It’s time for another Vegetable Planting Update and I have taken a heap of photos so you can get a good idea of how everything is going.
The weather the past couple of weeks has been absolutely wonderfully cool. This is great for us who don’t like the hot weather, but it is not great for growing tomatoes and other certain vegetables.
The tomatoes are really slow this year and there is some fruit but not much. The zucchinis are slow too and we are starting to pick some every few days but I am still waiting for the glut to can with my tomatoes or just by themselves for our winter pantry. Zucchinis are a great filler for soups and stews. By the time we are in winter and I am bombarding you with soup and stew recipes you in the Northern Hemisphere will be celebrating summer and BBQs and salads. Sigh, I will probably still bombard you anyway.
My husband has just finished mounding up on either side of our raised beds and you can see by the picture below that the potatoes are going great. We are so excited about them, as we haven’t been able to grow them with much success before, so to see how they are going is wonderful. We have started digging some as we need them and there are some really big ones.
The mounds are getting quite high now which is great for weeding and watering.
The zucchini bushes should really be twice their size but as long as they produce it doesn’t really matter. We have been picking them quite small and they are lovely cooked on the BBQ, and are my husbands favourite.
The Roma tomatoes seem to be doing better than the Grosse Lisse ones, as you can see there is some fruit below, but it is still quite small and green, but I think summer is coming, albeit late. We are going to have a week in the low 30’s starting on Friday (91F) so this continual warmth will really help.
My husband has done a great job with the corn and it is looking good. He has been trying to get on top of the weeds and is almost there. Unfortunately the weeds keep growing, possibly better and quicker than the vegetables. There is some difference in height but you can just see the corn at the back coming into flower.
The first year we moved here (4 years ago) we planted some fruit trees, but it was very wet where we planted them and only a few survived. Below is one of our pear trees with fruit. We should have really waited to see what the lay of the land was before planting them but at least some have survived.
I took these pictures on Sunday afternoon and you can see how dark the sky is and it did drizzle a bit and was quite cold and windy.
Below are some of the fruits of our labour, potatoes and zucchinis.
Well that’s another update, I hope when I do the next one I can show you boxes of tomatoes and corn.
What’s growing in your vegetable patch at the moment or what are you thinking of planting once winter has passed???
Blessings.
You’re able to get something we just can’t get ours to produce–zucchinis! They throw flowers and then no matter how much we work at it, squash bugs invade, and we may get a whole zucchini or two all year.
The upside, you have the warm temps coming in, and that will help. 🙂 Anything that produces will be something less you will have to buy at the store! Seeing your pictures make me really want to get out and start working on the plots. But it’s still snow season…not the greatest time to plant. 🙂
Have a great day!
Hey there, good to hear from you. We don’t have bugs that eat our zucchinis so that’s good but I am sorry about yours. Yes the warm weather is coming and I am going to try really hard not to complain about it 🙂 and yes I will be glad to be able to stay out of the supermarkets (store) and eat our own, which is much healthier for us all. I am excited to see pictures of your garden when the snow goes and the warmer weather comes and you have started to plant. Have a great week, blessings.
Obviously these are my favorite posts of yours. I see them and they “prepare” my heart. When you post your soup recipes, I will just think of those as “preparing” as well 🙂 . That is the cutest little tractor EVER! I kinda wish we had a little tiny one like that to put in my garden.
Commercially, we are the only ones around that don’t grow potatoes. Our farmer neighbors let us “glean” their fields after their harvester and trucks come through. Since you have to plant something else in that field the next two years and fertilize so heavy (potatoes KILL your dirt/nutrients), it’s just not profitable for us to switch our crops every year.
Your pears are awesome! I LOVE looking at your garden.
I am curious how much of your own food you are able to provide? It looks like more than just your warm months. I will be looking forward to seeing all your preservation methods.
Keep sharing Friend 🙂 .
Blessings,
What a wonderful blessing to be able to collect potatoes like that. I have been thinking about your question about how much food we are able to provide for ourselves and here are a few thoughts. We supply or own beef and pork, and occasionally I will buy chicken but not too often lately. The only canned food we buy would be tuna, salmon and pineapple. We pick apples off the side of the road and I probably bottle about 60 x 1 litre jars (about a quart I think), I do buy tomatoes and bottle them if ours don’t produce so I usually try and get over 60 jars of these as well. I do buy fresh fruit but usually just apples and oranges and maybe mandarines, and some salad stuff like lettuce and I buy 1 kg mushrooms a week. I just love mushrooms and I have been researching how I can grow my own and enough. I think once the aquaponics gets up and running I won’t need to buy lettuce or salad stuff. I will have a better think about this and maybe do a post. Some weeks (when money is short) we would only spend about $50 at the grocery store. Blessings.
I absolutely love reading your posts. You ask what’s growing in my garden right now…..since I’m from the Midwest in the USA nothing bur feet of snow. Very, very cold and lots of snow but I am planning my spring and summer garden. Thanks for a great read, keep posting.
I think that’s wonderful to have snow, the more I hear about it the more I would love to live there. Have fun planning your garden for the coming season and thank you for stopping by. Blessings
Oh I am so jealous! We just got another 2″ of snow today *sigh* I am gardening vicariously through you!
Thanks again for linking up with Green Thumb Thursday last week! I’d love it if you’d stop by and link up a few posts this week!
~Lisa
Hi Lisa, spring will come soon for you I am sure, and autumn for us. Thanks for your comment and blessings to you.