It seems that all winter long, I look over gardening magazines, review the results of last year’s garden and buy seeds to get started.  I use my guest bathroom as my winter green house and hopefully have some plants for the spring.   This year was no exception.   I planned, fretted and dreamed.  Over winter, I planted 3 types of garlic.   I also left some onions in over winter.   In the spring I was checking on the garlic, onions and second spring of asparagus.   Still not quite ready for asparagus.    My strawberries took over any spot where I would let them.

The vegetable garden is 500 square feet, fenced in too keep the deer and dogs out.      I have four raised beds, each 16 square feet, I have one area that has been tilled and setup for my root vegetables.  This year that area has sweet potatoes, I have a strawberry bed, asparagus bed and then the rest is for planning each year.  The blueberries are in their own area and the herbs are all closer to the kitchen.

What did not do well this year?

• Peas-  Only able to harvest enough to add to small stir fry.
• Squash-  Squash bugs this year have completely decimated my yellow squash, we harvested three small squashes
• Zucchini-  Not sure why we’ve just gotten NO zucchini (I have plenty of bees)
• Carrots-  These became food for bunnies, I’m sure.   The tops were all down and withered one day, the tops of all the carrots were chomped down.   I harvested to save what I could… disappointing…. The second planting is still in the ground.
• Tomatoes-   I’m putting the tomatoes here, although we still have a ways to go.  The plants are all scraggly and the leaves have rust.    I’ve gotten romas to make some sauce and the yellow tomatoes are EXCELLENT with raw cucumbers.  But it doesn’t look like we’re going to get as many tomatoes as last year, when we canned for a few weekends and had three large batches of sauce and some salsa.

What did well?

• Purple potatoes-  each plant gave me more than a pound of potatoes.
• Cucumbers- 3 cucumber plants, way more than we need.  1 plant for next year
  • I’ve been making dill pickle spears and eating cucumbers raw for more than a month.  I believe there are more than 20 cucumbers still waiting for disposition 🙂
• Gherkin cucumbers-   I love this little plant and am looking forward to the gherkin pickles from these.    Next year I’ll plant them away from the regular cucumbers.
• Eggplants-  This year we went with a Japanese fingerling? variety.   Loved these in stir fries.
• Beans-  I really appreciated these bushes this year. I only put two bushes in, next year I’ll put in four bushes.  We harvested beans for quite some time and still are harvesting beans.
• Kale-   GREAT baked with potatoes and great in smoothies.   Three plants are too much for us
• Blueberries did well until a hole in our netting let the birds in.   It only took a day or two to have them decimated….
• Green Peppers-  9 plants seem to be perfect for us, we received just enough peppers to support what we needed this year, but nothing for the freezer.
• Garlic and Onions-  Although  not as many made it over the winter (I believe chipmunks were the cause) I’m very pleased with the results.

The jury is still out on the sweet potatoes.

 

Update:

15 pounds of sweet potatoes!   They are so beautiful!   I  just pulled up my green pepper plants and picked the last of my green peppers!  Stuffed green pepper soup and fajitas were on the menu this week.  I also sliced up some and froze them.   We’re going to have stuffed peppers later this week and