How does your garden grow? (lots o' pics)

[wildeyed]

Here's mine!

before:


now:


container garden with very cute little eggplants and mini-cuke vines that produce full sized and nice tasting cukes:


closeup, yellow pear (productive little bugger!):


squash and pumpkins:


wildlife garden:


How does your garden grow? Do you see changes since the spring?

[Gormy Cuss]

1. The first year that I had a garden here, I planted a six pack of yellow pear tomato plants.

We were so sick of them that we didn't plant that variety again for five years.

[wildeyed]

4. Six yellow pear! Eeeek!

You musta been up to you ying-yang in little yellow tomatoes. Bet the neighbors got a few, too.

I accidentally planted a yellow pear and a sungold this year when I only meant to plant the sungold. Ooops! Both very productive and vigorous growers. I am trying to borrow a dehydrator to preserve the excess.

[Gormy Cuss]

7. Turns out one CAN have too many tomatoes..

even after giving away tons of them I had too many. I put them through the tomato press and made sauce!

[Gato Moteado]

2. great job!

i especially like that you have a wildlife habitat in the front. i wish everyone did that.

[wildeyed]

5. It is a perfect spot for it too.

Hot and dry, but the native plants hold up better than the non-natives I had there before. IT is actually prettier than what I had before, too. I am trying to inspire the neighborhood.

[Juneboarder]

3. Great Pics!!

I have 5 Roma Tomato plants that are ready to give me a ton of tomatos along with a 4 year old Jalapeno plant that mass produces every year and just planted a sprouted Heirloom Red Pear Tomato Plant.

I love watching the garden grown and eating the fruits you have grown... so much better than grocery store purchases anyday!! :)

Congratulations on a job well done! :)

[wildeyed]

6. I see some salsa in your future!

I had plant labeling issues this year when I started my seeds and ended up with no hot pepper varieties :(

[GardeningGal]

8. I always thought jalapeno plants were annuals.

I guess it depends on where you live. Here in Denver, no chance.

[Juneboarder]

14. Yea I don't really know

I just know that they keep on producing until winter time and I love it. Salsa is definitely in my near future, and I do have an awesome recipe if anyone is interested :)

[hippywife]

9. Real curb appeal!

I love the wildlife habitat! And the rest of your garden looks wonderful, too. I think next year, I'm gonna plant my squash, melons, and punkins like that. Good idea! :hi:

[wildeyed]

10. They have room to ramble back there all by their lonesomes.

At my old house I planted the Rampicante squash ( big vine on the far left) and it almost ate the entire small backyard. I ended up cutting it back with hedge clippers. But it makes nice squash and is easy to grow if it has room, so I planted it agian this year in my larger backyard and haven't been sorry

[hippywife]

11. So they do okay

in the high grass? I notice you can't mow under them. LOL

[wildeyed]

12. It is fine except when it rains a lot.

Then the squash get a little soft. I am going to try to gently pick up the vines and move them next time we mow. I will let you know how that goes.

[hippywife]

13. I really wondered because

there have been a couple of times when it got really hot here and we were doing conventional row gardening, we gave over the rows to the grass. Even thought the vines were healthy and beginning to produce small fruit, nothing came out of that gardent hat year.

[wildeyed]

15. Hmm, that may be why I see less production since the grass got longer.

I am going to try to gently move the vines, then mow. Next year I will plant blueberries bushes in that bed, expand the veggie patch and do squash and punkins there. I will need to figure out how to trellis them, or something, to keep them from over-running the rest of the garden like last time.

[wildeyed]

16. I went back and checked more carefully.

The rampicante squash vine has a dozen small squash growing, so it seems fine. The pumpkins are not producing well, but I never have had great luck with winter squash, so maybe it is me. My 400-lb pumpkin vine is DYING :cry: It looks like the main vine was sliced part way through. Maybe my dh accidental hit it when he was mowing? Anyway, I am heartbroken, dh not so much. I haven't broken the news to the kids yet. :(

[hippywife]

17. Is the part close to the root stem

still good? If so, maybe you can still save it. I would get it up out of that grass long enough to mow and weed the grass out around the root stem, replacing it with a good compost mulch. Hope you can salvage it. If not, and this has been a hard lesson for me to learn, gardening is trial and error. Every year you try to grow a garden, you get better and better at it, having learned from the failures as well as the successes, sometimes more. :hug:

[wildeyed]

18. The bed is clear of grass.

The vines grew out of the bed and flop out in the grass. I put some cheap temporary wire fencing around the bed to keep the dogs out. The pumpkin vine grew through the wire. It looks like something partially cut the pumpkin vine where it comes through the fence. I was hoping it would snap back, but it seems to be declining. :( I am ridiculously upset.

[madeline_con]

19. Your squash (or melon) does o.k. just cruising across the grass?

I don't have a lot of room in my garden.

[wildeyed]

20. So far.

The bed is clear of grass and weeds. I moved the vines a few days ago so I could mow and that seems to have been ok, too.