Garden Update – Beautiful Chaos

The garlic harvest was not as satisfying as I hoped it would be, but therefore I am very happy with our onions. We had 4 raised beds filled with onion sets and harvested around 25 kg of onions from these.

I had different varieties and all did Ok. In every bed there where smaller and bigger onions. Only with the variety Snowball there where a hand full of onions already going bad, but I do not know what the problem was. It could just be that I harvested them to late, or that they where to moist underneath all of the straw. I think I should not mulch the onions so thickly next year.

I had my husband hang all of the onions under the sealing to cure and hopefully they will store a long time this way. We will see how long they will last us. With some of the onions the leaves broke of and I can not hang these, so we store these on an egg tray. This way I hope they will store long enough until I can use them up.

Of course there is more to harvest in the garden at this time of year. We already have eaten a lot of potatoes harvesting them as we use them. And there is nothing like home grown potatoes. There is no store-bought potato that tastes so good. With the early potatoes the plants all have died back already, but it is to warm that I can store them. I just leave them in the ground and hope we have eaten trough them before the mice find them and before the potatoes sprout again. They will need to endure for a few more weeks before I can think of harvesting them for storage.

And then there are the green beans and peas to harvest. Luckily the kids help with cleaning them and we have eaten a few and froze a few for meals in the winter time.

We already ate a few zucchini and have many more to come. What can I do with all these zucchini? I still have so many glasses of pickled zucchini from last year, so I am not making any this year.

Despite the fact that the one pumpkin I planted in the wrong spot I am very happy with all the small pumpkins it seems to be producing. And they are growing bigger. I have a few more pumpkins on another spot of the garden, but this one seems to be doing best.

I also have some herbs and also have harvested some of them and dried them hanging underneath the sealing. These are dry and jarred. Ready to use in the kitchen.

I totally forgot to take pictures while harvesting the strawberries and the raspberries, but they where very good and the kids loved them. They where very excided to go and search for some new berries every day. Coming up soon are the blackberries.

We have eaten lettuce and, the kids have no patience, we have pulled still very small carrots to snack upon. Also we harvested our first cucumber.

The tomato plants are growing and growing and growing. I missed out on pruning them and now it is a small tomato forest and I have no idea what to do with them. Therefore I decided to just let them be. I merely gave a few outer stems some support by winding a thick rope around them that is knotted to a small bar above. I hope this will do and the tomato plants will not break off do to the wait of the tomatoes that should be growing on them soon. There are already tomatoes growing, but no changing colour jet.

And then the last thing I wanted to mention in this post is that apparently with one bed with cabbage I was too late to cover with some netting. The cabbage white beat me to this bed. Luckily I found the caterpillars before to much damage was done and I cleaned out the caterpillars and damaged leaves. I will have to keep an eye on this bed just in case I have overlooked some.

And I almost forgot about the red beets. We love red beets and have already harvested a few for soup and as a side. Also I have pickled some for the first time. We can hardly wait to try them.

When I wrote my last garden update I was not very happy with the results of the garden at that point. Now we are about one month later and a lot has happened. Not all is how I would like to see it, but for new made raised beds with only normal soil in them I think I should not complain.

At least we are harvesting some strawberries, which the children love. Also the raspberries are starting to ripen, so we can start harvesting these soon as well.

Furthermore we have harvested some lettuce. With the sweat peas we could already harvest the shoots, but we ratter have the peas, so we leave the shoots to grow and also have sown some more sweat peas for a later harvest. The green peas are a little bit behind, but are growing well too.

The fist bed I had sown in and covered with a thick layer of straw, some things sprouted, but it is pathetic considering how much I had sown. I have some red cabbage, a little more kale, a few white cabbages; the swede is doing Ok and needs some more space, the oatroot (vegetable oyster) came up well and I am looking forward to trying this vegetable out. I am growing this for the first time.

The onion sets and potatoes are doing great. When the Colorado potato beetle does not make to much damage, we should have a very nice potato harvest.

In between the onion sets I had sown carrots. A number of carrots did sprout by now, but the plantlets do not really want to grow somehow. The bed where I had sown carrots and lettuce later and I hat only covered with a thin layer of straw is looking better. Most of the seeds have sprouted here. I will have to wait and see if these carrots will grow better.

It is looking a lot different with the red beets between the garlic. The red beets that actually sprout also grew, but not many have sprouted. But there are sprouting new red beets al the time and stick there heads above the straw.

The tomato plants have set and are looking good, but are still very small. I hope I can harvest from them before the season is over.

The Paprika plants do not want to grow at all. I think the varieties for outdoors should probably also go in a greenhouse in this area.

The Dill is growing nicely and I should probably start harvesting this some time soon.

The corn and the pole beans sprouted nicely and are looking good.

The cucumbers are still small, but are looking good.

And I had sown some more. Sweat peas, spring onions, white cabbage, Kale and leeks. Beside the leeks everything came up nicely and will need to be replanted some time soon.

I have planted the pumpkins beside the greenhouse roof and in the compost bed which I had mulched with hay in the spring. The pumpkins beside the greenhouse roof have set and are looking fine, but are in a great contrast to the pumpkins I have planted in the compost bed. These are a lot bigger. The conditions in the composting bed must be a lot better. Even the only shortly planted potatoes are sticking there heads out of the straw already.

What I have noticed that there are only little insects and butterfly’s this year. I think we at least need more flowers and maybe we can do something to help insects and butterfly’s over the winter, so we hopefully have more again next year.