July & August Garden Progress

I didn't manage to do a July garden update, so we are combining July and August into one.

Listen, I never pretended to know what to do or how to garden. I literally make things up as I go. I don't have a green thumb. It's more of a yellow-green thumb. Could go either way, based entirely on luck, haha.  This season, while I've been happy with some crops, I have been pretty disappointed in others. So this summer wasn't our best year. Whatever. Still have time to stock up before the apocalypse, right? Right!? 

The radishes smashed it out of the park. I loved being able to pull a couple every few days to slice up for on top of salads. I finally decided to pull them all at once, as they store really well in the fridge after being cleaned, ends cut, and placed in a baggy with a paper towel. Then I kept some for slicing up later for salads, and the rest we pan fried. They taste delicious pan fried. Especially when combined with our beets. We didn't get enough beets to can this year, the bed just came up too spotty and then I had an issue with the leaves, but we had enough for a few pan fried meals. 

 

 

This was apparently the year for spotty beds. Sometimes we kill it on carrots, other times we ride the struggle bus. We were in the middle this year. Bed was spotty, so didn't get as much as we wanted, but we got enough for a few roasted carrot meals, with enough to set aside for me to slice on top of my salads for a few weeks. Don't ask me why some seeds germinate and others don't when I literally kiss each one before lovingly placing it in the ground. 

Tomatoes are always a success for us. Too bad I freaking hate eating tomatoes. I diligently picked them every few days for Sam though, throwing the weird ones into the chickens to appease the dinosaur decedents, ensuring I stay on their good side. 

 

We realized we fucked up on the raspberries. This was season three with them, and we should have been getting berries. However, we didn't, and after reading, we realized we shouldn't have cut them back the past two Autumns. But, you know, google is hard to navigate sometimes. And lots of searches told us to cut back. So we did. But then a search asking why we didn't have any berries this year told us it's because we cut them back. *sigh* So we are NOT going to cut them back this fall, and will see what happens next season. 

The strawberries kicked ass. We got a good crop of little berries in early May and June. Then they took an intermission the month of July. Come August though, they were all but throwing up strawberries in my hands, and bigger ones too, which totally made my day. I had to fight the wasps for them though. They are still going strong, so I'm thinking I'll be getting berries for a long while still. 

 

The beans also did really well this year, as they normally do. Thanks, beans. I had bush beans and trellis beans. The bush beans are now coming to a close, and I'm about to pull them out, but the trellis beans are just now gearing up to flower! So I'm looking forward to getting beans all throughout September. 

 

 

The cauliflower. Never had an issue with cauliflower, ever. Until this year. Everything was going great, heads are all growing beautifully, and then all of them became infested with these little bugs that are kinda powdery like and I had to pull them all out because neem oil didn't bother them at all. Really made me mad. 

And then the brussel sprouts. I was all excited when my mom got them for me, and I kept telling everyone to shut up and be patient, that they would do something any day. Any day now. But, they didn't. And then they ALSO became infested with those same little powdery bugs, so I had to pull them too. They were beautiful while they tried to grow though. 

 

 

The broccoli, as I stated earlier in the summer, was planted in a bed we forgot was straight chicken poop. Very nitrogen heavy. And while broccoli do like nitrogen, I guess they didn't like just how much there was. So a few of them bolted right away. However, once we got that drama out of the way, the rest produced pretty decent heads. 
 

 

My porch plants and herbs are doing amazing. I got multiple large harvests on my mint, with a couple more left to go probably. I'm going to cut all of my rosemary here soon and hang it in the house to dry out. I'm crossing my fingers one of these flowers will turn into a pumpkin here soon. And lastly, my lunchbox pepper plant and jalapeno plant have given me multiple peppers (with more on the way!) which were really fun to cut up and put on salads and scrambled eggs. 

 

 

 

 
 

There you have it. Some wins, some losses. We can't all be perfect gardeners, now can we? 

Oh right! Almost forgot about the apricot tree. Last year we didn't get to pick until the first two weeks of August, this year, it was the third week of July. We cut the tree back a bit last season, and the result was bigger fruit this year, which was awesome. We all ate apricots daily for a good three weeks. And I cut and froze a whole bunch for future smoothies too. A successful year for the apricot tree for sure.  

 

 

With love,

Mama Hauck