Garden update
This was our weekend harvest from the garden: delicious cherry tomatoes and the second batch of sugar snap peas. Today I’ll pick a bunch of sage to roast a chicken and some basil for freezing. We’ll have more cherry tomatoes soon, too.
Lessons learned so far:
- Next year I’m not planting pole beans. They got gigantic and took over the garden, but so far the entire harvest has been four beans. Four. I’d rather have more tomatoes that I can freeze.
- I think I’m going to skip spinach, too. And, forget fancy mixes of lettuce; I’m planting romaine. The spinach got unruly and some of the lettuce was too bitter for my family’s tastes.
- Aggressively pruning tomato plants may be overrated. Our cherry tomato plant is dripping with bunches of fruit and I did very little pruning. However, the beefsteak plant is being overgrown by some beans and so far, I only have five or six good-sized tomatoes (though there are more flowers and buds). I’m going to cut the bean plant back and give the tomatoes more support, but maybe it would have done better if I had removed more.
- We think rabbits stole a low-hanging peach and a groundhog living under our front porch is the main suspect for snatching a large, green Empire apple from a low branch. There are still a couple peaches high in one tree; those should be safe. However, our overabundance of wildlife and their apparent preference for sweet fruit is making me rethink planting berries next year.
Still to come: carrots, beefsteak tomatoes, and more herbs. This was an experimental year and I’m not unhappy with the results. There’s room for improvement but heck, I’m somewhwat amazed that I managed to get anything to grow.
