Veggie Garden 2010: a mixed bag

The spring foods went well. We ate asparagus, rhubarb, and two whole strawberries that the chipmunk didn't get to before us. The lettuce is still going. The herbs are out of control, as usual. I wish I'd known oregano would spread aggressively. Treat it as you would a mint, people! There's an actual Red Rome apple on our new tree. We'll have to split it four ways when it's ripe, I suppose. Peaches looking good. Quince didn't set fruit despite blooming for the first time. Maybe next year.

Almost two months since the last frost date, and things are really getting started now! We ate our first pole beans. I didn't get as many plants established as I wanted, though I started a lot of them. They didn't like all the wet weather either. Every day we have a few peapods, and the plants are six feet tall. The kids like those. The zukes and cukes should be producing by the weekend, since they are all finally setting fruit. The plants themselves are huge. I have high hopes for FRIDGE PICKLES this year, as last year we barely had any cukes. Stupid cold wet summer it was.

This has been the best year for raspberries we've ever had. They were free, too, as they came over the fence from the neighbors. Boo is a fan and will now go out and pick her own. Success!

I'm a big fan of orache (red mountain spinach) now and will no longer bother with normal spinach which bolts much too early. The orache is nearing four feet tall, and I use the leaves in salads.

Managed to get two swiss chard plants going and one cantaloupe.

The traditional Three Sisters of corn, pole beans, and squash has been a total bust. It's just the hubbard squash now. Some animal ate the corn plants. The beans sprouted and then disappeared. Pumpkins are coming up all over the yard, and I'm just letting them go. Maybe some are butternuts. I did plant a few butternuts, but I haven't seen them lately under the massive potato plants. They've been digging all the rain. I expect to get more than the 50 pounds I harvested last year.

The onions are hiding under the asparagus, but seem to be happy. Earwigs are eating the Bok choi again. Radishes went to seed much too early.

Tomatoes are growing well, esp. considering the cool wet weather. Well, I guess we had some heat, too. Along with the regular raised bed tomato plants, I did two containers of one tomato plant with two eggplants. Since they love the heat, I thought the containers might help them, and they seem very happy.

There's five beets, after putting seeds down twice. One carrot. Pathetic. Boo (who doesn't want to be called Boo in real life anymore. That's … impossible. But I'm trying.) thought that the carrot plants would come back next year, and would produce more than one carrot per plant.

The brussel sprouts are coming along slowly, but you don't harvest those until around the frost, so no rush.

My gardening mentor, my aunt, died on my birthday this past April. I miss her advice already. It was the corn seeds she gave me (Royal Red corn) that were destroyed by pests. Sigh. But the orache seeds were from her, and that's going well, so I guess it's win some lose some, right?

Photos to follow soon.