Recently in raised beds Category

One of the things I LOVE about gardening and keeps me sane is homegrown tomatoes! Everyone will attest that there is NOTHING like homegrown tomatoes! Nothing! Fresh off the vine and onto your plate, mmmmmm.

This month I am celebrating 1 year of vegetable gardening! 1 year ago today I decided to take back my garden, and grow my own food. We'd never had an ornamental garden persay so it's not like a lot of change was required, just a lot of hard work and time! Ironically this month is also one I have spent the least amount of time in the garden I think (aside from when we had the rains).

The reason is I've been pretty fed up with the squirrels eating the rewards of my hard work :( I've been slowly getting back out in the garden and have noticed not one, not two but three squirrels in the garden. They are small but wreaking havoc! I had my little rant about them already but when you see a sight like this greeting you when you check your plants it's pretty disheartening.

Those were beets :( Seriously this is no joke anymore so I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and instead of being defeatist I am being proactive. I've been out in the garden this recently and sown more plants (which I promptly killed - more on that later), moved some things around, done some maintenance, and generally tidied up. I cleaned down the patio table and chairs and hope to get outside more in the hopes of scaring the damn squirrels to death. I plan on eating breakfast, lunch and dinner outside on the patio now when possible and letting the dogs out with me more.

So speaking of the seeds I planted recently, well they shot up in 3 days, then when I went out to clean up the table and chairs I placed the tray ontop of the wheelie bin, in full sun, and promptly forgot about them. Left them there all day and needless to say the young seedlings fried! Time to get replanting I think!!!

Earlier this year I was at the local Lowes store picking up some supplies when I spotted asparagus bare root plants, naturally I snagged a bag. I planted 3 of them in a raised cinder block bed next to the orange tree. This weekend I noticed this:

Yay Asparagus stalk! They must have been busy in a short period of time cos in the space of the other two plants stands these.

Bit spindly the other two are but then as I understand they take a couple of years to get established before you can harvest so no great loss this year. Anyway just wanted to say YAY Asparagus is up and YAY I didn't kill it, unlike the rhubarb which hasn't done a damn thing. Ah well....

One Saturday late last month I kidnapped DH and made him do some gardening chores :) Namely putting up a trellis. As you can see from the pic it's some 2x4 timber with the wire mesh a HUGE improvement that before. The mesh covers a height of 5ft but I want to add another piece on the top to go to the top of the wood.

If you're curious as to why we chose the height, I basically held my hand up above my head and declared that the height of the trellis. No point in going higher if I can't harvest from it! As much as I dearly love the stepladder out in the garden (not!) I don't plan on going up it regularly to harvest beans and tomatoes every day!

Now to get DH to Home Depot for more 2x4's and whisk him into the garden again for the other beds!

It's been harvest time here for the winter crops. I've shared some pics recently of the harvests and thought it'd be interesting to show you this monster turnip I harvested from the garden recently. DH snapped this pic with his iphone.

Lest the pic not do the size justice, let me tell ya that weight of this monster was just a smidgen under 2lbs!!! To say that we ate turnips almost daily would be an understatement. I am still trying to find a cooking method that I really like for these since they were an experiment this year. They certainly grew well though huh?

Harvest figures for April are as follows:

• 4oz Chard @ $3.99 lb = 99c
• 5oz Orange (Valencia) @ 59c lb = $2.95
• 4lb 6oz Peas @ $4 lb = $17.50
• 1oz Spring Onion @ 99c lb = 6c
• 1oz Tomato @ $2.99 lb = 18c
• 2lb 2oz Turnip @ 79c lb = $1.68

Total Harvest for April = 11lb 14oz And some harvest pics:

Can you stand to see more pea harvest pics? I hope so cos here is another almost 2lbs
worth!


Unfortunately the trellis and wind had another battle this month and the trellis definitely lost this one. I think the peas are done. After the last bout of gale force winds, I propped the trellis up with the step ladder, but went out one morning to see this


Yep that's the ladder in the next bed over! Good job nothing in there was damaged as I hadn't planted out the summer crops yet! Sheesh! Anyway the peas have pretty much all leaned over the trellis and are spilling out and over onto the floor. Crazy! I harvested 3+ pounds so far, here's hoping I can at least get the peas that are left on the vines to fatten up!

In the comments on the last pea posts comments Zanthan Gardens asked: What varieties did you grow and how many feet did you plant? I grew bush and pole peas, in different beds. Bush peas I grew 4 squares x 9 plants per sq ft. I will say these aren't as good harvest value as pole peas but ok if you don't have decent trellis systems like I didn't or are growing them in addition to pole peas. The pole peas I grew 5 square foot, at 6 plants per square foot. The trellis for the pole peas was only 4ft high. In hindsight I needed bigger trellis and more plants per square foot, oh and I needed to train them better! The trellis I used had BIG holes so the plants didn't really grab on that well. Next year will be better!!! The varieties I used were: Pole Peas - tall telephone. Sorry obviously I didn't keep the packet for the bush peas (doh!)

Glogging, that's garden blogging, is very useful. It provides a permanent record of activities, plantings, harvests and most of all lessons learned! I learned so much last year in my first gardening year in America and I wanted to make a little reminder to myself for things to remember for next fall.

• Check often - cannot stress this enough! Just because it's winter the plants still need checking daily! Mostly for harvesting. I missed the ball on a cauliflower because I didn't check it often enough and picked it just past it's prime.
  

I know I'll learn a lot more as the seasons and years progress, but learning from mistakes is all part of the gardening process right?

I had a bumper harvest this week! It was time for "Peas glorious Peas"! We love peas here at WOY HQ and homegrown taste sooo good! I admit a couple of pods didn't make it to the basket but in all I kept myself in check and only ate a couple of the green pods of goodness!

See they look good enough to eat! lol! Which is a good job cos that's what I did, after I had the obligatory weigh in!

Yep the scale reads 32.3 oz! That's over 2lbs of peas! I used some in peas pilau rice Monday night and have had some with most meals since :) Love peas, raw, cooked, mushy, in curry, in dishes, in my tummy! Really needed the 2lb weigh in of peas though as I haven't been harvesting like I should have recently. Really need to get ontop of going in the garden and using the homegrown produce more.

The peas are a mixture of pole and bush peas, but the BIG majority winner harvest wise was the pole peas. I think next year I may not even bother doing bush peas, unless I just plant LOTS more peas :) They certainly are an easy crop to grow, unless your trellis blows over in the gale force winds like mine did! Bob promises me new trellises for Summer though so hopefully fingers crossed he gets some time to get those done for me :)

In other news I'll hopefully be sharing some new additions to the WOY 'ranch' soon! Got my hands full with this project so gonna go get out in the garden and get busy :) Happy gardening!

2008 was my first year growing tomatoes here in America, and although I'd grown them before in England I'd never encountered the tomato hornworm. I'd been on some gardening forums and heard so much about them that I was beginning to think I was going to get the whole season over without spotting one. I'd had problems with cabbage white caterpillars eating my radish greens but then in September after seeing some destruction on my tomato plants I saw this.

Now understand that this hornworm (and his buddy) was about 2" long so they'd been feasting up a storm for a while, I just hadn't noticed them. They are pretty tough to spot, so look closely at your tomato plants!!! Especially if they are missing leaves/branches. The problem for me is that I became fascinated with them. They are beautiful in a weird way, with their markings and horny bottom! I think the markings especially with the mock eyes and the diagonal lines. I'll say this for them too, they grab onto the branches really tight! I had trouble removing them from my tomato plants!

So why post these pics now? Because the new season is starting and tomatoes are pretty much on everyones grow list. Be aware of what you are looking for and take action early! These little buggers can strip plants bare in a day or two so get to know your plants and check them often!