Harvest Monday Preview

This will most likely be the last harvest monday that I will be able to participate in for a while because my garden is very young right now. Everything is planted and digging in roots for Harvests to come.

However, I did want to use this (slow) week to give you a preview of harvests that will soon come. So, please join me on a tour of our garden....and harvests to come....

Here is an aerial view of our garden.

Our garden consists of 12 beds with a walking row in between. At the end of some of the walking rows is another small bed that is used for seed saving plants that have to remain in the garden longer. The gardens are slightly larger than they look.

I'll start the tour with the kid's garden.

The pumpkin is Atlantic Giant. The tomatoes will grow up the stakes and be heavily pruned. These are extra tomatoes; so I want to see the difference between pruning and not pruning. The gourds and pumpkin will be allowed to crawl on the ground. The artichoke are rather small; I sure hope I get a harvest later this summer though...we'll see.


Here are the beds in the main garden --- two at a time.

 My beds are on a 3-year rotation. So Bed 1 is on the year where it is planted with a ground cover that will feed the soil...like a legume. In Bed 2: The okra is planted to the west of the peppers; so I hope they will shade the peppers and eggplant from late afternoon sun; which is generally about 100 degrees.

 Bed 3: The spring planted onions will probably end up being bunching onions. I am pretty sure they won't bulb before it gets hot(ter). All of the summer squash has germinated and I expect the garlic to be pulled before they get too big. You see the lower leaves are starting to die.

I won't heavily prune these toms, so we'll see how they compare to the toms in  the boys garden. The Heinz and Roma toms are both bush and the Roma is already starting to flower...so it won't be long now.

Bed 7 is an edible cover crop. I will be trying black eye peas from the store because I can't find any seeds. The potatoes have been hilled twice now. I really hope we get a great harvest.

Bed 9 is interesting. The plan is to grow popcorn in the center, allow pumpkin to grow along the ground, and cucumbers up the trellis. The fall planted onion should be pulled soon and out of the way. Bed 10 is a cover crop.

Bed 11 is sweet potatoes. I put my slips out a little early and then covered them to heat it up. I pulled the cover back just an hour later because it had gotten too hot. I read that they like the lows to be 65 and up. We are still having lows in the 60s. But I won't have time the next few weeks, so I had to get them out. I am growing more slips just in case. We have a long season here, so there is some room for error. In Bed 12, we plan to grow popcorn in the center, allow the watermelon to cover the ground, and canteloupe up the trellis. You can see at the end of the walking row between the two beds is a broccoli plant that has flowered and is now producing seeds. Its a hybrid, but I just want to experiment with de-hybridizing it bc it did SO well for me. I got lots of broccoli from this one plant. Plus its a Packman variety; which has been taken over by Montso (may have misspelled that).


So, there's my garden and a preview of  the harvests to come. I hope they start rolling in soon; but realistically, I think we are a few weeks away. The garlic will probably be first; looks like maybe a little less than a month.

Perhaps there are some gardeners with actual harvests....check them out over at Daphne's.