Gardening Endeavours

I've meant to write about our garden for months and months. But I kept running into other things to do and then more time passed and the prospect of writing such a long post and adding so many pictures to it seemed so daunting. But this is me, finally sitting down to write about this project.  It could take a few days of editing and revising.

Paul started by hiring a guy with a tiller to come out and till up the plot. They mixed in a bunch of soil amendments since the soil in Colorado tends to be very alkaline and most veggies do better in more acidic soil. They rolled out sheets of weed blocking material and then Paul arranged soaker hoses over the weed block. This was in late March.

A couple of weeks after that Paul purchased a soil test kit and we tested our soil's pH and its content of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus.

 

Around this time we began planting seeds in paper egg cartons and peat pots.  We planted several varieties of  tomatoes and peppers, watermelons, two types of cucumbers, broccoli and pumpkins.  We also purchased seeds for green beans, peas, yellow squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, beets and carrots.  We didn't start any of these in cups because their instructions stated that they are best started outdoors and do not transplant well.

 

We tended our seedlings indoors for almost a month with about 10 days of outdoor hardening and then finally decided that it was time to put some outside.  We did this on May 14th.  On May 15th we had a huge storm that lasted for 48 hours.  We got several inches of freezing rain and snow and gave up completely on the idea that any of our plants would survive.  Fortunately, we had only transplanted about half of our seedlings so we still had some to work with.

Near the end of May we started our outdoor seeds and moved the rest of the seedlings outside.  Everything transplanted pretty well.  I think we lost a couple of cucumbers and some peppers but we had plenty of both left.  By this point most of the snowstorm transplants had died and we pulled them up to make room for healthier plants.  We had a few tomato plants persevere -- namely a variety called Siberian that is cultivated in colder climates and can produce fruit all the way until the first frost.  We had a sturdy pumpkin vine pull through as well.

By this time we were getting really frustrated with the weed block material.  It's kind of a pain to work around and it doesn't do much to block the growth of weeds.  We've found ourselves reaching under the sheets to pull weeds that are out of our reach otherwise.  Quite annoying.  The one thing it is good for is holding in water that might evaporate from the soil without some extra cover.  We haven't decided if this is a worthy trade off yet.

It's difficult to tell from this photo but the weed block sheets are bulging up due to the large masses of weeds beneath them.  Weed block my foot.  And of course there are lots of weeds between the rows.  We weren't worried about those because we walked on them so much they weren't much of a problem.  A couple of weeks after this photo we realized that some of the weeds are climbing, viney species.  They like to use the stems of our plants for climbing.  So every once in a while we have to untwist a vine from a plant so it doesn't strangle.

It wasn't long before we began seeing flowers on many of our plants.  This was so exciting!  It was tangible evidence that something was going right.  It would still be a long, long time before we got anything edible but that didn't matter.  We were growing things!

Broccoli is a strange plant.  We have 16 of them and they're huge.  Not as big as zucchini plants but pretty darn close.  They've all had a tiny sprout like this in them but they progress quickly from this to all out flowering if you don't watch closely.  Flowering broccoli is bad because that means it's done and you won't get any more broccoli.  So we're being careful to snap off the sprouts in hopes of getting bigger sprouts.

The green beans have been delicious and plentiful.  We're going to plant more of them next year because we've enjoyed them so much this year.  These were our first beans, quite tiny little things.  They quickly grew to a nice, edible size and they've continued to produce well for several weeks.

The peas haven't done very well.  They got hit pretty hard by a rabbit or two and the wind was really harsh to them.  We've decided they need more trellising than most of our tomatoes.

The first things we harvested were squash and zucchini.  Those plants are taking off like you wouldn't believe.  Well, you might, especially if you've ever grown your own squashes.  They thrive in Colorado.  Actually, they more than thrive -- we need a new word for how well these suckers grow here.  It's kind of insane.

The pumpkin vine is growing a good sized pumpkin but it's just growing that one.  We have decided that we will plant 4 vines next year in hopes of getting one pumpkin from each so all four kids can have their own pumpkin to do with whatever they would like.

We have some promising looking peppers, both sweet and hot varieties.  The tomato plants are laden with green fruit.  I can't wait until they ripen.  We're going to have a canning party!  And lots of fresh salsa!

We learned that carrots need way more room to grow than we thought and that it's really worth it just to plant one seed at a time, no matter how tiny they are.  We had to thin them mercilessly and we missed out on a lot of food that way.  Also, the ones left behind have been puny and not as sweet as I'd like.

This is a cantaloupe.  We planted these because Miriam loves, loves, loves cantaloupe.  I really hope we get something edible from this vine.  There are half a dozen small fruits growing.  I heard from another, much more experienced gardener that they don't do very well here.  We'll see I guess.

This is an eggplant plant.  We purchased two from the local garden supply store when we heard that they do well here.  It was late in the season to start new seeds and we wanted to try our hand at eggplants so here it is.  No fruit yet but they do produce some beautiful purple blossoms.

This is our first lemon cucumber.  These little things were a fun surprise.  I'd never heard of them until I saw the seeds at the store.  I am so glad we have them, though.  The green variety we're growing has very bitter skin and we're pickling most of them.  The lemon cucumbers are perfect, though.  Exactly what summer should taste like!

Beets did absolutely nothing.  We even planted a second round of several beet seeds when we realized none of the first round had sprouted and still got nothing.  I'm not disappointed as I do not like beets.  Paul likes them though so he was kind of bummed about that. 

And this is just a plain gorgeous look at several yummy things we harvested!  We did it!  We're doing it -- growing our own food!