2018 Garden Highlights

It's been an unusual gardening year.  Cold wet spring.  Too much rain.  Ridiculous hot weather with lots of rain.  But despite the difficulties there are always lots of things that thrive and lots of things that suffer.  Bad spring for critters this year.  A ground hog was ravaging our early spring broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower until we trapped it and let to go down by the river 5 miles from home.  We plant sweet corn in weekly successions with the intent on having corn for a solid 2 month period or more starting the 3rd week in June through the end of August.  A raccoon repeatedly raided the corn patch just a each batch was ripening and almost ready to pick and wiped out our first three successions until we trapped it also and again released it down by the river.  Finally we started getting corn.  Deer discovered the sweet potatoes who love to munch the leaves.  The plants got set back some but once we put row cover over them the munching stopped and they recovered.

The last batch of corn for the season is an heirloom dent corn which is left to dry in the field which we grind for polenta.  It's about 9-10' tall.

The watermelon patch.  Crimson Sweet variety.  Absurdly large for this variety due to the excessive rain. (38+ lbs.)  Very sweet as always but somewhat watery as you might expect.  Alongside the watermelons is a planting of muskmelons (cantaloupes) - also very sweet but a little watery also this year.

Tomatoes on the left - Reisentraube cherry tomatoes, San Marzano paste tomatoes, Roma paste tomatoes, Radiator Charlies Mortgage Lifter slicing tomatoes, German Johnson slicing tomatoes, and Principe Borghese tomatoes for sun drying.  Peppers on the right - Santa Fe Grande, cayenne, jalapeno, Hatch Big Jim chile, Regular sweet green / red peppers and poblano peppers.  Also in the picture are tomatilllos used to make salsa verde.

Principe Borghese tomatoes.  They are about the size of a golf ball.  The seeds I use are imported from Italy.  Used to make sun-dried tomatoes though with our super high humidity I have to dry them in a dehydrator.  Really yummy.

Regular green / red bell pepper

 

Hatch Big Jim Chile - some still green

Cayenne peppers

Poblano peppers

 This is our old - I mean oooold corn crib with tumble down shedrow.  Equipment is parked under the shedrow and the corn crib itself is used as a drying shed.

The interior of the corn crib is completely lined with 1/4" hardware cloth - slat walls, ceiling and under the flooring - making it totally rodent proof.  The slat walls provide good airflow.  Here is part of this year's onion crop.

Raised beds along the bottom edge of the garden.  Basil, shallots, leeks, Saffon crocus, strawberries, kitchen herbs and asparagus.  The long term plan is to convert most or all of the main garden (65' x 100') to raised beds.

Two varieties of sweet potatoes this year.  Purple skin white flesh Japanese Marsuki and orange skin orange flesh Hernandez.  Should be a very good crop.