Wednesday, June 03, 2009

A Late Garden This Year

Finally planted


At last, we've had a stretch of sunny days. The farmers have been planting corn and making hay as fast as they can. I've also been busy in my little garden and have nearly finished planting it.  Thank goodness -- I was starting to wonder if I would have a garden this year.

So far, I have planted:

9 Better Boy tomato plants
3 Bell Boy pepper plants
3 King Arthur bell pepper plants
1 Sweet 100 cherry tomato plant
3 hills of Armenian Yard-long Cucumbers
2 hills of NK Dark Green zucchinis
9 marigolds

I have two jalapeƱo pepper plants and six more marigolds to set out, I still want to get one more cherry tomato plant, and I plan to plant some clumps of dill.  I like the way it smells. It reminds me of my grandma's garden.

The marigolds are for Keely, who would think my garden incomplete without them. She likes their spicy fragrance. This year, the marigolds are all yellow because I got a good deal on a flat of them at the Mennonite greenhouse in Fairview.

A small garden


I used to grow a much larger garden, but I don't have that much time and energy now, and it's unnecessary anyway. This little garden will produce much more than Dennis, Isaac, and I can eat. We'll be begging people to take a few zucchinis home with them and hauling bags of tomatoes to town to foist off on Keely.

When I had a bigger garden, I did a lot of canning. I have packed up most of my fruit jars and stored them in the shed, now. However, I am thinking about making and preserving some salsa this summer -- thus, the jalapeƱos.

We like corn, watermelon, canteloupe, squash, and all the other fresh veggies too, but if I grew all of them, I'd have a big garden, not a small one! We'll buy them from the several Mennonite produce stands that operate in our area.

And this year, since it will be July before the zucchini and cukes begin to produce and sometime in August before we have tomatoes and peppers, we'll be buying them at the produce stands for a while, too.


Gardens from other summers:

Tomatoes Someday
Dill Flower
Fields and Gardens Are Being Planted
My Vegetable Garden
Living off the Fat of the Land
Zucchini, Anyone?
Flats of Flowers
Planting the Garden with Mama

4 comments:

Keely said...

YAY Tomatos! You can tell when summer gets here because at the begining, everyone talks about how excited they are about fresh veggies. And by the end, people are bringing bags of tomatos and corn and such and leaving them on tables at work hoping someone will take them.

Genevieve Netz said...

Keely, I have three little tomato plants that I'm going to give you to plant by your doorstep. Some of the cells of the 9-pack had extra plants in them, and I separated and saved them. I'll give you some lime and humus/manure mix to amend your soil, too.

Mark said...

There's not much better to eat than fresh vegetables, and tomatoes are right up there near the top. We might end up with a couple of tomato plants (we'd better hurry), but we have the problem of watering. Maybe we're out of the drought, but up on our mountain the ground doesn't stay wet long.

Genevieve Netz said...

I hope this summer will be a little more normal for you all, in terms of rainfall!

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