Looking back at this years garden

One of my goals this season, was to improve the vegetable garden.

Looking back now, I think it was a success!

 

I had wonderful harvests from every crop planted, and spent a good part of my weekends canning.

 

This winter I know I will eat well, and I will know exactly what is in every single jar I open - good, organic, home grown goodness!

Totally worth it!

Now on to planning next years garden...

Garden bounty and canning

The garden has been producing lots of veggies for me this year.

I've been filling this basket with fresh, organic veggies almost every day!

The beans, cucumber and tomatoes seem to be the best crops this year, giving us seemingly endless supply. The tomato crop this year has been amazing! There is nothing like a fresh sliced tomato, still warm from the garden! You just can't buy this taste!

We have eaten our fill, shared with friends, and canned a lot.

I even had my first pressure canning mishap! While canning some tomatoes, I heard a funny sound from the inside to the canner. I can only assume the lid was on too tightly and the pressure finally blew the lid off. The jar was fine, but what a MESS!

Our pickling cucumbers were a little slow, so I bought some from the farmers market and made some garlic dill pickles and bread and butter pickles.

A winters worth of green beans and dilly beans has been canned up as well.

Onions will be ready soon, and cabbage and carrots will be harvested and canned for winter use.

The Cucamelons have been very prolific this year as well. Most have been eaten straight off the vine, but I am hoping to try a cucamelon mint pickle. I'll let you know how that works out.

While the veggie garden is still winding down, I am already planning for next years garden. My main goal this fall is to improve the soil in a few sections of the garden with leaves, compost and manure.
Yes, I said FALL. It sure is feeling like fall in the mornings.
And with the kids going back to school in a few days, fall isn't far behind!

Nothing beats home grown!

Mid way through the month of July already!

The garden is doing well and the harvest has begun!

I am thankful that I am able to do a quick clean up around the patches with the lawn mower, 

however the new problem seems to be the grass/weeds creeping into the patch.

I just don't have the time to pull weeds this time of year and so I have discovered that my string trimmer does a great job. Not exactly environmentally friendly so I will have to come up with another plan of attack. I am thinking raised beds maybe the way to go next year - IF it's in the budget!

From the 3 Black Current bushes I was able to harvest 7 pounds of currents!

I have also been keeping ahead of the birds this year and been able to pick a bowl of Black Berries every day. Some get eaten right away, the rest are frozen.

Tomatoes are doing well and I have been able to pick about 6 ripe cherry tomatoes so far.

They never seem to make it back to the house ... I crave home grown tomatoes most of the year. When it is finally time to harvest one, I just can't seem to control myself!

The Zucchini are coming alone too ... in just a few days I should be able to harvest the first one

 

The peas are doing amazing this year. I discovered that I need a better trellis for them ... a 3 foot chicken wire fence isn't tall or strong enough! Next year this shall be resolved, but for now the peas are strung up with twine, happily producing many MANY peas

The beans are being harvested every 2 days or so. This year we planted 'Royal Burgundy' and 'Blue Lake Bush'. I am please with both so far. I also planted 2 'Scarlett Runner' plants for my Hummingbirds late this spring and they are blooming well but I have only picked 1 bean so far. That is fine with me ... they are a tough, sort of fuzzy bean that I am not very fond of.

This was yesterdays pick of beans and peas.

Friday, before the heat, I decided to make the first dilly beans. I had also purchased some baby english cucumbers at the market and did the first jars of pickles. I love how the 'Royal Burgundy' made a lovely purple brine in the jar after processing.

My own cucumber plants are just starting to fruit, and my 5 pots of experimental pickles in a pot are doing well now ... hopefully some to pick soon. I hope they start to climb the fence, but it looks like I'm going to have to teach them how.

I harvested the heritage garlic yesterday. It was my first time, and they did produce scapes (which we glady ate YUM!) and small, very strong bulbs. I will replant most of these and purchase more bulbs and have a large garlic patch next year. We use a LOT of garlic around here!

Lots of kale in the garden, the dinosaur Kale seems to be doing the best. It is such a beautiful plant that I am reluctant to cut it!

We ate our share of spinach, leaf lettuce and romaine. I will definitely grow 'Little Gem' romaine again next year! Swiss Chard is looking good, but sadly we aren't fond of it. I will harvest it for my Mom and a work mate to eat. It sure looks pretty though!

 

I am looking forward to the rest of the harvest, and I am taking notes this year and already planning next years garden. You know what they say ... there is no garden so great as next years garden! ;)

June is flying past!

Sometimes things don't work out as planned.

My 'quiet' country life has been anything BUT quiet these days!

I'm back to work full time, Little Country Girl has just finished a session of Spring Skate and is now playing soccer. I am busy at the soccer field 2-4 days a week.

Country Boy is working lots of shifts at a local fast food restaurant, as well as getting ready for a summer job with the Pan Am Games coming soon. He is saving for a car and that will surely help loosen the load on Big Country Girl and I, who have been driving him around.

Father has started a new job, and so this means more time away from home.

There has been so much to do around the yard!

The grass hasn't stopped growing, nor have the weeds.

The veggie garden is now planted, and the pool opened.

2 more weeks and Little Country Girl will be on summer holidays.

It might almost be time to slow down a bit!

We had a very wet week, and so yesterday was spent cutting grass, weeding, and planting.

Today was another rainy day and so the housework was done, and I even had a chance to sit down!

I have been snapping photos for weeks, and finally I can post a few of what is going on in my yard.

I finally got the veggie tomatoes, peppers and zucchini's planted, and Little Country Girl talked me into trying watermelon one more time. Now the hard part ... keeping ahead of the weeds!

Our Asparagus patch was bountiful this year and I think we can all say that we had our fill.

Planted a whole lot of spinach and salad greens that should be ready to eat any time now.

I thought this Red Romaine looked good, but so far it just tastes bitter.

The first big weeding out there took almost all day, and filled the wheelbarrow!

Have you ever seen such a HUGE Rhubarb plant?

 I found a new recipe for Rhubarb Cinnamon muffins that everyone seems to like, and we have had stewed rhubarb and rhubarb strawberry crisp. I have also frozen some and given lots to friends. I think this plant really likes the yearly topdressing of manure!

I've been trying to get the back flower beds cleaned and planted up too.

Thank goodness for the perennials, or there would be no color out there. I just haven't had the time to get all the annuals in yet! There are some pretties out there...

Snow in Summer

 

Garden Loosestrife

 Maiden Pinks

 Allium

 Flag Iris

 Iris

 Spiderwort

The Hosta beds are coming to life, some are getting split 

 The Peony's are starting to bloom 

This week things should slow down for me a little.

Hopefully the weeds don't get away from me before then.

Looking back at this years vegetable garden

The weather today is cold and windy, quite a change from yesterdays 17°C.

It's the perfect day to sit by the fire and look at the notes of the years successes and failures.

 I sit and try to decipher the scribbles on the random pieces of paper and enter these notes into my garden journal. Each success (and failure!) is noted for planning the following years garden.

Thinking about it now, it must have been a successful year as the freezer and pantry are full, and we ate fresh, homegrown produce for a good part of the season.

I knew I wanted to learn to can this year, and so my garden was planned accordingly.

The first crop this year was Asparagus.  Anyone that has tasted fresh picked Asparagus knows there is nothing like it!  None of ours made it to the freezer this year so I added more plants.

Then came the rhubarb. This plant's size astounded me this year, and we ate plenty and froze lots too.

We had plenty of Black Currents too and some were frozen and some made jam.

I have been on an endless quest for the 'best' tomaotes to grow so I plant several types of tomatoes- some for slicing, some for canning and some cherry type for eating. And each year I try new varieties.  As long as I have gardened, I have always planted  'Sweet Millions'.

 They are a great cherry tomato, producing many  clusters of very sweet tomatoes and they have never let me down. They will always have a place in my garden. This year I planted 'Grape' tomatoes as well. They were very uniform and tasted good - UNTIL you tasted the 'Sweet Millions' and then the 'Grape' tasted almost sour.

  For slicing, I planted 'Beef Master', 'Parks Whopper', 'Money Maker' and 'Mortgage Lifter'.

The 'Money Maker' I grew from seed, they others I bought plants. The 'Mortgage Lifter' was put in late and I paid dearly for the plant because of the rave reviews I heard.

They were a huge disappointment ... small fruit and very few. The taste wasn't great either. 

Never again will I plant them!

The 'Money Makers' produced clusters of small tomatoes ... nothing to write home about.

My favorite was the 'Beef Master'. Lots of large slicing tomatoes, very juicy and flavorful.

The 'Parks Whopper' was a close second. I would grow them both again.

For canning I planted 'Sicilian Saucer' and 'Roma' . The weather was odd all season, and all the plants were very short, but these 2 varieties did very well. The Roma's produced TONS of uniform fruits that were great for canning. The real surprise for me was the 'Sicilian Saucer'. It produced some HUGE tomatoes and they were excellent for both slicing and canning, and very plentiful.

 

 

 I will definitely be growing these again!

On my list to try next year are the 'Tomato Berry' and 'Homestead 'tomatoes.

I'd love to hear from you if you have tried these varieties!

 

Something new we tried this year was Cucamelons.

 

They were a tiny, watermelon looking fruit that we thought were more of a novelty.

To my surprise, the kids liked them! The plants climb and so can be easily trained to grow up a trellis, so they will have a spot in next years garden.

The 'Sugar Snap' peas had a great year as always and will be planted again.

The bush beans did well too. I will always have a few varieties, already decided on 'Blue Lake' and 'Royal Burgundy' for next season.

 Carrots and onions had a good year. I'm not even sure what varieties I planted, but have already decided that there will be red onions as well as yellow. 

I battled the dreaded Cucumber beetles and squash bugs again this year, and so there were few zucchini's and cucumbers.

A garden is only as good as the soil, so I tried to get ahead of my spring chores by topdressing the garden with compost this fall. I FINALLY had a good amount of compost and I needed the space for fall cleanup. I hope to dig the rest this spring.

 Good looking stuff, huh?

The gardens are all cleaned out now, with the exception of the kale that I have been picking.

Planning a garden is ALMOST as much fun as actually growing it.

 Not long ago, a friend gave me this bag of seeds with a large variety of veggies to try.

Inside was almost everything a person needs to plant a good veggie garden. I don't think she realized how happy a bag of seeds could make someone - she looked SO surprised when I started jumping for joy! The only seeds I need to buy next year are peas, beets, and kale!

Planning next years garden just became SO EASY!