Catching Up With the Garden

 

Upon our return home, our garden had changed a lot during our month absence. Above is the east side of the garden. The trellis to the left has some cucumbers and watermelon growing and next to it is a row of okra we planted before we left between two rows of peas. Sadly we weren't able to harvest any peas since they were just not quite ready before we left. They didn't go to waste though as a friend of ours picked them for their consumption while we were away, including my sour cherry crop for this year. Beside the okra are the remains of our bolted lettuce which I promptly pulled up and laid on top of the much. Next are the onions, potatoes, hard to spot carrots, parsnips and next to the metal fence posts on the far right are our tomatoes.

Above is the west half of the garden. To the left you can again see the tomatoes followed by a row of Japanese shishito peppers which I plan to pickle a bunch of later this summer. We planted a couple of them last year and I picked a couple jars of excess and they turned out to be so tasty, that I want to built up a stash of them in my pantry. Besides the peppers are two rows of garbanzo beans, something new for us to plant. We always try to do something new every year to increase knowledge and to perhaps add to our pantry. Next come our sweet potato crop, followed by a row of garlic and finally our raised strawberry bed.

Home less than 20 hours and still with a serious case of jetlag, we set about picking our garden cart full of vegetables to keep us awake until a more reasonable hour for bed.

We started by picking all the garlic which did fantastic this year. Last year was our first year (in about two decades) and I saved all the biggest and best looking bulbs which I planted late last fall. This year, all our bulbs were mostly big and nice looking. I tied them in large bunches which you can see above and I hung them in our garage where they will spent the next month curing in the warm heat without direct sunlight. Then I will put them in mesh bags which we will store in the cool interior of our house with another 8 or 10 bulbs picked out for planting later this fall for next years crop. Hopefully the remainder of the garlic will be enough to get us mostly through winter before we have to buy any from the store.

Next up, we dug the remainder of our carrot crop up. We had been eating quite a bit before we left in salads and just raw. Our friend also picked some for their consumption while away. The remainder ones, which are quite large, we will shred and freeze to be used in cakes and other recipes like Filipino lumpia throughout the year. We also saved some for the next month or so to roast for eating as a side to our meals along with other root crop veggies.

Next up, we dug a couple feet of our 20 foot long row of parsnips. As you can see, we have a bumper crop of them this year and I'm not sure what we will do with them all. We've been eating a lot of them roasted but will preserve some in our freezer to be used as a mash later on. We will likely have to give a ton of them away as we don't have the room to store/preserve them all but for now, the rest lay in waiting in the garden.

I also dug up two hills each of white and red potatoes. We mostly missed the "new" potato stage this year while we were gone so are going to have an abundance of larger potatoes. I usually store a few bushels of them in our basement which will last until mid winter before they start going bad. I need a root cellar or something a bit colder than our basement to be able to store them all year round but being able to eat them for six to seven months a year is fine by me. Likely we will have way more than we can consume this year so will have to give some of those away too.

Finally, I pulled a few onions just to have on hand for eating. They aren't fully grown yet so we left the rest out in the garden for now but we won't be buying onions anytime soon. Like the potatoes, I can dry them out and preserve them enough to last until mid winter before they will start going soft. 

We were pleased with our garden when we returned from the Philippines. With our mulching before we left, weeds weren't too bad. Our 5 inch rain gauge was completely full, which combined with the mulch, meant that we had plenty of moisture too. We spent several hours in our garden weeding and picking the above veggies and feel that we were essentially caught up on what needed doing so all the pre trip preparations paid off. It would have been nice to have some peas and sour cherries in the freezer for the year but still a worthy trade I think. I still have enough cherries from last year frozen for a few pies this year but we will be without peas until next year.