My Garden

Many of you know that I am an avid gardener. I became interested about 15 years ago and started with one strawberry plant and one cherry tomato plant. Needless to say,our garden has evolved and we have grown,or attempted to grow, everything from lettuce to vanilla beans. While we have yet to master the vanilla beans, we do grow a tremendous amount of produce and it has become something my family looks forward to every spring. This season,while not one of our best, did provide us with some wonderful vegetables.
  One of the first things we plan when we start each spring is our tomato selection. We have grown many varieties of heirloom tomatoes and have found that we do very well with heirloom cherry varieties.We love to grow larger tomatoes as well, but the small ones are the favorites.Some of our favorite large variety tomatoes are Black Krim, Brandywine,Big Rainbow,Genuwine and Green Zebra. The smaller varieties we love are the Sunrise Bumblebee, Sunchocola, Indigo Rose and Tiger Stripe.
   When we start in the spring, we usually purchase a mix of plants and seeds. One of my boys loves working in the garden and germinated many seeds in his room during the early months of the year so that they were ready to be planted in the garden when the weather warmed up. Once they are planted and spend a month or two outside ,this is usually what we see...

  Before long, we were picking the smaller varieties daily.How gorgeous are the colors?

  I love the smaller varieties for making bruschetta,which tastes incredible with homegrown basil,tomatoes and garlic. We also make a lot of sauce ,which I freeze so I can have a taste of summer all year long.

Here are a few more pictures from our tomato harvest this year. The larger ones didn't fare as well this summer due to a lot of rain. They were cracked and not very pretty, but they sure did taste delicious!

 Along with our tomatoes, we planted a variety of squash,eggplant ,peppers and garlic. Only my cupcake squash did well this year,again,the rain caused some rot in my zucchini plants. I managed to harvest one zucchini. Here is a sample of what we were able to pick every few days.

We also found a few surprise tomatoes.

 

Salad greens are also a favorite in our house. Spinach,arugula,romaine,kale,mesclun mix and some heirloom lettuces made up our lettuce beds. We plant these very early in the spring and all from seed. We never buy lettuce plants. 

This was the first harvest from the lettuce patch.

 This spring,our strawberries were beautiful, our garlic didn't make it to harvest(we are currently planting another bed ), and we had a lot of other assorted vegetables and herbs.

  All in all , we did well, but definitely not our best. We also have peach,nectarine,lemon,lime and apple trees, all of which are grown in containers.  Many flowers and plants were planted as well, which I will share in another post.
   One of the things I did for the first time this year was use a product called  Growtrax. We removed an old swing set that my boys had long outgrown, and I was left with a big patch of dirt. My first thought was sod, but I saw this product and gave it a try. I have to say,I was skeptical,  but it worked! It is simply a roll of grass seed,fertilizer and mulch. You cut it to size and lay it down on top of the dirt(rake the dirt first) then water up to three times a day. The birds cannot get the seeds out and I was amazed at how quickly it grew! It is supposed to take a few weeks to start growing, but mine grew within a week...thanks to more rain! I found it on QVC,and I highly recommend it.

As you can see, the mat itself is starting to disappear and the grass is growing. I am hoping it survives, but right now,it looks like it is doing well.
    I will have another gardening post next week. Enjoy your day!