Why should you have a garden? Well, let me show you.
Today I picked quite a bit out of the garden.
Let’s start with the broccoli. I planted eight Green Goliath broccoli plants – and seven survived (the other seemed to be a runt with very thick leaves and never grew after it was transplanted.
I picked the broccoli a little late; I should have picked it yesterday but I got too caught up in other things. So it was picked this morning. There was a bit of yellow and some of the flowers opening up on the head, but that is fine. Out of all seven Green Goliath broccoli plants, there was a total of 12 pounds, 3 ounces of broccoli. Yes – a huge amount. That is up by quite a bit compared to last year when I planted the same variety and all eight made it. Last year I got just over five pounds of broccoli – this year it has more than doubled!
Why the difference? I am kind of wondering if the compost tea spray really has made a difference. All of my plants are growing exceptionally well this year with spraying compost tea on the leaves once a week.
Here is the largest head that weighed in at two pounds, 8 3/8 ounces by itself!
The broccoli filled up five one-gallon freezer bags.
Moving on to the next produce – more lettuce! A combination of Simpson Elite, Buttercrunch, and Red Salad Bowl. As I’ve said previously, I most likely will not grow Red Salad Bowl again because the production just isn’t there compared to Buttercrunch and Simpson Elite. However, there is 15 1/2 ounces (just shy of a pound) of lettuce that was plucked today.
And a few Crimson Giant radishes were picked; four total weighing in at 7 3/8 ounces. These radishes are huge and quite pungent – just the way I like them!
And lastly, a few peas. I’m not too happy with the peas this year. There was over 12 pounds of peas last year and so far this year, I’m well under a pound. What was picked today is only 2 3/8 ounces worth. There is one Super Sugar Snap pea below (the very big plump one) and all the others are Dwarf Gray Sugar peas.
So, the above pictures is why to have a garden. It is quite satisfying to see what you can grow yourself – and know that you are the one that grew it from start to finish. You also know how you grew the plants – and whether you used any kind of pesticides (I don’t use any myself).
Moving on to some other pictures. The tomatoes are coming along very well. Below is the Red Cherry tomato plant and you can see all of the blooms on it. There are several little tomatoes already started on the plant. The plant is already as tall as I am!
Below is one of the Best Boy tomato plants. You can see the tomatoes coming along well.
The Granny Smith apple tree has some apples on them that are still going strong. Unfortunately, the tree just can’t take the fruit an they are still very small. In the end, I’m going to have to pull these off shortly before it does damage to the plant. I have finally managed to fully keep the deer out and away from the apple tree with the netting.
Here is the full side garden showing all of the tomatoes, potatoes, and peas.
The flower bed in the front yard that was my “curb appeal” project is growing rapidly. The marigolds are growing very large – which I am happy about since it is helping to fill in all of the space.
A photo of the front garden. This is where the broccoli was cut out this morning. Although the main head of the broccoli was cut out, this year I plan to leave the broccoli in place so that side shoots can develop and we can harvest those. The onions are still hanging in there and the corn continues to grow. Still, you can see the difference in the corn on the left and the corn on the right. The corn on the left is Sugar Dots and the corn on the right is Silver Queen. I’m not fully sure why the corn growing on the left is slower. The same variety is in some buckets and they are doing just as good as the corn on the right. The soil in the buckets is the exact same soil that was used to fill the bed on the left in March.
Moving to the back garden. I cannot walk through it anymore! The potatoes on the left have covered the walkway so it is pretty hard to walk through now.
The green beans – which you can barely see some of the white flowers in the bottom of the photo above – are doing much better than I expected. Why? Well, look where they are placed! They were placed just to the right of the walkway and the potatoes are almost completely smothering them out. This is why I planted more Greencrop green beans in the front garden between each corn stalk. So far about 40 of the 50 beans in the front have come up. But, below is a closer photo of one of the Greencrop beans with several flowers on it. We sitll have a few freezer bags of beans from last year and we’re going to start getting more soon!
That is all for this garden update.