July Garden Update

It's time for a garden update! 

Sammy's tomatoes are doing amazing. Once the weather was consistently warm, we took off the water insulators. It took no time at all for them to triple in size, flowers to bloom, and tomatoes to come on! I don't like tomatoes, but Sam loves coming down to the garden and popping a handful into his mouth. 

I am so thankful we had a good carrot year! The first year we did carrots, they were great. Two years in a row after that, not so much. But this year we redeemed ourselves. I pulled all the carrots on the 19th, and shortly thereafter we pickled them! We got 8 pint jars of pickled carrots and they are DELICIOUS. We plan to plant a fall crop here shortly. 

 

Unfortunately our brussel sprouts were a bust. They were growing and doing just fine, and then all of a sudden I noticed they were infested with some kind of weird bug. Like seriously infested. beyond all hope of saving. So we pulled them and threw them out. We'll have to do some research to figure out what happened.  

Remember we started a second bed of strawberries? We still have our original bed, but we were gifted some new strawberry starts from our neighbor, and so we started a new bed. Both beds are thriving. Our original bed gave us TONS of strawberries over a 2 week period, then was done. Our new bed has been consistent with giving us a couple every day, with no end in site yet. 

 

 

 

Our snap peas have grown, bloomed, given us a great deal of snap peas, and have since wrapped up and been pulled. They make the perfect in-garden snack! 

 

 

Our bush beans were sooooo slow to get going, but finally took off. Everyday I go through the bushes and pull a few here and there and add them to a bag to await a "family sized" amount before cooking. The chickens are always jealous when I show them my bean haul, haha. 

 

I didn't know if I was going to get any raspberries this year, but I am happy to report that I see some flowers!! Not a lot, some a few here and there. So we will see what happens. I don't expect it to be a huge haul, since the bed is only on it's second year and still getting established, but I will take some over none for sure! Especially when I thought I wouldn't get any! 

  

 

 

Our broccoli has come and gone. It doesn't take too long for the broccoli plants to mature, heads to form, and then be ready to be picked. I think I had cut all the heads in the span of 2 weeks. We ate some, but I blanched and froze most. Next year I'd like to try my hand at pickling....since I just saw at a farm stand pickled broccoli! 
 

The corn.....boy, I really didn't think our corn was going to take this year. Because our spring was cooler and overcast, a lot of things were just taking forever. That was the case with our corn. It came in slow, spotty, and we were thinking it was a no go. Then, to our surprise, a growth spurt! We definitely were not "knee high by the 4th of July" but we keep chugging along. 

We also discovered a few surprise mystery squash plants and a pumpkin plant! I'm SO excited to see a pumpkin starting! 

So our radishes were one of the crops that DID take off and grow fast. We harvested those back in June. So that left the beets, the crop in the front. We thought they were ready to pull, based off the tops, but they really weren't. We should have let them go longer, but ehh, I guess we got too excited. We pulled them early and they were small. But oh well. Lesson learned. We plan to plant another crop of beets, as well as radishes, here very soon. 

 

I forgot to take some full garden photos this month, so I don't have any. But I do have a few of Timothy helping me water! And he's a cutie pie, so I think that makes up for it, lol. 

With love,

Mama Hauck