Revisiting My Summer Garden for the December Garden Journal Challenge
The gardening season is well over here in upstate New York, USA. I have not had a chance to post on Hive in quite a while as I am busy studying about my newest passion in life, a subject for a future post. But here I am on vacation in Nashville Tennessee, with nothing to do but wait for my daughter to return from an evening work meeting. What better time than to peruse my photos? Lo, I found a great many pics, intended for a garden journal post, that I took in months past. Now that my garden is mostly ripped up and heaped in compost piles, it's been fun to revisit it through photos.
Man did I ever eat well in August! I had a variety of foods then, but far too many fruits. I bought a chest freezer just to have somewhere to put all the strawberries, raspberries and peaches I simply could not eat or give away. Things could have been worse!!
My strawberries were grown in an 8 foot by 2 foot elevated planter. I got a good 15 quarts out of them! Far more than I needed and, although strawberries are my favorite fruit, I won't be growing them again next year. I hope to use this planter instead for lettuces, and to keep a supply of same producing for me for as much of the year I can. I've grown very fond of having a nice big salad of homegrown greens for breakfast every day (keeps me regular!) and had to buy them this year. Wish me luck!
My third year peach tree produced a great many peaches. I made myself peach cobblers every morning for a few weeks there, and look forward to doing the same in future years.
This year I learned that raspberries, while easy to grow, are not so easy to keep tidy! Boy do they ever shoot up to the heavens quickly, too quickly this year for me to have trellised them. I hope to get a suitable trellis built over the winter, so that these scrumptious berries will be both happier and easier to harvest.
I planted three different varieties of pole beans, which sure looked lovely where I put them, but didn't really produce all that much. That was fine, because by the time the pole beans ripened, I had had my fill of bush beans. Next year, half as many bush beans (wax beans so that I can see them more easily while harvesting), and twice as many pole beans, is the plan for 2025
I forgot I had planted some lettuce for fall eating back by my acorn squash, but boy was I happy when I finally started eating this stuff. It was yummy, and gorgeous on the plate.
The crabapple I planted in a barrel three seasons ago is still going great guns, and I harvested enough to make a batch of red raspberry and crabapple jelly sometime soon.
Gardening can't all be about growing food, now can it? I managed to get quite a lovely sitting area going up on my temporarily reclaimed asphalt. All of this is easily folded up and gotten out of the way so that the area becomes, every winter, nothing more than a driveway to my garage. I miss having this pretty spot, but I love being able to drive my car into the garage, not having to shovel it out when it snows, and getting my driveway plowed, so I just have to live without. Temporarily.
Whenever I come close to wrapping up a garden journal post, I realize there is a great deal I haven't told you. Potatoes, onions, cabbage, garlic, herbs, flowers, nightshades, squashes, salsas, relishes, beets, parsnips, carrots and more.
I've got quite a bit of food stored for the winter, frozen, dried, canned, pickled, fermented, dehydrated and in dry storage. I always feel a relief when it's all over to be honest. But by sometime in February, I am refreshed, and it all starts up again.
Thanks for being here with me, y'all. Now go out and hug a tree.
Love from Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
This is my entry to The Hive Garden Community's last-of-2024 monthly garden journal challenge. Come on by and check out what others are growing all over this beautiful planet! And tell us about your own. You know you want to...
It is nice to see a post from you @owasco.
Your garden season is finished and mine is just starting.
We grow half as much as we used to and still have too much for the 2 of us to eat. This year my husband said he was only planting 3 tomato plants and he did but then I showed him all of the ones I dug out of the compost pile. I will be canning tomatoes.
lol. I only planted three too, three varieties, and it was more than enough for me. I canned a bunch, ate a bunch, shared a bunch, and had the perfect amount.
I have 4 that I saved and now I see several more coming up in different areas and we have a native tomato, the small ones, that come up all over the yard. we will have an abundance of them.
My yard is so small that I have to pull any plants I didn't plant myself up. We have bad blight here, too, and I have been advised not to let those volunteers grow, they can harbor blight. I imagine Florida is very different than NY though.
I don't think I have ever seen blight on a plant. Not to say we couldn't get it.
We have two kinds here, early and late. Early is unsightly but harmless. In late blight, the entire plant turns brown pretty much all at once. It stops producing, and the blight stays in the ground or in the foliage for next year. I don't put any of my tomato foliage in compost, but bag it all up and get it out of my yard immediately, whether it has blight or not.
I have heard others say this about tomato plants. I have always put them in it.
Ours get a fungus when we get a lot of rain but I do not know what kind, now I am wondering if it is blight they are getting.
To be safe, no more mater plants in the compost. Thank you for the info.
I love your enthusiasm for the garden and that you are taking what you have seen from this year and are already planning for next year.
I'm sure those you have shared your over abundance with are pretty happy too.
My enthusiasm flags in August, when I feel like a slave to my garden, and cannot leave home for more than a day or two. But this time of year, when everything is either brown or covered with snow, it sure looks dreamy out there in my imagination.
This was the first year I was able to give quite a lot away. I'm getting much better at this. I grow more of what I actually like to eat, instead of what I think a garden is supposed to have in it.
Amazing though how you heal over winter and even before the first hint of spring, our hearts start desiring to get started again. Thank goodness for that.
Do you ever take breaks from making art?
I know that if I stop singing for a few months, when I start again I swear I can sing better - I notice sensations that I was unable to notice when I sang regularly.
I do take breaks from art sometimes, but it usually is not on purpose or planned. It's just that sometimes, for some reason, my art table doesn't call out to me. Sometimes it is when I am focused on something else and other times I have no idea why it happens.
Sometimes what draws me back more heavily is when something inspires me to try something new or the idea of doing something I've always done, a little differently. So.... maybe I am also better after I've gotten away from it some. I never really looked at it that way.
I always have things ready at my art desk for my next inspiration. If the urge to create ascends on me, I can jump right back to it. 😊
Yes that's what happens when I stop singing, and start again. It's just a little different somehow, looser, less guarded. Surprising.
What a succesful garden you manage! All the while planning ahead. Thanks for joining in and for being the best curator this year when I couldn't always be. You are so appreciated.
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Thank you!! My pleasure, always.
Ah, nice to have a good rest. Why are you quitting strawberries? I did - too much work. And the magpies and bugs would eat them.
My beans haven't done great. They kept getting eaten by slaters and I've been a bit lackadaisical really on the garden front. I need to be more dedicated! I think coz I know I'm going away, combined with grief and a hip issue, meant, most of hte time it's all I could do - can do - to pull a few weeds, and what survives, survives.
These were annual strawberries, so delicious and had no snails or other problems in this container. BUT, I also have lots of perennial fruits - raspberries, peaches, pears and blueberries. It's too much dang fruit! I have started a few perennial plants, so I should have some.
I can understand your doing a bit less in your garden this year. It's been quite a year for you. You're going away again?
I was shocked at how many beans my eight foot row produced. I came to hate beans, they had to be harvested every single day for nearly two months. Green, so I couldn't see them easily, and I had to bend over. I wish I could plant everything in elevated beds like my strawberry bed, which had almost no diseases or pests.
See it's opposite to me, my raised beds are full of slaters!!! Grrr. Haha I love beans. Steamed and with seedy mustard . The best. My sister hated them. My Dad would always say how he ate green beans in the army like it was some exciting story.
And yes, if my hip tendon is healed by then. March.
Boy your garden did do well! And good for you at preserving it all. I had hundreds of peaches on my tree but they all disappeared before they ripened. No idea why or how...
All disappeared?! That is bizarre! And you have no idea? They weren't on the ground? I would have been devastated!
Sounds like someone had to have come and pick them all for that to happen. I got to mine a bit too late, so many of them ended up in my compost pile. Next year!
Nope none on the ground, none in the tree. Was pretty weird. But I don’t know why anyone would take half ripe peaches…
How nice it all looks, those raspberries have a spectacular color, someday I hope to be able to plant my own raspberries 😍
Raspberries are delicious, and make fantastic jams and sauces. My variety is thornless and produces twice in the year. Win win for sure. Thanks for stopping by.
I love that you shared about your growing season. I miss being outside and am trying to find things to keep busy. Now that Thanksgiving is over and the house is decorated I decided to pull out a huge puzzle to work on. I will do a few to pass some time during the afternoons. I just got two seed catalogs, now that is exciting albeit I really don't need anything. I never got many beans from my pole beans this year as they took forever to get tall and then not many pods. I did however get a lot of bush beans.
Yes same here with the bean harvests! In previous years, I've gotten more pole beans that I could eat. I got mine in late, and I figured that was why I got so few. I prefer them to bush beans. I might try something more daring in the pole bean department, such as long purple ones, I can't remember their name.
Ah, I grew long beans this year, Taiwan Yard-Long Beans. Yours were probably the Asian variety I believe called Chinese Red Noodle. Once August came I got a lot of them, the plant grew very tall before making the pods. I did like them!
Greetings🌱. How nice that you have sown and reaped the harvest all year. You have fed yourself in a very healthy way. Enjoy this vacation season, congratulations, you deserve it!
It's always a treat to look at your lovely plants and harvests my friend!
Those strawberries and peaches are mouthwatering. I'll bet the peach cobbler you made was delicious.
Those tomatoes must be an heirloom variety. They look a lot like the Cherokee tomatoes I grew over the summer.
I can't wait to see what you do next year with the garden!
Romain lettuce has a unique color. I wonder what it tastes like, is it similar to other lettuces?
I've never grown the yellow beans before but secretly always wanted to. I would usually convince myself not to buy or order them because in my head after all, 'it's just color'. Wow wax beans just got extra points! That's ironic not only due to what you said about harvesting but also
pigment is just one of if not the part of the bean I like the most. Yes, even more than eating it!
I miss peach trees. And peaches. You have inspired me to regrow one, here in the Midwest. It should be easy now with my knowledge and memories of why past stone fruit trees never lived very long.
I do not miss my raspberry jungle.
Hello friend!
What beautiful peaches!
I loved your harvest, a big !HUG from Brazil!