It's been almost a year now since I started our little vegetable garden, I think Liz and I have had a lot of fun with our experiments, and learned quite a lot. As 2011 comes to a close, here's what's going on in my garden:
Late Summer, Bill helped me convert the circular bed into four raised square beds. The weed situation in the round bed was a nightmare, and a lot of the space was wasted as I had to walk all over the bed to get to the vegetables. Right now I have brocolli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, carrots, spinach, kohlrabi, spring onions, kale, and parsley growing in the beds. Through the Winter, these beds seem to perform the best as they get the most hours of sun.
Kohlrabi - not quite sure yet what to do with this, but I'm sure it will be good, and the kids will eat it all up just as they have been doing with all the other vegetables I've grown - not.
Kale - slow to get started this fall, but really good in salads, now it's getting a little larger I need to make some 'kale chips' with it.
The other part of the garden doesn't have a lot going on right now. The eggplant (aubergine) continued producing all the way into November with delicious eggplants, definitely plan to plant at least three different types of eggplant next Summer. I never really had much success with zucchini - the plant would get huge, then a few little zucchini would form, then a bug would get in them and that would be the end of it. The hippy bloke up the road told us to plant basil under them to keep out the bugs, but as Liz and I have discussed, they take up so much room, for not a whole lot of yield, and they're not even a veg we're that interested in, so I think I'm going to forgo zucchini for next year. I had a similar problem with butternut squash - big plant, little vegetable, bugs, so no to those too. The brocollini I tried this fall, grows incredibly fast, it tastes OKish, but the heads flower so quickly, it gets bitter if I don't get to it in time, the bees love the flowering heads though - I may just plant some in the borders around the veg garden this spring just to encourage the bees.
Anyway, look at Jazz - my little garden sentry.
The bad: Frigging stinkhorns in one of my beds. These things are my gardening nemesis, just when I think I've eradicated them, one or two reappear. They are completely non-toxic, but they smell like s##t - to encourage little flies to them, I truly hate them. So far, they're only in with the rutabagas, which is OK, as after I planted all of these rutabagas, I went and bought one to eat, and it didn't get very good reviews from the family testers.
The Unexpected: Clearly the compost I thought I'd composted hadn't really composted, as now I have little volunteers from it popping up in the two beds I spread it in. Could be butternut squash, could be zucchini, could even be a melon - I'll let them go for a while.
This little tomato plant is popping up next to the planter that I grew my best tomatoes in last Summer, I'm curious to see if it can make it.
Finally, my two best garden companions:
Jazz isn't afraid to admit she's got a few more grey hairs this year (possibly more than me now).
Guess who got her 'heartworm negative' all clear this week?
2012 Resolutions: Post more - we have some crazy stuff coming up in our future so it shouldn't be too hard. Work at least half as hard as the little sugar ants that just can't seem to stay away from my kitchen. Get five dead hang pull ups, and pistol squat on both legs (Liz is really enjoying working towards this goal!)
Happy New Year!
