What did I grow in 2017?

In early April, we added 4 additional vegetable beds to my existing 96 sq ft of growing space on the ground. They were Greenes Fence beds, which are fairly easy to assemble. Time will tell how well they hold up. It provided me an additional 80 sq ft of growing space, which is a LOT and quite literally doubled the space I could have fun and experiment in!

In the bed I knew I would plant late, I routinely added all of my kitchen scraps, lawn clippings, yard waste, brown bags in several layers and added several layers of soil over it to let it decompose and the worms do its thing. The soil was rich and ready by the time I planted two tomatoes, 2 zuchinis, interplanting of basil and a 5 pepper plants.

I’ll share my specific plan for 2017 in a later post. I planted from starts or from seeds mostly in mid april, early May, some of which were protected indoors in my garage by a south facing window which offered much of the heat and protection from the occassional night time dips in temperature.

The best investment this year is the gorrila cart. Its much easier to lug things around, and to mixup soil and amendments to add to beds.

No pesticides were used, and by interplanting and companion planting much of the garden pests can be kept at bay. The biggest problem is with roly poly’s eating much of my strawberries and tender cucumber plants. I decided to share the bounty with them and planted extra!! My philosophy is simple, we all co-exist, and I am not doing this for profit…so I dont mind sharing produce with my critter friends.

Tomato varieties
– Amos Coli
– Big Rainbow
– Brown Bear
– Mr. Stripey
– Stupice
– Early Girl
– Sweet million
– Grape

Squashes
– Bakers creek zuchini
– straight neck yellow squash
– Butternut squash
– spaghetti squash in container.
– patty pan squash

Melons
– Cantaloupes
– Roadside F1 cantaloupe

Cucumbers
Some in containers long the fence, and some in vegetable beds, trellised.
– Persian

Root vegetables
Carrots – Sweet nantes, parisian
Radish – french basket,
onions – yellow, white and red onions. Yellow ones did the best and did not rot quite as much as the red ones did.
garlic
potatoes – yukon gold and variety of colored potato spuds. Harvesting this was fun and taste was terrific.

Peppers
– hot banana pepper
– pablo ancho
- chilli relleno
– red cayenne – slim and long peppers, turned out to be milder than the orange ones
- orange cayenne – turned out hotter than I expected
– thai pepper in a container
– habanero – these did not take off very well
– big bertha
– chocolate pepper

Beans
Mostly pole beans this year, growing in different parts of the garden.
– Yard long beans, Scarlet emperor, Romano beans

Asparagus

Okra – red and green

Eggplant – italian and lousiana green fingers

Herbs
– Holy Basil, Parsley (flat and curled), Oregano (greek, italian and cuban), Basil, Marjoram, Stevia, Lemon Balm, Apple mint, Verbena, Thyme, Spearmint, Peppermint, Turmeric, Ginger, Lavendar (spanish, French), chamomile, sage, calendula.

Leaves
Lettuce varieties, arugula, kale, malabar spinach, fenugreek, drumstick.

Berries
Blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries

Overwintered and perinneal : Lavendar, Stevia, lemon balm, verbena, thyme, mints, holy basil (indoors), parsley (binneal), celery

Gosh this seems quite a lot!! The garden never ceases to delight me!!