Weekend update

I got to pick my first tomatoes on Saturday.

Sweet baby girl

That first taste of garden-fresh tomato in the summer is priceless.

My scarlet runner beans are blooming.

Ever since I saw them in Denmark last summer, I wanted some orange bean flowers in my garden. I even planted some in my flower bed because they're so pretty.

My Jacob's cattle beans are blooming, too.

These are very pale purple in real life, but look white in the picture.

The squash on the hugul is still doing well.

I trimmed some of the radishes to give it some room to grow.

Before

After

We've had a lot of rain lately, but it looks like we're going to get a break this week and have a chance to dry out. I'm a little worried that my potatoes are going to rot.

Filling the freezer

I picked my second head of broccoli the other day. I only planted two plants, so that's pretty much the last of it.

I still can't believe I grew broccoli. Look at how nice it looks:

I didn't see any bugs on either of them. Even so, I let them sit in salt water for awhile after picking them.

Since we haven't finished eating the first one (despite a delicious broccoli cheese quiche), I decided to freeze the second one.

All cut up

Blanched and frozen

I've been freezing most of the peas, too.

Almost 3/4 pound!

So my one head of broccoli and small bag of peas won't really fill the freezer, but it's still nice to know they're there and I can eat good garden food whenever I want.

Around the garden

I've found myself getting somewhat forgetful about harvesting things this year. I was a little late on the beets, several of the peas were too big before I picked them, and I just remembered to check on the carrots yesterday. I've been having so much fun watching stuff grow, that I almost forgot that's not the last step.

The garden - June 25th

Yesterday, I managed to give the garden a pretty good once over and spotted a few things going on.

The basil is doing very well.

The zinnias are all blooming. This variety has smaller flowers than the ones I planted last year, but they're still pretty.

Quite a few of the onions have fallen over already. It seems a little early.

Pay no attention to the weeds

The radishes and lettuce have covered the hugel nicely. We've picked and eaten some radishes, but I'm mostly just leaving everything there.

There has been a lot of erosion, to the point that my squash plant almost fell off the end. It looked like this a week ago:

It's growing away from the mound, and its roots were coming out of the dirt. I tried to dig them down in and cover them with more topsoil. So far, it's working, and the plant looks much better. I'll have to keep an eye on it.

Last but not least, I've got several volunteer tomato plants.

I'm gambling that I can pick the beans before these tomatoes become a problem. I might need these plants because a couple of my other tomato plants aren't looking very good.

Harvesting

I've been picking lots of things from the garden lately.

Peas

Broccoli. Now you see it...

Now you don't.

Cabbage

Beets

Look at how big the broccoli was:

The cabbages were clearly getting chewed on, but there's plenty left for me

I've been freezing the peas. I pickled some beets today and froze the rest.

Frozen beets

I think the broccoli and cabbage will probably just get eaten fresh. Yum.

On trend

Even after planting all the vegetables in the big garden and on the hugulkulture mound and putting some annuals in my flower beds, I couldn't resist the urge to do some more planting, so I combined two popular garden trends in one.

Wheelbarrow and potting soil bag planter

I planted flowers in the wheelbarrow last year but with my lax watering and the local wildlife digging around and chewing on the plants, they didn't do well.

I think the potting soil bag will help keep the soil from drying out so fast. I doubt anything can save the flowers from blue jays burying peanuts.

At least they'll be pretty for a few days.

Bean tower update

This post has nothing to do with beans. It's about the other way that my bean towers can be used.

This family of mourning doves thinks my bean towers are a great place to sit and watch the yard

Isn't that baby adorable?

First eats from the garden!

I ate all of the peas sitting on the patio Friday morning. They were delicious.

I could've been eating kale for awhile now, but I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to eat it. I planted it not even knowing if I like it. I think I'm first going to try kale chips and then I'll probably throw some in smoothies.

The radishes came off of the hugul garden. At the time I planted them, I wasn't even thinking of eating them. I just wanted something that would grow fast to help hold the soil down. They certainly grew fast. The mound is covered with a radish and lettuce forest.

I haven't eaten any of the lettuce. There are enough weeds mixed in that I'm not sure I'd want to try at this point. The squash is growing well, although it isn't spreading as fast as I expected.

The nasturtiums I planted on the north side of the mound are also coming along nicely.

So far, I'm happy with my hugul experiment.

Tomato rescue

I'm not sure yet if the rescue was actually a success, but I'm optimistic. Last year, I planted the tomatoes on the west side of the garden. This year, I moved most of them to the east side of the garden.

Looking northeast - June 8th

As you can see in this picture, my small composter sits against the fence on the east side. When I planted the tomatoes, one of them ended up directly behind the composter. At the time, I figured that missing the morning sun wouldn't be a big deal because the plant would get plenty of afternoon sun. I think I was wrong.

In this picture you can see the difference between the composter tomato and the plants on either side. Big difference. In fact, you can hardly see the poor tomato plant for the weeds and grass.

Last weekend, I relocated this plant to a different spot in the garden where nothing will block its sun.

It's now growing next to the basil. So far, it looks better, but it still hasn't taken off like the others. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm going to have another dud tomato plant. Only time will tell.

Future harvest

The cabbages are about softball size.

I think they're so pretty.

The cherry tomato plant has a few little fruits

I can see one baby pepper

and a lot of little pea pods.

Last but not least, this guy is doing well on the hugelkultur bed.

This is a Marina di Chioggia squash. I planted seeds on both ends of the mound, but the ones on the south end did not sprout. Three sprouted on the north end, but something chewed on the other two, so this is the sole survivor. So far, so good.

Ta daa!

I've been working on this project for awhile, and it's finally done.

What is it? If you ask D, he'll say I buried Thor, but the real answer is that this is my first attempt at hugelkultur.

I'm pretty stoked about it, so I'm going to explain what I did, but this absolutely should not be taken as any kind of instruction on how to do hugelkultur. I'm fairly certain that I did several things wrong because when it comes to things like this, I only read enough to get the basics, and then I completely wing it from there. If you want to learn more about hugelkultur, and the right way to do it, the place to look is permies.com.

I had stumbled onto some articles about hugelkultur recently and got really excited when I realized I had a tree that needed trimming. One day in April, a tree guy cut several large branches off a linden tree in my front yard. He thought I was crazy when I told him I wanted him to leave all the branches in the yard and just cut the biggest ones into shorter pieces, but he did it anyway. I started with this:

April 11th

On the first day, I cut down all the pieces, and arranged them by size.

Then I hauled them all into my back yard. I know the neighbors thought I was crazy. Next, I starting laying out the largest pieces, trying to figure out how big I could make the structure.

April 12th

I settled on roughly four feet by ten feet. Then I started digging out the sod.

All of the sod went into a wheelbarrow, and I started piling the biggest pieces of wood.

April 19th

I started adding the small branches and also laid some of the sod upside down on the pile.

The next weekend, I finished laying all of the dug-out sod on top of the branches.

May 26th

Then I bought several bags of top soil and poured it into the cracks, in an attempt to fill the spaces in between the branches.

This was a very dirty task.

After that, it sat for a few weeks. I didn't want to finish it off too early, because I wanted to be able to put seeds on it right away. I also didn't want it to get rained on as soon as I finished.

The final touch was several more bags of top soil poured over the top.

May 17th

I had decided I was going to try to grow the squash seeds that Seed Savers Exchange gifted me with, but they won't grow fast enough to cover the mound, so I also scattered lettuce and radish seeds all over it. Then I covered it with straw to hopefully help hold everything in place in the rain.

It didn't take long for the seeds to sprout.

May 21st

So that's the beginning of my first hugelkultur. I'll let you know how it develops and what I learn along the way.