonderful. I will have to save a special edition of the garden journal for flowers.
Cheers to all the Hive Gardeners growing and sharing food.
This is the second chapter of the 7th season of the Pickleman Family Garden. Almost ready to plant for a long warm season with 1 less tree to block the sunlight.
Mom started me along my path of growing stuff when I was a kid. Motivated by so many blockchain blogging gardeners, I figured I would plant and share and learn as I reclaim as much grass space as I can. It has turned out to be a fruitful experience and I hope to inspire you to sow and grow no matter what your location or experience level is.
Tomatoes are getting pretty expensive at the grocery store because we refuse to eat the cheap American ones. Best tasting $2.17 I have saved!
