Our garden Sept 2016: Our only cantaloupe that survived was stolen before I could harvest it.

Sept 2016: Our diseased cantalopue

I decided to try growing cantaloupe last year after getting horribly sick (from a virus form of food poisoning) for a whole month from a cantaloupe I got at our local grocery store the prior year.   I love cantaloupe so I was hoping I could grow my own and not have to worry about getting food poisoning again.  Unfortunately it doesn't look like this will work, since our cantaloupe was a total flop due to disease, pests, and theft.

 
 At first our cantaloupe was thriving.  It was growing so big I had to trim it back just to fit on our trellises.  But then one day I saw a bug in one of the cantaloupes just starting to grow.  I took the picture above and looked up what bug it was.  Turns out it was a spotted cucumber beetle.  Not only does this beetle eat melon and cucumber plants, but they also spread bacterial wilt.  Which explains why shortly after my melons and the whole plant started to look diseased after spotting the cucumber beetle feasting on my plants (pictured below). 

Our garden Sept 2016: cantaloupe with bacterial wilt

The only cantaloupe that survived last year from the attack of the cucumber beetles was stolen.  I can only imagine that it was a person who came into our garden and took it, since it's too big for a squirrel to take.  This time (unlike yrs ago) I didn't catch the thief in the act.  As you can imagine the fact that the only two cantaloupes I've ever grown we're both stolen has been rather discouraging.  So while I know it's possible to try to prevent pests and thefts in your garden, it's frankly not worth the work to me.  I like to try to grow low maintenance high reward veggies, and apparently cantaloupe doesn't quite make the cut.   So I'm throwing in the towel this year and plan to buy from our local farmers market instead this year. 

Have you ever grown cantaloupe or had cucumber beetles or problems with garden thieves?  If so I'd love to hear about it. 

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created by Sebastian Meyer For the movie Snow White and the Huntsman

Every year before spring, I start dreaming of my ultimate garden and yard.  I let my landscaping dreams go wild.  The reality is I usually just have enough energy to focus on planting and harvesting our vegetable garden.  So while I know it's likely I won't get around to implementing most of any of my landscaping ideals, I still love to dream about it.

Our strawberries June 2015

Our first strawberry harvest of the 2015 season from June week 1 2 days later I harvested twice as much!

Garden B Oct 1 2014

I normally do post on our garden twice a month during it's peak and once a month the rest of the gardening season, but I think going forward I'll only do a few posts a season.  I plan to post during the start, middle, and toward the end of the season.  This year for our end of season garden posts I've split it up into 3 posts What We Plan to Different Next Year In Our Garden, What Worked For Us In Our Garden This Year, and this post will conclude our garden posts for the season with a video tour of our garden.

Garden A: Oct 1 2014 cucumbers, Roma tomatoes, beets

While starting to take down our garden, I always reflect on the season and what I would do differently next year.  I started to take down some of our garden last week, despite our beautiful weather (highs in the 60s).  This year for gardening my plan was to have our garden be as care free as possible, while still providing us with our fav veggies for the summer and early fall.  So I'm judging this season on how well our garden accomplished these goals.  In my last post I reflected on what worked for us this year.  In this post I plan to share what didn't fit our goals of low maintenance, and high yields of veggies and fruits we love.

Oct 1 2014 Garden A; Big or better tomatoes (I thought they were Roma when I bought it)

While starting to take down our garden, I always reflect on the season and what I would do differently next year.  I started to take down some of our garden this week, despite our beautiful weather (it was almost 70 a couple days ago).  I took down our beans which are not growing any new beans any more, some tomato plants (only the ones with no tomatoes on them), and cucumbers.  I think it's possible the cucumbers might even still grow, but I really just wanted to have all our trellises put away for the season.  I did leave one cucumber plant undisturbed as a test just to know. 

Our Garden July W3 2014

Our garden is in full bloom right now and has been doing great due to the cooler temps this summer and lots of rain.  I've only had to water our garden when we planted so far.  Usually the only thing I do in July except for the occasional weeding is watering in early mourning and guiding tomatoes in their cages, and beans and cucumbers up their trellises.

Wow has this post been late this year!  We have been so busy here this year working on home projects (maintenance and remodelling), that I haven't had time to post about our garden. It's also been amazing weather here (believe it our not our summers can be very hot here but this year it's been upper 70s instead) that I've been rather compelled to hang outside rather than hang out inside in air conditioning being a nerd.  I do apologize for those who do follow our garden every year.

Edibles can be pretty!  ornamental kale image via AZ Plant Lady

Well it's time to start planning your garden, even though it doesn't look like it today in Minneapolis!  We still have about a foot of snow on the ground, puddles and ice on the side-walks, and it's snowing as I write right now (just flurries).   But before you know it, it will be time to start planting so I am taking this time to finalize our garden plans for this year.  I think the best way to start planning your garden is to reflect on past experiences (assuming your not new to gardening), and to consider what you hope to accomplish with your garden this year.  What has worked for you before?  What problems have you had in the past?  What are your goals for your garden this year?

Mr Cat always inspects our root crops!

Our garden still has a few things in it but it's mostly been put to bed now.  We still have beets, rutabaga, carrots, parsley and chives, kale and mustard greens.  Soon I plan to harvest what is left before the ground freezes or we get a big snow.  We already had a light snow last week (see the picture of our garden below), and in MN you never know when the next one will come!

our over ripe cucumbers and jalapenos

I know this is coming really late, but better late than never right!  I was so swamped with our tomato harvest (both harvesting and preserving read more about that here) doing our kitchen renovation, and teaching sewing (which I do only in the fall and spring), that I've had a hard time finding the time to blog!  It was also hard to even keep up with weighing everything.  Most colanders I used to harvest our tomatoes with were over the weight limit for our scale.  I ended up guessing at the end (as I ended up doing last year too).  So I don't know how accurate it is.

It's been crazy busy around here now that I'm teaching sewing (only for two more weeks though) and we have been doing our kitchen remodel (almost done, just one more big project to do), so I've been behind again on our garden updates as well as preserving our garden.

dehydrating our many tomatoes and catnip

 As I said in my last post we are in the middle of a kitchen renovation so I've been pretty busy.  Tomatoes have been We have been harvesting about 17 lbs a week lately and I have been having to take breaks from our kitchen renovation to dehydrate tomatoes and cook down tomato sauce into a tomato concentrate (takes up less space and is less likely to spoil).  Our green beans have slowed down now, they were producing crazy before we were giving them out to everyone we know.  Ironically we had problems getting them to grow in the spring so I had to replant several times.  Next year we plan to plant half as many beans and plant more cucumbers instead.  The leaves on both our cucumbers and beans are starting to turn brown and die now, but are still producing.

Garden A: August 3 2013

I've been so busy lately I haven't had time to write about our garden.  And it's really in it's full glory now too.  We're in the middle of our kitchen renovations right and I've been having to work on the DIY part of the reno this week, and I'm also hosting a brunch this weekend for family (look for post to come on easy brunch crowd pleasers soon).  And next week I plan to work hard on making fall fashion accessories to add to my Etsy shop, Ornute.

One of our cauliflower is finally starting to turn into a head: Back Yard Aug 3 2013

I usually post often about our garden in the summer, but I must admit I haven't been in our garden much these days so I don't think to write about it.  Our garden has been doing good, just a little slow to get going due to colder temps and a late planting, so I've had no need to garden at all.  Nothing like last year!  I've only been occasionally harvesting kale, beans, tomatoes, basil, jalapenos, broccoli, beets, and cucumbers.  I've actually only watered twice this year because it's been cooler and partly cloudy most days, even when it hasn't rained.

Taken July 16 2013 in our backyard: our heirloom blue podded sugar snap peas

Our gardens at a lull right now due to late planting of our peas and beans (due to our late spring and late planting) which are usually in full swing now. Our garden is in a state of transition from cool spring plants (peas, broccoli, greens, cilantro, berries, etc.) to warm season plants (beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, etc.)  So basically right now is all about harvesting and planting second crops for fall (which I plan to do this weekend).

July 1 2013 Garden B: our purple podded pole beans are starting late and starting to vine up

Our gardens been growing slowly due to our late start planting this year, but it is starting to produce.  Last week was my first time grocery shopping this season when I realized I didn't have to buy as much at the store, because our garden is producing enough.  Love that time of year!

our raspberries are starting to form

It has been a crazy unusually cold (even for MN) spring and needless to say our garden was very late this year.  At least we weren't planning on doing any big landscaping projects this year like we did in 2011 which was also an unusually cold and snowy late spring.

various stages of lettuce stumps growing

Since last year our lettuce did not grow well at all because I grew it in too small of a container and I didn't thin it enough (planted them to close).  So we have been buying our lettuce for a long time now and I am determined to grow my own this year and year round too!  I have been obsessed lately with taco salads (made in a double batch of my taco recipe) and a simple tangerine salad (with apricot Stilton cheese, mandarin oranges, and olive oil and Trader Joe's orange champagne vinegar), so I have been using a lot of lettuce!