A Garden Update
I feel like this summer has flown by in a blur. One day I was planting seeds and the next I’m harvesting tomatoes. This time of year feels perfectly exuberant in the garden, everything is tall, green and producing fruit. I like to soak in the fullness of this season so I can remember it deep in winter when there is no green to be seen.
This is the main garden up behind the garage, the workhorse. It’s not laid out in a nice pattern, things are planted wherever there happens to be room. It’s a bit weedy and overgrown around the edges because I’m letting it grow tall for the pigs. We have been moving them around this garden to root up the grass and weeds for our future expansion.
This garden houses loads of vegetables grown en masse. There are purple cabbage, giant cauliflower plants, rows and rows of beans for drying, neatly staked tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, herbs, asparagus and so much more.
There are also fall crops that have just gone in where the garlic was harvested. A long row of shelling peas to stock the freezer along with hundreds of leeks.
Late July and August are always great times in the northern garden. For you southerners I’m sure it’s a crispy dry time. Here in the north the gardens are in their prime.
What state is your garden in, full glory, past prime, gone?
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Peppermint Stick Chard
This spring a packet of ‘Peppermint Stick’ Chard arrived with my seeds from Renee’s Garden. I didn’t think much about it, I just seeded them a flat along with everything else this spring. They were transplanted in the garden at the appropriate time and I completely forgot about them. Chard is one of those vegetables that gets forgotten with all the succulent lettuces and spinaches on the market. Yet it’s a perfect vegetable, able to withstand very severe cold and still produce bountiful leaves when the days heat up as well.
Not only is this variety a hardy vegetable to grow, it’s a showstopper as well. Look at those variegated pink and white stalks. They practically glow when you catch them out of the corner of your eye. Chard isn’t one of those vegetable that I grow a ton of, but there are always a few stands growing in a corner of the garden. This variety is quite lovely and is one I will keep growing year after year, even if it never graces my plate.
What is a vegetable you’d grow for beauty even if it didn’t produce fruit you liked?
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The First of the Season
Last Thursday I plucked the first ripe tomato from the vine and popped it straight into my mouth. There was no saving to share with Mr Chiots, very selfish I know, but he doesn’t care since he doesn’t like tomatoes quite as much as I do.
This is a ‘Tess’s Land Race’ currant tomato, the same one that ripens first just about every year. I find that I enjoy this lovely variety until the big beefsteak tomatoes come on, then it’s simply too tedious to harvest the tiny tomatoes. I’ll pick them if I need something extra for a recipe, or if I want little tomatoes for a salad. But once the beefsteaks come on they are forgotten.
What tomato variety ripens first in your garden?
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Friday Favorite: Hand Hoe
I used to have hand trowels that I loved, then I got this hand hoe from Johnny’s Seeds. It’s now my favorite tool, pretty much the only one I use. It works for pretty much any gardening task and I love that it has a sharp blade that can be used for cutting roots and hoeing. It can also be used as a trowel to dig planting holes.
I find myself always reaching for this tool and finally decided that with the size of my garden I needed to purchase a few more. Last week two shiny new ones arrived. I now have one to keep up by the main garden behind the garage, one to keep by the back door, and one to keep by the front door as well.
Do you have a favorite hand tool?
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Seaweed Mulch
My tomato plants in the potager behind the house are much deeper green, more compact and overall much better looking than my tomatoes plants in the main garden behind the garage. I was trying to figure out why since the soil is very similar in both gardens and the plants have been treated almost exactly the same. The plants in the back garden have actually been fertilized more than the ones in the potager.
Then I remembered that the plants in the potager have been mulched with seaweed from when we buy lobsters. It acts as a seaweed tea of course, every time it rains the plants get a low dose of healthy nutrients.
Seaweed is a dynamic accumulator, it also contains loads of minerals and micronutrients. I don’t harvest seaweed for my garden, but whenever I get it when we purchase lobsters it goes right around my prize plants. Comfrey is a good alternative to seaweed if you don’t live near the ocean. I also grow massive amounts of comfrey to use in/around favorite plants. I always throw some in planting holes because it stimulates root growth & development. Comfrey deserves it’s own post, more on that wonder plant later.
What’s your favorite local mulch product?
