Garden Totals 2015

After the past few cold blustery days, and a few overnight freezes, I think it's safe to say growing season is officially over here in northern Iowa.  I wrote down the last few jalapenos and peppers that we harvested last week (including several jalapenos from a plant that grew in our compost pile), and entered the totals in my spreadsheet.

Here's how we did:

Total produce: 99.65 pounds. For the sake of easy reading, I'm going to round the decimal points.  But the specific total was just shy of 100.  If only we had one more tomato...

• Broccoli: 2 lbs.
• Butternut squash: 20 lbs.
• Garlic: under 1 lb. (really I think we only got one bulb - the rest never took off)
• Green beans: 14 lbs.
• Green peppers: 5 lbs.
• Jalapenos: 4 lbs.
• Onions: 3 lbs.
• Peas: just under 1 lb., although with the amount Jonah ate while picking them, probably over 1 lb.
• Potatoes: 3 lbs.
• Radishes: 3 lbs.
• Raspberries: 1/2 lb.
• Red pepper: under 1 lb. (only one pepper turned to red - the rest we harvested green)
• Strawberries: under 1 lb.
• Tomatoes: 37 lbs.
• Watermelon: 5 1/2 lbs.

The total does not include:

• 2 pumpkins, because we didn't eat them. We just set them on the front porch for decoration.
• Any of the apples from our tree, because I didn't feel like weighing the basket full all at once.

Overall, it was a pretty good haul for the minimal work and money we put into it.  We probably spent around $50 on seeds, starter plants, tools, and buckets.  I should have kept the receipts so I could tell for sure, but I didn't.

Most of the food we ate right away, although we still have some green beans and tomatoes in the freezer.  I was going to attempt canning, but I didn't have the right tools at the right time, so I just chose to freeze things instead.  There's always next year.

We went into this year pretty much knowing nothing, and eager to try a lot of different things.  We learned quite a bit.

We need to weed.  Our pepper plants and strawberries got pretty choked out by the weeds.  They would have done a lot better if we had kept up on things.  We kept putting it off because we were busy, and then it became too big of a task to catch up on, so half of the garden just kind of became a weed patch.

Squash and pumpkins will take over if you let them.  This was pretty good for our squash harvest.  Jesse pulled the pumpkin plant out a couple months ago because it was getting mildew, which we read could spread to the squash and tomatoes, so we elected to save those instead.  Smart move, since those were our biggest producers.

Starting from seeds inside is a lot of work.  It's a lot easier to buy starter plants, or wait a bit longer to just plant seeds outside, depending on the plants.  Most of our plants that survived were from the starter plants, not the seeds.  

That's the story of our garden this year.  We still have to get it ready for winter.  Jesse wants to mow down the remaining weeds and cover the garden so that they'll all die before next year, and we have a pretty thriving compost pile to spread on there in the spring.  Any other tips for our first winter?

Garden Update: Mid-July

At long last! Another update on our garden!

Our apple trees have apples!  I'm pretty excited for that come fall.  We love applesauce.

Here's our grapevine:

...and a close-up of a bunch of grapes!  They're not ready to eat yet, but they're growing great!

The raspberries are just about done

...although there's still a few last berries to grab.  The kids have basically been gobbling these up as soon as I bring them in, so we didn't end up making anything with them this year.  Snacks of fresh berries are always a good thing though!

Here's an overview shot of the garden.  The bushy area that's overgrown at the bottom of the picture is where the strawberries were.  Since they're done, we haven't weeded that part as much.

We finally got the pepper plants weeded out and they're growing well.  

The jalapenos are almost ready to harvest.

When we were weeding, we took the cages off of the tomatoes, so now they're just big bushes.  We have Romas

And beefsteaks.  The first ones are just starting to turn red.

Can you spot the butternut squash in the next picture?

Our green beans have been growing like crazy!  We've gotten several dinners' worth of side dishes already!

Our first pumpkin is as big as a basketball.  We researched the kind of pumpkin (Howden) and discovered they're more of carving pumpkins and not so much eating pumpkins, although supposedly you can eat any pumpkin.  So we'll probably try one to see what it tastes like.  If nothing else, we have free pumpkins to carve this October.

And finally, our baby watermelon.  

Our peas are done for.  They didn't take root very far down, although I think pea season is pretty much over anyways.  The strawberries are done.  The potatoes are still going strong in the buckets, and the parsley and basil are still growing inside on the dining room table.

We've harvested over 11 pounds from the garden so far this year, and that's been mostly little stuff.  Once we get to the big squashes and all the apples and tomatoes, our total should be pretty high!

Garden Update: Little Plants Are Growing!

Little plants are growing!  Vines are growing!  Trees are blooming!  Flowers are pretty!

One of the cool things about moving to this new house has been seeing all the things that were already planted that we get to enjoy now.  The previous pastor and his family did a lot of landscaping and planting, and I feel a bit spoiled that we get to just come take over.  We're trying to add to it and make it even better.

Let's start with the purely pretty things.  Last month the tulips were in full bloom.  They're mostly gone now, but now these have popped up.

There's still a few purple and yellow tulips on the other side of the front porch (there were also pink and orange a few weeks ago). 

They're just gorgeous!

On the side of the house are some other flowers, so we've been learning what they are as well.

In the backyard, the apple trees (2 different kinds) are flowering, which gives me hope for lots of apples for applesauce this fall.

We also inherited both a grape vine

and several raspberry bushes. Sorry for the weird picture angle, but the neighbors were out and I didn't want them to feel weird about me taking pictures.

So.

Everything up to this point in the blog post has been stuff that was already here.  Aren't we spoiled?

I showed you our tilled up garden plot a few weeks ago, and here's what it looks like today:

We bought several more plants at the garden center, so we now have the potential for watermelon, pumpkins, broccoli, peas, beans, onions, and tomatoes.  Some are doing better than others.  This is the year of trying a bunch of stuff and learning what works.

(broccoli)

(tomatoes in cages)

My favorite part is the strawberry plants.  We planted six of them, and while they're tiny right now, they're supposed to come back each year, so we are hoping to help them get nice and big!

Inside, we still have butternut squash, dill weed, some kind of lettuce, and a few more pepper, jalapeno, and tomato plants.  Those will be planted outside in the next week or so.  We still have some extra onion bulbs, which will probably get planted one per cup and take over the table in the window.  Might as well grow them, since we know we'll eat them!

We also got a parsley plant and a cilantro plant for me to keep inside.  The parsley is thriving!

The cilantro is not.

Most of the stalks wilted, so I picked them off to salvage the cilantro and dry it.  I'm trying to revive the remaining plant but I'm not too hopeful there.  At least we only paid about what I would have for one bunch of cilantro at the grocery store?

And finally, our bucket potatoes.

(Matthew's, mine, Jonah's, Jesse's)
We each picked a seed potato to plant.  We're having an unofficial competition to see who picked the best one.  Jesse's looks the biggest so far, but since we can't actually see the potatoes, we'll have to wait until fall to find out who picked the winner.

So that's our garden right now.  Honestly, growing things from little tiny seeds intimidates me, which is why I've let Jesse do pretty much everything so far.  I'm more comfortable with plants that are sturdy and close to harvesting, and then preserving everything afterwards.   Still, I'm really excited with the potential for all this yummy food!

What's In The Garbage: We Started A Compost Pile!

Last week, I showed you our garden beginnings, along with a sneak peak at our compost pile (next to the garage in the picture above).  I had a whole list of questions about composting, and I still haven't found all of the answers to them.  But on April 22, which was Earth Day, we decided to jump in and start anyways.  Want to know what prompted that change?

The episode of Curious George on PBS that morning was about composting.  Real life here, folks.

The kids got excited about it, so we decided to start.  We gathered up the veggie scraps and egg shells we had so far, added some banana peels later in the day, and some grass clippings a few days later.

Now we have a bowl like this on the counter, and any extra scraps or peels or shells go in there.  Every day (or every other day if it's not too full), someone takes the bowl out and adds it to the pile.  I dump my coffee grounds directly on the pile when I make my cold brewed coffee every week since it's less messy that way.

This was what our pile looked like that first day.  Jesse had made a big batch of carrot apple celery juice, plus there were a few other bits.

The pile has already about tripled in size between the food scraps and the yard waste we've been cleaning up.  It's pretty cool to know that that free stuff will help our garden grow!

One positive benefit we've already seen is about a 1/3 reduction in our garbage, right off the bat!  I'm really excited for that to continue.  Between getting back into cloth diapering with Elizabeth, making sure to keep everything we can recycle out of the garbage, and now composting, we're at our goal of just one bag/week!

I'm sure there's still more that we can do to lessen our waste, but it's really cool that we made it to this goal in just a few months!

Garden Beginnings

About a month ago, we started our seeds inside.  I had been saving egg cartons for this, and the boys helped poke holes in the bottom for water drainage.  

We (and by "we" I mean Jesse) planted them in the egg cartons.  Unfortunately, they didn't get labeled before the boys started bringing them in to put them on our card table.  Mystery plants!
We had seeds for carrots, bell peppers, jalapenos, tomatoes, and lettuce.

After a couple weeks, Jesse transplanted some of the thriving plants into plastic cups, because they had outgrown the egg cartons but weren't ready for outside yet.  He put these on dark towels to help them really soak up the sun and stay warm, since we don't have a heating lamp.

(I can't figure out why this picture won't rotate in the blog post. It's not sideways on my computer!)

At that point he also planted some additional seeds, yellow squash and dill.  The squash and dill are growing well, as are about a third of the egg carton plants.  The 5 egg cartons in the picture above didn't really grow well, probably because they didn't get quite as much heat and sunlight.  Live and learn!

Earlier this week, our church president came by and tilled up the land behind our garage.  It's a huge plot!  I don't know that we'll even be able to fill it, but it's awesome to have this much space!  We're going to work on putting up a chicken wire fence around it to hopefully keep out the rabbits.  If you look really closely, you can also see our compost pile behind the garage to the right of the garden.  More about that next week!

Jesse picked up four more tomato plants, four red pepper plants, and four jalapeno plants, which are a little bit farther along than our seeds.  We're hoping to transplant everything to the garden in a few weeks.

We're still pretty much novices at this since we only had our two tomato plants in pots last year.  Any advice for beginners?  I know a lot more about the saving the produce once it's actually grown than I do about growing it...