What's growing on....

I know I know... its like I fell off the face of the planet during the height of the growing season. Well this summer I moved  around my work schedule so that I could stay home with the kids... now I spend my days driving them to swim lessons, gymnastics, more swim lessons and dance camp.  (Yes we can cross off  "learn to swim" off our summer bucket list :) ) So blogging moves even further down my to do list. I have so many ideas for posts yet at the end of the day I feel like this.....

So I'm going to try and give a quick update... and sorry I don't have a lot of pictures. 

Trixy.... there has been such a huge learning curve when it comes to Trixy. I guess that is to be expected since she is my first dog. All and all though I don't think we're doing to bad. Really its a lot like have a child... you need to be consistent. She is no longer eating up my garden plants. She will come in and poke around when I am gardening but she doesn't destroy my garden. She insists on eating any weeds I pull up or chewing on anything I prune but thats fine with me. My husband is her alpha and I am her beta. Right now the big thing I am working on with her is Recall training. In the house I have no problems with recall, however outside is a different story. Especially when her dog friends are around. A friend gave me a great tip to keep a highly desirably treat in my pocket when I am outside and so far that is working really well. She has yet to see a deer though and I just have to hope that my husband is around when that happens. 

Alliums Bed (i.e. onions, garlic, leeks, etc)
This year I grew one square foot garden (4ft x4ft) dedicated to my alliums. The garlic and onions are done and have been harvested.  The big learning point here was the onions. I finally figured out how to grow onions from seed. Basically densely sow onion seed in large trays (not single cell trays). Onion transplants are pretty hardy... you can pull and tug on the roots and stick them in the soil and they still grow. I am still on the look out for a good red onion seed, the redwing variety I tried this year did not do all to great. I recently ordered music garlic and so I am excited to add this to my garlic bed this coming fall. This bed will be home to my nightshades next year so I am taking advantage of the extra time to start building up the bed with leaf compost, egg shells (for extra calcium) and I may even try some pea shoots in the fall.

Nightshade bed
I have one square foot garden (4ft x4ft) dedicated to nightshades... it contains 2 tomatoes, 4 eggplants and 4 chillis. I think next year I will leave the tomatoes out of the square foot garden and grow more chillis and eggplant. Tomatoes are just unruly. Casper eggplant so far is really working out well. It is easy to grow from seed and is the first to fruit. For chillis I am growing 6 varieties this year: cayenne, greek peppericino (spelling?), ancho, jalepeno, thai, and bhut. The cayenne and thai really have taken off but really all the chilli plants are doing fine.

Tomatoes
So I have four that are producing ripe tomatoes....

• Sungold Cherry- good old reliable :) love this tomato... I eat 1-2 handfuls of these daily.
• Black Cherry- First year growing this and definitely a keeper. Prolific, tastes great and my daughter likes it. You really can't ask for more.
• Tasty grape hybrid- This year the deer discovered how good this one tastes... so I now have to spray deer repellent around the plant when I see some of these ripening.
• Supertasty Hybrid- I am so excited to have a ripe large tomato this early in the season. The fruit have no cracking and look beautiful. I will be cutting into one tomorrow lets hope it tastes good. 

Watermelon

I grew two small fruited watermelon (sugar baby and blacktail mountain). They were doing really great till they got shaded by the monster tomatoes (rookie mistake), so I will have to try these again next year in a better location. 

Cucumbers

Cucumbers are chugging along... my new cucumber, the mexican sour gherkin is an absolute hit ... kids love them. Definitely a keeper and I will grow at least two of these plants next year. 

Cabbage and cauliflower

These were doing great but until the beginning of July... now the cabbage are riddled with insect holes (arguably I can still eat them) and the cauliflower ... well they are shriveled and bitter. I didn't tie up the cauliflower as I was supposed to.... still not sure its worth all the effort though. I think I may give up on the cauliflower. 

What's growing on....

Second try at a lime plant... first one died over the winter... this one is a dwarf beers lime...

Blueberry bushes .. this year I have put up bird netting...

The hardy kiwi and golden ann raspberry plants have grown out of control...not sure if you can see the sage, oregano and chives that are fighting to get some light... I transplanted the chives out of here after this photo was taken. Oregano and sage are holding their own.

Slowly but surely I am getting the kiwis trellised properly....

Garlics started producing scapes... Chinese pinks were first to scape they should be ready soon. (Is scape a verb? Well now it is)

Spinach, arugula and cilantro in my square foot garden....

I let this volunteer pumpkin go... its not vining like I would have thought.. its massive though...

This is a pumpkin volunteer that I transplanted... its not growing as well but it is flowering!!

My chilli plant from last year is happy to be back in the ground.

I got this creeping thyme on clearance last year... its flowering :)

Sunchoke!! Found these tubers at Wegmans.

My crazy onion/leek garden.. onions are not flowering this year (thats a good thing)

My new garden space.. this is for those veggies that I want to keep away from the wildlife in my yard (okra, melons, cukes, tomatoes) My yard backs into a forrest so wildlife pressure is pretty high.

Of course the first tomato to fruit is my sungold!!

Bit of a late start to my cantelope...

My eggplant from last year is happy to be back in the ground and is flowering :)

Trying a different okra variety this year... "millionaire" from Johnny's select seed.

Trying my hand at leeks... instead of hilling these (to blanch the stalk) I buried these more than 6 inches underground.

Finally figured out how to grow cilantro from seed!

Mint

Nasturtium

Lemon grass is happy to be back in the ground:)

I am trying ginger this year... in my climate I should be growing this in a pot but I am bad with pots so I am going to try transplanting this to a pot in the fall.

Chamomile is chugging along... I need to figure out how to make this into tea.

My mystery raspberry plant is fruiting... I will know soon enough if it is a black jewel raspberry or red killarney raspberry.

One plant that is noticably missing are my cukes... they did not take to well to being transplanted this year... I am doctoring the first set of transplants and have reseeded a second set. Lets see how it goes.