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.

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 garden October W1 before we took most of it down for winter

I think the most important part of gardening is reflection, so you can learn from your successes and misses. We are so far under our produce tally from last year and even though we still have lots of root vegetables to harvest and a head of broccoli, I doubt we will have produced more than last year.  Last year we ended the season with 190 lbs of produce, so far we have 118 lbs, last year we had 155lbs at this time of year.

Our purple broccoli in our front bed (that we planted a few weeks behind the ones in our main garden) is just finally now growing a head

Our garden hasn't produced much this month due to the drought.  They said on the weather channel that this is the 2nd driest fall ever on record in MN.  Well, not much you can do about that.  I can only spend so much time watering...  I looked at last years record (listed below), and noticed we did 100 lbs in tomatoes, and since we did twice what we did last year in August for tomatoes (and planted more than last year) I was expecting alot of tomatoes like 100-150 lbs!  Instead we only did 13 lbs!  Not even half of what we did last month!  The beans are the same.  Overall we we're trending to produce more than last year, but if you look at this year compared to last year you can see we are 20lbs under what we did last year. 

Grass hoppers making whoopee in our beans.  I guess the bean jungle is a sexy place!

This month has flown by!  Hard to believe fall is almost here. We've been producing about 5-6lbs of tomatoes every few days and 2 lbs of beans.  They are the true rock stars of  the garden right now.  I'm pretty much constantly making tomato sauce (stay tuned for a post about how I make my sauce to come soon), and freezing beans these days.  Last year was our first year producing veggies on a large scale and I so under estimated the time it takes to preserve it all in August, Sept, and October.  This year I'm better prepared.

I didn't know if our squash, zuchini, and pumpkins would grow in our new garden bed, because it is lightly shaded and we've never grown any before.  I was so happy that they seemed to be growing well.  Then local fellow blogger and gardener Amy of Get Busy Gardening alerted me to stay on the lookout for squash borer.  When I learned of this pest I asked my next door neighbor who is an avid gardener if he's had any problems.  He said he did not.  I knew he had a huge squash plant last year and years before that too, so I breathed a sigh of relief mine should be fine I figured.  Maybe I got a little too comfortable.....

Our pumpkin plant showing wilt due to a squash borer infestation

Tomatoes in Garden A

Our gardens been doing pretty good lately.  I spend most my time just cutting back overgrown plants, weeding, training, and harvesting.  I luckily haven't had to water much, every time I'm about to it rains.  Our biggest harvest has been peas lately (about 4 oz of peas every few days) but they are dying out now.  We are starting to have or tomatoes ripening (we've harvested 5 so far) and I picked 4 huge cucumbers so far.  I'm so happy that they are doing well (it's been about 3 years since we've had a good cucumber crop).

Garden B July W3

I can't believe it's nearly the end of July!  Time has been going by so fast.  It seems like just yesterday that I was planting seeds wondering if any of it would even grow.  Now our garden looks like an over grown jungle!  And so many things that I wasn't sure if they would pan out look like they're going to make it.  Yea!  This is my favorite time of the gardening season because it's too late to plant anything (except for fall crops) and the only work I need to do is watering, weeding, light harvesting, pest control, and training vining plants and tomatoes.  After that it's time to just sit back and let them grow.  I love how at this time of the year you also know what kind of harvest you can anticipate.  I can already tell we're going to have lots of tomatoes, beans, radishes, peas, kale, basil, zucchini, cucumbers, beets, rutabaga, turnips, and carrots.  That is assuming we don't have any bug problems or disease.  I can't wait!  What's growing in your garden?