Garden report 9 - Abundance and Truth

The garden has spilled out its abundance over the past couple of weeks, every visit offers a basketful.  Sometimes that is a good thing and other times the we are not so sure what to do with it all.

This Hungarian heart tomato was a real treasure - 2 1/2 lbs!  There were others just as big with giant pecks and bites out of them, those sneaky chickens.  The rest were between 1 and 2 lbs each.  This is my new favorite variety and we were careful to save seeds from the best one.

I'm still trying to figure out the timing of tomatoes.  Each week there is more than we can eat but not enough to process.  My sister in law RayAnne suggested quartering them, drizzling with olive oil and broiling them with salt then pureeing them before storing in qt size freezer bags.  

The corn has served as the main course for lunch on several occasions and we were lucky to have two plantings that provided 4 weeks of good eating.  We picked up a chili lime corn seasoning at a local farm shop and it is yummy!

The green peppers were surprisingly gigantic this year.  I have not seen much more of the Hungarian hot peppers, and there is no sign of the ancho, red, yellow or orange peppers, I planted three of each.

The garden bouquets as arranged by Clara and George have been constant.  I have to admit out of all that grows on our property the flowers probably bring the most joy to me, the vegetables may nourish our body but seeing happy flowers in bloom out every window and decorating our table at every meal nourishes my soul.

Here is Clara's garden.  Aside from one cherry tomato plant it is all flowers.  She is not happy about the giant bugs it attracts but will venture out there with scissors anytime the table calls for a new bouquet.

Peter's sunflower house is towering.  It even towers over the weeds and makes the garden such a happy place to visit, not just for us but also birds and bees.

James' gourds are as expected, tidy without a trace of a weeds.  He has always been one to keep things simple and follow rules.  Last year's gourds are all dried and may be the source of focused crafting this fall.

The rest of the garden honestly looks more like a jungle and I'm happy that this Mexican sunflower pushed its way through it.  We collected its seeds from our neighbor last year, they were so tiny and in the mix we free casted over the hugelbeds.

Besides flowers there seems to be green beans growing everywhere, climbing up the sunflowers and even choking out weeds in some cases.  These ones are rattle snake beans and noted for their interesting pattern, but what makes them unique is also reason for the kids to refuse them.

This lofty patch is sorghum, or broom corn.  I wish I knew how to make brooms and I also wish I had a good reason for planting it.  It did very well and aside from feeding the seeds to the chickens I'm not sure what to do with it.  

I had high hopes for the hugelbeds but really they are an ugly mess.  It is hard to find much in them without doing damage to either the bed or other plants.  But next year we'll know for sure,  whatever wants to be permanently established there is still working it out.  In the future however, I'm keeping my "experiments" back towards zone 3.

I was most surprised by the effects of the southwest corner of the first hugelbed.  It had become the wind break to the rest of the garden and suffered much erosion because of it.  You can see not much grew there.

Here are the front beds.  They have been both productive and neglected.  For the first part of summer most of our meals came from this special spot in our front yard. But somewhere around mid July I experienced a huge aversion to most my favorites, kale, lettuce, Swiss chard, cilantro, turnips and beets.  Instead, my tastes turned to German rye with cream cheese, pickles and sauerkraut 3 times a day!  Can you guess why?!  Paul said there was no need for a test this time around, I am growing baby!  And since this is a garden report I will not even attempt to give a sampling of the joy, misery, surprise, fatigue, blessing, peace, nausea and more debilitating nausea that I've been rolling with over the bulk of the summer.  I am hoping my appetite and ability to stomach food preparation will return before the first frost.  And with an arrival of my own expected mid March, I'm already considering what I've learned and what will be realistic for next year's garden.