We wound up going out for Mexican food last night since the lobster tails didn't defrost in time to make the lobster tails diavolo with pasta dinner I had planned. Jim said if they haven't defrosted overnight in the fridge , he' going to put them out near the pool to defrost! LOL Guess he was pretty disappointed he had to eat nachos instead of lobster last night!
I've harvested a lot of beans and other veggies the past two days and gave half the beans, squash, peppers and tomatoes away but I'm going to have to get a lot of these beans processed and in the freezer some time this afternoon.
I don't know why they've taken their good old time, but the zucchini and summer squash are finally producing. The winter squash growing in the same area of the garden had no trouble producing fruit early, so this is another one of those garden scratch your head moments trying to figure out why it took the pollinating insects so longer to get around to doing their job on those other squash plants
The only late planting I did was another group of yellow bush beans which I started harvesting a few days ago. There's no more space here to plant anything else, unless I can find some things to pull out of my two raised beds. If so, then might see if it's not to late to plant some spinach. I won't be doing any more planting at our son and daughter-in-laws garden since they won't be coming up enough to use them and I'm running out of freezer space for anything more than what's coming in now.
I'm already starting to think about what I'll plant here next year; and it will be less of some veggies and more of others. We definitely don't need 12 tomato plants for two people unless I wanted to start canning again, which I don't. We have some very good organic gardeners selling at the local farmers markets so that is helping me decide what I want to plant in my limited growing space.
One of my neighbors actually planted asparagus in one of those wine barrel planters and they're doing great, and since my artichokes didn't produce one artichoke this year, and I have no idea why, since they did well last year, and the same artichokes I planted at our son's place this year produced like mad, it's definitely a puzzlement. In any case, next year, I'm going to use at least one those two big planters for asparagus next year, and maybe use the other one for a single zucchini plant, since zucchinis take up four square in my square foot gardening method.
This was year two of using the square foot gardening method and it's working very well. I even grew a lot of potatoes in my square foot raised beds, even though I had read that you can't. I also learned that 4 fava beans per square did better than 9 which I planted last year, and only on square was needed for each tomato plant if the soil is good, new compost added and with regular feeding with special tomato, pepper and eggplant fertilizer. And since I'm always ready for a challenge and eager to break rules, (without breaking any laws of course, that don't seem to make sense to me), I dove right in and planted Red Pontiacs and Yukon golds, and used the organic fertilizer made for root vegetables. The thing that didn't work, was my other experiment of growing potatoes in a 5 gallon bucket, because I over watered them, so if I decide to try that again next year, I'll put them on the drip system.
Time now to trim and wash those beans!
I've harvested a lot of beans and other veggies the past two days and gave half the beans, squash, peppers and tomatoes away but I'm going to have to get a lot of these beans processed and in the freezer some time this afternoon.
I don't know why they've taken their good old time, but the zucchini and summer squash are finally producing. The winter squash growing in the same area of the garden had no trouble producing fruit early, so this is another one of those garden scratch your head moments trying to figure out why it took the pollinating insects so longer to get around to doing their job on those other squash plants
The only late planting I did was another group of yellow bush beans which I started harvesting a few days ago. There's no more space here to plant anything else, unless I can find some things to pull out of my two raised beds. If so, then might see if it's not to late to plant some spinach. I won't be doing any more planting at our son and daughter-in-laws garden since they won't be coming up enough to use them and I'm running out of freezer space for anything more than what's coming in now.
I'm already starting to think about what I'll plant here next year; and it will be less of some veggies and more of others. We definitely don't need 12 tomato plants for two people unless I wanted to start canning again, which I don't. We have some very good organic gardeners selling at the local farmers markets so that is helping me decide what I want to plant in my limited growing space.
One of my neighbors actually planted asparagus in one of those wine barrel planters and they're doing great, and since my artichokes didn't produce one artichoke this year, and I have no idea why, since they did well last year, and the same artichokes I planted at our son's place this year produced like mad, it's definitely a puzzlement. In any case, next year, I'm going to use at least one those two big planters for asparagus next year, and maybe use the other one for a single zucchini plant, since zucchinis take up four square in my square foot gardening method.
This was year two of using the square foot gardening method and it's working very well. I even grew a lot of potatoes in my square foot raised beds, even though I had read that you can't. I also learned that 4 fava beans per square did better than 9 which I planted last year, and only on square was needed for each tomato plant if the soil is good, new compost added and with regular feeding with special tomato, pepper and eggplant fertilizer. And since I'm always ready for a challenge and eager to break rules, (without breaking any laws of course, that don't seem to make sense to me), I dove right in and planted Red Pontiacs and Yukon golds, and used the organic fertilizer made for root vegetables. The thing that didn't work, was my other experiment of growing potatoes in a 5 gallon bucket, because I over watered them, so if I decide to try that again next year, I'll put them on the drip system.
Time now to trim and wash those beans!
