A Walk Through my Vegetable Garden

Summer is here and my Vegetable garden is well under way!  

Last summer I harvested some lettuce, a few peas, beans, corn and squash (not nearly enough to feed us once a week for a month) and NO butternut pumpkins and NO watermelons.  

But I got buckets and buckets full of tomatoes!  The tomatoes just didn’t stop, and I was able to harvest tomatoes well into the middle of winter!  

My herb garden thrived over the past year yielding thyme, rosemary, marjoram, celery, parsley, basil, spring onions and yarrow.

For the winter season I had plenty of peas in the beginning of the season and one bed of carrots.

  

I knew one bed would not even be enough carrots to sustain our family for one week (carrot salad is a standard side dish for supper), but the idea was to see how it goes, if my soil was right this time. We have terrible clay soil and in the past had NO carrot harvest.  I also wanted the children to experience pulling their own carrots!  

And they did!

We could start harvest carrots in October, and it become a ritual for the little ones to pull their own carrots, while I watered the garden, every morning.  Sadly, I had to clean up the bed two weeks ago.

I believe I had such a marvelous tomato harvest, because I’ve put all my time and efforts into the tomatoes.  

I studied tomatoes and looked after my little tomato plants with great care. So, I decided from now on to focus on one specific vegetable in a season, study it and try to make a success out of it.  This way I will not waste my time and money on a variety of vegetables with little or no success.  

With tomatoes I know now more or less what work, and decided to focus on pumpkins for this season!  Yes, I desperately want to harvest pumpkins!

I only plant heirloom seeds in my vegetable garden and get my seeds mainly from Livingseeds.  

Over the past two years, I got quite a number of different seeds, from various heirloom seed suppliers.  The seed packages were all just thrown in a box, so in the beginning of this season, I organized my seeds in a filing box.  

I attached the seed envelope to cardboard.  On the cardboard I can make notes whether the specific seed fit into our climate, what kind of soil worked and success or failure.

Since I started my vegetable garden two years ago, I yearned for a permanent hot box. 

Every summer we had to repair our cardboard hot boxes. 

This September, Christo and the boys, built me a permanent hot box. 

This hot box can take 24 seedling trays at a time.

The men did a great job on the hot box and it works perfectly.  

It has air holes, which I can cover with masking tape when it is cold outside, or open when it is too hot outside. 

It also have growing bulbs inside.  

The box fit on a piece of wood, so I can carry the seedling trays outside on warm days. 

It is painted with a waterproof paint, so I can water the seedling trays without damaging the wood.

I sowed my first seeds the third weekend of September and by the end of September the first plants were ready to be transplanted in the ground.  

Another huge improvement in our vegetable garden was cutting down the last trees in the current designated patch for the vegetable garden.

First were the one small tree in the right corner of the vegetable garden.  

We took it out during the winter months to open up more son for the existing raised beds.

In October it was time to take out the last and biggest tree.  This tree had split in two, three winters ago and though we tried to save it, it had a very strange look and this past winter split again. There was no way we could save it anymore.  

CJ and Josua was a great help for Christo, and the little ones enjoyed playing between the branches! 

Now the vegetable garden looks much bigger and with a little imagination, it could actually give the impression of a vegetable garden!

This summer I sowed 5 varieties of pumpkin, peas, 3 varieties of bush beans, lettuce, watermelon and cucumber.  

Cucumber is a first for me, and I thought I would just give it a try, alongside the pumpkin.  

I also sowed our rainbow corn, harvested during the previous summer season, directly into the ground. 

I didn’t need to sow one tomato seed. We took out the previous season’s tomato plants in July, and since I knew they liked these particular beds, I just let it rest until it was time to plant my tomatoes. 

Great was my surprise when early spring came and tomato plants sprouted in clusters all over the two beds! 

A few weeks ago I thinned them out, and replanted some of them.  I sure have more tomato plants than the previous summer season.

In the past two weeks I’ve start finger prune the small side shoots, also called suckers, growing between the main stem and the leaf stems, and gently pinch these off with my fingers.  

I have no idea how many plants I have on the three different varieties I grew the previous season, but sure do look forward to a plentiful harvest, again! 

The tomatoes we grew last year were stacked against wood trellises and by the end of the season it couldn’t hold the tomatoes any more. 

So, Christo and the boys are busy making me iron trellises.  

In the process the boys learn working with metal which includes welding skills.  Josua paints it with metal paint to keep it from rusting. 

It seems like I’m into a vertical garden this Summer!

So far my pumpkins are doing great. 

I’ve planted honey suckle in the same beds as the pumpkins to attract bees, and also do hand pollination every morning.  

I already have two big pumpkins, 

but there were also a few pumpkins who slipped through during the hand pollination process :-(

We already harvested some peas;

plenty of beans;

and Lettuce!

Yarrow are growing everywhere!

And the Fig tree is full of promise too!

I also only wet the garden by hand, which do take a lot of time, but I see it as part of my summer program! 

Who of my blog friends has a vegetable garden and how are your gardens going? Please share in the comments below.

Much love

Linnie

"Moreover I will appoint a place ... 

and will plant them, 

that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more;"

2 Sam 7:10

PS. This was God's promise to me 7 years ago, after we rented different houses for several years. 

I pleaded with God for a place where I could grow a garden of my own!

Thank you, Lord!

A New Season For My Vegetable Garden

My first seedlings for this season were planted two weeks ago!

The previous weekend, CJ went through all my beds and gave it a finishing touch, pulling out a few weeds (Daniel helped too).   

During August we added in horse manure, left over ground coffee beans, river sand, peanut shells, some bone-meal and the ash from our fireplace.

Two of my 7 beds’ ground looked beautiful, with thousands of earthworms.  The other 5 beds’ compost still need a little more maturing, but for now they will have to do.

Daniel was very intrigued by all the worms.

Every now and then he came to show me a new one!

Isn’t he soooo sweet!  I just love that little face!

And another one...!

I planted my pumpkin plants around plastic nursery pots.  I got the idea from Jane’s Delicious Garden. 

This way I will try to correct the mistakes I made with my butternuts and squash during the previous season. 

Pumpkins are very ‘hungry’ plants and need lots of fertilizer. As the pumpkin plants grow, their roots spread down around the bottom of the pot.  When you fill the pot with water, it slowly drains out of the holes at the bottom of the pot, directly and gently watering the roots. 

I can feed the plants with my Bokashi liquid fertilizer through the pots, delivering the food directly to the roots without any wastage.  

My butternuts and squash also got mildew in the previous season.  Watering directly into the pots avoids wetting the leaves and lessens the chance of disease. 

Lastly, but certainly the biggest mistake was sowing seeds we saved from the organic butternuts and squash we received from Ethical Co-op resulting in NO harvest from the butternuts and squash we planted. You can imagine the frustration of working for months, nurturing these little plants, to result in NO harvest!

After investigating, I realized they were F1-hybrids. 

What is the problem with F1 hybrids?  The advantages of hybrids are various.   They are usually more vigorous and productive than the non-F1 parent.  They are more resistant to disease, they establish themselves quickly and evenly! Wow, what more can you ask for?

There is one BIG catch with F1 hybrids:  you can’t save seeds from them! 

F1 hybrids are a once-of deal only!  If you sow seeds saved from an F1 hybrid, they will NOT yield a harvest!  If you want to grow a particular F1 hybrid again, you have no choice but to BUY F1 seeds from the seed producer.  This way the seed producers will over time manipulate the seed market and farmers and gardeners will increasingly become more and more dependent of them, having to PAY for seeds.  

What is wrong with that?

It wasn’t God’s intention in the beginning.  We read in Gen. 1:11 “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”

God intend man to plant seeds and harvest food as well as seed to plant again. But as always MONEY is the motivation.  Obviously GM seed producers will decline it and motivate it with producing enough food for the “over-populated” world!  

Seed producers (like Monsanto) even sue farmers who sow open-pollinated seeds, since they interfere with their ‘patented laboratory produced seeds”.

I only buy and plant Heirloom seeds.  Why Heirloom seeds?  

The following is taken from Sean Freeman's blog, Livingseeds:

 “Heirloom plants can be simply defined as any plant that has been handed down from generation to generation..., that is firstly open pollinated, secondly has a history of private exchange and thirdly has not been subject to a plant breeders rights, claim to be worthy of heirloom status. Heirlooms are our genetic guarantee of future food supply. 

No matter what nature cares to throw at us, if you have a handful of heirloom seeds you can be assured that firstly you can plant the seed, secondly you are able to save the seed for the following year and thirdly, if environmental conditions change the plant will have the internal genetic diversity available to adapt via natural selection. Something that cannot be said for any hybrid or GM seed.”

Read more at Livingseeds by Sean Freeman. 

Little Michael in the Ergo, while I'm busy sowing and planting

This brings me to another point: ‘Organic’ seldom means a heirloom seed, it only means no pesticides were used during the growing process. I planted the seed of an organic butternut. When I first bought organic vegetables, I thought ‘organic’ also meant no genetic modification of the seeds.  Out of my ‘experiment’ (and research) it is clear, this ‘organic’ butternut was genetically modified. 

Genetic modification of seeds is even more hazardous than the pesticides sprayed during the growing of vegetables, according to Dr. Marcola, (Read more about the effect of Genetic Modified Seeds on the fertility of our next generation).

The implication of this is that I can never again take the chance of saving seeds from any vegetable I haven’t grown myself.  The vegetable we buy in the supermarket will most probably be genetically modified and sadly enough the organic vegetables too.  

For my butternuts, I sow Waltham Butternut seeds but I also discovered BeingPlants.  I ordered a  variety of seeds from them (you can even select your currency).  Their service was excellent and 5 days after I placed my order, I received my seeds.  I also received seeds from Living Seeds. 

A week ago I sowed the different varieties of corn, tomatoes, lettuce, pumpkin, watermelon and melon, which I received from BeingPlants and Living Seeds. 

I thought the night temperatures had increased enough that I didn’t need the hot boxes for germination.  Most of the time, there is germination within 3 days after sowing.  With the seed trays outside the hot box, there wasn’t one seed that germinated, so on the fourth night we moved it into the hot box en within three days the seeds started to germinate!

In the meantime the beautiful strong pea-plants I planted 3 weeks ago

were eaten by snails overnight!  

 

I had a few peas from the second batch of seeds I sowed and planted them in the open spaces were the snails had their feast.  

The snails also had a feast on my pumpkin plants.  

We immediately threw  dried egg shells, but will have to keep an eye on the little plants the next day or two.  I may need some chemical free snail pellets.

We also replanted our Rainbow Corn plants.  

Andrew didn’t feel to well the day we replanted the corn plants.

These seeds are the seeds we saved from our first harvest of rainbow corn during the previous season.  This is a first for me.  To save my own heirloom seeds, sow them and have them germinate.  Every single one of the seeds germinated. It just felt so good!!

We now also have 5 extra hanging baskets with strawberries.  These 5 new plants were propagated from our existing plants.

We now have 11 strawberry baskets and I’m feeding them liquid fertilizer to ensure a huge harvest of strawberries for my many small children!

With love

Linnie